Camden: The Hero of Saratoga's Disgrace

Three years after forcing the surrender of an entire British army at Saratoga, Horatio Gates arrived in the South to take command of what remained of the Continental war effort there following the loss of Charleston. On August 16, 1780, his army, more than twice the size of the British force opposing it, collapsed within minutes when untested militia broke and ran at the first bayonet charge. Gates himself left the field on horseback, reportedly not stopping until he had ridden more than sixty miles. His own letter to Washington, written two weeks later, survives at Founders Online and documents both the scale of the disaster and his attempt to explain it.

Gates assembled an army of roughly 3,700 men in North Carolina, a force that on paper substantially outnumbered the British garrison at Camden, though two-thirds of his troops were inexperienced militia who had never maneuvered together. Learning of Gates's approach, Cornwallis marched from Charleston to meet him, arriving at Camden on August 13 and electing to take the offensive rather than wait behind fortifications. In a coincidence neither commander anticipated, both armies began night marches toward each other at almost exactly ten o'clock on the night of August 15, colliding in the darkness roughly six miles north of Camden.

Gates arranged his line with a critical tactical error: his best troops, Continental regulars from Maryland and Delaware, were posted on the right flank, directly opposite the most experienced British regiments under Lieutenant Colonel James Webster. His inexperienced Virginia militia were placed on the left, facing the same veteran British troops they were least equipped to withstand.

When British regulars advanced with bayonets fixed, the Virginia militia broke and fled almost immediately, many without firing a shot. Their collapse spread along the line to the North Carolina militia at the center, and within minutes the entire left and center of Gates's army had dissolved into a retreat that did not stop at the battlefield. Gates himself, caught in the rout, rode from the field and reportedly did not halt his retreat until he reached Hillsborough, North Carolina, more than sixty miles away.

The Continental regulars on the right flank, under Baron Johann de Kalb, did not break. They held their ground and fought even as the rest of the army collapsed around them, until British cavalry under Banastre Tarleton swept around to attack their rear. De Kalb was wounded multiple times and died of his injuries days later in Camden. The Continentals who did not escape were killed, wounded, or captured.

Gates's first report to Congress, written August 20, was so vague about casualties that Washington, reading it days later, genuinely feared the entire Continental contingent in the South had been destroyed. A fuller account did not reach Washington until Gates wrote directly to him on August 30, from Hillsborough, providing the casualty returns he had been able to compile in the intervening two weeks.

Gates's letter also attempted to find a measure of optimism in the disaster, noting that he did not believe Cornwallis would be able to capitalize fully on the victory given the state's continued resistance. The assessment proved partly accurate, though not because of anything Gates himself accomplished afterward.

Congress removed Gates from command of the Southern Department in the weeks following the defeat, and Washington appointed Nathanael Greene to replace him. Gates's political connections shielded him from formal court martial, but he never again held field command during the war. The general who had once been touted by his allies as a potential replacement for Washington himself ended his Revolutionary War career in disgrace at Camden, while Greene, taking over a shattered force, would spend the following fifteen months executing the strategic campaign that ultimately confined the British to a handful of coastal positions and set the stage for Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown.