Washington's Immortals

by Patrick K. O'Donnell

  Knowing the moment demanded decisive action, Williams pressed Gates for orders to attack.

  The general sharply responded, “Sir, that’s right—let it be done.”

  Galloping on his black charger, Williams “hastened to [General Edward] Stevens.” His Virginia militia “instantly advanced with his brigade apparently in fine spirits.” To aid in their assault, Williams asked for forty or fifty volunteers. The group of privates quickly assembled and the Marylander rode toward the front lines, ordering the men to act as pickets and slow the advancing enemy. “Take to the trees. Keep up as brisk a fire as possible!”

  As the battle unfolded, Mordecai Gist surveyed the field: swampland, interspersed with conifers, lay on both sides of the Waxhaws Road, making it difficult for the British to flank the Americans. The terrain allowed the Redcoats to concentrate their smaller forces for a frontal assault on the Grand Army. But as Gates formed his men, he inadvertently made a disastrous error. The Americans’ weakest forces, the North Carolina and Virginia militia, were facing the seasoned British regulars of the 23rd and 33rd Regiments. The British army typically assembled its best units on its right flank, fighting “right-handed.” Ideally, the American should have positioned his elite troops—the crack Maryland and Delaware regiments—across from the strongest British forces.

  Stretching nearly a mile long on the right side of the Waxhaws Road stood the elite of the American army, Gist’s 2nd Maryland Brigade, which included three Maryland Regiments, along with Captain Robert Kirkwood’s stalwart Delaware Regiment. “[We] formed the line of battle . . . and lay on our arms until Break of Day,” recalled Kirkwood.

  Yelling “Huzzah!” the Redcoats fired a volley and charged across the sandy field.

  Forgetting their orders not to fire until they could see the whites of the enemies’ eyes, some of the militia responded almost immediately to the threat. One North Carolinian recalled, “I believe my gun was the first gun fired, notwithstanding the orders, for we were close to the enemy, who appeared to maneuver in contempt of us, and I fired without thinking, except that I might prevent the man opposite from killing me.” Within seconds, a loud roar sounded up and down the line.

  With bayonets gleaming, the Redcoats bore down on the Virginia militiamen, who “almost instantly collapsed. [In] a panic, they threw down their loaded arms and fled in utmost consternation.” Within their ranks, only one regiment resisted the impulse to run. Unfortunately, the rest of the American left flank disintegrated. One of the participants noted that the urge to panic works “like electricity, it operates ­instantaneously—like sympathy, it is irresistible where it touches.”

  Williams, Gist, and Gist’s friend Captain John Smith attempted to halt the fleeing militia, but the sight of British cold steel had broken the part-time soldiers. By contrast, the American right wing stood firm.

  Smoke hung over the battlefield, obscuring the line of sight of both sides, and “the action became very Desperate; which continued for the space of a half an hour,” remembered Kirkwood. Like a rock, Marylanders held their line. “General Gist preserved perfect order in his brigade, and, with his small arms and artillery continued a heavy and well-directed fire upon the 33rd Regiment and the whole of the left division,” Banastre Tarleton noted.

  The 2nd Maryland Brigade, commanded by Gist, lunged forward toward the Volunteers of Ireland. The Volunteers had been formed by an Irish nobleman, Lord Francis Rawdon, a close friend of Tarleton. Described as “the ugliest officer” in the British army, Rawdon fought first at Bunker Hill and swiftly rose through the ranks, gaining the confidence of Cornwallis and his superiors. In the fall of 1777 he had been put in charge of raising a unit of Irish volunteers from the thirteen colonies. Now those volunteers faced their fellow Americans across the field of battle.

  From horseback, opposite the Irishmen, John Eager Howard, who was emerging as one of the finest battle captains in the American army, shouted, “Fire!” With his commanding battlefield presence, he urged his men onward. One British officer recalled, “The enemy threw horrid showers of grape. . . . I commanded a company and lost more than half the number I took into the field, and the company next to me lost two-thirds. For half an hour, the event was doubtful.”

