Fishing Creek, 18 August 1780

While the humiliating Camden defeat of 16 August 1780 was unravelling for General Horatio Gates and his troops, General Thomas Sumter, who had successfully detached himself from the fiasco, achieved success in taking control of a strategic ferry crossing on Carolina's Wateree River between Camden and Charlotte. A surprise attack totally subdued the British garrison there, and a bounty of war matériel was gained, along with 250 or so prisoners. Sumter, in no hurry to return to Camden, learned, by dispatch from William Davie, of Gates's demise and flight from the disaster that was Camden. 

Lord Cornwallis, in the meantime, learned of Thomas Sumter's raid and gain of valued British supplies and troops, and, in the aftermath of Camden, set Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton on Sumter's trail. It didn't take long.

The day after Camden, Tarleton spotted Thomas Sumter and his men alongside the riverbank of the Catawba River. The following morning, August 18th, Tarleton and his legion tracked Sumter to the junction of Fishing Creek with the river. Here the rebel troops stopped for lunch, along with some rest and relaxation. Sumter enforced no security precautions. "Sentries" enjoyed the afternoon along with their comrades. Tarleton and his men attacked the patriot rebels in total surprise, many, including Sumter, half-dressed and disarmed. Those who could, like Sumter, escaped by any means available. A huge number were casualties, and more than 300 were taken prisoner. More importantly, to the British, their men were rescued, and maybe most importantly: their matériel was recovered. The Americans gained nothing but another huge dose of humiliation as a coda to the Camden defeat.

The Battle of Camden, 16 August 1780

In May 1780 the regular Continental army, those not imprisoned, had retreated northward to Hillsborough, North Carolina, above Durham, and even as far as Virginia, in the aftermath of Charleston's surrender to the British. The Waxhaw Massacre of Abraham Buford's troops that month also signaled retreat for anyone lucky enough to survive.

Late in July, though, with Major General Horatio Gates at the helm, the Continental army returned southward into the Carolinas. They gathered at Charlotte to regroup, calling in the local militia to meet with Continental Army officers. Gates was intent upon taking on Lord Cornwallis and regaining South Carolina. 

He was targeting Camden in particular, a key crossroads which had become a Loyalist stronghold of about a thousand men under British commander Lord Francis Rawdon. Lord Cornwallis was advised of Gates's movement days earlier and arrived on the scene to support Rawdon with additional troops, including Banastre “Butcher” Tarleton and his notorious dragoons.

Soon after your Lordship had first taken possession of Camden, you detached me to Waxhaw with my own regiment, thinking that as it was an Irish corps it would be received with the better temper by the settlers of that district, who were universally Irish and universally disaffected. My conduct towards the inhabitants, and the extraordinary regularity of the troops under my command, I must assert to have been such as ought to have conciliated their firmest attachment; yet I had the fullest proofs that the people who daily visited my camp, not only held constant correspondence with the rebel militia then assembling at Charlotteburg, and with those who were harassing Lieut.-Colonel Turnbull's detachment, but also used every artifice to debauch the minds of my soldiers, and persuade them to desert from their colours. The encouragement which they gave to the men, and the certain means of escape with which they furnished them, succeeded to a very alarming degree, and the rage of desertion was not stopped by our return to Camden.

When your Lordship left me to command in the Back Country, you left me in the territory of an enemy, awed solely by apprehension of our force from open opposition. I soon found (as your Lordship's experience since will readily lead you to believe) that I was betrayed on every side by the inhabitants. Several small detachments from me, were attacked by persons who had the hour before been with them as friends in their camp. As the rebels, however, had not strength to assail the body of the army, they endeavoured to weaken it by treachery. I had the clearest conviction that the militia who swarmed daily in our camp, not only held forth every allurement that could entice the soldiers to desert, but actually furnished horses to such as would go off, and forwarded them from house to house till they were beyond the reach of pursuit.

—Letter from Lord Francis Rawdon to Lord Charles Cornwallis, excerpt

(It is not indicated nor probable that any of the Burke County, North Carolina, McDowells or their overmountain colleagues participated in the Battle of Camden. Thomas Sumter, William Davie, and Francis Marion were more likely to be leading the South Carolina militia. Gates had even reduced his own regular army numbers by sending support troops to Sumter and Marion, who had been sent back to the swamps by Gates. The battle is, however, important in context of what followed for those men.)

