Quote Originally Posted by MacBean View Post
Is that Ferguson of rifle fame who died at Kings Mountain? Why is he appealing today especially? I have to admit, what I've heard of him is rather interesting though.
Two reasons, I suppose. First, he was a Scottish gentleman. Second, I was thinking about him on Sunday when I was driving past the Kings Mountain battlefield. The entire period of the Scottish Enlightenment (sort of 1729-1832) produced a plethora of titans in the arts, philosophy, and sciences, and in my opinion Captain Ferguson was one of them. With true Scots inventiveness he devised an eminently practical breech loading rifle that had, for its time, two great virtues: it could be loaded faster than a conventional muzzle loading musket, and it's accuracy was superior to any other military arm then in service. To this inventiveness he brought a system of values-- call it a moral compass if you will-- that prevented his killing Washington with a shot fired in stealth. Seems to me that that encapsulates the ethos of the Enlightenment.