The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (99 page)

Two days after the proclamation of leniency, Clinton without consulting Arbuthnot issued a second -- Thomas Jones, the loyalist historian, was to observe sardonically that the British thought that they could subdue rebellion by proclamation -- releasing all those on parole as of June 20, but requiring them to take an oath to support British measures. If they refused to give active support they would be treated as rebels. The effect of this requirement was to send men who might have sat out the war back into active opposition. Clinton did not remain to face it, however. He left for New York the next week with 4000 troops, most of the army's horses and wagons, and a good deal of equipment, having received word that the French might attempt to take New York in his absence. With things well under way in South Carolina he could turn the command over to Cornwallis, who had, long wanted autonomy.

Just what Clinton had left Cornwallis became clear over the summer. The command in the Carolinas was independent, though of course Clinton remained at the head of the army in America. He gave Cornwallis instructions to pacify South Carolina, reclaim North Carolina, and to drive into Virginia where operations were projected with contingents drawn from the army in New York.

Cornwallis's command may have been independent but he faced formidable restraints on its exercise. The proclamations Clinton had hung around his neck could be thrown off and were, with the dispatching to jail of some of the worst rebels. But the proclamations had generated an opposition that grew over the summer, grew with every attempt to put it down. In a sense everything Cornwallis could do to destroy the king's enemies was futile. His problem in the Carolinas had been Howe's and Clinton's in the North: in order to restore the allegiance of America he had to crush the rebellion. And the process of crushing the rebellion simply fed its sources. That process slipped out of his control almost at once in the brutal struggles that occurred over the summer between loyalists and patriots. One of the earliest of these fights took place on June 20, ten days after Cornwallis assumed command. A Tory colonel, John Moore, who had served with Cornwallis above the Cooper River, returned to his home in Ramsour's Mill in North Carolina and attempted to enlist his neighbors in the king's service. Some 1300 responded only to be defeated in a chaotic battle by a rebel force of almost equal size. Those of Moore's men who did survive disappeared, leaving him with thirty stragglers to take to Cornwallis in Camden.

Three weeks later, on July 12, rebels under Captain James McClure beat up a Tory party under Captain Christian Huck, a regular officer who ordinarily served with Tarleton's Legion. This battle was fought at Williamson's Plantation (now Brattonville), a little more than fifty miles north of Camden in the Catawba district. And on August 1, Thomas Sumter, called the "gamecock" by Tarleton, led as many as 600 men against a much smaller Tory force under Lt. Colonel George Turnbull at Rocky Mount. The loyalists held their own in this fray, but Sumter gained too from this additional example of defiance of royal authority. In the next month the loyalists absorbed heavy losses at Hanging Rock. And when they were successful, as, for example, the navy was in raiding rebel property near Georgetown, they also succeeded in calling out opposition. Near Georgetown, in the Williamsburg district, the rebel militia swarmed into organized units when the navy showed itself.

These confrontations attained a size sufficient to ensure that their history would be told. Many more, skirmishes, raids, murders, did not. Yet they were important, for they forced men into action. A raid brought Thomas Sumter back into service after he had retired to his plantation near Statesburgh. Tarleton's Legion burned Sumter's house in May. Andrew Pickens, a partisan leader of scarcely less talent, broke his parole and his oath after his plantation was plundered by Tories.

There is no way of knowing how many others took to the field for similar reasons. But throughout 1780 and well into 1781, nasty, brutish conflicts occurred in the interior of South Carolina. Many involved nothing more than small-scale raids, neighbor against neighbor. Others, better remembered, enlisted large numbers of militia on both sides and often were directed against British posts, supply trains, dispatch riders. This sort of warfare, deadly little fights, shootings, and burnings, brought out the worst in people (and the best in a few). The worst were the

so-called "outhers," scavengers and jackals and renegades, their hands set against everyone while they professed to be in opposition to whichever group they plundered. Such men had appeared earlier in New York and Pennsylvania where, as in the Carolinas, they brought an indiscriminate misery.

Bringing order to this disorderly countryside was very much on Cornwallis's mind when he succeeded Clinton. By the end of June he had established posts at Ninety-Six, Camden, and Cheraw; soon after he pushed detachments into place at Rocky Mount, Hanging Rock, and Georgetown on the coast near the mouth of the Pee Dee. There were also fairly strong units at Savannah and Augusta to the south. Altogether Cornwallis could claim uneasy control of some 15,000 square miles. And he was considering a move into North Carolina and in fact was waiting only until the harvest could be completed there before beginning his march.
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While Cornwallis stretched his forces out in South Carolina, American regulars marched into North Carolina led by the giant Bavarian Johann DeKalb. The son of peasants, DeKalb looked as if he had spent years in grain fields doing the hardest labor, for he was a bull of a man, over six feet in height, broad in face and thick in body -- though not in brain. He knew his craft, having fought in two European wars, served with Marshal Saxe, and read deeply about battles. He also knew something about America; Choiseul had sent him to report on colonial affairs during the agitation before 1776 and he had traveled widely -- and observed carefully. He returned to America after the war began and though he received a commission as a major general and served at Valley Forge and Monmouth, he had never had his own command. Now he had it, from Congress, which in April had ordered him to take Delaware and Maryland Continentals to the rescue of Charleston. DeKalb never made it; in July he rested his footsore infantry at Coxe's Mill along the Deep River in North Carolina.
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There Horatio Gates found him on July 25 and, on the order of Congress, took command of his 1400 Continentals. Congress had appointed Gates to head the army in the South on learning of the disaster at Charleston. Washington had recommended that Nathanael Greene be appointed, but Congress, still bedazzled by Saratoga, had wanted

