"Enough has been lost in a vain defence of Charleston; if more is sacrificed, the southern states are undone; and this may go nearly to undo the rest."

Arriving in the camp of Kalb, the first words of Gates ordered the troops to be prepared to march at a moment's warning. The safest route, recommended by a memorial of the principal officers, was by way of Salisbury and Charlotte, through a most fertile, salubrious, and well-cultivated country, inhabited by Presbyterians who were heartily attached to the cause of independence. But Gates, on the morning of the twenty-seventh of July, put what he called the "grand army on its march by the shortest route to Camden, through a barren country which could offer no food but lean cattle, fruit, and unripe maize.

On the third of August the army crossed the Pedee river, making a junction on its southern bank with LieutenantColonel Porterfield of Virginia, an excellent officer, who had been sent to the relief of Charleston, and had found means to subsist his small command on the frontier of South Carolina.

The force of which Gates could dispose revived the hopes of the South Carolinians, who were writhing under the insolence of an army in which every soldier was licensed to plunder, and every officer outlawed peaceful citizens at will. The British commander on the Pedee called in his detachments, abandoned his post on the Cheraw Hill, and repaired to Lord Rawdon at Camden. An escort of Carolinians, who had been forced to take up arms on the British side, rose against their officers and made prisoners of a hundred and six British invalids who were descending the Pedee river. A boat from Georgetown, laden with stores for the British at Cheraw, was seized by Americans. A revolt in the public mind against British authority invited Gates onward. Misled by false information, from his camp on the Pedee he announced on the fourth by a proclamation, that their late triumphant and insulting foes had retreated with precipitation and dismay on the approach of his numerous, well-appointed, and formidable army.

On the seventh, at the Cross Roads, the troops with Gates made a junction with the North Carolina militia under Caswell, and proceeded toward the enemy at Lynch's creek.

VOL. V.-25

In the following night that post was abandoned, and Lord Rawdon occupied another on the southern bank of Little Lynch's creek, unassailable from the deep, muddy channel of the river, and within a day's march of Camden. Here he was joined by Tarleton with a small detachment of cavalry, who on their way had mercilessly ravaged the country on the Black river as a punishment to its patriot inhabitants, and as a terror to the dwellers on the Wateree and Santee. By a forced march up the stream, Gates could have turned Lord Rawdon's flank and made an easy conquest of Camden. Missing his opportunity, on the eleventh, after a useless halt of two days, he defiled by the right, and, marching to the north of Camden, on the thirteenth encamped at Clermont, which the British had just abandoned. In the time thus allowed, Rawdon strengthened himself by four companies from Ninety-Six, as well as by the troops from Clermont, and threw up redoubts at Camden.

On the evening of the tenth Cornwallis left Charleston, and arrived at Camden before the dawn of the fourteenth. At ten o'clock on the night of the fifteenth he set his troops in motion, in the hope of joining battle with the Americans at the break of day.

On the fourteenth Gates had been joined by seven hundred Virginia militia under the command of Stevens. On the same day Sumter, appearing in camp with four hundred men, asked for as many more to intercept a convoy with its stores on the road from Charleston to Camden. Gates, who believed himself at the head of seven thousand men, granted his request. Sumter left the camp, taking with him eight hundred men, and on the next morning captured the wagons and their escort.

An exact field return proved to Gates that he had but three thousand and fifty-two rank and file present and fit for duty. "These are enough," said he, "for our purpose;" and on the fifteenth he communicated to a council of officers an order to begin their march at ten o'clock in the evening of that day. He was listened to in silence. Many wondered at a night march of an army, of which more than two thirds were militia that had never even been paraded together; but Gates, who had the "most sanguine confidence of victory and the disper

sion of the enemy," appointed no place for rendezvous, and began his march before his baggage was sufficiently in the

rear.

At half-past two on the morning of the sixteenth, about nine miles from Camden, the advance-guard of Cornwallis fell in with the advance-guard of the Americans, to whom the collision was a surprise. Their cavalry was in front, but Armand, its commander, who disliked his orders, was insubordinate; the horsemen in his command turned suddenly and fled; and neither he nor they did any service that night or the next day. The retreat of Armand's legion produced confusion in the first Maryland brigade, and spread consternation throughout the army, till the light infantry on the right, under the command of Colonel Porterfield, threw back the party that made the attack and restored order; but at a great price, for Porterfield received a wound which proved fatal.

