Battle of Camden

Background

After years of stalemate in the north, the British turned to the southern colonies. On 12 May 1780 Sir Henry Clinton took Charleston, South Carolina, and with it an American army of more than 5,000 men. Clinton returned to New York and left Lord Cornwallis to hold the province with a chain of posts, of which Camden was the most important inland. Congress sent Horatio Gates, the general credited with the victory in the Battles of Saratoga, to take over what was left of the Southern Department. He took command in North Carolina on 25 July 1780 of a small force of Maryland and Delaware Continentals under the German-born Major General Johann de Kalb.

Gates marched at once for Camden by the most direct road, through poor country where his men found little to eat. Militia from North Carolina under Richard Caswell and from Virginia under Edward Stevens joined him on the way. Gates believed he had about 7,000 men. A count showed a little over 3,000 fit for duty, of whom fewer than 1,000 were Continentals. Many were sick from a diet of green corn, unripe fruit and a ration of molasses. Cornwallis reached Camden on 13 August and decided to attack, though he had only about 2,200 men.

The Battle

Both generals ordered night marches on 15 August. Around two o'clock in the morning their advance guards collided on the road north of Camden, in open pine woods with swamps on either side. After a confused skirmish both armies waited for daylight.

At dawn Gates placed the Virginia and North Carolina militia on his left and center and de Kalb with the 2nd Maryland Brigade and the Delaware Regiment on his right. The 1st Maryland Brigade was in reserve. This put his least experienced troops opposite the best of the British: the 23rd and 33rd Regiments and light infantry under Lieutenant Colonel James Webster. Lord Rawdon commanded the British left, made up mainly of Loyalist units. The 71st Highlanders and Banastre Tarleton's cavalry were held in reserve.

Webster's regulars came on cheering with fixed bayonets. The Virginians broke and ran, most of them without firing a shot, and nearly all of the North Carolina militia followed. One North Carolina regiment next to the Continentals stood its ground. Webster then turned against the exposed flank of the Continental line. On the American right de Kalb, who could see little through the smoke and morning haze, held off Rawdon and even counterattacked. The Continentals fought on for perhaps three quarters of an hour until they were attacked from several sides and Tarleton's cavalry charged their rear. De Kalb fell with eleven wounds and died three days later. The survivors scattered into the swamps, and Tarleton's horsemen chased the fugitives for about twenty miles.

Gates was swept away with the militia. He rode some sixty miles to Charlotte that day and went on to Hillsborough, about 180 miles from the battlefield, in a little over three days.

Weapons

Most of the British and Loyalist infantry carried the Brown Bess Musket and its Socket Bayonet, and it was the bayonet, or the sight of it, that decided the action on the American left. Some of the Virginia militia are said to have received bayonets only shortly before the battle, with no training in their use. The Continentals were by this stage of the war armed largely with French muskets such as the Charleville Musket. Their officers were under orders to carry the Spontoon. Tarleton's dragoons fought with the saber, with the Light Dragoon Pistol as a second weapon. Both armies had a few light field guns. The British pieces were light 6-pounders and 3-pounders, the latter of the kind described under Grasshopper Cannon, and all of the American guns were lost.

Aftermath

American losses were never counted exactly. Estimates commonly run to about 900 killed and wounded and about 1,000 captured, along with all the artillery and baggage. Cornwallis reported 68 killed, 245 wounded and 11 missing. Two days later Tarleton surprised and scattered Thomas Sumter's partisans at Fishing Creek, and for a time no organized American force remained in South Carolina.

The victory encouraged Cornwallis to invade North Carolina, but the destruction of a Loyalist force at Kings Mountain on 7 October forced him back. Congress removed Gates, and at George Washington's choice Nathanael Greene took over the southern army in early December 1780. Greene's campaign led to the Battle of Cowpens and the Battle of Guilford Court House.

On Screen

Camden appears in The Patriot (2000), directed by Roland Emmerich. The fictional Benjamin Martin, played by Mel Gibson, watches from a distance as American lines trade volleys with the British in open fields and then break, and he blames Gates for fighting regulars in the European manner. Tom Wilkinson plays Cornwallis. The film is right about the result, the collapse of the militia, the cavalry pursuit and the blame that fell on Gates. It leaves out the dawn collision in the pine woods and the long stand of the Continentals under de Kalb, and in reality most of the militia ran without exchanging volleys at all. Martin is an invented character who draws on several partisan leaders. Colonel Tavington, played by Jason Isaacs, is loosely based on Banastre Tarleton, whose British Legion wore green jackets rather than the red coats seen in the film.