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judging people, and to induce their co-operation with their fellow-citizens in the common cause of American liberty. Partial success followed their explanations, and a treaty of neutrality was granted to the disaffected. But the old grudge still subsisted, and they continued to thwart the measures of Congress. The friends of the revolution marched an army into their settlements. Opposition was subdued with little or no bloodshed, and a temporary calm succeeded. But many of the disheartened royalists abandoned their plantations, and went either to the province of Florida, or among the Indians. In both cases they were tools in the hands of the British, and ready to co-operate with them against their countrymen who favored revolutionary measures. They lent their aid to a project for attacking the western settlements of South Carolina, at the moment Charlestown was to be invaded by a powerful fleet and army. They performed their part. Under the direction of Britain, and in concert with Indians, dressed and painted like them, they began to murder the white settlers nearly on the same day Sullivan's Island was attacked by the British. Measures of discrimination had been proposed among themselves to restrain the Indians from disturbing the tories, but they were unavailing. Both classes of white people fell by a common massacre. The repulse of the British in their attack on fort Moultrie, disconcerted the tories and Indians, and gave the whigs leisure to chastise them both. This was done with spirit and effect by an army commanded by Colonel Williamson. A calm succeeded for three or four years, but guards were kept on the frontiers and the inhabitants lived in terror; for they were apprehensive of a renewed attack. After the fall of Charlestown in 1780, everything was reversed. The British, the tories and Indians, had the upper hand. Robbery, desolation and murder, became common and continued till the revolutionary war was ended. Many were killed-several fled-the country was filled with widows and orphans, and adult male population was sensibly diminished.

From the first settlement of the upper country till the peace of 1783, a succession of disasters had stunted its growth. The years 1756, 1757 and 1758, were attended with no uncommon calamity. The same may be said of the years between 1770 and 1775, but with these exceptions; the upper country was for nearly twenty years of the first thirty of its existence kept in a constant state of disturbance either by the Indians or tories, and the contentions between regulators and Scouilites. Under all these disadvantages it grew astonishingly. Prior to the revolution it had received such an increase of inhabitants, as essentially contributed to the support of that bold measure; but since the year 1783, the improvement of that part of the

State has exceeded all calculation. In the course of the revolutionary war the Cherokees, having taken part with the enemies of the State, were so completely defeated, that in 1777 they ceded to South Carolina all their lands to the eastward of the Unacaye mountains. In the year 1784 a land office was opened for the sale of this land. The price fixed was ten dollars per hundred acres, payable in debts due from the State. This low price, the fertility of the soil, and the healthiness of its climate, allured settlers to this newly acquired mountainous territory in such abundance that its population advanced with unexampled rapidity. The extention of the limits of South Carolina-the increasing population both of its old and new western territory, has within the last twentyfive years elevated the upper country from a low condition to be the most influential portion of the State. The base of South Carolina on the sea coast below the falls of the rivers, when compared with its apex above the falls, is nearly as three to two; yet its principal strength rests with the smaller section. The latter increases in wealth, population and improvement of every kind, much more rapidly than the former. What the flat sea-coast has slowly attained to in 138 years, is now within the grasp of the hilly upper country; though very little more than half a century has passed since the first germs of civilized population were planted in its western woods.

CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION

OF SOUTH CAROLINA,

FROM A BRITISH PROVINCE TO AN INDEPENDENT STATE.

CHAPTER III.-SECTION I.

Of Introductory Events and Taking of Arms.

In the year 1763, when the peace of Paris had strengthened the British interest in North America by the addition of the contiguous French and Spanish colonies, many thought the English American empire was established on a permanent footing. Subsequent events proved the fallacy of these speculations. Perhaps some may allege that the removal of hostile neighbors inspired the colonists with projects of independence. This opinion is also unfounded, especially in South Carolina. Happy in her connection with Britain she wished

for no change. Between her and the mother country there was no collision of interests, and there never had been any serious complaints of either against the other. Commerce and manufactures were the favorite pursuits of Great Britain, and agriculture of Carolina. No instance can be produced where the relative connection, between a colony and its parent State, was more likely to last. In none was there a stronger bond of union from a reciprocity of benefits, or a fainter prospect of contention from the interference of their respective pursuits. The colony consumed an immensity of British manufactures, which she could neither make for herself nor purchase elsewhere on equal terms, and for the payment of which she had ample means in her valuable native commodities. The exchange of one for the other, was a basis of profitable commerce. Carolina, satisfied with her political condition, did not covet independence. It was forced upon her as the only means of extrication from the grasp of tyranny, exerted to enforce novel claims of the mother country, subversive of liberty and happiness. These claims were brought forward soon after the peace of Paris; and dissipated all the hopes which were fondly indulged, that Great Britain would maintain a pre-eminent rank in America. At this inauspicious period the scheme of a revenue to be laid by the British Parliament, and collected in the colonies without the consent of their local legistatures, was introduced. The British ministry were prompted to this innovation by the immense load of national debt, incurred during the war which in that year had terminated. They conceived that every part of their dominions should pay a proportion of the public debt and that the Parliament of Great Britain, as the supreme power, was constitutionally invested with a right to lay taxes on every part of the empire. This doctrine, so plausible in itself, and so conformable to the letter of the British constitution when the whole dominions were represented in one Assembly, was reprobated in the colonies as subversive of their rights and contrary to the spirit of the same government when the empire became so far extended as to have many distinct representative assemblies. The colonists conceived that the chief excellence of the British constitution consisted in the right of the people to grant or withhold taxes, and in their having a share in the enacting of the laws by which they were to be governed. In the mother country it was asserted to be essential to the unity of the empire, that the British Parliament should have a right of taxation over every part of their extended dominions. In the colonies it was believed that taxation and representation were inseparable, and that they could neither be free nor happy if their property could be