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its victor to recover the South for America. Given Gates's record, which is all that Congress had to go on, the choice was excellent. Most men seemed to like him instinctively, reassured by his plainness. On top of his apparent simplicity, since 1777 he carried an aura of success -- he had forced surrender from a British army. The pride, and delight, that Americans felt in his triumph is clear in the word they coined to describe it -- he had "burgoyned" the British.

Soldiers in the field respect victories, but they also expect renowned leaders to provide effective leadership. Doubts about Gates set in at once. The day after his arrival he ordered the "Grand Army" -- his term for the worn-out Continentals -- paraded, and on July 27, he set them on the road to Camden. Protest was futile and seemed churlish in the face of Gates's reassurances that "
rum
and
rations"
were only a couple of days behind him. Still, Otho Williams, his adjutant general, urged him to take a roundabout route to the west rather than a direct line which led through sand and swamp, largely barren of farms and those few long since picked clean by the militia of both sides.
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On August 7, Richard Caswell's North Carolina militia, some 2100 strong, joined Gates, and the next week Virginia militia under Edward Stevens came in. The militia must have wondered about the Grand Army. Gates's troops exuded fatigue, as any troops might who had existed on little more than green corn, lean beef, and peaches for several weeks. Marching from Hillsboro to Rugeley's Mills, just north of Camden, a distance of 120 miles, had taken them two weeks. They reached Rugeley's Mills short of just about everything -- they had but eighteen cannon and only a small troop of cavalry, though the Carolinas generally lightly wooded and flat were made for cavalry. Gates also lacked information about his enemy, a deficiency that was to cost many lives.
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The enemy had increased his numbers in Camden two days before. Cornwallis, in Charleston, learned of Gates's approach on August 9. The next day he set out for Camden. There he found Rawdon, now reinforced by four companies of light troops from Ninety-Six, and small units from Hanging Rock and Rocky Mount. Rawdon had skirmished with advance parties from Gates's army and with partisans under Thomas Sumter. Gates, however, was ignorant of Cornwallis's presence and unaware that a large force, 2043 effectives, had ensconced itself in Camden.

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There were also 800 British sick in the town, and their presence helped convince Cornwallis that he should fight rather than pull back before what he thought was a much larger army.
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On August 15, Gates ordered a night march which he expected would bring his army into position to trap a much smaller British force. When he issued his orders Gates thought he had 7000 men; the skeptical Williams had a tally taken and discovered that the army numbered 3052. Gates expressed surprise but ordered the army forward, commenting only that the 3000 would be sufficient. According to Williams, who wrote a perceptive account of the battle that followed, before marching the troops dined on "a hasty meal of quick baked bread and fresh beef, with a desert of molasses, mixed with mush, or dumplings." This meal, Williams reported, "operated so cathartically, as to disorder very many of the men," who "broke ranks" all night with the result that they were weaker and even more tired than usual in the morning. Whatever their condition, they marched at ten that night; by coincidence Cornwallis set his army in motion at exactly the same time. About two-thirty the next morning advance parties of each blundered into one another on the road at Saunders Creek about halfway between Camden and Rugeley's Mills. A confused fight followed with a handful of prisoners taken on both sides. From one of them, Gates learned that he faced Cornwallis and an army of 3000. Further expressions of surprise came from Gates, who now, uncharacteristically, asked his officers for advice. They obviously thought that Gates was rather late in consulting them, and all save Edward Stevens remained silent. Stevens spoke a part of what all felt: they had no choice but to fight.
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At first light of a very hot day, the two armies got a good look at one another and at the place where they would fight. They discovered that about 250 yards of open fields separated them, with the Americans holding slightly higher ground. On either side swamps about a mile apart bounded the field. Cornwallis had sent his troops into a long line during the night with light infantry on the far right; the 23rd Regiment stood to its left with the 33rd between it and the road. Together they composed the right wing commanded by Lt. Colonel James Webster. On the left side of the road from the swamp inward stood the North Carolina Provincials and militia, both loyalist units, the Legion infantry, and the Volunteers of Ireland, another loyalist regiment. This wing, the left, was assigned to Rawdon. Cornwallis split the 71st on either

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