the swamps, through which the cavalry could not follow, every corps was dispersed. The canes and underwood that hid them from their pursuers separated them from one another. Kalb lingered for three days; but, before he closed his eyes, he bore an affectionate testimony to the exemplary conduct of the division which he had commanded, and of which two fifths had fallen in battle. Opulent, and happy in his wife and children, he gave to the United States his life and his example. Congress voted him a monument. The British parliament voted thanks to Cornwallis. Gates and Caswell, who took to flight with the militia, gave up all for lost; and, leaving the army without orders, rode in all haste to Clermont, which they reached ahead of all the fugitives, and then pressed on and still on, until, late in the night, the two generals escorted each other into Charlotte. The next morning, Gates, who was a petty intriguer, not a soldier, left Caswell to rally such troops as might come in; and himself sped to Hillsborough, where the North Carolina legislature was soon to meet, riding altogether more than two hundred miles in three days and a half, and running away from his army so fast and so far that he knew nothing about its condition. Caswell, after spending one day at Charlotte, disobeyed the order of his chief and followed his example. On the nineteenth, American officers, coming into 1780. Charlotte, placed their hopes of a happier turn of Aug. 19. events on Sumter, who commanded the largest American force that now remained in the Carolinas. That detachment had, on the fifteenth, captured Aug. 15. more than forty British wagons laden with stores, and secured more than a hundred prisoners. On Aug. 16. hearing of the misfortunes of the army of Gates, Sumter retreated slowly and carelessly up the Wateree. On the seventeenth, he remained through Aug. 17. the whole night at Rocky Mount, though he knew that the British were on the opposite side of the river, and in possession of boats and the ford. On the eighteenth, he advanced only eight miles; and on Aug. 18. the north bank of Fishing Creek, at bright mid-day his troops stacked their arms; some took repose; some went to the river to bathe; some strolled in search of supplies; and Sumter himself fell fast asleep in the shade of a wagon. In this state, a party under Tarleton cut them off from their arms and put them to rout, taking two or three hundred of them captive, and recovering the British Aug. 20. prisoners and wagons. On the twentieth, Sumter rode into Charlotte alone, without hat or saddle. 1780. CHAPTER XLV. CORNWALLIS AND THE MEN OF THE SOUTH AND WEST. 1780. 1780. FROM the moment of his victory near Camden, Cornwallis became the principal figure in the British service in America, the pride and delight of Germain, the desired commander in chief, the one man on whom rested the hopes of the ministry for the successful termination of the war. His friends disparaged the ability of Sir Henry Clinton, accused him of hating his younger and more enterprising compeer, and censured him for leaving at the south forces disproportioned to the service for which they were required. We are come to the series of events which closed the American contest and restored peace to the world. In Europe, the sovereigns of Prussia, of Austria, of Russia, were offering their mediation; the united Netherlands were struggling to preserve their neutrality; France was straining every nerve to cope with her rival in the four quarters of the globe; Spain was exhausting her resources for the conquest of Gibraltar; but the incidents which overthrew the ministry of North, and reconciled Great Britain to America, had their springs in South Carolina. Cornwallis, elated with success and hope, prepared for the northward march, which was to conduct him from victory to victory, till he should restore all America south of Delaware to its allegiance. He was made to believe that North Carolina would rise to welcome him; and, in the train of his flatterers, he carried Martin, its former governor, who was to re-enter on his office. He requested Clinton to detach three thousand men to establish a post on the Chesapeake Bay; and Clinton knew too well the wishes of the British government to venture to refuse. In carrying out his plan, the first measure of Cornwallis was a reign of terror. Professing to regard South Carolina as restored to the dominion of George III., he accepted the suggestions of Martin and Tarleton, and the like, that severity was the true mode to hold the recovered province. He therefore addressed the most stringent orders to the commandants at Ninety-Six and other posts, to imprison all who would not take up arms for the king, and to seize or destroy their whole property. He most positively enjoined that every militia-man who had borne arms with the British and had afterwards joined the Americans should be hanged immediately. He set up the gallows at Camden for the indiscriminate execution of those among his prisoners who had formerly given their parole, even when it had been kept till it was cancelled by the proclamation of Clinton. To bring these men to the gibbet was an act of military murder. The destruction of property and life assumed still more hideous forms, when the peremptory orders and example of Cornwallis were followed by subordinates in remote districts away from supervision. Cruel measures seek and are sure to find cruel executive agents; officers whose delight was in blood patrolled the country, burned houses, ravaged estates, and put to death whom they would. The wives and daughters of the opulent were left with no fit clothing, no shelter but a hovel too mean to attract the destroyer. Of a sudden, the woodman in his cabin would find his house surrounded, and he himself or his guest might be shot, because he was not in arms for the king. There was no question of proofs and no trial. For two years, cold-blooded assassinations, often in the house of the victim and in the presence of his wife and little children, were perpetrated by men holding the king's commission; and they obtained not indemnity merely, but rewards for their zeal. The enemy were determined to break every man's spirit, or to ruin him. No engagement by proclamation or by capitulation was respected. 1780. The ruthless administration of Cornwallis met the hearty and repeated applause of Lord George Germain, who declared himself convinced that "to punish rebellion would have the best consequences." As to the rebels, his orders to Clinton and Cornwallis were: "No good faith or justice is to be expected from them, and we ought in all our transactions with them to act upon that supposition." In this manner, the minister released his generals from their pledges to those on whom they made war. In violation of agreements, the continental soldiers who capitulated at Charleston, nineteen hundred in number, were transferred from buildings in the town to prison-ships, where they were joined by several hundred prisoners from Camden. In thirteen months, one third of the whole number perished by malignant fevers; others were impressed into the British service as mariners; several hundred young men were taken by violence on board transports, and forced to serve in a British regiment in Jamaica, leaving wives and young children to want. Of more than three thousand confined in prison-ships, all but about seven hundred were made away with. 1780 On the capitulation of Charleston, eminent patriots remained prisoners on parole. Foremost among these stood the aged Christopher Gadsden, whose unselfish love of country was a constant encouragement to his countrymen never to yield. Their silent example restrained the timid from exchanging their paroles for the protection of British subjects. To overcome this influence, eleven days after the victory at Camden, he, and thirty-six of his most resolute associates, in flagrant disregard of the conditions on which they had surrendered, were early in the morning taken from their houses and beds and transported to St. Augustine. Gadsden and others, refusing to give a new parole, were immured in the castle of St. Mark. After some weeks, a like cargo was shipped to the same place. The system of slaveholding kept away from defensive service not only more than half the population, whom the planters would not suffer to be armed, but the numerous whites, needed to watch the black men, if they were to be |