Horatio Gates made some questionable choices, especially the choice to hold a large portion of his regular army in reserve. Despite his known lack of faith in militia, he chose to create the entire left  flank from them, while the opposite flank was regular army helmed by Baron Johann de Kalb. In sum, early morning 16 August 1780, within an hour of the first volley, the Continental Army was totally routed by Lord Rawdon and his men. The militia dropped their arms and fled. Baron de Kalb suffered three bullets and eight bayonet wounds, then took three days to die. The battle was still playing out when General Gates mounted his horse and galloped for Charlotte. There, he procured a fresh horse and fled another 120 miles north to Hillsborough. He ran. His troops that were able to flee, aimed for the safety of Charlotte. 

General Gates fled & left his army a great many of whom was killed & taken prisoner and the balance thrown into utter confusion.

–Pension application of Richard Crabtree, excerpt

Errors were made by an overconfident General Gates, and the total collapse of his left flank left about 800 Continentals facing over 2000 British troops. Cornwallis sent in a charge by Tarleton  and his legion. The Continentals turned tail and fled. 

Brigadier General Griffith Rutherford of the Carolina militia had accompanied commander Horatio Gates to Camden. Rutherford was wounded, captured, and ultimately incarcerated in the British prison at St Augustine, Florida, until his exchange in summer of 1781. Gates's regular army and its officers ultimately retreated to Hillsborough, leaving no provision for the patriot militia. 

…and the mortified militia, were left to depend upon their own exertions, and their own fortitude; which, notwithstanding the discouragements they had met with, did not fail. They assembled—formed themselves into small partisan corps—and actually combated successfully, the first detachments of the enemy that came afterwards into their country. These are facts which entitle the patriots of Mecklenburg and Waxsaws, [sic] to a whole page of eulogium, in the best history that shall record the circumstances of the revolution.

—Otho Holland Williams, Adjutant to General Horatio Gates*

In the meantime, militias on the county and local levels, if not casualties or prisoners, disappeared back into the countryside to regroup and continue to strategize. Colonel Charles McDowell and his militia withdrew to the west of the mountains.

* Otho Holland Williams, A Narrative of the Campaign of 1780, transcribed by William Johnson, included in Johnson's Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene, published 1822 by A.E. Miller, Charleston, South Carolina

The Overmountain Men, September 1780

From Historical Handbook Number Twenty-Two, 1955, Government Printing Office, Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D.C., excerpts:

"Despite fears of a possible ambush, the patriots crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains safely on September 29. The two units, into which the volunteer army was divided, passed, respectively, through Gillespie Gap and what is believed to have been McKinney's Gap. Shortly afterwards, they were reunited at Col. Charles McDowell's plantation, at Quaker Meadows, near the present site of Morganton, N. C. Here they rested during the evening of September 30. ...
The arrival of [Benjamin] Cleveland and [Joseph] Winston on September 30 and the night of pleasant relaxation at the McDowell home raised the spirits of the mountain men. The following day, October 1, they continued their southward march to a gap of South Mountain near the headwaters of Cane Creek. Here they camped during inclement weather through October 2.
While the men rested, the leaders of the expedition met in an evening council to review the progress of the march. First, measures were adopted to correct disorders in the columns resulting from the weariness of the march. More important, however, was the election of Col. William Campbell to serve as temporary commander of the combined volunteer units. In recognition of Col. Charles McDowell's seniority, he was entrusted on October 1 with a mission to General Gates' headquarters to request a permanent commander. He was instructed to ask for the assignment of either Gen. Daniel Morgan or Gen. William Davidson of the American Continental Army. McDowell's regiment was turned over to his brother, Maj. Joseph McDowell."

