The British still held the city of New York. General Washington's army sat in their impregnable camps on the Hudson and along the Delaware, where he could reach out a hand to New England on the east, and to Philadelphia on the south, at the same time threatening now and then the stronghold of the British. Meantime an active campaign was being carried on in the states south of Virginia. At the battle of Charleston the brave General Lincoln and his gallant army were compelled by the British to lay down their arms and give themselves up as prisoners of war without the usual courtesies. The ceremony of surrender was particularly galling. Forbidden by their conquerors to play a British or a Hessian air, they marched to the joyous melody of "Yankee Doodle," their colors cased, and their hearts rebellious. The battle of Camden was another defeat for the Americans. On that disastrous day fell the companion of Lafayette's first voyage, the Baron de Kalb, who died bravely after receiving no less than eleven wounds. Sir Henry Clinton, the British commander in the south, thought that defeats like these would finish the question for that part of the country, so he gave out proclamations of amnesty to the tractable and built scaffolds to hang the unsubmissive. But the south was not to be so easily subdued. The British met with defeat at King's Mountain, and in October, 1780, General Greene was sent to push the southern campaign more vigorously. One result of these southern disasters was to make the importance of Virginia increasingly evident as a base for operations in the Carolinas. Cornwallis saw this and he determined to reduce that state, to cut off the southern army from its base, and thus to control the approaches to the heart of the country. Accordingly, in January, 1781, he sent Benedict Arnold, who had been made a brigadier general in the British army, with a strong force, and with two trusted British colonels, to conduct a campaign in that state. If the British commander in chief had wished to fill the men of the Continental army with a fire that would make them unconquerable, this was the way to do it, and this was the man against whom they most desired to fight. On the other hand, General Washington chose a leader for the defense who was so well beloved by his men, and who was himself filled with so fiery an enthusiasm for the cause, that this alone would have been enough to bring into effect all the strength of those drained and exhausted men and to energize them for prodigies of valor. This leader was Lafayette. In February, 1781, he was commissioned to go against Arnold.