  Twice the Americans repulsed the Irishmen. Rawdon’s troops began to falter. The combat veterans of the Maryland Line, “who had the keen edge of sensibility rubbed off by strict discipline and hard service, saw the confusion [of the militiamen] with little emotion,” wrote Williams.

  By this time, it was nearly impossible to see anything on the battlefield. “A dead calm, with a little haziness in the air, which preventing the smoke from rising occasioned so thick a darkness that it was difficult to see the effect of a very heavy and well-supported fire on both sides,” recalled one observer. Despite the lack of visibility and the steadfastness of the Marylanders, Cornwallis sensed the tide of battle was beginning to turn. Outflanked but noticing his enemy had begun to stagger, the earl rode into the maelstrom “with great coolness, in the midst of a heavier fire than the oldest soldier remembers.”

  Cornwallis’s intrepid leadership rallied his men, “Volunteers of Ireland, you are fine fellows! Charge the rascals—By heaven, you behave nobly!”

  Johann de Kalb’s courage equaled Cornwallis’s, and he urged his men to hold their ground as he rode up and down the line. Suddenly his horse collapsed, killed by a British ball.

  British infantry assaulted Gist’s brigade on the left flank. In his coup de grâce, Cornwallis committed Tarleton’s cavalry to battle.

  Despite the gaping hole in Gates’s line, de Kalb continued to fight. Disregarding the loss of his horse, the sixty-year-old Bavarian refused to yield ground. De Kalb’s aide remembered that as the British closed in on the commander of the Maryland Division, “[de Kalb] fell into the hands of the enemy, pierced with eight wounds of bayonets and three musket balls. I stood by the baron during the action and shared his fate, being taken by his side, wounded in both arms and hands.”

  Williams shifted from Smallwood’s 1st Brigade back to Gist and de Kalb, who were fighting for their lives. He summoned Benjamin Ford, who was commanding a regiment: “[I] called upon the [regiment] not to fly and was answered. They have done all that can be expected of them. We were outnumbered and outflanked. See the enemy charge with bayonets.”

  The Marylanders were being flanked on three sides by the British. At this crucial moment, Williams and Gist looked for Smallwood, “who, however, was not to be found.”

  Gist continued to fight, along with the other Marylanders. One of Gates’s aides, Major Charles Magil, described the actions of Marylanders:

  The men, to their Immortal Honour made a brave defense, but were at last obliged to give ground and were almost all killed or taken; Gist’s Brigade behaved like heroes, so did Smallwood’s. But their being more to our left afforded us no opportunity of saving them. . . . Gist’s Brigade charged with bayonets, which first made the enemy give way . . . but we owe all misfortune to the militia; had they not run like dastardly cowards, our army was sufficient to cope with them.

  Tarleton’s charge, combined with the British infantry attack on the American line, resulted in a melee that was staggering in its intensity. “Rout and slaughter ensued in every quarter.” The entire American line collapsed.

  Gist attempted to rally his men and withdraw in good order while indirectly helping what remained of Gates’s Grand Army to escape. According to Tarleton, “Brigadier General Gist moved off with about one hundred continentals in the body, by wading through the swamp on the right of the American position, where the British cavalry could not follow; this is the only party that retreated in a compact state from the field of battle.”

  De Kalb fought on though mortally wounded. The baron cut down a Redcoat with his sword before collapsing. British soldiers began to strip the dying Bavarian of his gold-embroidered uniform. Cornwallis rode into the
scene and immediately put a stop to the filching. Compassionately, he said, “I am sorry, sir, to see you, not sorry that you are vanquished, but sorry to see you so badly wounded.”

  In his weakened condition, de Kalb allegedly looked at Cornwallis and nobly responded, “I thank you sir for your generous sympathy, but I die the death I always prayed for: the death of a soldier fighting for the rights of man.”

  As in their flight for survival at Brooklyn, the Marylanders scrambled through the swampy waters that flanked the battlefield, fleeing for their lives. Tarleton and his Legion were fast on their heels, cutting down the fleeing Continentals and militiamen with saber and pistol.

