British campaign in the Carolinas during 1780 before the Battle of Kings Mountain.
1 NINETY SIX After Charleston Ferguson was sent to Ninety Six to raise troops and drive Whig bands from the foothills. 2 CAMDEN Cornwallis destroyed an American army under Gates—August 16, 1780 3 CHARLOTTE Cornwallis invaded North Carolina and captured Charlotte—September 22, 1780
Gen. Horatio Gates, American commander in the South during most of 1780. Courtesy Emmet Collection, New York Public Library.
Scene at the Battle of Camden, August 16, 1780, which gave the British almost complete control of South Carolina. From a painting by Chappel. Courtesy The Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia.
Believing South Carolina to be largely subdued, Cornwallis now began a northward march for the purpose of invading and overrunning North Carolina. His plans were upset temporarily by the advance of a new American army under the command of Gen. Horatio Gates, the patriot victor at Saratoga. Appointed by Congress to succeed General Lincoln as American commander in the South, Gates had reached North Carolina in July. Moving southward to capture the important British post of Camden, S. C., he commanded an army composed of veteran Delaware and Maryland continental troops and raw Virginia and North Carolina militia. In a surprise meeting for both forces near Camden on August 16, 1780, Gates’ tired and disorganized army was crushingly defeated by Cornwallis. The last large organized American army in the South had been destroyed, and the British, more than ever before, appeared to be invincible. Their triumph at Camden opened the way for the resumption of Cornwallis’ triumphant march and the invasion of North Carolina in September 1780.
Whigs and Tories in 1780
The British victories at Charleston and Camden in the summer of 1780 increased the bitter strife between the loyalists (Tories) and the patriots (Whigs) in the South. Both groups had been active in partisan warfare since the invasion of Georgia in 1778. Cornwallis’ march through South Carolina greatly encouraged the Tories. Many of them from the coastal and interior regions of the Carolinas now joined him as active recruits. Overawed by British force, other inhabitants of this area renewed their allegiance to the King or remained neutral to escape damage to themselves and their property. To counteract the Loyalist movement, daring partisan leaders including Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter, and Andrew Pickens, now took the leadership in strengthening Whig resistance. Desperate and unexpected assaults by day and night upon the advancing British and their outposts quickly began throughout the lowlands and upcountry. While Cornwallis was gathering supporters by threats and force or by allowing only Loyalists to trade, the Whigs remained steadfast in their devotion to personal and political freedom. Soon the merciless nature of the Tory attacks upon outlying Whig settlements and Whig guerrilla fighters so disgusted the neutral citizens of the region that many of them turned to the Whig cause.
The seriousness of the day-to-day combat between Whig and Tory in the Carolinas is shown in a military report of the time.