taken from them without their consent. The patriots in the American assemblies insisted that it was essential to liberty and happiness, that the people should be taxed by those only who were chosen by themselves and had a common interest with them. Mr. Locke's celebrated position "that no man has a right to that which another has a right to take from him," was often quoted as a proof that British taxation virtually annihilated American property.

Every thing in South Carolina contributed to nourish a spirit of liberty and independence. Its settlement was nearly coeval with the revolution in England; and many of its inhabitants had imbibed a large portion of that spirit, which brought one tyrant to the block and expelled another from his dominions. Every inhabitant was, or easily might be a freeholder. Settled on lands of his own, he was both farmer and landlord. Having no superiors to whom he was obliged to look up, and producing all the necessaries of life from his own grounds, he soon became independent.

The first statute that roused general and united opposition to British taxation was the memorable stamp act, passed in the year 1765. By this it was enacted, that the instruments of writing which are in daily use amongst a commercial people should be void in law unless they were executed on stamped paper, or parchment, charged with a duty imposed by the British Parliament. A less extensive tax might have passed unobserved by the unsuspecting colonists; but the stamp act was so intimately connected with all public and private business that an united vigorous opposition to it was judged indispensably necessary. To concert an uniform line of conduct to be adopted by the differnt colonies on this trying occasion, a Congress of deputies from each province was recommended. This first step, towards continental union, was adopted in South Carolina before it had been agreed to by any colony to the southward of New England. The example of this province had a considerable influence in recommending the measures to others who were more tardy in their concurrence. The colonies on this occasion not only presented petitions, but entered into associations against importing British manufactures till the stamp act should be repealed. On the 18th of March 1766, that favorite point was obtained. This concession had the effect of inspiring the Americans with high ideas of the necessity of their trade to Great Britain. The experiment of taxation was renewed in the year 1767, but in a more artful manner. Small duties were imposed on glass, paper, tea, and painter's colors. The colonists again petitioned and associated to import no more British manufactures. consequence of which, all the duties were taken off excepting

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three pence a pound on tea. Unwilling to contend with the mother country about paper claims, and at the same time determined to pay no taxes but such as were imposed by their own legislatures, the colonists associated to import no more tea; but relaxed in all their other resolutions, and renewed their commercial intercourse with Great Britain.

The tax on tea was in a great measure rendered a barren branch of revenue, by the American resolution, of importing none on which the parliamentary duty was charged. In the year 1773 a scheme was adopted by the East India Company, to export large quantities of that commodity, to be sold on their account in the several capitals of the British colonies. This measure tended directly to contravene the American resolutions. The colonists reasoned with themselves, that as the duty and the price of the commodity were inseparably blended if the tea was sold, every purchaser would pay a tax imposed by the British parliament as part of the purchase-money. Jealous of the designs of the mother country, and determined never to submit to British taxation, they every where entered into combinations to obstruct the sales of the tea sent out by the East India Company. The cargoes sent to South Carolina were stored, the consignees being restrained from exposing it to sale. In other provinces, the landing of it being forbidden, the captains were obliged to return without discharging their cargoes. In Boston, a few men in disguise threw into the river all that had been exported to that city by the East India Company.This trespass on private property provoked the British Parliament to take legislative vengeance on that devoted town. An act was immediately passed, by which the port thereof was virtually blocked up by being legally precluded from shipping or landing any goods, wares or merchandize. Other acts directed by the same policy speedily followed. One of them was entitled, "An Act for the better regulating the Government of Massachusetts." The object of this was essentially.to alter the charter of the province. By it the whole executive government was taken out of the hands of the people, and the nomination of all officers vested in the King or his Governor. Soon after followed an act in which it was provided that if any person was indicted for murder, or for any other capital offence committed in aiding the magistracy, that the Governor might send the person so indicted to another colony, or to Great Britain, to be tried. These proceedings, no less contrary to the British constitution than to the chartered rights of the colonies, were considered as the beginning of a new system of colonial government, by which the provinces were to be reduced to a much greater degree of dependence on the mother country than they had ever experienced. A general

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