October 7 · This Day in America
British Major Patrick Ferguson had sent word into the Carolina backcountry: lay down your arms, or he would march his army over the mountains and lay waste to the country with fire and sword. It was the wrong threat to make to those men. They came — frontier militia from beyond the Appalachian ridgeline, hunters who shot for a living — and on a wooded hilltop in South Carolina they surrounded Ferguson's Loyalist force and climbed the slope from every side at once. In about sixty-five minutes it was over. Ferguson was dead. His army was destroyed. It was a battle fought almost entirely between Americans, Patriot against Loyalist, and the Patriot victory shattered British plans to roll up the South. Thomas Jefferson called it "the turn of the tide of success." The road from here runs through Cowpens and Yorktown to a new nation.
Source: www.battlefields.org
Also on this day · 1765
In New York, delegates from nine colonies meet as the Stamp Act Congress — the first time the colonies coordinate political resistance to Parliament rather than petition it one by one. They draft a declaration of rights and grievances, arguing that there can be no taxation without their consent. It is a small, formal meeting. It is also the colonies discovering they can act together, eleven years before they declare why.
Source: www.battlefields.org
“The turn of the tide of success.”Thomas Jefferson, on the Battle of Kings Mountain