Soon, 14 soldiers will finally rest in peace
CAMDEN, S.C. — A Swedish mother visiting her daughter watched in wonderment at the crowd gathered for a funeral honors ceremony for Revolutionary War troops — replete with a parade, a play, prayers and a plethora of dignitaries — to honor 14 soldiers who died on Aug. 16, 1780.
I turned to her and said, “We love our wars.” To which I should have added, “And we love our warriors.”
The soldiers’ remains were discovered last fall, buried as shallow as six inches deep in the sandy soil where they fell during the Battle of Camden. Thanks to the work of archaeologists, coroners and historians, aided by buttons and other military paraphernalia, the battleground remains have been determined to belong to 12 Continental soldiers, one British loyalist and one British regular. Thirteen were honored as heroes in ceremonies planned by countless volunteers, both civilian and military. The 14th individual was determined to have had at least some Native American ancestry and so will be buried with help from the Catawba Nation and the Lumbee Tribe.
In fact, the reinterment of all the soldiers at the Camden Battlefield site is being delayed until the U.S. Army and the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust can turn the ground into a military cemetery. For now, at least, the carefully crafted coffins are being held in a safe place until preparations for the cemetery are completed.
The Battle of Camden is historically important for many reasons, not least because it was the bloodiest battle in the American Revolutionary War but also because, well, Camden lost, bolstering Britain’s “Southern Strategy,” its plan to concentrate its forces in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. Even though the patriots far outnumbered the loyalists — 4,000 to 2,000 — they were out-trained and out-equipped, and many of them had dysentery.
More than 900 patriots died in the Battle of Camden. Another 1,000 were captured, many of them consigned to prison ships to waste away of disease and malnourishment. Among the British soldiers at Camden, just 68 died, 245 were wounded and 11 went missing.
The Southern Strategy — a concept most Americans probably identify with Richard Nixon — was at this time the work of King George III, or at least his military advisers. Long before the Civil War, the South was identified as unique and separate, which, then as now, wasn’t necessarily a compliment. Beginning in the 1660s, the Carolina Colony, which stretched from Virginia south to Florida and west to the Pacific Ocean, was populated by hardscrabble farmers in the northern half and planter-barons overseeing vast estates under slave labor in the southern half.
The remnants of those times and events can be seen today in a patriotic devotion to “place,” in the number of steeples per capita, and in the strong identification with war — and defeat — and with the military in general. There’s a reason that the South produces more military recruits (41 percent) than any other part of the country.
Streets and houses in Camden pay homage to military leaders, including some from the other side, who fought or died in one battle or another. Visitors here can’t miss the Georgian-style Kershaw-Cornwallis house, named both for town founder Joseph Kershaw, who built it, and for Lord Charles Cornwallis, who marched to Camden with 2,500 British troops and seized the home as a supply post.
We take our wars and our warriors seriously.
Ceremonies began early on April 22 with a solemn procession of horse-drawn caissons loaded with the flag-draped coffins of the dead soldiers. I should mention that all the details of these events were the product of meticulous planning and local people volunteering their skills. The coffins were handcrafted by former theologian and minister Philip Hultgren,
who learned woodworking from his Swedish-emigrant grandfather. Every nail was hand-forged by Jack Hurley, a retired University of Memphis history professor and a selftaught blacksmith. To be true to the period, Hurley created 30 two-inch nails per coffin, each one needing about 100 blows from his 4-pound hammer to create.
Hultgren’s authentic 18thcentury-style coffins have six corners. Each one measures 5 feet, 6 inches in length and is finished with linseed oil.
“I wanted them to look like they were fashioned by someone who cared and who was a handson kind of person,” Hultgren said, adding, “They’re not perfect, but they look really good, and they have that sense of this is real, this is what a family would do.”
So it might have been in the summer of 1780. And so it is in the spring of 2023. Yes, we love our warriors. May they finally, eventually, rest in peace.