The Camden 14: Naming America’s First Soldiers
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Olen Shannon Maldonado, käsintehtyjä artesaanituotteita myyvän Jaui lahjakaupan perustaja. Valitsin Shopify, koska alustoja testatessani totesin sen ehdottomasti yhdeksi helppokäyttöisimmistä alustoista. Minulla oli tärkeää pohtia kehittymistämme tulevaisuudessa. Kaikki myyntiin tarvittavat työkalut, kuten varaston suunnittelu, ovat kätevästi dashboardissa. Aloita ilmainen kokeilu shopify.com-sivustolla.
Tomorrow is July 4th, exactly 250 years after the founding fathers declared independence from Britain. I feel like to a lot of Americans, that sounds like the end of the American Revolution. It's easy to forget the war, though, continued for seven years afterwards. More battles, more blood, more sacrifice. One of the reasons that's easy to forget is because this war was largely fought by anonymous men. Yes, of course, we know the stories of George Washington and the heroes who won battles, but this was also a war fought by soldiers who never made it home, whose names history never recorded. So today, we're gonna do something a little different. As most of us celebrate this country's 250th birthday with fireworks and barbecues, some are literally digging into stories that have lain underneath Revolutionary War battlefields for centuries.
And just recently, some of those stories came to the surface. A few weeks ago, the Start Here team traveled down to Columbia, South Carolina, where we found ourselves escaping the heat for a history lesson. We're at the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, navigating a maze of files and artifacts. As part of the University of South Carolina, it's also a state agency.
There are some of the buttons that came off the soldiers, but obviously they're not in good shape.
This is Stephen Smith. He's an archaeologist who has spent nearly 30 years studying the southern battlefields of the American Revolution. So that's a button from a U.S., like from a revolutionary uniform.
Yeah, absolutely.
Wow. He's showing off some trays, which at first glance appear to hold little flat rocks. They're crusty, about the size of a quarter. As you lean closer, though, you start to notice some familiar markings.
How can you tell that they're continental buttons?
Well, because on some of them, which he probably, Jim probably has, they have a USA on them.
Really?
Yeah.
What is the Battle of Camden and why are archaeologists excavating it now?
I didn't even know they were referring it to the United States of America that early.
A lot of people don't know that. Across the hall from us is James Legg, an archaeologist in the research division at the Institute, who also specializes in battlefield and military site archaeology.
This is a typical American musket ball. which we can judge from the size of it.
These treasures are just a sampling of the hundreds of artifacts carefully excavated by Stephen and James from a Revolutionary War battlefield about 35 miles northeast of campus. It's the site of the Battle of Camden. Okay, quick American Revolution refresher to set the scene for you. The Battle of Camden was on August 16th, 1780. Leading up to this, Patriot forces had won key victories in the North, forcing the British to shift their whole strategy to the South. But that shift was working. Savannah had now fallen. Charleston had just surrendered three months earlier in the largest American defeat of the entire war. To try to pick up the pieces, Congress sent General Horatio Gates to turn things around in the Carolinas.
At least, that's what they hoped.
But a beautiful area, full moon. And the two armies met just down the road where we will walk.
We're now standing in a wooded area in Camden, South Carolina, just off of what is now a state highway. This was the spot that became a battlefield.
You would have seen huge virgin pines. You couldn't even put your arms around them. And it's open area like you see today with these trees widely spaced. And there was high, what's called wire grass.
Gates was marching his starving, exhausted army through the South Carolina heat toward the British forces camped at Camden.
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