Isaac Shelby to William Hill, 1814

Frankfort,
The seat of Government
of Kentucky, March 4th, 1814

Dear Sir
I have to acknowledge receipt of your favor of the 7th of January last, which came to hand only four days ago. And now haste to answer it, by the first Southern Mail.
You inform me that you are about to write the history of the Battle of Kings Mountain, and several others, that were faught in So. Carolina, and you request such information as I can give you.
My antient private papers are all at my farm fifty miles from this place and owing to my official duties here I may not have it in my power to go to my farm under two or three months– But I can inform you that I have documents, and data, in my possession, which will afford a more detailed account of the action at Kings Mountain, and the causes that led to that event, than can be given by any other man alive.
I will communicate them to you, as soon as I can spend a few days at home and also of the action faught at Ceder Spring, near Warfords Iron Works, in July 1780, of the taking of the British fort, on Thicketty, in the same month, and of the action at Musgroves Mill on the Enoree River, in August of the same year, & of the reduction of a British post at Colliton Hall, near Monks Corner in Nov. 1781, at all of which I was an eye witness.
You are very correct when you say that "Historians & those who have wrote of the Revolution, either through want of information or design have given a very erroneous account of those events etc." of the action on Kings Mountain. I have seen no history any thing like the truth.
The case which you state of "Col. Williams having robbed Major McDowell of the credit of reducing a post of the Enemy" must I presume allude to the battle faught at Musgroves Mill on the Enoree river, on the 19th of August, 1780, for I recollect of none other from whence prisoners were taken to Hilsborough– I commanded the right wing in that action, and Col. Elija Clarke of Georgia the left– there were many field officers in the action who had volunteered their services from McDowell's camp, at Smith's ford of Broad river of which Col. Williams was one who had a few men who always adhered to him. His object was, if the enterprise succeeded, to reach his own home somewhere near Ninety Six but in which he was disappointed by the rapid and Mariculous retreat we were forced to make from the field of battle on account of an express from Col. McDowell informing us of the defeat of he Grand Army, under General Gates near Camden. Our retreat was up towards the mountains and along them into No. Carolina from whence I crossed over the western waters where I lived ; left the prisoners we had taken in the action with Col. Clarke who I understood consigned them to the care of Col. Williams to take to Hilsborough in No. C.
I understood afterwards he did, and arrogated to himself the sole honor of Commanding the action in which they had been captured.
Be so good to acknowledge the receipt of this letter and let me now what direction to give a letter, to reach you more certainly. One directed to me at this place will come safe to hand & I shall expect a line from you before I write you again.

Very respectfully,
Your most Ob. servant,
Isaac Shelby

William Hill, Esq.

Gen. Nathanael Greene in the South

The Continental Congress had been unfortunate in its selection of commanders in the South. It had chosen Robert Howe, who lost Savannah. It had chosen Benjamin Lincoln, who lost Charleston. In August 1780, near Camden, South Carolina, the British attacked Horatio Gates' army, which broke and ran in wild confusion. The way was cleared for Lord Cornwallis to pursue his goals of gathering southern Loyalists and taking the war into Virginia. His southern ports could be mobilized to move men and materiel into the Carolinas.
Congress entrusted General Washington with the choice of Gates' successor. On October 5 it resolved "that the Commander-in-Chief be and is hereby directed to appoint an officer to command the southern army, in the room of Major General Gates." George Washington acted without delay. The day after he received his copy of the resolution, he wrote to Nathanael Greene at West Point, "It is my wish to appoint You." Congress approved the appointment, and gave Greene command over all troops from Delaware to Georgia with extraordinarily full powers, "subject to the control of the Commander-in-Chief." Greene took command at Charlotte, North Carolina on December 2, 1780. Brigadier General Isaac Huger of the South Carolina Continentals was appointed his second in command.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Southern Theatre Field of Battle, 1780

(click image to enlarge)

"A New and Accurate Map of North Carolina, and Part of South Carolina, with the Field of Battle between Earl Cornwallis and General Gates." (1780)

Gen. Benjamin Lincoln (1733-1810)

Benjamin Lincoln was born on January 24, 1733, in Hingham, Massachusetts. He would grow to follow his father's footsteps into local political office. At 21, Lincoln became town constable and in 1755, Lincoln entered the 3rd Regiment of the Suffolk militia as an adjutant. In 1757, he was elected town clerk of Hingham, then Justice of the Peace in 1762. In 1772, Lincoln was promoted to lieutenant colonel of the 3rd Regiment of the Suffolk militia. Being in the Suffolk militia allowed Lincoln to gain military experience which he used in three major battles of the American Revolution. In 1776, he was promoted to brigadier general, then major general, then commander of all Massachusetts troops in the Boston area. After the British evacuation of Boston, Lincoln joined General George Washington at New York, commanding the right wing at the Battle of White Plains. Shortly after seeing action at Fort Independence, he was commissioned into the Continental Army as a major general.
In September of 1777, Lincoln joined Horatio Gates' camp to take part in the Battles of Saratoga. Lincoln's role in the Second Battle of Saratoga was cut short after a musket ball shattered his ankle.
After recovering from this severe wound, Lincoln was appointed Southern Department Commander in September 1778. He participated in the defense of Savannah, Georgia on October 9, 1779 and was forced to retreat to Charleston, South Carolina, where they were subsequently surrounded, then forced to surrender to Lieutenant General Henry Clinton on May 12, 1780. This was one of the worst Continental defeats of the war. Lincoln was denied the honors of war in surrendering, which deeply rankled. He was exchanged as a prisoner of war, paroled, and, in the court of inquiry, no charges were ever brought against him. After the exchange, Lincoln returned to Washington's main army, even leading it south to Virginia and playing a major role in the Yorktown surrender in October 1781. General Lord Cornwallis was so humiliated by his defeat at the hands of the "Colonials" that he refused to personally surrender his sword to General George Washington, sending his second-in-command, General Charles O'Hara, in his stead. In response, General Washington sent his subordinate, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, to accept Cornwallis's sword after the defeat at Yorktown.

