Camden is the oldest inland city in South Carolina, the fourth oldest city in the state. It sits near the center of the long-vanished Cofitachequi chiefdom, which existed in the 1500s and which the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto encountered. In 1730 King George II ordered eleven inland townships established along South Carolina's rivers, and Fredericksburg - the township that would later become Camden - was laid out in 1732 in the Wateree River swamp. Few took the offered lots; the swamp was malarial, the higher ground to the north more attractive. The township disappeared. In 1758, Joseph Kershaw from Yorkshire established a store on the higher ground and called the place Pine Tree Hill. Camden became the main inland trade center in the colony. Kershaw later suggested renaming the town for Lord Camden, the British parliamentarian who had championed colonial rights. The name stuck.

Charleston fell to the British in May 1780, and Cornwallis marched 2,500 troops inland to Camden, making it the British supply post for the southern campaign. The Battle of Camden in August was a Patriot disaster. On April 25, 1781, the Battle of Hobkirk's Hill played out between about 1,400 Continental troops under Nathanael Greene and 950 British and Loyalists under Lord Francis Rawdon. The British technically won, but the price was high enough that they abandoned Camden and retreated toward the coast. After the Revolution, Camden became one of the wealthiest interior trading towns in the new United States. Goods from the Carolina backcountry flowed down the Wateree on flat-bottomed riverboats to Charleston, and from there to the world. The railroad arrived in 1842. Six Confederate generals came out of Camden during the Civil War. Sherman's army burned a full block of downtown buildings in 1865.

Starting in the mid-1880s, wealthy northern families discovered Camden as a winter escape. Three resort hotels eventually served the trade, and the town became associated with equestrian sport. Today Camden is home to the third oldest active polo field in America. In the winter, more than 1,500 thoroughbreds call the area home. Kershaw County is, by its own count, the 'Steeplechase Capital of the World.' The Carolina Cup, first run on March 22, 1930, has been held nearly every year since - skipped only in 1943, 1944, and 1945 for the Second World War and in 2020 for COVID. The race normally draws over 70,000 spectators to the Springdale Race Course just north of town. The National Steeplechase Museum sits nearby. South Carolina state law forbids gambling on horse racing, which makes the Carolina Cup an unusual creature among major steeplechases - a race that is purely sport and pageant.

For a town of about 8,000 people, Camden has produced a long list of consequential Americans. Larry Doby - the first African American to play in the American League and a Baseball Hall of Famer - is from Camden. So is Bernard Baruch, the financier who advised presidents from Wilson through Truman. Mary Chesnut, whose Civil War diary remains one of the great firsthand accounts of the Confederate home front, lived here. Kathleen Parker won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2010 and lives in Camden. William F. Buckley Jr.'s family founded the Buckley School of Public Speaking here. Brook Benton, the smooth-voiced singer of 'Rainy Night in Georgia,' was born nearby. Samuel E. Wright, the Broadway voice of Sebastian the crab in 'The Little Mermaid,' grew up in Camden. Scipio Vaughan, born into slavery, founded the influential Vaughan family that would later carry his name across the United States and Nigeria. The town is small. Its reach has not been.