  In the midst of the flight, a Continental rushed up to John Eager Howard and informed him of a wounded Maryland officer. Howard surged into action and helped extricate the injured man from the field of battle. One Maryland officer later reflected on the courage of Gist and Howard and his fellow Marylanders: “I saw in particular, such coolness and personal bravery in General Gist, Colonel Howard, and some ­others. . . . I am confident upon equal ground we could have fought, and I think subdued an equal number of the British troops.” He added that Howard was one of the last to leave the field, accompanied by African American Thomas Carney, “who bore his part under Howard.”

  Unlike Howard and Gist, General Horatio Gates disgraced himself by being one of the first officers to leave the field of battle. Reports also indicated that Smallwood was not visible on the field. In his letter to the Maryland government, Smallwood glossed over his flight, putting the chain of events in the most favorable light: “I retreated with the shattered remains of the Maryland Division by way of Waxhaws, hence to Charlotte, where I intended to have made a stand.”

  For more than twenty miles, the men ran for their lives. Chaos ensued. Williams recalled, “The cries of the women and the wounded in the rear, and the consternation of the flying troops, so alarmed some of the wagoneers, that they cut out their teams and taking each horse [fled the battlefield].”

  One of the worst single defeats of the entire American army was over in an hour. Now the southern colonies of the United States lay open to the British.

  Before the battle began, Gates had commanded the Grand Army’s heavy baggage train with approximately two hundred wagons to evacuate the battlefield, but the drivers ignored the order. As a result of their disobedience, the camp followers and women who had accompanied the army were now at the mercy of the British. Most strikingly, the American cavalry, which had been ordered to guard the baggage train, was now plundering it. The dragoons started breaking into trunks, pulling out clothing, food, and coins that belonged to the Maryland officers. They eagerly broke into their gin cases, opening the bottles and passing them around.

  As Cornwallis’s commissary general surveyed the battlefield, he also noted the detritus of war. “The road for some miles was strewn with the wounded and killed who had been overtaken by the legion in their pursuit. The numbers of dead horses, broken wagons, and baggage scattered on the road formed a perfect scene of horror and confusion: Arms, knapsacks, and the accoutrements found were innumerable; such was the horror and dismay of the Americans.”

  With little time to gaze upon the plundering, the Marylanders and militiamen fled. Wagoners who had lightened their loads by tossing the contents of their wagons on the side of the road sped past them, nearly running them down. Continentals and militiamen streamed north, searching out their comrades and evading Tarleton’s pursuing cavalry. Nearly as dangerous were the local Tory sympathizers, who took advantage of the opportunity to pounce on the hapless and disorganized Patriots. Cornwallis’s victory stoked the confidence of the Tories, who now openly turned against their fellow colonists. Many of the Americans had thrown away their arms in their flight and were easy prey for the British sympathizers who were “every day picking them up, taking everything from them which was of value.”

  In terms of modern counterinsurgency, Cornwallis’s strategic victory was affecting the war’s true center of gravity, which was the civilian population. Their allegiance could—and did—easily shift between the Crown and the United States over the course of the war. Loyalist Americans now felt emboldened by the victory.

  Civilians weren’t the only ones whose allegiance was affected by the shocking defeat at Camden. Nearly 130 Continentals and militiamen also changed sides and aided the British, “capturing some, plundering others, and maltreating all the fugitives they met,” according to Williams. Those captured were offered a stark choice: languish in the bowels of a prison ship until their likely death or enlist in the British army with the possibility of survival or even escape. For many, it was about survival. Others were simply opportunists who wanted to be on the winning side because of the potential wealth it could bring.

  One of those compelled to join the British was Maryland Private James Gooding, who reported, “[I] was wounded through [my] belly and through [my] thigh. [I] lay in Camden about three months.” After healing from his wounds, he deserted the Loyalists and rejoined the Patriots, serving in the light infantry under Howard. Another turncoat was the infamous soldier of fortune and Delaware Continental Michael Dougherty. “Our Regiment was cut up root and branch . . . my unfortunate self wounded and made prisoner,” he recalled. Once again, allegedly, his aversion to prison “persuaded and listed [enlisted] in Tarleton’s Legion.” He later lamented, “What a mistake! I never before had kept such bad company.”

