CHAPTER X.
REVOLUTIONARY WAR (continued), 1780.
Sir Henry Clinton left the South, believing that the revolutionary spirit there was so nearly quelled that but little apprehension need be felt regarding it. And as if to strengthen this opinion, a decided victory was gained very soon by Lords Cornwallis and Rawdon (afterwards the Earl of Moira), over the combined American forces, under Baron de Kalb and General Gates, at Camden.
General Gates had been sent by Washington, with a strong force from the North, for the relief of the southern provinces. The season was unhealthy; they marched through a barren and disaffected country, were greatly in want of food, and eating unripe peaches and green corn which soon produced disease, their numbers were sadly weakened and thinned. In the meantime De Kalb, with the Delaware and Maryland regiments, marching south with the same object, suffered equally, collecting their own supplies on the march—lean cattle from the canebrakes and Indian corn, the only grain of those regions.[[32]]
The approach of Gates raised the hopes of the patriots of South Carolina, and Colonel Sumter, who had fled with his partisan-band to North Carolina, on the late triumphs of the British, returned with his fearless followers and made successful attacks on the British posts; while Marion, another bold leader, issuing from the swamps of the Lower Pedee with a number of only half-clad men, began to attack their outposts with equal success. These partisan-bands having joined Gates, he advanced from Clermont, about thirteen miles distant from Camden, on the 5th of August, with the intention of surprising the British camp; while Cornwallis, who had, on his junction with Rawdon, assumed the command, was advancing from Camden with the design of surprising the Americans. The next morning by break of day the two armies encountered each other. Although the Americans greatly outnumbered the British, Gates’ militia, which were new to the field, on the first charge of the British bayonets threw down their arms and fled, General Gates and Governor Casswell being fairly carried off the field by the fugitives, whom they could not rally. In vain did the better disciplined and more experienced regiments of Maryland and Delaware sustain their ground with firmness, and even compel the enemy to retire; they too, being attacked in flank and De Kalb their leader mortally wounded, were broken and fled. The pursuit lasted for twenty-eight miles; every corps, says Hildreth, was scattered; men and officers, separated from each other, fled singly or in small parties through the woods. The road was strewn with killed and wounded. Arms, knapsacks, broken-down wagons and dead horses scattered the road for many miles. Of the Americans, 900 were killed, and about the same number taken prisoners, many of whom were wounded. The British lost only between 300 and 400 men.
A few days afterwards disastrous news reached Gates, and about 200 men, the collected fragments of his late considerable force, now assembled in the Valley of Wateree in North Carolina, about eighty miles from the scene of their terrible defeat. This was, that Sumter, having fled with his followers to the same district, had been pursued by the rapid and merciless Tarleton, in whose furious career more than half his cavalry had broken down. Coming with the remainder in hot speed upon the camp of the partisan leader, who, believing himself safe, had relaxed his guard, he had been surprised, his prisoners released, 300 of his own men captured, and 150 killed, while he himself narrowly escaped with his life.
The Carolinas might now be considered subdued, for no organised American forces remained within them. To make the subjection more complete, and to awe the spirit of insurrection which had shown itself on Gates’ approach, Lord Cornwallis adopted measures of extreme severity. Orders were issued to hang every man now found in arms, who had formerly taken British protection, and several such persons having been discovered among Sumter’s followers, they were accordingly hanged on the spot. The property of all such as had left the province to avoid the British rule, and of all that held commissions under congress, was declared to be sequestrated, and Gadsden and forty other of the principal inhabitants of Charleston, suspected of having corresponded with their friends in arms, were put under arrest and sent prisoners to St. Augustine.
These extreme measures, however, failed of their intended purpose. A reaction, as was sure to be the case, followed. The people, who had been awed into subjection, were now exasperated to revolt. Marion again had a ragged but formidable band under his control among the swamps of the Pedee, and Sumter presently collected a new force with which he harassed the north-western districts, and in which he was aided by volunteers from the mountains. Both were now commissioned as generals, and a guerilla warfare was kept up by them.[[33]]
Nor was the public reaction confined only to the men—it raised the women of South Carolina into heroism. They gloried in being called “rebel-ladies,” refused their presence at the scenes of gaiety offered them by the conquerors of their cities, and occupied themselves instead, in visiting and relieving the sufferings and wants of the wounded soldiers, and encouraged their husbands, sons, or brothers, still to be “rebels,” and die, if it must be so, rather than submit to the British. Nor was this noble patriotism confined only to the South. Mrs. Willard assures us, eloquently, that patriotism glowed in the hearts of women throughout all parts of the country, and that they displayed great activity in collecting materials and making clothes for the soldiers. In Philadelphia, a society for this purpose was formed, at the head of which was Martha Washington, the wife of the commander-in-chief. All this was as it should be, but not more than we have a right to expect from the daughters of a parentage so worthy as was that of many an American. The earth’s best blood was in their veins. The daughters of those pilgrim-mothers who left their native land to establish purer and more Christian homes in the American wilderness, could not so belie their ancestry as to fail in the charities of womanhood.
But we now come to a dark passage, which forms a strong contrast to the patriotism of the above.
The utmost gloom hung over the American affairs in the North. France had once more, it is true, under the influence of La Fayette, who now returned to America, sent over a fleet and a considerable number of troops, to co-operate with the republicans; but nothing as yet had been done. So doubtful indeed did it appear, towards the autumn of 1780, whether the army could even be maintained for another campaign, that Washington was anxious, while he had yet any forces under his command, to strike some decisive blow, and he accordingly proposed to Count de Rochambeau, the French general, who lay with his troops at Newport, to make an attack on New York. In order to concert this proposed plan, Washington went to Hartford, and during his absence a scheme of treason, in the very bosom of the American camp, came to light, which fell like a thunderbolt on the country, and which has so much interesting detail connected with it, that we must be allowed to give it somewhat fully, and in doing so we will principally follow the excellent American historian Hildreth, and the Annual Register of 1781.