Camden was America's worst defeat of the Revolution — a hero general who fled 60 miles and an army that collapsed in minutes before British bayonets.
By August 1780, the British Southern strategy was working brilliantly. Charleston had fallen with 5,000 American prisoners, and now General Cornwallis marched north to crush whatever remained of the Continental Army in the Carolinas.
Leading the American force was General Horatio Gates — the hero of Saratoga who Congress had sent south over Washington's objections. Gates arrived with an army of 4,000, but nearly 2,500 of them were untrained militia who had never fought a battle.
On August 16, Gates made a series of disastrous decisions, including marching his men all night through swampy Carolina heat without food. When the exhausted Americans met Cornwallis's force of 2,100 battle-hardened regulars, they were already spent.
The British launched a bayonet charge directly at the American militia on the left flank. The militia — most of them having never faced a bayonet charge — dropped their weapons and ran. The collapse was instantaneous, spreading panic through the entire line.
Baron de Kalb, the Continental Army's senior officer on the field, was surrounded and shot 11 times before he fell. He died two days later. Meanwhile, General Gates fled — eventually covering 60 miles by nightfall. It was the longest recorded flight by a general in American history.
Camden gave Britain firm control of South Carolina and opened the door for the invasion of North Carolina. Gates was quietly sidelined and never held field command again. It would take the guerrilla tactics of Nathanael Greene and Daniel Morgan to turn the tide in the South.