  Facing incarceration in a British prison ship or death if they were captured, Gist, John Gunby, Howard, and many other members of the original Baltimore Independent Cadets ran for their lives. Gist and Howard assembled some of the larger groups of retreating Marylanders. Together they made the long journey toward Charlotte.

  The fleeing soldiers were “a great number of distressed with families.” Williams’s pen described “the disorder of the whole line of march . . . [its] compound wretchedness—care—anxiety, pain, poverty, hurry, confusion, humiliation, and dejection would be characteristic traits in the mortifying picture.”

  One of Gist’s officers, Lieutenant Gassaway Watkins, “was pursued by Tarleton’s horse, jumped a fence eleven logs high, and was two nights and days without eating without seeing anyone and slept in the woods.”

  The men found insufficient food in Charlotte. So Gist ordered them north toward Salisbury. The route was so fluid that Robert Kirkwood barely noted the flight in his journal. “I can give no account of our marches on the Retreat untill we came to Salisbury, where we arrived on the 21st.” Nearly starving and living on whatever they could find—primarily peaches and watermelons—the men avoided local Tories and marched for nearly two hundred miles. Initially, the senior officer in the field was Smallwood, who claimed to assume command of the stragglers. They joined Gates. After fleeing the battlefield, Gates had ridden for three and a half days, covering a remarkable distance for even the most experienced rider.

  The tattered remains of the army filtered into Hillsborough. Sergeant Major William Seymour, a stalwart veteran of the Blues, recalled, “The fugitives from Camden came in daily, but in a deplorable condition, hungry, fatigued, and almost naked. . . . [The men needed to be] completely refitted with clothes, tents, and blankets.”

  It is impossible to determine American losses exactly; however, estimates say at least 650 of the Continentals were killed or captured. The Marylanders had sustained over 50 percent casualties during the Battle of Camden. But slowly, the remnants of the Grand Army trickled into Hillsborough, even up to two or three weeks after the battle. As they had done so many times before, the Marylanders re-formed and were able to help rebuild the army.

  One bright spot occurred when Francis Marion freed a number of Continental troops. The Swamp Fox described the gallant action in his own words: “Attacked a Guard of the 63rd and Prince of Wales Regiment with a number of Tories. Took 22 regulars [British] and 2 Tories prisoner and retook 150 Continentals from the Ma
ryland line.”

  Cornwallis was riding high after his decisive victory in Camden. In Europe and at Henry Clinton’s headquarters in New York, the war appeared to be finally turning a corner in favor of the Crown. The Dutch, reacting to the string of British wins, stopped supplying the Americans with gunpowder, supplies, and equipment. Even in Paris the victories had a chilling effect. In the two years of war since the alliance was signed, there had been few tangible battlefield results except the two botched operations under Jean-Baptiste d’Estaing. Some questioned how long France would remain at war and whether it separately tried to make peace with Britain despite the treaty. The war was driving France toward bankruptcy, and an understanding with Britain was considered an honorable way to exit the war. There was a serious possibility that France would pull out its troops and end its funding. Perhaps the greatest threat to independence came several months later when Russia and Austria proposed a peace conference to mediate an end to the war.

  The year 1780 looked even darker than the fall of 1776 for the new nation. “Reconciliationists” in Congress had begun calling for talks with Great Britain. American morale was at a low point, and many believed the war would come to an end with some sort of accommodation rather than the complete independence that the Patriots wanted. Their last hope was to win some significant battles in 1781. If the British could simply maintain the status quo, continuing to consolidate their gains in South Carolina and grow additional Loyalist units without any major battlefield losses, their ultimate victory seemed certain.

  Cornwallis and Britain appeared to be unstoppable. One officer wrote of Cornwallis: “His army is his family, he is the father of it. There are no parties, no competitions. What may not be expected from a force so united, a leader so popular and patriotic? The great confidence the army place in him will enable him to carry the world before him.”