supported by a body in reserve. They
were much less numerous than the Americans, but they were picked men,
the choice of the regiments in Charleston and Camden. The American
militia, of which the greater part of Gates' army consisted, had
never felt an enemy's fire. The Maryland and Delaware troops were good
soldiers, well trained and in confidence of their leaders. With the
break of day, and the advance of the American left, the action began.
This division of the army consisted of Virginia militia under Stevens.
Handled with unexpected severity by the British fire, they yielded
before it and fled in panic, many of them without even discharging their
pieces. The wretched example was followed by the North Carolina militia,
with the exception of a single corps, commanded by Major Dixon. The
cavalry under Armand, a foreign adventurer, broke at nearly the same
moment; and a charge of the British cavalry, happily timed, put an
end to all hope of rallying the terror-stricken fugitives. The devoted
Continentals alone kept their ground and bore the brunt of the action.
They were led by the veteran De Kalb--the Commander-in-Chief having
hurried from the field in a vain attempt to bring the militia back. The
artillery was lost, the cavalry dispersed;--the regulars, numbering but
nine hundred men, were required to bear the undivided pressure of two
thousand of the best troops in the British service. With the example
before them, the desertion of their General, and their own perfect
isolation, they would have been justified by the necessity of the case,
in instant flight. But, as if the cowardice of their countrymen had
stung them into a determination to show, at all hazards, that they, at
least, were made of very different stuff, they not only resisted
the attack of the enemy, but carried the bayonet into his ranks. The
combatants rushed and reeled together with locked weapons. But this
struggle could not last. The conflict was prolonged only until the
British cavalry could return from pursuing the fugitives. Their sabres
gave the finishing stroke to the affair. De Kalb had fallen under eleven
wounds, and nothing remained, but flight, to save this gallant body
from the mortification of surrender on the field of battle. It was no
consolation to Gates, while fleeing to North Carolina, to be overtaken
by messengers from Sumter, announcing a gallant achievement of that
brave partisan, by which forty wagons of booty and nearly three hund