After the British victory at the Battle of Camden in August 1780, Major Patrick Ferguson was dispatched to the Southern Colonies. His task was to recruit members to fight for the Loyalist militia and protect Cornwallis’s left flank as he attempted to move through the Carolinas.
In 1779, after a stalemate in the north, Cornwallis went south as second in command to Sir Henry Clinton. Clinton captured Charleston in May 1780. Cornwallis pressed on to defeat General Horatio Gates at Camden, South Carolina, on August 16, 1780.
During the Battle of Camden, when the American line collapsed, de Kalb and his infantry remained on the field. De Kalb led a counterattack in an attempt to stem the tide but the British swarmed around the American. As Gates’s army retreated, de Kalb fell and was taken to Camden where he died in 3 days.
Ferguson, inventor of the Ferguson rifle, commanded a group of Cornwallis' Loyalists he had recruited. Ferguson threatened to invade the mountains beyond the legal limit of settlement westward. The locals organized a militia and fought against the loyalist forces on October 7, 1780 in the Battle of King’s Mountain.
Uncover History in South Carolina
We invite you to visit the preserved locations along the Liberty Trail and to immerse yourself
in the extraordinary events that determined the fate of a nation.
Treacherous waters and Patriot fire foil a British attack on Charleston Harbor
Visit Historic Drayton Hall — Tour the nation’s oldest preserved plantation house in America still open to the public. Explore Drayton Hall's 18th-century architecture, landscapes & the people who lived here.
Established in 1767 by the Patriot supporting Moore family. Local militia gathered at Walnut Grove prior to the Battle of Cowpens. Visitors may take guided tours of the house and grounds.
Patriot Leader Nathanael Greene Is repulsed but not defeated in his campaign to chase the British from the South Carolina backcountry
Andrew Jackson State Park combines history, art and community activities into a setting that has made it one of the state’s most popular parks.
An architectural treasure in its own right, the South Carolina Historical Society Museum is housed in a National Historic Landmark building and features interactive exhibits on the people, places, and movements that shaped the state and nation.
The Battle of Camden was a devastating defeat suffered by the Americans in the British military offensive in the South.
Now under the man-made Lake Marion, British Lieutenant Colonel John Watson and Patriot Brigadier General Francis Marion, the “Swamp Fox,” skirmished in Wyboo Swamp near Santee Road.
Built circa 1740, Hopsewee Plantation was one of the South’s major rice plantations and the birthplace of Thomas Lynch, Jr., one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
A former British headquarters, explore the reconstructed Kershaw/Cornwallis House, British redoubts, and programs about colonial life.
In 1780, after the British occupied Charleston during the American Revolutionary War, the Brewton house was used as the British headquarters for Henry Clinton.
An ingenious Patriot deception provokes a prominent Loyalist to surrender his outpost