He left Morristown
April 14, 1780 with fourteen hundred effective men; reached the head of Elk in May; left Petersburg early in June, passed through Hillsborough, and halted on Deep River, in North Carolina, on the sixth of July. In the mean while,
* All the way from Yorkville I passed caravans of wagons with cotton, on their way to Camden or Columbia. The teams are driven by negroes, sometimes accompanied by an overseer. They carry corn and fodder (corn-stalks) with them, and camp out at night, in the woods, where they build fires, cook their bacon, bake their hoe-cake, and sleep under the canvas covering of their wagons. It is a season of great delight to those who are privileged to "haul cotton" to market.
** This view is from the north side of the Creek. Like the other stream, it is filled with canes, shrubs, and many blasted pines.
***The Baron De Kalb, knight of the royal military order of merit, was a native of Alsace (a German province ceded to France), and was educated in the art of war in the French army. He was connected with the quarter-master general's department, and his experience in the duties of that station rendered his services very valuable to the American army. Toward the close of the Seven Years' War, he was dispatched to the British colonies in America, as a secret agent of the French government. He traveled in disguise; yet on one occasion, he was so strongly suspected, that he was arrested as a suspicious person. Nothing being found to confirm the suspicion, he was released, and soon afterward returned to Europe. De Kalb came to America again, in the spring of 1777, with La Fayette and other foreign officers, and was one of the party who accompanied the marquis in his overland journey, from South Carolina to Philadelphia. Holding the office of brigadier in the French service, and coming highly recommended, Congress commissioned him a major general on the fifteenth of September, 1777. He immediately joined the main army under Washington, and was active in the events which preceded the encampment of the troops at Valley Forge. He was afterward in command at Elizabethtown and Amboy, in New Jersey; and while at Morristown in the spring of 1780, was placed at the head of the Maryland division. With these, and the Continental troops of Delaware, he marched southward in April, to re-enforce General Lincoln, but was too late to afford him aid at Charleston. Gates succeeded Lincoln in the command of the Southern army, and reached De Kalb's camp, on the Deep River, on the twenty-eighth of July. 1780. In the battle near Camden, which soon followed, De Kalb, while trying to rally the scattered Americans, fell, pierced with eleven wounds. He died at Camden three days afterward, and was buried there. An ornamental tree was placed at the head of his grave, * and that was the only token of its place until a few years since, when the citizens of Camden erected over it the elegant marble monument depicted in the engraving.
