In 1780 Tidence Lane and six of his seven sons fought alongside other men from East Tennessee
in the Battle of Kings Mountain. This battle while obscure to some was vital in the American
Revolutionary War. It would buy time for Washington and his army in the north and stop the
British army from advancing north to engage the American forces there. Among those that fought
that day (October 7, 1780) were men such as John Sevier that would later serve as the first governor
of Tennessee. It is said that Major Patrick Ferguson (commander of the British forces) had sent word
to patriots on the Tennessee side of the Smokies “that if they refused to lay down their arms, he would
march over the mountains and ‘lay waste the country with fire and sword.’” The Overmountain Men,
as they came to be called, gathered at Sycamore Shoals (near present day Elizabethton, TN) to prepare
to march on September 25, 1780, and met with other militia men along their way to North Carolina. On
October 7th they engaged Ferguson and his Loyalist/British army on top of Kings Mountain. At the height
of the engagement Sevier and Campbell (the VA militia commander) charged the high point of the British
lines, giving the Overmountain men a foothold atop the mountain. Ferguson was killed trying to break
through Sevier’s lines, and the Loyalists surrendered shortly thereafter. James H. Sightler in his book
The Separate Baptist Revival and its Influence in the South,” writes “…This crushing victory set off
a chain of events that led to the British surrender by Cornwallis at Yorktown in September 1781.”