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Major Patrick Ferguson (1744 – 7 October 1780) was a British Army officer who designed the Ferguson rifle. He is best known for his service in the 1780 military campaign of Charles Cornwallis during the American Revolutionary War in the Carolinas, in which he played a great effort in recruiting American Loyalists to serve in his militia against the Patriots.
Ultimately, his activities and military actions led to a Patriot militia force mustered to put an end to his force of Loyalists, and he was killed in the Battle of Kings Mountain, at the border between the colonies of North Carolina and South Carolina. Leading a group of Loyalists whom he had recruited, he was the only regular army officer participating on either side of the conflict. The victorious Patriot forces desecrated his body in the aftermath of the battle.
Through his parents, he knew a number of major figures in the Scottish Enlightenment, including philosopher and historian David Hume, on whose recommendation he read Samuel Richardson's novel Clarissa when he was fifteen, and the dramatist John Home. He had numerous first cousins through his mother's family: these included Sir William Pulteney, 5th Baronet, Commodore George Johnstone, and Sir James Murray (later Murray-Pulteney).
In October 1778, Ferguson was assigned to lead a raid in southern New Jersey to suppress who had been seizing British ships. They were based around the Little Egg Harbor River, which empties into the Great Bay. Ferguson attacked their base in what is known as the Battle of Chestnut Neck.
About a week later, Ferguson was notified by a Hessian defector, Lieutenant Carl Wilhelm Juliat, who had returned to the British side after a furious argument with the American Lieutenant Colonel Carl Von Bose, that a detachment of Count Pułaski's troops, under Von Bose's command, was located nearby. Ferguson marched his troops to the site of Bose's infantry outpost, which comprised fifty men and was a short distance from Pulaski's main encampment.Kajencki, AnnMarie Francis. Count Casimir Pulaski: From Poland to America, a Hero's Fight for Liberty. New York: PowerPlus Books, 2005. . p. 77An older book spells the defector's name as Juliet and identifies him as a Frenchman. The author says that about 50 men were killed by the attackers. Sears, Robert. The Shot Heard Round the World: From Lexington to Yorktown: A Pictorial History of the American Revolution. Boston: John Adams Lee Pub., 1889. . p. 284. At first light on 15 October 1778, Ferguson ordered his men to use bayonets to attack the sleeping men of the American force. Pulaski reported that Ferguson's Tories killed, wounded or took prisoner about 30 of his men in what the Americans called the Little Egg Harbor massacre.Kajencki, 2005. p. 78
Ferguson's own account (under the pen-name Egg-Shell) expresses his dismay at Pułaski's lack of preparations and failure to post look-outs. He said in his official report that little quarter could be given, and his men took only five prisoners.Irving, Washington. Life of Washington. Volume 3. New York : G.P. Putnam, 1860. . pp. 503–504. Irving gives 50 as the number of men killed by Ferguson and his force. Ferguson reported that he did not destroy the three houses which sheltered the Americans because they were the dwellings of inoffensive Quakers, who were innocent civilians.Draper, Lyman C., Anthony Allaire, Isaac Shelby. King's Mountain and Its Heroes: History of the Battle of King's Mountain. Cincinnati: Peter G. Thompson, Publisher, 1881. . p. 60. Pułaski eventually led his mounted troops (Pułaski's Legion) forward, causing Ferguson to retreat to his boats, minus a few men who had been captured. Ferguson reported his losses as two killed, three wounded, and one missing.Draper, 1881, p. 59. Draper gives the lieutenant colonel's name as "De Bosen." He states that Pulaski captured "a few prisoners." He also identifies "Juliet" as a Hessian and a "double deserter."
Major Patrick Ferguson was appointed Inspector of Militia Corps on 22 May 1780. His task was to march to the old Tryon County area, raise and organize Loyalist units from the Tory population of the Carolina Backcountry, and protect the left flank of Cornwallis' main body at Charlotte, North Carolina.Buchanan, 202Dameron, 22 By this time, Ferguson had acquired the nickname of "Bulldog" among his militiamen.Franklin and Mary Wickwire, Cornwallis: The American Adventure (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970), 200.
After winning several victories over American forces, Cornwallis occupied Charlotte, in the summer of 1780. He divided his army and gave command of one section to Ferguson. Ferguson's wing consisted of Loyalists he had recruited to fight for the British cause.
Some Whig leaders briefly considered attacking the Tory stronghold at Ninety Six, South Carolina; but they hurriedly dispersed after learning that a large Patriot army had been defeated at Camden three days previous.
