At the Battle of Camden, British General Lord Cornwallis routed Gates’s army and captured nearly 1,000 men, including their supplies, baggage, and artillery. There was no organized retreat, and Gates rode near 170 miles north in three days to flee. It destroyed his reputation and his new southern army.
Soon after Greene took command of the southern theater, the tide of war began to turn in favor of the Patriots. Greene and his men turned south to reconquer the South Carolina backcountry. Throughout 1781, Greene steadily drove the British back to Charleston, which they abandoned the following December.
Drury Harris, a free Black man, served as a private in the 3rd South Carolina Regiment during the American Revolution, fighting in key battles like Savannah, Charleston, and Cowpens, where he was wounded; after the war, he settled in South Carolina, married, and was later granted a pension, living until 1834.
Peter Harris, a Catawba Indian who survived a devastating smallpox epidemic as a child, served bravely in the Continental Army during the American Revolution, fighting in key battles like Stono Ferry and Rocky Mount; despite his contributions, he later petitioned South Carolina for a pension, poignantly describing himself as "one of the lingering embers of an almost extinguished race," and was granted $60 a year just before his death in 1823.
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