(from: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Lincoln)

Francis Marion (1732–1795)

Francis Marion was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Continental Army and, later, Brigadier General in the South Carolina Militia during the American Revolutionary War. He became known as the "Swamp Fox" for his ability to use decoys and ambushes to disrupt enemy communications, capture supplies, and free prisoners. His strategic use of guerrilla tactics helped set in motion the decline of open battles in the conflict. Before the Revolutionary War, he was a sailor.

Marion is considered one of the fathers of modern guerilla warfare, and is credited in the lineage of the U.S. Army Rangers.

When Charleston fell on 12 May 1780, Francis Marion escaped capture because he had broken an ankle in an accident and had left the city to recuperate. Following Gen. Isaac Huger's defeat at Moncks Corner and the Waxhaw Massacre of Col. Abraham Buford's men by British Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton and his Green Dragoons, Marion organized a small troop, at first consisting of between 20 and 70 men—the only force then opposing the British Army in the state. At this point, he was still nearly crippled from the slowly-healing ankle.

He joined General Horatio Gates just before the Battle of Camden, but Gates sent him to take command of the Williamsburg Militia in the Pee Dee area, asking him to undertake scouting missions and impede the expected flight of the British after the battle. Marion thus missed the battle, but was able to intercept and recapture 150 Maryland prisoners, plus about twenty of their guards, who had been en route from the battle to Charleston. The freed prisoners, thinking the war already lost, refused to join Marion and deserted.

However, with his militiamen, Marion showed himself to be a singularly able leader of irregulars. Unlike the Continental troops, Marion's Men, as they were known, served without pay, supplied their own horses, arms, and, often, their own food. All supplies that were not obtained locally were captured from the Loyalist forces.

Marion rarely committed his men to frontal warfare, but repeatedly surprised larger bodies of Loyalists or British regulars with quick surprise attacks and equally quick withdrawal from the field. After the surrender of Charleston, the British garrisoned South Carolina with help from local Tories, except for Williamsburg, which they were never able to hold. The British made one attempt to garrison Williamsburg at Willtown, but were driven out by Marion at the Battle of Mingo Creek.

The British despised Marion and repeatedly tried to neutralize his force, but Marion's intelligence-gathering was given advantage by overwhelming Patriot loyalty in the Williamsburg populace.

Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton, sent to capture Marion, despaired of finding the "old swamp fox", who eluded him by travelling along swamp paths. Tarleton and Marion were sharply contrasted in the popular mind. Tarleton was hated because he burned and destroyed homes and supplies, whereas Marion's Men, when they requisitioned supplies, or destroyed them to keep them out of British hands, gave the owners receipts for them. After the war, most of the receipts were redeemed by the new state government.

Once Francis Marion had shown his ability at guerrilla warfare, making himself a serious nuisance to the British, Gov. John Rutledge (in exile in North Carolina) commissioned him a brigadier-general of the South Carolina state troops.

When Gen. Nathanael Greene took command in the south, Marion and Lieutenant Colonel Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee were ordered in January 1781 to attack Georgetown, but were unsuccessful. In April, however, they took Fort Watson and in May, Fort Motte, and succeeded in breaking communications between the British posts in the Carolinas. On August 31, Marion rescued a small American force trapped by Major C. Fraser with 500 British. For this, he received the thanks of the Continental Congress. Marion commanded the right wing under General Greene at the Battle of Eutaw Springs.

In 1782, during his absence as State Senator at Jacksonborough, his brigade grew disheartened and there was reportedly a conspiracy to turn him over to the British. But in June of that year, he put down a Loyalist uprising on the banks of the Pee Dee River. In August, Francis Marion left his brigade and returned to his plantation.

(Source: Wikipedia)