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Battle Of Camden

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While Cornwallis stretched his forces out in South Carolina, American regulars marched into North Carolina led by the giant Bavarian Johann DeKalb. The son of peasants, DeKalb looked as if he had spent years in grain fields doing the hardest labor, for he was a bull of a man, over six feet in height, broad in face and thick in body - though not in brain. He knew his craft, having fought in two European wars, served with Marshal Saxe, and read deeply about battles. He also knew something about America; Choiseul had sent him to report on colonial affairs during the agitation before 1776 and he had traveled widely - and observed carefully. He returned to America after the war began and though he received a commission as a major general and served at Valley Forge and Monmouth, he had never had his own command. Now he had it, from Congress, which in April had ordered him to take Delaware and Maryland Continentals to the rescue of Charleston. DeKalb never made it; in July he rested his footsore infantry at Coxe's Mill along the Deep River in North Carolina.

There Horatio Gates found him on July 25, 1780, and, on the order of Congress, took command of his 1,400 Continentals. Congress had appointed Gates to head the army in the South on learning of the disaster at Charleston. Washington had recommended that Nathanael Greene be appointed, but Congress, still bedazzled by Saratoga, had wanted its victor to recover the South for America. Given Gates's record, which is all that Congress had to go on, the choice was excellent. Most men seemed to like him instinctively, reassured by his plainness. On top of his apparent simplicity, since 1777 he carried an aura of success - he had forced surrender from a British army. The pride, and delight, that Americans felt in his triumph is clear in the word they coined to describe it - he had "burgoyned" the British.

Soldiers in the field respect victories, but they also expect renowned leaders to provide effective leadership. Doubts about Gates set in at once. The day after his arrival he ordered the "Grand Army" - hls term for the worn-out Continentals - paraded, and on July 27, he set them on the road to Camden. Protest was futile and seemed churlish in the face of Gates's reassurances that rum and rations were only a couple of days behind him. Still, Otho Williams, his adjutant general, urged him to take a roundabout route to the west rather than a direct line which led through sand and swamp, largely barren of farms and those few long since picked clean bv the militia of both sides.

On August 7, Richard Caswell's North Carolina militia, some 2,100 strong, joined Gates, and the next week Virginia militia under Edward Stevens came in. The militia must have wondered about the Grand Army.Gates's troops exuded fatigue, as any troops might who had existed on little more than green corn, lean beef, and peaches for several weeks. Marching from Hillsboro to Rugeley's Mills, just north of Camden, a distance of 120 miles, had taken them two weeks. They reached Rugeley's Mills short of just about evervthing - they had but eighteen cannon and only a small troop of cavalry, though the Carolinas, generally lightly wooded and flat, were made for cavalry. Gates also lacked information about his enemy, a deficiency that was to cost many lives.

The enemy had increased his numbers in Camden two days before. Cornwallis, in Charleston, learned of Gates's approach on August 9. The next day he set out for Camden. There he found Rawdon, now reinforced by four companies of light troops from Ninetv-Six, and small units from Hanging Rock and Rocky Mount. Rawdon had skirmished with advance parties from Gates's army and with partisans under Thomas Sumter. Gates, however, was ignorant of Cornwallis's presence and unaware that a large force, 2,043 effectives, had ensconced itself in Camden. There were also 800 British sick in the town, and their presence helped convince Cornwallis that he should fight rather than pull back before what he thought was a much larger army.

On August 15, Gates ordered a night march which he expected would bring his army into position to trap a much smaller British force. When he issued his orders Gates thought he had 7,000 men; the skeptical Williams had a tally taken and discovered that the army numbered 3,052. Gates expressed surprise but ordered the army forward, commenting only that the 3,000 would be sufficient. According to Williarns, who wrote a perceptive account of the battle that followed, before marching the troops dined on "a hasty meal of quick baked bread and fresh beef, with a desert of molasses, mixed with mush, or dumplings." This meal, Williams reported, "operated so cathartically, as to disorder very many of the men," who "broke ranks" all night with the result that they were weaker and even more tired than usual in the morning. Whatever their condition, they marched at ten that night; by coincidence Cornwallis set his army in motion at exactly the same time. About two-thirty the next morning advance parties of each blundered into one another on the road at Saunders Creek about halfway between Camden and Rugeley's Mills. A confused fight followed with a handful of prisoners taken on both sides. From one of them, Gates learned that he faced Cornwallis and an army of 3,000. Further expressions of surprise came from Gates, who now, uncharacteristically, asked his officers for advice. They obviously thought that Gates was rather late in consulting them, and all save Edward Stevens remained silent. Stevens spoke a part of what all felt: they had no choice but to fight.

