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16 August in military history: the Battle of Camden, 1780

Military history · 16 August · American Revolutionary WarFull calendar

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Print showing the Battle of Camden: amid smoke, a fallen general in a light coat lies wounded at the center while his soldiers try to shield him from British grenadiers and dragoons with raised sabers; a militiaman in a white shirt runs away on the left and a torn American flag waves above the melee.
“Battle of Camden, death of De Kalb”, New York Public Library, Emmet Collection, EM15410. Public domain. New York Public Library, via Wikimedia Commons.
Quick answer

On 16 August 1780, a few miles north of Camden, South Carolina, the British army of Lieutenant General Charles, Earl Cornwallis routed the American southern army of Major General Horatio Gates. The two armies had marched into each other in the dark, and at dawn the Virginia and North Carolina militia on the American left and center broke almost as soon as the British regulars came on. The Maryland and Delaware Continentals fought on until they were overwhelmed, and Major General Johann de Kalb fell mortally wounded. Gates was swept away in the flight and reached Charlotte that night. The South Carolina Encyclopedia calls Camden one of the worst losses suffered by the Continental army.

Full story · ~11 min readBattle of Camden 1780: How Gates Lost the Southern ArmyOn 16 August 1780 Cornwallis's smaller army routed Gates in South Carolina: the night collision, the militia rout and de Kalb's last stand.Read the full story ›

Battle of Camden

16 August 1780 · 246 years ago

The hero of Saratoga heads south

In April 1780 the Maryland and Delaware Continentals marched south under Major General Johann de Kalb to relieve Charleston, but the city surrendered on 12 May before they could reach it. Congress gave the Southern Department to Horatio Gates, the victor of Saratoga, and on 25 July he reached de Kalb's camp near Buffalo Ford in North Carolina and took command.1

Gates resolved to march on the British post at Camden. According to the South Carolina Encyclopedia, de Kalb suggested a route through friendly country by Salisbury and Charlotte; the National Park Service's 1975 landmark nomination says Gates overruled his generals and took the most direct road, through infertile, thinly populated country. The army set out on 27 July and found little to eat on the march.2

Cornwallis learned of the advance in Charleston and marched to Camden with reinforcements. By his own account he had about 1,400 fighting men, regulars and provincials, with four or five hundred militia and North Carolina refugees. Gates wrote that Brigadier General Edward Stevens joined him at Rugeley's, thirteen miles from Camden, on 14 August with seven hundred Virginia militia.3

Molasses and a collision in the dark

Otho Holland Williams, Gates's deputy adjutant general, writes that Gates reckoned his force at upwards of seven thousand; the field return Williams then collected gave exactly 3,052 rank and file present and fit for duty, and Gates answered: "these are enough for our purpose".4

There were no spirits in camp, so, according to Williams, each man was issued a gill of molasses with a full ration of corn meal and meat. Williams writes that the meal "operated so cathartically, as to disorder very many of the men, who were breaking the ranks all night". Both armies marched toward each other at about ten that night.5

Cornwallis put the clash of the advance guards in the dark at about half an hour past two in the morning, Tarleton "a little after two", and Williams at midnight. Cornwallis halted; he wrote that the ground, narrowed by swamps on the right and left, was "extremely favourable for my numbers", and he would not risk an action in the dark.6

When Williams went to call de Kalb to a council, the baron asked: "and has the general given you orders to retreat the army?". At the council Gates asked what was best to be done, and Stevens answered: "Gentlemen, is it not too late now to do any thing but fight?".7

“They ran like a torrent”

At dawn Gates had his Continentals on the right, the North Carolina militia in the center and Stevens's Virginians on the left. Facing the Virginians stood Lieutenant Colonel James Webster's light infantry and the 23rd and 33rd Regiments of Foot.8

Stevens's brigade went forward; but, Williams writes, "the impetuosity with which they advanced, firing and huzzaing, threw the whole body of the militia into such a panic, that they generally threw down their loaded arms and fled, in the utmost consternation". Gates wrote that "to my astonishment, the left wing and North-Carolina militia gave way".9

Governor Nash of North Carolina wrote that all the militia except one North Carolina regiment, under Colonel Dixon, gave way at the first fire. Williams says part of Dixon's regiment fired two or three rounds, and that "a great majority of the militia, (at least two-thirds of the army) fled without firing a shot". Gates and Major General Caswell tried to rally them, "but the enemy's cavalry continuing to harass their rear, they ran like a torrent, and bore all before them".10

