At the end of June, Cornwallis reported that he had put an end to all resistance in Georgia and South Carolina, and in September, after the harvest, would march into North Carolina to reduce that province. On hearing of the violence of the British, Houston, the delegate in congress from Georgia, wrote to Jay: "Our misfortunes are, under God, the source of our safety. The enemy have overrun a considerable part of the state in the hour of its nakedness and debility; but, as their measures seem as usual to be dictated by infatuation, when they have wrought up the spirit of the people to fury and desperation they will be expelled from the country."

Patriots of South Carolina took refuge in the state on their north. Among them was Sumter, who in the command of a continental regiment had shown courage and ability. To punish his flight, a British detachment turned his wife out of doors and burned his house with everything which it contained. The exiles, banding themselves together, chose him for their leader. For their use, the smiths of the neighborhood wrought iron tools into rude weapons; bullets were cast of pewter, collected from housekeepers. With scarcely three rounds of cartridges to a man, they could obtain no more but from their foes; and with the arms of the dead and wounded in one engagement they must equip themselves for the next.

On the rumor of an advancing American army, Rawdon called on all the inhabitants round Camden to join him in arms. One hundred and sixty who refused he crowded during the heat of midsummer into one prison, though some of them were protected by the capitulation of Charleston. More than twenty were loaded with chains. On the twelfth day of July, Captain Huck was sent out with thirty-five dragoons, twenty mounted infantry, and sixty militia, on a patrol. His troops were posted in a lane at the village of Cross Roads, near the source of Fishing creek; and women were on their knees to him, vainly begging mercy; when suddenly Sumter and his men, though inferior in number, dashed into the lane at both ends, killed the commander, and destroyed nearly all his party. This was the first advantage gained over the royal forces since the beginning of the year.

The order by which all the men of Carolina were enrolled

in the militia drove into the British service prisoners on parole and all who had wished to remain neutral. One Lisle, who thus suffered compulsion in the districts bordering on the rivers Tyger and Enoree, waited till his battalion was supplied with arms and ammunition, and then conducted it to its old commander who was with Sumter in the Catawba settlement.

Thus strengthened, Sumter, on the thirtieth of July, made a spirited though unsuccessful attack on Rocky Mount. Having repaired his losses, on the sixth of August he surprised the British post at Hanging Rock. A regiment of refugees from North Carolina fled with precipitation; their panic spread to the provincial regiment of the prince of Wales, which suffered severely. In the beginning of the action not one of the Americans had more than ten bullets; before its end they used the arms and ammunition of the fallen. Among the partisans who were present in this fight was Andrew Jackson, an orphan boy of Scotch-Irish descent, whom hatred of oppression and love of country impelled to deeds beyond his years. Sumter drew back to the Catawba settlement, and from all parts of South Carolina patriots flocked to his standard.

So far the South had rested on its own exertions. Relying on the internal strength of New England and the central states for their protection, Washington was willing to incur hazard for the relief of the Carolinas; and, with the approval of congress, from his army of less than ten and a half thousand men, of whom twenty-eight hundred were to be discharged in April, he detached General Kalb with the Maryland division of nearly two thousand men and the Delaware regiment. Marching orders for the southward were given to the corps of Major Lee. The movement of Kalb was slow for want of the means of transportation. At Petersburg in Virginia he added to his command a regiment of artillery with twelve cannon.

Of all the states, Virginia, of which Jefferson was then the governor, lay most exposed to invasion from the sea, and was in constant danger from the savages on the west; yet it was unmindful of its own perils. Its legislature met on the ninth of May. Within ten minutes after the house was formed,

Richard Henry Lee proposed to raise and send twenty-five hundred men to serve for three months in Carolina, and to be paid in tobacco, which had a real value. Major Nelson with sixty horse, and Colonel Armand with his corps, were already moving to the south. The force assembled at Williamsburg for the protection of the country on the James river consisted of no more than three hundred men; but they too were sent to Carolina before the end of the month. North Carolina made a requisition on Virginia for arms, and received them. With a magnanimity which knew nothing of fear, Virginia laid herself bare for the protection of the Carolinas.

The news that Charleston had capitulated found Kalb still in Virginia. On the twentieth of June he entered North Carolina, and at Hillsborough halted to repose his wayworn soldiers. He found no magazines, nor did the governor of the state much heed his requisitions or his remonstrances. Caswell, who was in command of the militia, disregarded his orders from the vanity of acting separately. Yet, under all privations, the officers and men of his command vied with each other in maintaining order and harmony. In his camp at Buffalo ford, on Deep river, while he was still doubting how to direct his march, he received news of measures adopted by congress for the southern campaign.

Washington wished Greene to succeed Lincoln; congress, not asking his advice but not ignorant of his opinion, on the thirteenth of June unanimously appointed Gates to the independent command of the southern army. He received his orders from congress and was to make his reports directly to that body. He might address himself directly to Virginia and the states beyond it for supplies; of himself alone appoint all staff-officers; and take such measures as he should think most proper for the defence of the South. From his plantation in Virginia, Gates made his acknowledgment to congress without elation; to Lincoln he wrote in modest and affectionate language. He enjoined on all remnants of continental troops in Virginia to repair to the southern army with all possible diligence.

Upon information received at Hillsborough from Huger of South Carolina, Gates formed his plan to march directly to Camden, assured of its easy capture. To Kalb he wrote:

"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.

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