Old battlefields seem more like parks. Trying to imagine cannons and the cries of the wounded? Difficult, but not always. Farmers\u2019 plows unearthed so many Mini\u00e9 balls at Shiloh that the soil turned white. Shiloh was of the Civil War. I\u2019m writing of Camden, Aug. 16, 1780, which I visited.<\/p>\n
I walked past monuments and flags, past where Redcoats mortally wounded beloved Continental Maj. Gen. Baron de Kalb. Past where five Patriots fell. Past where a member of Fraser\u2019s Highlanders died and is buried. The 71st Regiment of Foot, Fraser\u2019s Highlanders, was a prominent British infantry regiment raised to serve in the American Revolutionary War. Lt. Gen. Simon Fraser composed the unit of two battalions recruited from the Scottish Highlands. They were elite and feared for their skill with the bayonet.<\/p>\n
Tiny white wildflowers cover the battlefield. Their leaves feature stinging hairs. Think stinging defeat. A British bayonet charge here scattered Patriots like a covey of South Georgia quail, and Lord Cornwallis\u2019 regulars crushed Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates\u2019 unseasoned men. That\u2019s the short of it.<\/p>\n
The long of it began with dragoons. Now there\u2019s a terrifying word: dragoon. Armand\u2019s Legion, a Continental Army cavalry unit \u2014 i.e., dragoons \u2014 and Banastre Tarleton\u2019s dragoons collided unexpectedly early morning here on the Great Wagon Road. They skirmished, withdrew and waited on dawn.<\/p>\n
As major conflict brewed, Gates positioned Maryland and Delaware Continentals on his right flank while placing inexperienced Virginia and North Carolina militia on his left. Gates\u2019 raw militia directly faced elite British regulars who met the advancing Virginians with a disciplined bayonet charge. The Virginia militia fled without firing a shot, followed quickly by the North Carolina militia. A disaster unfolded.<\/p>\n
Maryland and Delaware Continentals, led by de Kalb, launched successful counterattacks against Lord Rawdon\u2019s wing. British Col. Webster wheeled his troops to strike the exposed Continental flank. Surrounded and outnumbered, the Continentals were broken when Tarleton\u2019s cavalry charged their rear. Retreat turned into \u201crout and slaughter,\u201d where Bloody Ban\u2019s dragoons killed many over a 20-mile chase.<\/p>\n
De Kalb suffered 11 wounds \u2014 shot three times and bayoneted repeatedly. Upon seeing de Kalb, Cornwallis told him, \u201cI am sorry, sir, to see you, not sorry that you are vanquished, but sorry to see you so badly wounded.\u201d Cornwallis supervised the dressing of de Kalb\u2019s wounds by his surgeons in Camden. As he lay dying, de Kalb reportedly told a British officer, \u201cI thank you, sir, for your generous sympathy; but I die the death I always prayed for; the death of a soldier, fighting for the rights of man.\u201d He died three days later.<\/p>\n
General Gates fled, famously riding 60 miles to Charlotte by nightfall. A clobbering happened here, but silver lined the black cloud of defeat. Nathanael Greene replaced the Coward of Camden. Gates never held a significant military command again. Greene was the right leader at the right time. The Savior of the South executed a brilliant strategy of exhaustion and attrition that broke the British will to fight. His motto? \u201cWe fight, get beat, rise and fight again.\u201d Greene turned the war around down South, which directly led to the Patriots\u2019 ultimate victory at Yorktown.<\/p>\n
The Battle of Camden ranks as one of the worst defeats for an American army in U.S. military history. It\u2019s widely considered the worst American Revolutionary War defeat on an open battlefield. The British swept a Southern American army out of existence, taking control of the Southern colonies, albeit temporarily. The Patriots suffered approximately 1,900 casualties (roughly 900 killed or wounded and 1,000 captured), compared to 324 to 350 British casualties.<\/p>\n
Historians often rank this engagement alongside the Siege of Charleston as one of the low points for the Revolutionary cause. Battles like Antietam rank higher for sheer loss of life, but Camden remains a prime example of a total tactical and leadership failure.<\/p>\n
Tom Poland is the author of 12 books and more than 1,000 magazine features. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle and changing culture, and speaks often to groups across South Carolina and Georgia, \u201cGeorgialina.\u201d Visit Poland\u2019s website at tompoland.net<\/a> or email him at tompol@earthlink.net<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Old battlefields seem more like parks. Trying to imagine cannons and the cries of the wounded? Difficult, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12433,14794,6047,14799,5886,14800,14797,14796,14795,455,5916,12441,14798,9,714],"class_list":["post-24181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-poland","tag-american-revolutionary-war","tag-battle-of-camden","tag-battles","tag-bayonet","tag-conflicts","tag-continental-army","tag-dragoon","tag-horatio-gates","tag-johann-de-kalb","tag-military","tag-military-operations","tag-nathanael-greene","tag-patriot-american-revolution","tag-poland","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}