Lost and Found

Reposted from battlefields.org by Jennifer Howard

Just north of Camden, South Carolina, the landscape transitions from bustling urbanity to scattered homesteads and expansive longleaf pine forests. On August 16, 1780, this region on the edge of the prehistoric Atlantic Ocean now known as the Sandhills was the setting for the turning point of the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution, the Battle of Camden.

After Charleston fell to the British on May 12, 1780, the hero of Saratoga, Major General Horatio Gates, arrived in the South with plans to replicate his victorious campaign in the North. Gates marched for Camden to capture the outpost there. Meanwhile, Major General Baron de Kalb and more than 1,000 Maryland and Delaware Continentals were marching south from Morristown, New Jersey, on orders from General George Washington. Things were about to get serious in Camden and Gates’ troops were severely compromised. Food rations were nearly non-existent. His soldiers foraged on green corn and green peaches, a decision that caused them to be “breaking the ranks all night [as they] were certainly much debilitated…”

In the early hours of August 16, Lord Cornwallis’s 2,335 troops and Gates’s approximately 3,500 Patriots literally ran into each other on the Waxhaw’s Road, eight miles north of Camden. After a short skirmish, both sides fell back to regroup. At early morning light, the two armies faced each other in earnest, separated by about 200 yards of longleaf pine forest. Although, on paper, the Americans enjoyed numerical superiority, all but about 1,250 of their number were inexperienced new Virginia and North Carolina militia. Cornwallis’s forces were a mix of Loyalists and veterans with Simon Fraser’s Highlanders, known officially as the 71st Regiment of Foot.

“The battle, of course ended up being a total disaster,” commented James Legg, public archaeologist for the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology (SCIAA). “The American Army was destroyed for the second time in four months.” Legg has spent decades researching the battle and thousands of hours on the battlefield. He described a setting where musket fire at close range continued for 45 minutes or more before the British outflanked the Patriots and claimed victory.

We may never know how many soldiers lost their lives at Camden. When faced with charging bayonets, many Patriot soldiers fled to the north and west. Some were captured. Others were left dead or wounded where they fell. Burials were unceremonious affairs in shallow single or mass graves. Historical records indicate that many others remained on the surface, their remains removed by wolves and other scavengers. Legg continues, “No one was ever removed. They didn’t get up and go home. They are still right where they fell.”

In the years following the battle, the landscape remained remarkedly intact. The site was not developed or paved over; however, shallow graves left the soldiers’ remains vulnerable to the impacts of logging and agriculture. The Hobkirk Hill chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, who preserved the first two acres, moved to have the battlefield listed on the National Register of Historic Places in January 1961. The Palmetto Conservation Foundation acquired a large portion of the battlefield and provided the initial light interpretation. In 2017, ownership of the battlefield was transferred to the Historic Camden Foundation. In 2018, the American Battlefield Trust and the South Carolina Battleground Trust, through their Liberty Trail initiative, acquired and preserved an additional 294 acres of the battlefield. All 770 acres of the battlefield are now protected under a conservation easement held by the Katawba Valley Land Trust and enjoyed by visitors using the The Liberty Trail app.

Legg describes Camden as a “featureless battlefield.” The site is a pine forest with no structures such as fortifications or trenches – the only evidence comes in the form of artifacts. Much of the early research conducted by Dr. Steven Smith, a research professor affiliated with SCIAA since 1986, involved the identification of artifacts, located either by interviewing relic hunters or utilizing systematic metal detecting. Research conducted throughout the early 2000s yielded dense concentrations of arms-related artifacts such as lead shot and musket balls, and clothing artifacts such as buttons and clothing clasps, all within six to 18 inches of the surface. The artifacts were catalogued, and the locations were mapped for later work. In 2020, Legg finally confirmed that the collections of buttons marked burials.

South Carolina Battleground Trust CEO, Doug Bostick worked closely with Legg and Smith over the years. He knew that the remains were vulnerable, felt strongly that America’s first veterans deserved a permanent resting place that honored their service and protected their remains and set a course to achieve that. “The soldiers who fell at Camden fought a vicious, bloody battle for the liberties we enjoy today,” Bostick remarked. “They are heroes who deserve to be remembered as such.” In the Fall of 2022, he contracted with SCIAA for the excavation of the remains of five to six soldiers and assembled a steering committee to begin the planning for reinterment ceremonies in April 2023.

A cross-disciplinary team of archaeologists from SCIAA and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources and biological pathologists from the Richland County Coroner’s Office under the leadership of Smith and Legg began the work to recover the soldiers over an estimated timeline of four weeks. As the archaeological units were opened, however, graves believed to hold one individual were found to hold several, and the timeline extended from four weeks to eight.

John Michael Fisher, an archaeologist for SCIAA, has personal connections to Camden and served his country in the U.S. Army Reserves. “My grandfather used to take me on rides throughout the state to see battlefields or historic sites. Camden was always important to him. We had a family member who fought in the Revolution and disappeared at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse.” He continued, “As a veteran, I felt humbled to be there. I’m a combat veteran, so seeing these guys who marched all the way from Maryland exhausted, and then died and were thrown into mass graves, made me personally attached to this project.”