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Hello, this is Matt from the Explorers Podcast.

I want to invite you to join me on the Voyages and Hello, this is Matt from the Explorers Podcast.

I want to invite you to join me on the voyages and journeys of the most famous explorers

in the history of the world.

These are the thrilling and captivating stories of Magellan, Shackleton, Lewis and Clark and so many other famous and not so famous

adventures from throughout history. Go to Explorers Podcast.com or just look us up on your

podcast app. That's the Explorer's Podcast. Hello and thank you for joining the American Revolution.

This week episode 268, the Battle of Kings Mountain. In our last episode the Overmountain men had assembled a force of about

1400 Patriot Militia who were moving in early October 1780 to confront the loyalist militia under British Major

Patrick Ferguson near Gilberttown, North Carolina.

Despite having gathered a large number of militia, there were many reasons to think that this fight was going to go badly for the Patriots.

These were largely untested militia.

Most of these men were not from the immediate region and were not familiar with the locality.

Some were from Virginia, some were from South Carolina, and many were from the frontier that is now Tennessee.

They also had no food and supplies except what they carried on themselves.

So any campaign that lasted more than a few days was going to make that lack of supplies a real problem.

The obvious apparent commander of the Army should have been General Thomas Sumter.

But Sumter had left his Army to go find

South Carolina Governor John Rutledge, who had fled into North Carolina and had granted

someone else's overall command of the South Carolina militia.

Sumter could not command his army until he got Rutledge's permission.

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