Long before the first musket was fired in anger along its sandy roads, Camden, South Carolina, occupied a place of strategic importance in the colonial backcountry. Founded in 1732 as Fredericksburg Township and later renamed for Charles Pratt, the first Earl of Camden and a champion of colonial rights in Parliament, the town sat at the head of navigation on the Wateree River and served as a vital crossroads linking Charleston to the interior. By 1780, it had become the linchpin of British strategy in the South — and the site of one of the most devastating American defeats of the entire Revolutionary War. What happened at Camden in the scorching summer of 1780 exposed the fragility of the patriot cause at its lowest ebb, cost the life of one of the Continental Army's most gallant officers, destroyed the reputation of one of its most celebrated generals, and ultimately set the stage for the strategic recalibration that would turn the tide of the war in the Southern theater.
PEOPLE
Baron Johann de Kalb
Continental Army Major General, German-French Officer, Maryland and Delaware Commander
Major General Horatio Gates
Continental Army General, Southern Department Commander, Hero of Saratoga
Lord Charles Cornwallis
British General, Southern Army Commander, Lieutenant General
Lieutenant Colonel James Webster
British Infantry Commander, Regular Army Officer
KEY EVENTS
STORIES
HISTORICAL VOICE
Eleven Times
The Maryland and Delaware Continentals did not know the left had broken. The battle had been going on for perhaps fifteen minutes when the British infantry began appearing on their flank. De Kalb was ...
MODERN VOICE
The Shadow of an Army
When Nathanael Greene arrived at Charlotte in December 1780 to take command of the Southern Army, he wrote to Washington that he had found "but the shadow of an army." That's a figure of speech, but i...