At first light of a very hot day, the two armies got a good look at one another and at the place where they would fight. They discovered that about 250 yards of open fields separated them, with the Americans holding slightly higher ground. On either side swamps about a mile apart hounded the field. Cornwallis had sent his troops into a long line during the night with light infantry on the far right; the 23rd Regiment stood to its left with the 33rd between it and the road. Together they composed the right wirrg commanded by Lt. Colonel James Webster. On the left side of the road from the swamp inward stood the North Carolina Provincials and militia, both loyalist units, the legion infantry, and the Volunteers of Ireland, another loyalist regiment. This wing, the left, was assigned to Rawdon. Cornwallis split the 71st on either side of the road in reserve. Tarleton's cavalry stood two abreast just to the rear of the 71st.

Cornwallis had placed all his loyalist units including militia, presumably the least reliable of all, on his left. Gates did not know of these dispositions when he aligned his army and merely by chance placed his militia on the American left directly across from the British regulars. Stevens's Virginia militia stood near the swamp, and to their right, Caswell's North Carolinians. On the other side of the road, the Delaware Contimentals stood close to the swamp with the 2nd Maryland Brigade between them and the road. DeKalb headed the right, Smallwood, the left. The American artillery set up near the road, and the 1st Maryland Brigade was held in reserve.

The battle began with the Virginians moving forward against the regulars on the right. Just before the order was given to them, Otho Williams was told by an artillary officer that the British seemed to be "displaying," that is, deploying, in this case frorn a column to a line. Williams quite property thought that in motion the regulars were vulnerable to an attack and recommended to Gates that the Virginians be ordered forward.

Gates gave the order - his first and last of the day - and Stevens marched his men out. Cannonading on both sides had begun by this time, and the haze which hung over the field began to darken. Stevens's men reached musket range with their leader shouting to them to use their bayonets. They found the British infantry in motion, but far from displaying they were coming forward, "firing and huzzaing." Cornwallis had detected movement on the American left, probably the first steps of the Virginians, and believing that the Americans were making some change in aliginment, sent Webster on the attack. The battle had begun with each side hoping to take advantage of a mistake of the other. Some of the Virginians seem to have responded to British volleys with fire, but most lost their nerve and ran to the rear. The North Carolinians, panicked by the sight of the Virginians, did not squeeze their triggers but threw down their loaded muskets and ran. This opened up the left flank of DeKalb's wing. Otho Williaims and the 1st Maryland Brigade in reserve attempted to come forward in these dreadful minutes, but their ranks were thrown into disarray by the fleeing militia pouring through them. Colonel Webster meanwhile had turned the light infantry and the 23rd to the left to strike the naked American flank. This was a brilliant move and probably destroyed whatever chances DeKalb's wing had of holding its ground.

Up to the time that Webster struck, DeKalb's troops had more than held, throwing back two attacks by Rawdon's provincials and counterattacking vigorously. For thirty minutes at least Rawdon and Conwallis were barely able to keep their left from collapsing. Neither side could see the other clearly by this time as the smoke had drifted over most of the field. Lack of visibility may have aided DeKalb in holding his soldiers to their task, for his troops could not see that their left was exposed. Gradually, however, they realized how vulnerable they were as Webster's men pressed against them. Otho Williams did his best to bring the Marylanders up to the hole vacated by the militia. Webster blocked him off, however, and by noon the American right had collapsed. DeKalb fought for a few minutes longer until he collapsed from his wounds. Three days later he was dead.

The Americans did not withdraw from the battlefield in a manner recommended by military manuals. Rather they left in a crowd with no regimant retaining its integrity as a unit. Gates made no attempt to discipline or reorganize this herd, choosing rather to outdistance it astride a fast horse. That evening he reached Charlotte, sixty miles away, and by the 19th he was at Hillsboro, another 120 miles farther on. He had gone to Hillsboro, he later explained, to secure a base and to rebuild his army. Most of his soldiers did not follow him, Preferring instead to head for home.

Camden shocked both sides. The defeat depressed patriot spirits everywhere, but it did not stop the raids and ambushes on the part of the irregulars. That Camden had so little effect on the grim, inside war surprised Cornwallis and his officers. Two weeks after the battle found him promising Clinton that he would be moving into North Carolina soon. He wanted - he said - to establish a magazine for the winter at Hillsboro, stocked with rum, salt, flour, and meal from the countryside. But he hesitated to send his troops northward unless Clinton undertook to provide a "diversion" in the Chesapeake, an action that would prevent the enemy from sending southward another army, such as Gates had led. The appearance of Gates had caught Cornwallis by surprise, and in his letters to Clinton he implied that his chief should have given him warning. There was another reason to feel unease even though Camden had been a victory - the loyalists in North Carolina had not sent intelligence of Gates's coming. Nor did they show themselves immediately after Camden, but contented themselves with professions of friendship, very quiet professions apparently. In any case, as Cornwallis remarked to Clinton, they "do not seem inclined to rise until they see our army in motion."

Robert Middlekauff. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789. Oxford University Press New York (1985), New York, 1985.

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