American Revolutionary War: American militia defeat royalist irregulars led by British major Patrick Ferguson at the Battle of Kings Mountain in South Carolina, often regarded as the turning point in the war's Southern theater.

Loyalists were colonists in the Thirteen Colonies of British America who remained loyal to the British crown. Historians have estimated that between 15% and 33% of the population of the colonies were Loyalists. A 2000 researcher suggested between 15% and 20% of the 2,000,000 whites in the colonies…