To a council of the American general officers, held immediately in the rear of the lines, Gates communicated the report of a prisoner, that a large regular force of British troops under Cornwallis was five or six hundred yards in their front, and submitted the question whether it would be proper to retreat. Stevens declared himself eager for battle, saying that "the information was but a stratagem of Rawdon to escape the attack." No other advice being offered, for even Kalb remained silent, Gates desired them to form in line of battle.

The position of Lord Cornwallis was most favorable. A swamp on each side secured his flanks against the superior numbers of the Americans. At daybreak his last dispositions were made. The front line, to which were attached two sixpounders and two three-pounders, was commanded on the right by Lieutenant-Colonel Webster, on the left by Lord Rawdon; a battalion with a six-pounder was posted behind each wing as a reserve; the cavalry were in the rear, ready to charge or to pursue.

On the American side, the second Maryland brigade with Gist for its brigadier, and the men of Delaware, occupied the right under Kalb; the North Carolina division with Caswell, the centre; and Stevens, with the newly arrived Virginia militia, the left: the best troops on the side strongest by na

ture, the worst on the weakest. The first Maryland brigade at the head of which Smallwood should have appeared, formed a second line about two hundred yards in the rear of the first. The artillery was divided between the two brigades.

Gates took his place in the rear of the second line. He gave no order till Otho Williams proposed to him to begin the attack with the brigade of Stevens, who had been with the army only one day. Stevens gave the word; and, as they prepared to move forward, Cornwallis ordered Webster, whose division contained his best troops, to assail them, while Rawdon was to engage the American right. As the British with Webster rushed on, firing and shouting huzza, Stevens reminded his militia that they had bayonets; but they had received them only the day before, and knew not how to use them; so, dropping their muskets, they escaped to the woods with such speed that not more than three of them were killed or wounded.

Caswell and the militia of North Carolina, except the few who had Gregory for their brigadier, followed the example; nearly two thirds of the army, Gates himself writes this of them, "ran like a torrent," and he, their general, ran with them. They took to the woods and dispersed in every direction, while Gates disappeared from the scene, taking no thought for the continental troops whom he left at their posts in the field, and flying, or, as he called it, retiring, as fast as possible to Charlotte.

The militia having been routed, Webster came round the flank of the first Maryland brigade and attacked them in front and on their side. Though Smallwood was nowhere to be found, they were sustained by the reserve till the brigade was outflanked by greatly superior numbers and obliged to give ground. After being twice rallied, they finally retreated. The division which Kalb commanded continued long in action, and never did troops show greater courage than these men of Maryland and Delaware. The horse of Kalb had been killed under him, and he had been badly wounded; yet he continued to fight on foot. At last, in the hope of victory, he led a charge, drove the division under Rawdon, took fifty prisoners, and would not believe that he was not about to gain the day, when

Cornwallis poured against him a party of dragoons and infantry. Even then he did not yield until disabled by many wounds.

The victory cost the British about five hundred of their best troops; "their great loss," wrote Marion, "is equal to a defeat." How many Americans perished on the field or surrendered is not accurately known. They saved none of their artillery and little of their baggage. Except one hundred continental soldiers whom Gist conducted across swamps through which the cavalry could not follow, every corps was dispersed. The canes and underwood that hid them from their pursuers separated them from one another.

Kalb lingered for three days; but, before he closed his eyes, he bore an affectionate testimony to the exemplary conduct of the division which he had commanded, and of which two fifths had fallen in battle. Opulent, and happy in his wife and children, he gave to the United States his life and his example. Congress decreed him a monument. The British parliament voted thanks to Cornwallis.

Gates and Caswell, leaving the army without orders, rode in all haste to Clermont which they reached ahead of all the fugitives, and then pressed on and still on, until, late in the night, they escorted each other into Charlotte. The next morning Gates left Caswell to rally such troops as might come in; and himself sped to Hillsborough, where the North Carolina legislature was soon to meet, riding altogether more than two hundred miles in three days and a half, and running away from his army so fast and so far that he knew nothing about its condition. Caswell, after waiting one day, followed his example.

On the nineteenth, American officers, coming into Charlotte, placed their hopes of a happier turn of events on Sumter, who commanded the largest American force that now remained in the Carolinas. His detachment had, on the fifteenth, captured more than forty British wagons laden with stores, and secured more than a hundred prisoners. On hearing of the misfortunes of "the grand army," Sumter retreated slowly and carelessly up the Wateree. On the seventeenth he remained through the whole night at Rocky Mount, though he knew