The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (100 page)

side of the road in reserve. Tarleton's cavalry stood two abreast just to the rear of the 71st.
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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 Continentals 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 artillery officer that the British seemed to be "displaying," that is, deploying, in this case from a column to a line. Williams quite properly 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 alignment, 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 Williams and the 1st Maryland Brigade in reserve attempted to come forward in these dreadful minutes, but

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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.
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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 Cornwallis 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 learned 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 on 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 regiment 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.

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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."
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Cornwallis did not wait for either a diversion or a rising but began preparations for a march almost as soon as the smoke had settled at Camden. By early September he had collected the supplies he needed

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and the wagons and the horses to transport them, and on the 8th the march began for Charlotte with Hillsboro the army's final destination.
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Two weeks later, on the morning of September 21, Colonel William Davie, a partisan who sometimes operated with Thomas Sumter, provided Cornwallis with further evidence of the dispositions of the people of the Carolinas. An advance party of the Tory Legion. under Major George Hanger, was resting on that day on Wahab's Plantation near the Catawba. Hanger resembled his chief in one respect -- he was suffering from the delusion that one horseman in the legion was worth a dozen rebels. And like so many English officers who had fought in real wars, that is, European wars, he believed that his brain at the head of almost any unit would overmatch the American enemy. Hanger was completely unaware that Davie and 150 men were near by, but Davie knew exactly where Hanger was -- thanks to reports from civilians in the area. Davie attacked the legion and thoroughly roughed it up -- at least fifteen legionnaires were killed and forty wounded -- at the cost of one partisan shot by mistake in the pursuit of the legion.

The van of Cornwallis's army reached Charlotte on September 26. Many of the soldiers had been sick in the previous two weeks, including Tarleton, who was still unable to rise from a wagon. Major George Hanger again served in his stead with almost the same results as at Wahab's. This time Hanger, heedless of the desirability of scouting the ground in and around Charlotte, led his horsemen into an ambush. Light,infantry extricated the legion from the embarrassment of being shot to pieces by a small number of Davie's partisans.

The entire march had been difficult, and the losses from the raids and the sickness of the troops persuaded Cornwallis to sit in Charlotte for a time and lick his wounds. While he was there he learned little of what was going on around him and even less of what was occurring to the west, where Patrick Ferguson had been sent -- in part to divert attention from the main army but more importantly to subdue the frontier.

Patrick Ferguson, a Scot who had served in the Seven Years War, possessed remarkable abilities. He had invented a breech-loading rifle, superior to anything the British army was to have for a hundred years. The army, deeply and perhaps justly fond of the musket, scorned its adoption and only two hundred were manufactured. Ferguson loved army life more than invention and yearned for a command of his own.

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His service did not bring him rapid promotion, and when he came to the southern campaigns he was only a major. Clinton appointed him inspector general of the loyalist militia, a post he filled with distinction until he brought disaster upon himself and British arms. The distinction and the disaster had common sources -- a very good intelligence, an unyielding adherence to the conventions of a British officer, and perhaps a sense that somehow he had not demonstrated his worth to his superiors. The intelligence was obvious. The devotion to the standards and rules by which an officer was expected to comport himself had been expressed before he came to America. In the Seven Years War, for example, Ferguson once turned while retreating from an enemy charge to retrieve his pistol which had been jostled from its holster. That sort of careless bravery, the conjunction of the trivial -- picking up a pistol -- with the important -- risking his life in an act of daring -- perfectly expressed the code of an officer and a gentleman. In South Carolina, in his manner of dealing with loyalists, Ferguson showed that he had imagination as well as courage. The loyalists, who had been made to feel that they were mere appendages to the main effort, that indeed they were not quite trustworthy, discovered in Ferguson a commander who cared about them and who actually listened to their grievances and fears. The loyalists' response to Ferguson came throughout the summer of 1780 when, under his leadership, they performed well against their enemies from NinetySix to the North Carolina border. Ferguson and his loyalist militia did not win every engagement, but near the end of the summer they had virtually cleared northwestern South Carolina of active partisans.
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Their skirmish with Colonel Joseph McDowell's irregulars at Cane Creek banished that worthy to the other side of the mountains, a sanctuary to which William Campbell, Isaac Shelby, John Sevier, among others, had already retired. None of these men, nor others who led backcountrymen, were rough frontiersmen. Rather, they were men of family and property and in some cases of education. Campbell, originally from Virginia, was married to a sister of Patrick Henry. Isaac Shelby, born in Maryland, had already made a name for himself in Kentucky and was to become that state's first governor. John Sevier, a Virginian by birth, was as well known in Tennessee and would be its first governor. Joseph McDowell, though born in Virginia, was something of a local boy -he had moved to North Carolina years before and later represented the state in Congress.
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These men hated Ferguson and hated being ejected from South Carolina. They seized a chance to return through a mistake Ferguson made in a moment of casual bravado, moments professional officers cherish and sometimes later regret. On September 12 Ferguson's troops had reached Gilberton, where, had their commander remained quiet, they might have stayed until they either recruited additional supporters or received reinforcements. Instead, Ferguson released a member of Shelby's family captured in a skirmish with a message to the rebels that "if they did not desist from their opposition to British arms, he would march his army over the mountains, hang their leaders, and lay their country waste with fire and sword." This threat was taken as a challenge and undoubtedly hastened the recruitment of the opposition. Within two weeks around 800 westerners had gathered at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga and on September 26 set out for Gilberton, picking up armed recruits along the way. Ferguson did not learn of his danger for another four days and then began withdrawing toward Cornwallis in Charlotte. He could have reached Cornwallis and perhaps would have, had his information about the enemy been surer, and had his good sense overcome his pride.
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