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[Written by Gary Foreman; Shown on "The History Channel" (U.S.); June 2000]

Jay Eben as Lt. Col. Tarleton

This documentary combined talking heads with dramatisation/re-enactment to tell the story of the battle of King's Mountain and its context. Unfortunately, it succeeded chiefly in perpetuating a number of historical myths regarding that battle, the battle of Waxhaws, and the characters of both Banastre Tarleton and Patrick Ferguson.

The narration had clearly decided to play "good cop, bad cop" with them: sadly, some historians interviewed, for whom I have otherwise much respect, shared this approach. If Pattie was to be the tragic hero, then Ban was the unalloyed villain. Waxhaws was portrayed as a massacre, with Buford's own culpable incompetence ignored. Much was made of the local community's shocked response to the plight of the wounded - but no mention made of the fact that Ban had actually paroled the non-walking casualties into medical care, nor of the number of prisoners taken. The myth of "Tarleton's Quarter" was taken at face value in the film, and was a recurrent motif.

In filling in the back-story of both officers, a number of significant mistakes were made:

• Neither Ban nor Pattie was from a titled family: Pattie's father was an advocate (attorney) in Edinburgh, later a judge; Ban's had been the boss of a Liverpool merchant/slaving shipping company. Neither could be described as "aristocratic" or "noble", yet that is how they are described in the programme. A large number of officers were from similar professional middle-class backgrounds. I believe some confusion sets in because of the honorific title of "Lord" by which Scots judges are addressed, Pattie's father being known as Lord Pitfour: but that's all it is - an honorific, not a peerage!
   
• The portrait of Ban used looked to be in the style of Robert Wilson (1970s) and was a bad likeness.
   
• As usual, Pattie's rifle-design was depicted as being opposed by the army top brass. It was alleged that they deliberately obstructed this brilliant "young whippersnapper" (as one of the historians interviewed called him). However, again, this is a serious misrepresentation. Aged 32 in 1776, when he put his rifle before the Ordnance, Pattie already had borne the King's Commission for 17 years. He was no "whippersnapper", and he was also the nephew of Wolfe's successor, Brigadier General Murray. He won over the initially cautious Townshend - his uncle's former comrade from Quebec - and Lord Germaine. He demonstrated the rifle before the King, who was also impressed, and gained the favour of Gen. Sir William Howe, who had already noticed him at his pioneering Light Infantry training camp in 1774. Howe was, in fact, set to expand the experimental rifle corps only days before disaster struck at Brandywine. The corps was suspended largely because of Pattie's crippling arm wound. He was confident of doing more with the rifle project when he returned home, but it was never intended that the Ferguson Rifle should replace the Brown Bess. It was a specialised weapon for Light Infantry use.
   
• The Rebel officer Pattie declined to snipe off at Brandywine was only possibly Washington, and it would have made little difference to the war even if Pattie had shot him. Yet the myth persists of Washington's indispensability: the international dimension of the war was, as ever, glossed over. Perhaps if Washington had fallen, the Rebels might have kept Arnold...
   
• The programme misrepresented Pattie's relations with Ban, depicting them at loggerheads over ethics and methods. Given that Pattie described Ban in a personal letter to his brother-in-law (i.e. one in which he was not having to be mindful of the views of army personnel) as "a very active gallant young man", that Ban in turn paid generous tribute to him in his Campaigns, and that they worked well together at Moncks Corner, this is dubious. Mutual respect is more likely. (See "Banecdotes.")
   
• Quotations were ripped out of context for manipulation. A comment by Cornwallis on the untrustworthiness of paroled Rebels who had retaken the oath of allegiance was said to be his opinion of Loyalists. Not the same thing at all.
   
• Pattie did not choose to make a stand at King's Mountain: he was waiting for reinforcements (McArthur and the 71st) to get closer, to help him back to Charlotte. He did not want to fight there, but felt it might be a good place to be just in case. As for choosing it because it looked like Castle Hill in his native Edinburgh...!!! That has to be a joke!
   
• Cornwallis and Ban did not deliberately abandon him to his fate: messages had been intercepted, and Ban was recovering from yellow fever. Cornwallis too had not been well. To imply it was a snub is wrong.
   
• It is unlikely that Pattie shot the Rebel Col. Williams: I suspect the Loyalist who came up with that story had wanted to give his commander a more heroic end. People on both sides who were closer at hand (such as James Potter Collins) make no mention of it. There is a stronger tradition - perhaps more credible in that it is embarrassingly NOT the sort of thing anyone would want to invent - that Williams may have been a victim of deliberate "fragging". Pattie was in no state to shoot anyone. He was comatose. Both arms were broken by bullets, his thigh was torn, he had about half a dozen bullets in the chest, and another in the head...
   
• Pattie was rescued immediately on falling by his own people - Elias Powell and friends, who tended his wounds and held him for the few minutes he lived, though unconscious.
   
• Virginia Poll was taken prisoner on horseback, but on the hill after the battle. It is highly unlikely she had betrayed Pattie. She helped Powell bury him and Sal. After her release at the Moravian Towns, she returned to Charlotte and found herself another redcoat, with whom she may have returned to Britain. "Virginia" was probably not the girls' first name, but where they came from. One may have been a Miss Featherstone, according to one of Draper's correspondents.
   

Regarding the dramatisation, it was exciting enough in battle terms. Re-enactor Dr. Harold Raleigh was a likeable Pattie Ferguson, although Jay Eben, as Ban, would have stood a better chance of passing himself off as William Washington than the real Tarleton.

If they are going to voice Pattie's letters, it might be advisable to get a real Scot with an educated Edinburgh accent (Pattie writes in the 18th century equivalent of a Morningside-accent), rather than an American trying to put it on - which sounds almost Irish at times.

Three characters were also given entirely inappropriate RP South-Eastern English voice-overs:

• Anthony Allaire, from Rochelle, New York;
   
• Colonel Nisbet Balfour of Dunbog, from Fife) - whose quote was moved to a later point in time than when he said it, thus misrepresenting HQ attitudes towards Pat at the point it was used
   
• Rebel Captain Paddy Carr, an Irishman, who said he wished "more trees in the wilderness bore such fruit" as dead Loyalists. Oh, we know why in Carr's case: because he's an unsympathetic character. And unsympathetic characters in US films are always voiced that way!
   

Of the glorification of the "Scotch-Irish" (a term not widely used before the 19th century, when Americans of Ulster Protestant ancestry, hitherto largely self-described as "Irish", sought to distance themselves from the larger influx of Catholic Irish), the less said the better. The graphics used to represent the "OverMountain Men" looked more like Daniel Day-Lewis in Last of the Mohicans than extras from Deliverance.

It was unfortunate that no historian from the U.K. or Canada was interviewed to offer a Loyal American perspective. The self-congratulatory tone became increasingly unbearable. A lot of mythology, such as the ludicrous notion that wider adoption of the Ferguson rifle could have changed the course of a world war (with fronts ranging from the Caribbean to India, and the Spanish and French navies threatening invasion!), was allowed to go unchallenged.

The gist seems to be, that it is only acceptable to make a hero of Pattie for U.S. consumption by portraying him as a maverick disliked by his superiors, the inventor of an interesting weapon, and an inadvertent victim of Ban's reputation. This does both him and Ban a grave disservice (and is insulting, too, to Howe, Erskine, Clinton, André and the other officers who liked and valued Pattie). All in all, this programme could have been so much better.