Attempts at the identification of localities have been made by W. G. De Saussure in Charleston Year-Book (1884, pp. 282-308), and in an Historical Map of Charleston, 1670-1883, in the Year-Book for 1883. A plan of Fort Johnson on James' Island is in Ibid. (p. 473). These latter maps are also in a reprint of a portion of this Year-Book, issued under the title of 1670-1783: The Centennial of Incorporation, 1883 (Charleston, 1884).
There are other charts of the harbor in the No. Amer. Pilot; in the Neptune Americo-Septentrional. A chart of the harbor and bars by R. Cowley is sometimes noted as published in London in 1780.
There are other maps of Charleston in Bellin's Petit Atlas Maritime, vol. i. 37; in Castiglione's Viaggio p. 309, etc. There are among the Rochambeau maps in the library of Congress (no. 19) Vues de la rade de Charleston et du fort Sullivan, 1780, and a colored plan (no. 46), measuring 20 X 18 inches, called Plan de la ville de Charlestown, de les retrenchments et du siège fait par les Anglais en 1780.—Ed.
For the period between the Waxhaws and the disaster near Camden, the reports of Cornwallis are of value (Remembrancer, x. 261; Pol. Mag., i. 261, etc.); Ramsay, Rev. in S. C., ii. 128-145, has a fair account. The affair at Ramsour's Mill has not been given due prominence in the general histories. There is a good account of it in Caldwell's Greene, 123. But the description which has generally been followed is the one which General Joseph Graham—who was not present at the fight—printed in the Catawba Journal for Feb. 1, 1825.[1116]
Colonel Williams transmitted a report of the action at Musgrove's Mill to Gates (Remembrancer, xi. 87). But the best account of the affair is in Draper's King's Mountain, who (p. 122) gives a list of his authorities. See especially MCCall, Georgia, ii. 304-317; Jones, Georgia, ii. 452; and Amer. Whig Rev., new series, ii. 578.
Gates's Defeat near Camden, 1780.—The defeated general dated his official report at Hillsborough, Aug. 20, 1780 (Remembrancer, x. 335; Tarleton, 145; Sparks's Correspondence of the Revolution, iii. 66 and 76; Mag. Amer. Hist., v. 502, etc.). Cornwallis presented two reports bearing on the campaign. In the first—sometimes dated Aug. 20th, and sometimes Aug. 21st—he follows his movement to his arrival at Camden. The second—always dated the 21st—takes up the story at that point. They are both in the London Gazette Extra for October 9th, 1780.[1117]
I have found nothing official from Rawdon; but on Sept. 19th, 1780, he wrote to his mother, the Countess of Moira, describing the events preceding the battle. He speaks of the course taken by Gates as "the ruinous part which they, the Americans, actually did embrace", adding that De Kalb had advised Gates to cross Lynch's Creek and attack him there. This Rawdon learned from an aide to De Kalb[1118]—probably Du Buysson—who was taken with his chief.[1119]
Tarleton, too, was a participator in the action, and his account (Campaigns, 85-110), though written long after the event, is valuable. It begins with Cornwallis's arrival at Camden.
But the description of the campaign and battle which far outweighs all others, is the Narrative of the Campaign of 1780, by Colonel Otho Holland Williams, Adjutant-general,—printed as "Appendix B" to Johnson's Greene, vol. i. pp. 465-510, and copied thence into Simms's Greene, Appendix. There is no reason to doubt the general accuracy of the story, though no one knows when Williams wrote it. Two of the American commander's aides wrote accounts. The more important is the letter from Thomas Pinckney to William Johnson, the biographer of Greene, dated Clermont, July, 1822, and therefore written long after the battle; but the author's recollections so exactly agree with the facts as now known that it is an account of the greatest value.[1120]