The torrent carried Gates away as well. He and Caswell rode for Charlotte, about sixty miles from the field by Williams's estimate, and arrived that night; Gates then went on to Hillsborough.11

De Kalb's last stand

On the right the 2nd Maryland Brigade and the Delaware battalion held, even advanced and took prisoners, while the 1st Brigade behind them was twice driven back and twice rallied. When Williams called on his own 6th Maryland not to fly, Lieutenant Colonel Ford answered that "we are outnumbered and outflanked". Cornwallis then sent in his dragoons while his infantry charged with the bayonet, and the Continentals broke.12

De Kalb fought on foot with the 2nd Brigade and, in Williams's words, "fell, mortally wounded, into the hands of the enemy, who stripped him even of his shirt". Accounts of his wounds differ. The American Battlefield Trust gives some eleven, most of them from the bayonet; Steven D. Smith, in documentation prepared for the National Register in 2022, gives three musket balls and eight bayonet cuts, citing a 2018 Charles River Editors biography; and Smith quotes, via Piecuch's The Battle of Camden, a letter James Iredell wrote his wife after talking with American officers two months later: de Kalb hid a musket wound and was then mortally struck by a cannon ball. De Kalb died in Camden on 19 August.13

Counting the cost

The British return of killed, wounded and missing lists 1 captain, 1 lieutenant, 2 serjeants and 64 rank and file killed; 2 lieutenant colonels, 3 captains, 8 lieutenants, 5 ensigns, 13 serjeants, 1 drummer and 213 rank and file wounded; and 2 serjeants and 9 rank and file missing. Tarleton puts the total at 324, officers included, as do the Trust and Smith. Cornwallis reported between eight and nine hundred Americans killed and about one thousand prisoners, many of them wounded. He named Brigadier General Gregory among the dead, but Nash listed Gregory among the officers who were safe.14

Tarleton gives 70 officers and 2,000 men killed, wounded and taken. Williams's later returns give 711 Maryland rank and file, besides officers, killed, captured or missing since the last muster, a number he says "could not, with any accuracy, be ascertained"; "at least a very great majority" were, he believed, lost on 16 August. The South Carolina Encyclopedia gives about 800 killed or wounded and another 1,000 prisoners, the Trust 1,050 casualties, and Smith perhaps as many as 1,900 killed, wounded or captured.15

Strength estimates differ too: Smith gives about 3,700 Americans against 2,230 British, the Trust 3,690 against 2,239, and the British field return of the night of 15 August lists 1,944 rank and file.16

An inquiry that never met

On 5 October 1780, the 1975 nomination says, Congress voted that an inquiry be made into Gates's conduct. Major General Nathanael Greene replaced Gates in the South, about two months after the battle by the American Battlefield Trust's reckoning. According to the nomination, Greene declined to hold the court of inquiry, saying he could not spare his few general officers; Gates kept demanding a hearing, and on 5 August 1782 Congress repealed its resolve of 5 October 1780; the inquiry, the nomination says, was never held.17

The Trust writes that the defeat cleared South Carolina of organized American resistance and opened the way for Cornwallis to invade North Carolina. How the war in the South ended at Yorktown is told in our article on Washington and Cornwallis.18

Copenhagen, 1807: the bombardment and the seized fleet

16 August 1807 · 219 years ago

During the Napoleonic Wars, British forces landed near Copenhagen and bombarded the Danish capital to keep the Danish navy out of French hands. Denmark capitulated, its fleet was seized by the British, and the attack led to war between Britain and Russia.

Read the full story of Copenhagen, 1807: the bombardment and the seized fleet ›

Also on this day

1777: near Bennington, on ground now in New York, militia from New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts under John Stark, a brigadier general of the New Hampshire militia, beat a detachment that Burgoyne had sent for supplies under Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum, and then a relief column under Breymann. Stark wrote that the first action "lasted about two hours, and was the hottest engagement I have ever witnessed, resembling a continual clap of thunder". He reported 700 prisoners on 18 August and 750 on 23 August; Burgoyne, writing on 20 August, put his loss at "about 400 men, killed and taken in both actions, and twenty-six officers, mostly prisoners". More in our article on Saratoga.19

1812: Brigadier General William Hull surrendered Detroit and his army to Major General Isaac Brock without a fight. Brock wrote that day that 2,500 troops had surrendered and about 25 pieces of ordnance had been taken; his report of the next day, as the London Gazette printed it, counts thirty-three, and C. P. Stacey's entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography 35 guns. The Canadian Archives copy of his letter of 16 August gives his Indian allies as about 400, the Gazette's copy about six hundred.20

Frequently asked questions

Who won the Battle of Camden?