Shelby and his Overmountain Men crossed back over the Appalachian Mountains and fled back into the territory of the Watauga Association at Sycamore Shoals in present day Elizabethton, Tennessee, and by the next month on 25 September 1780, Colonels Shelby, John Sevier, and Charles McDowell and their 600 Overmountain Men had combined forces with Col. William Campbell and his 400 Virginia men at the Sycamore Shoals muster in advance of the 7 October 1780 Battle of Kings Mountain near present day Blacksburg, South Carolina.
On 2 September, Ferguson and the militia he had already recruited marched west in pursuit of Shelby toward the Appalachian Mountain hill country on what is now the Tennessee/North Carolina border.Buchanan, 204 By 10 September, Ferguson had established a base camp at Gilbert Town, North Carolina and issued a challenge to the Patriot leaders to lay down their arms or he would "lay waste to their country with fire and sword."John Buchanan, The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The American Revolution in the Carolinas (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997), p. 208. "Provincial regulars" were Americans who enlisted in British army units, as opposed to British regular army and Tory militia. Edgar, 153.
North Carolina Patriot militia leaders Isaac Shelby and John Sevier, from the Washington District (now northeast Tennessee), met and agreed to lead their militiamen against him.Buchanan, 210–211
On 7 October 1780, the two armies clashed during the Battle of Kings Mountain. The battle went badly for the Loyalists positioned high on the mountain ridge, and during the fighting, Ferguson was shot from his horse. With his foot still in the stirrup, he was dragged to the Patriot side. According to Patriot accounts, when a Patriot approached the major for his surrender, Ferguson drew his pistol and shot him as a last act of defiance. Other soldiers retaliated, and Ferguson's body was found with eight musket holes in it. Patriot accounts said their militia stripped his body of clothing and urinated on him before burial. They buried him in an oxhide near the site of his fall. Col. Benjamin Cleveland of North Carolina claimed Ferguson's white stallion as a "war prize” and rode it home to his estate of Roundabout.
One of Ferguson's mistresses, "Virginia Sal", was also killed in the battle and was buried with the officer. In the 1920s, the U.S. government erected a marker at Ferguson's gravesite, which today is a part of the Kings Mountain National Military Park, administered by the National Park Service.
Ferguson's personal correspondence reveals a man of intelligence, humour and charm. He also wrote several articles, satirical in tone, for publication in James Rivington Royal Gazette, under the pseudonyms Egg-Shell, Memento Mori and John Bull.
He was survived by his mother, his brothers James and George, and sisters Annie, Elizabeth (Betty) (Mrs Scrymgeour-Wedderburn of Birkhill), and Jean.
In Louis L'Amour's book The Ferguson Rifle (1973), Ferguson stops by a poor family home on his way to the Battle of King's Mountain and kindly gives his personal copy of the Ferguson rifle to a boy who later carries it West. Ferguson is shown to be a gentleman who displays all the appropriate social graces to a lady (the boy's ill mother) and compassion to a family in need by giving up his personal firearm, asking only that the boy keep it always, and never use it against the king. (p7) In NCIS episode 18 Season 10 “ Scoped” referenced by Ducky during autopsy as he explained to his assistant Jimmy about early snipers. In Steve Ressel's novel State of One (2010), Ferguson is the main antagonist featured against James Pariah, a soldier formerly under Ferguson's command during the Battle of the Brandywine in 1777. Ferguson had been resurrected as a golem by the Leeds Witch with hopes of raising a golem army of similar soldiers, all armed with , to destroy the ratification of the US Constitution in September 1787. James Pariah cleaves to his old Ferguson rifle, sometimes referring to it as his wife, having modified it with special actions such as a spring-loaded knife in the stock.
In Sharyn McCrumb's novel Kings Mountain: A Ballad Novel (2014), Ferguson is the central antagonist. Events leading to and the battle itself are covered from multiple viewpoints on both sides.
In the 2014 episode "Patriots Rising" of the television program The American Revolution, Ferguson is portrayed as having George Washington in his gunsight, but choosing not to shoot.
In the outdoor drama Horn in the West, Ferguson is portrayed harassing Daniel Boone's Patriot friends ultimately leading to the Battle of Kings Mountain whereby his final defiant moments are carried out by shooting a Patriot with his pistol.
In Stephen Hunter's 2022 novel "Targeted", Ferguson is given a short biographical treatment focusing on his prowess with firearms and is linked, genetically to Bob Lee Swagger, the fictional protagonist of Hunter's long running series of novels.
Ferguson is mentioned in The Domination, a dystopian science fiction alternate history series by S.M. Stirling, where he is presented as the first governor of the fictional Cape Colony.
Ferguson's death is mentioned in the song "Old World Rules And Empire Takes" by Scottish folk singer Malcolm MacWatt.
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