On 16 August 1780, a few miles north of Camden, South Carolina, Lieutenant General Charles, Lord Cornwallis routed the American southern army of Major General Horatio Gates. The Virginia and North Carolina militia on the American left and center broke almost as soon as the British regulars advanced with the bayonet. The Maryland and Delaware Continentals fought on until they were surrounded, and their commander, Major General Johann de Kalb, was mortally wounded. Gates himself left the field in the rout. The South Carolina Encyclopedia calls it one of the worst losses the Continental Army ever suffered.
A new commander and a hungry march
After Charleston fell to the British on 12 May 1780, the Maryland and Delaware Continentals under de Kalb, sent south to relieve the city, were the only significant American force left in the South. Congress gave the southern command to Gates, celebrated as the victor of Saratoga, and he joined de Kalb's camp in North Carolina on 25 July. Britannica's account, by the military historian Raymond K. Bluhm, notes that much of the credit for Saratoga belonged to Gates's subordinates, Benedict Arnold among them.1
Gates decided to strike at Camden, the largest British post and supply depot in the South Carolina interior. De Kalb advised a longer route through Salisbury and Charlotte, friendly country where the army could find food, but Gates chose the direct road to surprise the garrison, and his men marched with little to eat. Bluhm adds that on 15 August many of them were already sick when Gates fed them a meal of molasses and cornmeal and ordered a night march. Cornwallis, warned of the advance, had come up from Charleston with reinforcements and marched north from Camden to meet him.2
The militia breaks
The two columns ran into each other in the dark of the night of 15 to 16 August and both halted to wait for daylight. They formed up on a narrow front hemmed in by swamps. Both generals put their best troops on the right, so Gates's veteran Continentals stood opposite the Loyalists while the inexperienced Virginia militia of Brigadier General Edward Stevens on his left faced the British regulars of the 23rd and 33rd Regiments of Foot under Lieutenant Colonel James Webster.3
When Webster's line advanced with bayonets, the Virginians ran, many without firing a shot, and the panic spread to the North Carolina militia in the center. The American Battlefield Trust records that Gates himself was caught up in the flight. The South Carolina Encyclopedia says he reputedly rode all the way to Charlotte, in North Carolina.4
De Kalb's last stand
On the right, de Kalb's Continentals had been pushing back the troops in front of them, and they stayed on the field after the rest of the line had gone. Webster's regulars wheeled left into their flank, and Cornwallis committed his reserves and his dragoons around their rear. Outnumbered and nearly surrounded, the Maryland and Delaware regiments were overwhelmed.5
De Kalb, a German-born officer who had served France for decades before joining the American cause, fell with about eleven wounds, most of them from bayonets, according to the American Battlefield Trust. He was carried into Camden and died there on 19 August.6
The cost and what followed
Casualty figures vary. The American Battlefield Trust estimates 1,050 American and 324 British casualties. Britannica gives the same British figure but puts American losses at more than 2,000, with over 1,000 taken prisoner, while the South Carolina Encyclopedia counts about 800 Americans killed or wounded and another 1,000 captured. On strengths, the Trust gives 3,690 Americans against 2,239 British, and Britannica about 3,700 against 2,200.7
The defeat ended organized American resistance in South Carolina for a time and opened the way for a British invasion of North Carolina. An inquiry into Gates's conduct was ordered, though no charges were ever pressed, and within about two months Major General Nathanael Greene took over the southern command. Greene's campaign in the Carolinas wore the British down and helped lead to Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown in 1781. That ending is told in our article on Washington and Cornwallis.8 › Nathanael Greene
Also on this day
- 1807: Battle of Copenhagen. During the Napoleonic Wars, British forces landed near Copenhagen and bombarded the Danish capital to keep the Danish navy out of French hands.
