On Sunday, February 2, my wife and I toured the historical city of Camden in the central part of South Carolina, where Willoughby Blackard fought in the Battle of Camden on August 16, 1780, according to his official military record: "While a resident of Caswell County, North Carolina, he enlisted and served as a private in Captains Jacob Turner's and William Sanders' Companies in Colonel Henry Dixon's North Carolina Regiment. He was in the battle of Great Bridge, Virginia, "where Fordyce was defeated", was in the battle of Stone Ferry and was taken prisoner at Charleston, South Carolina, May 26, 1780. On July 27, 1780, he was exchanged and placed in Captain Edward Yarborough's Company in Colonel Henry Dixon's North Carolina Regiment. He was in the first battle of Camden and the battle of Guilford and was discharged November 15, 1781. He was allowed pension on his application executed October 8, 1832, at which time he was living in Wythe County, Virginia." [This record refers to the first Battle of Camden, but I haven't heard of a later one.]
The site
of the Battle of Camden is several miles north of the town of Camden where
a British fort has been reconstructed. While waiting for the fort to open,
we drove around and by chance found the battlefield. What was then a mature
pine forest among swamps is now just fields and scrubby pine. There is
only a roadside marker and a nearby monument marking where the General
"Baron" de Kalb fell.
Like us, the soldiers also found the battle site accidentally. At 10 pm on the night before the battle approximately 2500 Patriot troops under Major General Horatio Gates, "Hero of Saratoga," began marching south toward the fort with the intention of attacking what they believed to be a much smaller British force. It should have been an easy victory for the Patriots, because Francis Marion, the "Swamp Fox," had moved between the fort and Charleston, closing off lines of supply and retreat. What the Patriots didn't know, however, was that General Cornwallis and the entire southern army of Britain had already arrived at Camden on their way to join the northern army in Virginia. Coincidentally, Cornwallis had given the order to leave the fort and head north at exactly the same time the Patriots started moving south. Contrary to the film The Patriot, which shows most of the Patriot soldiers at Camden dressed in the blue coats of the Continental Line (regular soldiers), they were mostly ill-equipped and untrained militia. Imagine their surprise when in the middle of the night they nearly bumped into about 3000 British infantry and cavalry heading toward them. The battle commenced at first light, with the Virginia and North Carolina militias on the left facing experienced British troops.
One thing that puzzled me is that the North Carolina regiment was militia, yet Willoughby was in the Continental Line. The mystery was cleared up when I found a web site on Col. Dixon explaining that Governor Caswell had put Dixon and presumably what remained of his troops after Charleston under Caswell's command in the North Carolina militia. According to the book The American Revolution in the South, written by Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee and edited by his son Robert E. Lee, the idea was to use the experienced and disciplined soldiers of the Continental Line to set the example for militiamen. This was needed because the inaccurate weapons then in use required soldiers to line up in ranks and bang away at each other from about a hundred feet away, and the inexperienced militiamen found this somewhat disconcerting.
The Virginia Militia panicked and ran, exposing the left flank of the North Carolina Militia, which then also broke and ran. Major General Gates rode after the fleeing militia trying to rally them, but after seeing the futility of the situation, he continued on to Charlotte. Dixon's regular soldiers managed to fire three volleys, and the Delaware and Maryland troops to their right also held. According to one account, "when the British began overwhelming them in numbers, [Dixon] ordered his men to charge with bayonets.
Surrounded on every side, Gen. de Kalb was killed with eleven wounds, but Dixon's men fought alongside his body. After all the ammunition was used, Dixon led a second charge of bayonets and cut his way through the British lines."
If this account is correct, and the monument to de Kalb's fall is in the correct place, then Willoughby fought near the monument. The surviving Continentals, presumably including Willoughby, escaped through a swamp to their right, where Tarleton's cavalry could not pursue them. The next attempt to stop the British was at the Battle of Cowpens near Spartanburg SC (17 January 1781), but Willoughby missed that battle, it is said, because his regiment had no shoes. He did make it to the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, near Greensboro on 15 March 1781, where the Patriots delayed Cornwallis long enough to help ensure the defeat of the British at Yorktown.
Charles