The British army of Lord Cornwallis defeated the American southern army of Horatio Gates north of Camden, South Carolina, on 16 August 1780.

Why did the Americans lose at Camden?

Most of the Virginia and North Carolina militia fled almost as soon as the British regulars advanced, leaving the Maryland and Delaware Continentals outnumbered and outflanked. The army had also marched with little to eat, and Otho Williams writes that a meal of molasses disordered many men on the night before the battle.

What happened to Johann de Kalb?

He fought on foot with the Continentals, fell mortally wounded and was taken prisoner. Accounts of his wounds differ. He died in Camden on 19 August 1780.

Was Horatio Gates punished after Camden?

Nathanael Greene took over the southern army. According to the 1975 landmark nomination, Congress voted on 5 October 1780 for an inquiry into his conduct, but the inquiry was never held, and Congress repealed that resolve on 5 August 1782.

What else happened on 16 August?

In 1777 John Stark's militia defeated Burgoyne's detachments near Bennington, and in 1812 William Hull surrendered Detroit to Isaac Brock.

Notes

A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.

  1. Otho Holland Williams, “Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene”; Samuel K. Fore, “Camden, Battle of”. ↩
  2. Samuel K. Fore, “Camden, Battle of”; James Dillon, “The Camden Battlefield”. ↩
  3. Otho Holland Williams, “Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene”; Samuel K. Fore, “Camden, Battle of”; Charles, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”; Horatio Gates, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”. ↩
  4. Otho Holland Williams, “Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene”. ↩
  5. Otho Holland Williams, “Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene”; Charles, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”; Horatio Gates, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”. ↩
  6. Otho Holland Williams, “Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene”; Charles, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”; Banastre Tarleton, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”. ↩
  7. Otho Holland Williams, “Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene”. ↩
  8. Otho Holland Williams, “Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene”; Horatio Gates, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”; Charles, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”; Banastre Tarleton, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”; American Battlefield Trust, “Camden”. ↩
  9. Otho Holland Williams, “Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene”; Horatio Gates, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”. ↩
  10. Governor Nash, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”; Otho Holland Williams, “Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene”; Horatio Gates, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”. ↩
  11. Otho Holland Williams, “Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene”; James Dillon, “The Camden Battlefield”; Horatio Gates, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”. ↩
  12. Otho Holland Williams, “Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene”; Charles, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”; Banastre Tarleton, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”. ↩
  13. Otho Holland Williams, “Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene”; American Battlefield Trust, “Camden”; Steven D. Smith, “SC Historic Properties Record”; Samuel K. Fore, “Camden, Battle of”. ↩
  14. Charles, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”; Banastre Tarleton, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”; American Battlefield Trust, “Camden”; Steven D. Smith, “SC Historic Properties Record”; Governor Nash, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”. ↩
  15. Banastre Tarleton, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”; Otho Holland Williams, “Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene”; Samuel K. Fore, “Camden, Battle of”; American Battlefield Trust, “Camden”; Steven D. Smith, “SC Historic Properties Record”. ↩
  16. Charles, “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America”; American Battlefield Trust, “Camden”; Steven D. Smith, “SC Historic Properties Record”. ↩
  17. James Dillon, “The Camden Battlefield”; American Battlefield Trust, “Camden”. ↩
  18. American Battlefield Trust, “Camden”. ↩
  19. John Stark, “Memoir and Official Correspondence of Gen. John Stark”; John Burgoyne, “A State of the Expedition from Canada, as Laid before the House of Commons”; New York State Parks, “Bennington Battlefield State Historic Site”; Vermont State Historic Sites, “Bennington Battle Monument Research”. ↩
  20. Isaac Brock, “Documents Relating to the Invasion of Canada and the Surrender of Detroit, 1812”; Dictionary of Canadian Biography, “BROCK, Sir ISAAC”; The London Gazette Extraordinary, “issue 16653”. ↩

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