It's Out There. Go See It.

It's kind of weird how we can live in a place for years and never actually see or understand it. It was only last summer that I went to Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. This is the location generally accepted to be the reason for and the place of the opening salvos of the US Civil War in 1961. My family moved to South Carolina in 1972. So, yeah, it took me 52 years to actually see this place that was to be so pivotal to American history.

And it's the same here locally. On a beautiful Saturday, Leap Day, 29 February 2020, I drove out to the Battle of Camden site to visit for the first time ever. That only took 48 years, despite the fact that it's barely a day's horse ride a way (about 25 minutes by modern car).

The battle here in 1780 is thought by some historians to be the high-water mark of the British effort to retain the American colonies. British strategy has shifted south in the American colonies to the breadbasket. Believing that control of the agriculture of the are would help strangle the American rebellion, British moved major operations to Georgia, and North and South Carolina. Additionally, there were strong monarchist feelings in the South, so much so that the British command believed that they could easily raise Loyalist units to easily win the South.

 

The British took the two major Southern posts, Savannah and Charleston, capturing large amounts of Colonial troops as well as munitions, equipment, and food. It was a powerful blow against the Patriot cause and forced the Americans to enter into major partisan and guerilla operations.

 

It is said that across the colonies around a third of the population was loyal to The Crown. The were the Loyalists. It is countered that a third were pro-independence, or Patriots. The final third wanted nothing to do with any of it and hoped to just be left alone to try and build their lives in peace. Instead, the war turned into a bloody, violent, vicious and ugly civil war that saw much of what we today would describe as war crimes. These sort of tactics pushed many into the hands of the Loyalists or the Patriots.

 

And so it was that in the sweaty, tick-infested cauldron of a wilderness north of Camden, South Carolina that American forces were routed in a sharp battle led by British Lords Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis, Lieutenant Colonel James Webster, and Colonel Francis Edward Rawdon-Hastings. I will not bore you with tactics and maneuver, but suffice it to say that despite outnumbering the British Redcoats nearly 2-to-1, Colonial forces suffered over 1900 killed or captured out of 4000 engaged. British losses were 324 killed, wounded and missing out of their 2100. 

 

American General Horatio Gates, the hero of the Battle of Saratoga, was humiliated. At the height of the battle with his flank collapsing and being overrun, he mounted his horse and fled headlong to Charlotte, North Carolina. He was rightly removed for cowardice under fire. Nearly all Colonial military stores in the South were lost. And German mercenary Major General Johann von Robais, Baron de Kalb was mortally wounded while leading Maryland Patriot forces.

Recently, fourteen war dead from the battle were recovered at the battle site. One was a Highlander of the  British Army's 71st Regiment of Foot, unofficially known as Fraser's Highlanders, and another was a Native American Loyalist militiaman from North Carolina. The other twelve were Continentals. They were all reburied in 2023 with full military honors, with the Highlander's remains handled by an honor guard of the The Royal Highland Fusiliers flown in from the UK for the event.

 

photo by insidegmt

 

In 2021, the City of Camden unveiled a new statue to de Kalb at the Revolutionary War Visitor Center in the southern part of the town. The German military liaison to the United States attended. It is at least the third monument to the general in the area. 

 photo byemergingrevolutionarywar.org

 

The area around the battlefield today is generally referred to as the Baron DeKalb (or 'BDK') community.

And while it was a decisive and overwhelming American defeat, at the same time it's Pyrrhic value would lead to the eventual defeat of Britain in it's rebellious American colonies at Yorktown, Virginia, barely 14 months later.

 

So, the only advice I can give you is to look around your community and find those places you've ignored or just haven't seen. There's is a lot of history out there. Go see it. Take the kids. It'll be amazing.