[1123] The best of this class, perhaps, is that of Colonel Senff, an engineer officer who was with Sumter at the time. The original is among the Steuben Papers, a portion being printed in Mag. Amer. Hist., v. 275. See also two letters written by Governor Nash of North Carolina (Tarleton, 149, and Corres. Rev., iii. 107). The latter is especially valuable as showing the effects of the disaster on the public mind. Marion also announced the defeat to P. Horry (Gibbes, Doc. Hist., 1776-1782, p. 11).
In a letter dated Kennemark, Sept. 5, 1780, Greene describes the defeat from Gates's despatches, which had not then been made public (R. I. Col. Rec., ix. 243; R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., vi. 265; and Mag. Amer. Hist., v. 279). A more valuable letter on the same subject is one to Reed, written after his arrival in the South (Reed's Reed, ii. 344). But the most important of these Greene letters is one dated High Hills of Santee, Aug. 8, 1781 (quoted by Gordon, iv. 98), in which Greene declares that Gates did not deserve the blame with which his career in the South was so unhappily closed. Moore (Diary, ii. 310) gives several extracts from accounts of the affair which appeared in Rivington's Royal Gazette. Another contemporary account from a British source is in Lamb's so-called Journal, pp. 302-307. Lamb was a standard-bearer in a British regiment at the time, and his narrative seems to have been written while details were still fresh in his mind.
[1124] Remembrancer, x. 276; Ramsay, Rev. in S. C., ii. 456, etc. Important letters of Gates as to his dispositions after the action are in Mag. Amer. Hist., v. 308; Remembrancer, x. 338; Corres. Rev., iii. 66; Maryland Papers, 128, etc., etc.
The charges of undue haste and refusal to take the advice of others, so recklessly heaped on Gates by Bancroft and the writers who have copied him, appear to be without foundation. After a careful examination of the field, in company with Otho H. Williams, Greene advised against making an inquiry into Gates's conduct, while "Light-Horse Harry" Lee wrote to Wayne (R. E. Lee's edition of Lee's Memoirs, p. 32) that Gates "has been most insidiously, most cruelly traduced.... An action took place on very advantageous terms; we were completely routed." In his Memoirs, Lee censured Gates for not using cavalry. But this, too, seems undeserved, as a note to page 394 of Giradin's Continuation contains evidence to the effect that Gates could not get—though he made every effort—the cavalry he was blamed for not employing. The most exhaustive article in his defence is The Southern Campaign, 1780: Gates at Camden, by John Austin Stevens, in Mag. Amer. Hist., v. 24-274. It is wholly in favor of Gates, and is so one-sided that it should be read with the greatest caution. Singularly enough, when he wrote this article, Mr. Stevens, as he acknowledges (p. 424), did not know of the existence of the Pinckney letter noted above. For the other side, perhaps, nothing is better than a short, carefully written article by Henry P. Johnston, entitled De Kalb, Gates, and the Camden Campaign, in Mag. Amer, Hist., viii. 496, and reprinted without map in Kapp's Kalb, Appendix, p. 322. Of the more popular accounts, that in Marshall's Washington (iv. 169) is still one of the best. Mention should also be made of the description in McRee's Life and Correspondence of James Iredell, N. Y., 1857, i. 456-461. Accounts of more or less value will also be found in Greene's Greene, iii. 17; Johnson, Greene, i. 296; Harper's Monthly, lxvii. 550; Botta (Otis's trans.), iii. 206; Soulés, Troubles, iii. 285; Allen, Hist. Amer. Rev., ii. 318; Andrews, iv. 27; J. C. Hamilton, Hist. of the Republic, ii. 120; Sparks, Washington, vi. 214; Irving, Washington, iv. 91; Lossing, Field-Book, ii. 459; Carrington, Battles, 513; Dawson, Battles, iii. 613, etc., etc.
[1125] There is some detail in Mrs. Ellet's Women of the Amer. Rev., iii. App. The best known portrait of Sumter is by C. W. Peale. It is engraved in the quarto edition of Irving's Washington. Cf. Lossing's Field-Book, ii. 651.—Ed.
