Revolutionary War Service
In 1776, Gist was appointed major of a battalion of regulars, and was with them in the battle near Brooklyn, where they fought a delaying action at the Old Stone House (Brooklyn, New York), allowing the American army to escape encirclement.
In January 1779, the Continental Congress appointed him as a brigadier general in the Continental Army, and he took the command of the 2nd Maryland Brigade. He fought stubbornly at the Battle of Camden in South Carolina in 1780. At one time after a bayonet charge, his force secured fifty prisoners, but the British under Lord Cornwallis rallied, and the Marylanders gave way. Gist escaped, and, a year later, he was present at the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.
He joined the southern army under Nathanael Greene, and he was given the command of the light corps again when the army was remodelled in 1782. On August 26, 1782, he rallied the broken forces of the Americans under John Laurens at the battle of the Combahee and gained a decisive victory over the British.
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