Militia flee in the dark; Cornwallis shatters Gates's army near Camden
Before dawn on August 16, 1780, two armies stumbled into each other on a sandy road four miles north of Camden, South Carolina. Lord Cornwallis's 2,239 British regulars faced Horatio Gates's larger but green force of 3,052, two-thirds of them untested militia. When Cornwallis's line advanced firing and shouting, the Virginia militia broke first, then the North Carolinians. Banastre Tarleton's cavalry crashed into the exposed Continental rear. Within an hour the American army had lost over 2,000 men and its entire artillery. Gates never commanded in the South again.
Camden cost Gates his command and his reputation and forced Congress to hand the southern war to Nathanael Greene, whose patient strategy of retreat and attrition would undo Cornwallis at Yorktown. The rout also hardened the American reliance on partisan leaders like Sumter and Marion, who kept resistance alive in South Carolina while the Continental Army rebuilt.
QHow many men did Gates lose compared to Cornwallis at Camden?
Gates's army suffered more than 2,000 casualties out of roughly 3,052 men, while Cornwallis lost only 69 killed, 245 wounded, and 11 missing from a force of 2,239. Of the identified American dead, 162 were Continental regulars, 63 were North Carolina militiamen, 12 were South Carolina militiamen, and just 3 were Virginia militiamen, a low count consistent with reports that the Virginia line ran before the shooting truly started. The Americans also lost all eight of their field cannon and more than 200 wagons.
QWhat happened to the 200-plus wagons the Americans lost at Camden?
Gates's army did not just lose men and cannon, it lost its entire supply train: upwards of 200 wagons along with the greatest part of the army's baggage fell into British hands or were abandoned along the retreat route. Combined with eight captured field pieces, the loss stripped the southern Continental Army of the equipment it would have needed to campaign again immediately. Rebuilding artillery and wagon trains took months, forcing Nathanael Greene, once he took command, to fight a campaign of maneuver and retreat partly because he lacked the heavy logistics to do otherwise. The lost wagons help explain why Greene's early campaign relied on maneuver rather than heavy logistics.
QWhat happened to Captain Richard Dorsey after the battle?
Captain Richard Dorsey, an American officer, was wounded in the fighting and captured by the British before the day was out, one of many Continentals swept up in the collapse of the Maryland and Delaware lines. His capture came amid the same general collapse that swept up hundreds of other Continentals that afternoon. Dorsey's fate was shared by hundreds of Continental regulars taken prisoner that single afternoon.