[1126] The first, dated Camden, July 7, 1780, is in Remembrancer, xi. 156, and Pol. Mag., ii. 339. The more famous letter, without date, but containing the offer of a reward for the head of every Irish deserter, is in Ramsay, Rev. in S. C., ii. 132; Moultrie, Memoirs, ii. 215; and Washington's Writings, vi. 554. See also Sparks, Corres. Rev., iii. 77 (note). The extract of the letter to Balfour or Cruger, which aroused the ire of Washington, is in Washington's Writings, vii., Ramsay, Rev. in S. C., ii. 157, and Moultrie, Memoirs, ii. 240. Cornwallis's own version is in his Correspondence, i. 56, and Draper's King's Mountain, p. 140. A proclamation embodying the British commander's ideas as to confiscation was issued on either the 6th or 16th. of September, 1780 (Tarleton, 186; Ramsay, Rev. in S. C., ii. 460; and Remembrancer, xi. 25). Clinton's reply to Washington is in Cornwallis Correspondence, i. 60, with Cornwallis's and Rawdon's explanations (pp. 72, 501).
[1127] Ramsay was a prisoner at the time, and what he says (Rev. in S. C., ii. 158-173, 288-303) has a considerable value. A large portion of Moultrie's second volume (pp. 117-201) is taken up with the same subject. Both of them relied on a letter written to Ramsay by Dr. P. Fassoux, surgeon-general in the hospital at Charleston. Moultrie declares that the letter "is an exact statement of their conduct in our hospital at that time." The letter is in Moultrie, Memoirs, ii. 397,—the indorsement is on p. 277; Gibbes, Doc. Hist. (1781-82), p. 116; and Ramsay, Rev. in S. C., ii. 527. If a tithe of this statement is true, the conduct of the British officers in charge at Charleston was simply brutal; but the British surgeon denied most of the statements. It will do no harm to contrast this with the treatment of those taken at Yorktown, as told by one of their own number, Gen. Graham. Cf. his Memoirs, 66 et seq., and App. p. 306. English writers have asserted that papers implicating the Charleston prisoners in a conspiracy to overthrow the government were found in the pockets of those taken at Camden; but no proof of this has ever been produced. In fact, in his letter of Dec. 4th Cornwallis alleged as a reason for their removal to St. Augustine that they were so insolent in their behavior they could not be allowed to go at large in Charleston. Indeed, the prisoners seem to have been treated with increased harshness after Camden. Before that time everything had been done to induce them to enlist in the British army. A regiment had been raised, and the command offered to Moultrie, and refused by that sturdy patriot in a letter which has been printed over and over again. Cf. Moultrie, Memoirs, ii. 166; Ramsay, Rev. in S. C., ii. 289; Charleston Year-Book for 1884; and reprinted as The Correspondence of Lord Montague with General Moultrie, 1781 (Charleston, 1885).
[1128] Hayne's letters to the British authorities are in Gibbes, i. p. 108; Remembrancer, xiii. 121; Ramsay, 508-520.
[1129] Greene waited till Gadsden and his fellow-prisoners were safe within the American lines; and his officers, in ignorance of his purpose, remonstrated, Aug. 20, 1781, against this delay (Ramsay, ii. 521; Moultrie, ii. 414; Greene's Greene, iii. 558; Gibbes, i. 128). Greene's formal proclamation, Aug. 26th, declared that the first regular British colonel captured should suffer (Ramsay, Rev. in S. C., ii. 524; Moultrie, ii. 417, Remembrancer, xiii. 125, etc.). Cf. also Greene to Washington, Aug. 26, 1781, in Corres. of Rev., iii. 393; Balfour to Greene, Sept. 3, 1781. The letter to which this is an answer I have not found in Ramsay, U. S., 520, extract; and Gibbes (1781-82), 168. And see also Greene to Balfour, Sept. 19, 1781, in Gibbes, 168. Before this threat could be carried out a new commander arrived at Charleston, and the war took on humaner methods.
[1130] Cf. Hansard, xxii. 963; Parl. Reg. (Debrett), xxv. 81; Polit. Mag., iii. 45, 73, 237, 383; Lee's Memoirs (2d edition), 326; Hist. Mag., x. 269.