Camden: Finding America's Fallen
In the spring of 1780, after seizing Charleston, South Carolina, British General Charles Cornwallis pushed inland and established a supply depot and garrison near Camden. The move set the stage for one of the American Revolution's most devastating encounters. Determined to free the state from British control, Major General Horatio Gates marched his worn, inexperienced troops southward. Many of the men were ill, weakened by disease, and suffering in the brutal heat of a Southern summer.
When Cornwallis learned of the American advance, he quickly moved into position. On August 16, 1780, the two armies collided in the pine forests outside Camden. In a decision that proved catastrophic, Gates followed standard military protocol and placed the most seasoned soldiers on his right flank and the least experienced on the left. However, Cornwallis had arranged his troops in the same fashion. The British easily broke through the American line, allowing them to envelop the fleeing troops. By day’s end, more than a thousand Americans were dead, wounded, or missing.
More than two centuries later, in 2022, archaeologists from the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources uncovered seven shallow graves at the battlefield, some scarcely six inches below the surface. Working alongside biological anthropologists from the Richland County Coroner’s Office, the team carefully exhumed the remains and personal artifacts of fourteen soldiers.
With support from an NEH Celebrate America! grant, a new episode of the PBS series “Secrets of the Dead” brings this painstaking scientific and historical work to the public. “Camden: Finding America’s Fallen” follows researchers as they apply modern genealogical tools to identify the soldiers and trace their descendants. The episode reconstructs the men’s stories and explores the Battle of Camden's significance in the larger story of the Revolution.
WNET and Impossible Factual produced “Camden: Finding America’s Fallen,” in partnership with South Carolina ETV. The episode premieres Wednesday, November 11, 2026. Check your local PBS listings or visit www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/.