Note 1118 — Chapter VI · (continued 2)

A mystery surrounds the life of De Kalb. But he died as became a man of worth and honor. The fullest account of his career is The Life of John Kalb, Major-general in the Revolutionary Army, by Friedrich Kapp, "privately printed" in New York in 1870. In 1884 there seemed to be a revival of interest in the hero of Camden, and the volume was published. It is a translation of Kapp's Leben des Amerikanischen Generals Johann Kalb, Stuttgart, 1862. An earlier notice was the Memoir of the Baron de Kalb read at the meeting of the Maryland Historical Society 7 January, 1858, by J. Spear Smith. Both Kapp and Smith, from whom Kapp quotes, are unwarrantably severe on Gates, as, too, is G. W. Greene in his German Element in the War of American Independence, N. Y., 1876, pp. 89-167. See, also, Thomas Wilson, The Biography of the Principal American Military and Naval Heroes, N. Y., 1817; Headley, Generals, ii. 318; Lee, Memoirs, i. 378, etc. For an account of the monument to De Kalb, see H. P. Johnston in Mag. Amer. Hist., ix. 183.