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Chapter III - Trouble in the Carolinas
Trouble in the Carolinas
Americans lost more than just a town or two, however. Three months after the capture of Charleston, the confident British led by Lord Charles Cornwallis surprised American forces at Camden, South Carolina. Although General Gates, the hero of Saratoga, led a hastily organized army of militiamen against the seasoned British regulars, some militia units panicked in the noise and confusion of battle and fled without firing a shot. Also, after the Battle of Camden thousands of slaves joined the British, driven by the Proclamation of Freedom which had been issued by loyalist Virginia Governor Lord Dunmore. Between 1780 and 1781 the lack of slave labor seriously disrupted the planting and harvesting schedules. War in the Carolinas quickly developed into a series of bloody and brutal clashes between loyalists and patriots. Small, independent Western farmers and Eastern plantation owners were no strangers to conflict, particularly among themselves. Western farmers, detesting the control of the plantation elite, declared themselves loyal to the King. The slave-holding plantation owners, on the other hand, felt threatened by the British encouragement of slave revolt. One observer described South Carolina as "a piece of patchwork, the inhabitants of every settlement . . . being in arms for the side they like best, and making continual inroads into one another's settlements." This civil war among Carolinians reached a climax in October of 1780 at the battle of King's Mountain, North Carolina, where guerilla forces viciously crushed the loyalists. Hatred between the warring factions was so strong that American irregulars slaughtered loyalists who tried to surrender after the battle.
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