South Carolina

A pivotal moment in American history, as told by our forefathers

On October 7, 1780, American Patriot and Loyalist soldiers battled each other at Kings Mountain, near the border of North and South Carolina. With over one hundred eyewitness accounts, this collection of participant statements from men of both sides includes letters and statements in their original form - the soldiers' own words - unedited and unabridged. Rife with previously unpublished details of this historic turning point in the American Revolution, described as the war's "largest all-American fight," these accounts expose the dramatic happenings of the battle, including new perspectives on the debate over Patriot Colonel William Campbell's bravery during the fight. Robert M. Dunkerley's work is an invaluable resource to historians studying the flow of combat, genealogists tracing their ancestors and anyone interested in Kings Mountain and the Southern Campaign.

Discover how ""Huck's Defeat"" spurred on the South Carolina militiamen to future victories during the Revolutionary War.

In July of 1780, when the Revolutionary War in the Southern states seemed doomed to failure, a small but important battle took place on James Williamson's plantation in what is now York County, South Carolina. The Battle of Williamson's Plantation, or ""Huck's Defeat"" as it later came to be known, laid the groundwork for the vicious partisan warfare waged by the militiamen on the Carolina frontier against the superior forces of the British Army, and it paved the way for the calamitous defeats that the British suffered at Hanging Rock, Musgrove's Mill, Kings Mountain, Blackstock's Plantation and Cowpens, all in the South Carolina backcountry. In this groundbreaking new study, historian Michael C. Scoggins provides an in-depth account of the events that unfolded in the Broad and Catawba River valleys of upper South Carolina during the critical summer of 1780. Drawing extensively on first-person accounts and military correspondence, much of which has never been published before, Scoggins tells a dramatic story that begins with the capture of an entire American army at Charleston in May and ends with a resounding series of Patriot victories in the Carolina Piedmont during the late summer of 1780---victories that set Lord Cornwallis and the British Army irrevocably on the road to defeat and to surrender at Yorktown in October 1781.

From the rocky slopes of Kings Mountain to the plains of Hannah's Cowpens, the Carolina backcountry hosted two of the Revolutionary War's most critical battles

On October 7, 1780, the Battle of Kings Mountain utilized guerilla techniques - American Over Mountain Men wearing buckskin and hunting shirts and armed with hunting rifles attacked Loyalist troops from behind trees, resulting in an overwhelming Patriot victory. In January of the next year, the Battle of Cowpens saw a different strategy but a similar outcome: with brilliant military precision, Continental Regulars, dragoons, and Patriot militia executed the war's only successful double envelopment maneuver to defeat the British. Using firsthand accounts and careful analysis of the best classic and modern scholarship on the subject, historian Robert Brown demonstrates how the combination of both battles facilitated the downfall of General Charles Cornwallis and led to the Patriot victory in America.

Author Dwayne W. Pickett details the life of William Hilton, his exploration of the Carolina coast and the founding of an iconic island.

Behind the pristine beaches and world renown of Hilton Head Island lies a history that dates back to the early exploration of the nation. In 1663, William Hilton, a mariner born in England, was hired by a group in Barbados to find new lands for them to settle. Hilton led an exploration of the Port Royal Sound area, where he named a high bluff of land Hiltons Head as a navigational marker for future sailors. The island began as a sparsely populated area on the fringe of English settlement in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when it was called Trench's Island on some maps.