About the time when James Robertson went from Watauga to fling out the frontier line three hundred miles farther westward, the British took Savannah. In 1780 they took Charleston and Augusta, and overran Georgia. Augusta was the point where the old trading path forked north and west, and it was the key to the Back Country and the overhill domain. In Georgia and the Back Country of South Carolina there were many Tories ready to rally to the King's standard whenever a King's officer should carry it through their midst. A large number of these Tories were Scotch, chiefly from the Highlands. In fact, as we have seen, Scotch blood predominated among the racial streams in the Back Country from Georgia to Pennsylvania. Now, to insure a triumphant march northward for Cornwallis and his royal troops, these sons of Scotland must be gathered together, the loyal encouraged and those of rebellious tendencies converted, and they must be drilled and turned to account. This task, if it were to be accomplished successfully, must be entrusted to an offcer with positive qualifications, one who would command respect, whose personal address would attract men and disarm opposition, and especially one who could go as a Scot among his own clan.
Cornwallis found his man in Major. Patrick Ferguson.
Ferguson was a Highlander, a son of Lord Pitfour of Aberdeen, and thirty-six years of age. He was of short stature for a Highlander--about five feet eight--lean and dark, with straight black hair. He had a serious unhandsome countenance which, at casual glance, might not arrest attention; but when he spoke he became magnetic, by reason of the intelligence and innate force that gleamed in his eyes and the convincing sincerity of his manner. He was admired and respected by his brother officers and by the commanders under whom he had served, and he was loved by his men.
He had seen his first service in the Seven Years' War, having joined the British army in Flanders at the age of fifteen; and he had early distinguished himself for courage and coolness. In 1768, as a captain of infantry, he quelled an insurrection of the natives on the island of St. Vincent in the West Indies. Later, at Woolwich, he took up the scientific study of his profession of arms. He not only became a crack shot, but he invented a new type of rifle which he could load at the breach without ramrod and so quickly as to fire seven times in a minute. Generals and statesmen attended his exhibitions of shooting; and even the King rode over at the head of his guards to watch Ferguson rapidly loading and firing.
In America under Cornwallis, Ferguson had the reputation of being the best shot in the army; and it was soon said that, in his quickness at loading and firing, he excelled the most expert American frontiersman. Eyewitnesses have left their testimony that, seeing a bird alight on a bough or rail, he would drop his bridle rein, draw his pistol, toss it in the air, catch and aim it as it fell, and shoot the bird's head off. He was given command of a corps of picked riflemen; and in the Battle of the Brandywine in 1777 he rendered services which won acclaim from the whole army. For the honor of that day's service to his King, Ferguson paid what from him, with his passion for the rifle, must have been the dearest price that could have been demanded. His right arm was shattered, and for the remaining three years of his short life it hung useless at his side. Yet he took up swordplay and attained a remarkable degree of skill as a left-handed swordsman.
Such was Ferguson, the soldier. What of the man? For he has been pictured as a wolf and a fiend and a coward by early chroniclers, who evidently felt that they were adding to the virtue of those who fought in defense of liberty by representing all their foes as personally odious. We can read his quality of manhood in a few lines of the letter he sent to his kinsman, the noted Dr. Adam Ferguson, about an incident that occurred at Chads Ford. As he was lying with his men in the woods, in front of Knyphausen's army, so he relates, he saw two American officers ride out. He describes their dress minutely. One was in hussar uniform. The other was in a dark green and blue uniform with a high cocked hat and was mounted on a bay horse:
"I ordered three good shots to steal near to and fire at them; but the idea disgusting me, I recalled the order. The hussar in retiring made a circuit, but the other passed within a hundred yards of us, upon which I advanced from the wood towards him.
Upon my calling he stopped; but after looking at me he proceeded.
I again drew his attention and made signs to him to stop; levelling my piece at him; but he slowly cantered away. As I was within that distance, at which, in the quickest firing, I could have lodged half a dozen balls in or about him before he was out of my reach, I had only to determine. But it was not pleasant to fire at the back of an unoffending individual who was acquitting himself very coolly of his duty--so I let him alone. The day after, I had been telling this story to some wounded officers, who lay in the same room with me, when one of the surgeons who had been dressing the wounded rebel officers came in and told us that they had been informing him that General Washington was all the morning with the light troops, and only attended by a French officer in hussar dress, he himself dressed and mounted in every point as above described. I AM NOT SORRY THAT I DID NOT KNOW AT THE TIME WHO IT WAS.*
