CHAPTER VII
THE DEFEAT OF THE RED DRAGOONS
If what the proverb tells us is true, that it is always darkest before dawn, the patriots of the South in 1780 must indeed have prayed for the light. Affairs had gone rapidly from bad to worse. Sir Henry Clinton had come again from New York, and in May of that year had captured Charleston with all of Lincoln's army.
Sir Henry went back to New York, leaving Lord Cornwallis in command. Washington desired to send his right-hand man, General Greene, to stem the tide of British success, but the Continental Congress chose to send General Gates.
In August, this weak general was utterly defeated in the battle of Camden, in South Carolina. How the bitter words of General Charles Lee, "Beware lest your Northern laurels change to Southern willows," must have rung in his ears! Gates fled from Camden like the commonest coward in the army. Mounted on a fast horse, he did not stop until he reached Charlotte, seventy miles away.
No organized American force now held the field in the South, and the red dragoons easily overran Georgia and South Carolina. There seemed to be little left for Cornwallis to do; for the three Southern colonies were for the time ground under the iron heel of the enemy.
Crushing blows, however, only nerved the leaders, Sumter, Pickens, Marion, Davie, and others, to greater efforts. The insolence, the cruelty, and the tyranny of the British soldiers, and the bitter hatred of the Tories, had brought to the front a new class of patriots. These men cared little about the original cause of the war, but the burning of their houses, the stealing of their cattle and their horses, and the brutal insulting of their wives and their daughters, aroused them to avenge their wrongs to the bitter end. And many were the skirmishes they brought about with the British.
Thirty days had now passed since the battle of Camden, and Cornwallis on his return march had not yet reached the Old North State. It was still a long way to Virginia, and the road thither was beset with many dangers.