Waxhaws 1780
The only sizable force not trapped inside Charleston was a regiment of Continentals under Abraham Buford. Pursuing hard, Tarleton caught them on May 29, 1780, in a clearing. His dragoons and infantry swarmed over Buford’s lines. The result was a slaughter. Many Continentals were killed trying to surrender. The massacre inspired the epithet “Bloody” Tarleton.
Site located 9 miles east of Lancaster, S.C., on Rt. 522. Marked by a monument and common grave.
Camden 1780
After the fall of Charleston, Congress sent Gates south to stop the British. On August 16 he collided with Cornwallis outside this village. The battle was another American disaster. The militia broke and ran, and the Continentals were overwhelmed. This defeat was the low point of the war in the South. Historic Camden preserves remnants of the Revolutionary town. The battlefield is several miles north of town. This stone marks the place where the heroic DeKalb fell.
Kings Mountain 1780
When Cornwallis invaded North Carolina in autumn 1780, he sent Patrick Ferguson ranging into the upcountry. A band of “over-mountain” men—tired of his threats and depredations—trapped him and his American loyalists on this summit. In a savage battle on October 7, they killed or wounded a third of his men and captured the rest. The defeat was Cornwallis’s first setback in his campaign to conquer the South. Administered by NPS.