him with many plausible arguments subservient to this design. The non-importation agreement adopted by the Americans, not only disabled them from supplying the wants of the Indians, but precluded the possibility of their receiving royal presents. This interruption of the commerce usual between the white inhabitants and their savage neighbors, gave Mr. Stuart an opportunity of exasperating the Indians against the friends of Congress.

In the years 1760 and 1761, a war with the Cherokee Indians had involved the inhabitants of South Carolina in such distress that they courted the aid of the King's troops in America. In fifteen years after, when the people of the same country dared to resist the parent state, it was supposed by the friends of royal government that the horrors of an Indian war would once more bring the province to sue for British protection.

The above mentioned Mr. John Stuart, very early in the contest, retired from South Carolina to West Florida; and from that province employed his brother Henry Stuart, Mr. Cameron, and others, to penetrate into the Indian country to the westward of Carolina. A plan was settled by him, in concert with the King's Governors, and other royal servants, to land a British army in Florida, and to proceed with it to the western frontiers of the Southern States, and there, in conjunction with the tories and Indians, to fall on the friends of the revolution, at the same time that a fleet and army should invade them on the sea-coast. Moses Kirkland, a leader of the party for royal government in the back parts of South Carolina, was confidentially employed by John Stuart, Governor Tonyn, and other royal servants to the southward, to concert with General Gage, the commander of the British forces in Boston, the necessary means for accomplishing the above mentioned scheme. The whole plan was fully detected by the providential capture of the vessel which was conveying Kirkland to Boston. The letters found in his possession were published by the order of Congress, and produced conviction in the minds of the Americans, that the British administration, in order to effect their schemes, had employed savages, who indiscriminately murder men, women and children, to commence hostilities on their western brethren. Though the discovery of the British designs, and the capture of Kirkland, who was to have had an active share in the execution of them, in a great degree frustrated the views of the royal servants, yet so much was carried into effect, that the Cherokee Indians began their massacres two days after the British fleet attacked the fort on Sullivan's Island.

The Americans very early paid attention to their savage

neighbors. They appointed commissioners to explain to them the grounds of the dispute between Great Britain and her colonies, and to cultivate with them a friendly correspondence. As far as they possibly could, they supplied their wants. They endeavored to persuade the Indians that the quarrel was by no means relative to them, and that therefore they should take part with neither side. These moderate propositions were overruled by the superior influence of the royal superintendent, who had their previous confidence and more ample means of administering to their necessities. An Indian war commenced, and was carried on with its usual barbarity. Their massacres caused a general alarm. It was known that the Indians were excited by royal agents, and aided by some of the tories. The inhabitants were for the most part destitute of arms, and government could afford them no supply. For present safety they betook themselves to stockade forts. Colonel Williamson was charged with the defence of the country, but so general was the panic, that in sixteen days he could not collect 500 men. An engagement took place on the 15th of July, between a party of Indians and tories, and a party of militia commanded by Major Downs. The former were defeated and fled. They were pursued, and thirteen of their number being taken, were found to be white men painted like Indians. Intelligence of the repulse of the British at Sullivan's Island on the 28th of June, arrived in the back country at this critical time, and produced very happy effects. The tories were intimidated, and the inhabitants turned out with so much alacrity that Williamson soon found himself at the head of 1,150 men. With 330 horsemen he advanced to attack a party of tories and Indians, which was encamped at Occnore creek. On his way he was attacked both in front and flank by savages who had formed an ambuscade, and from it kept up a constant fire. Williamson's horse was shot under him; Mr. Salvador fell by his side, and his whole party was thrown into disorder. Colonel Hammond rallied about twenty men, and, directing them to reserve their fire, marched rapidly with them to the fence behind which the Indians were covered, fired upon them, and immediately jumped over and charged. The Indians fled from the approaching bayonet. Williamson burned the Indian town on the east side of Keowee river, but his men could not be induced to pass the river till Colonel Hammond crossed before them. They then followed, and without delay destroyed all the houses and provisions they could find. Williamson returned to his main body and advanced with them to Eighteen Mile creek, where he encamped on the 2d of August. As he advanced, he sent off detachments to lay waste the Indian set

tlements, who, by the fifteenth, had completed the destruction of all their lower towns. On the 13th of September, Williamson, with an army of two thousand men, partly regulars and partly militia, marched into the country of the Cherokees, whose warriors were said to be equally numerous. The invaders again fell into an ambuscade. They entered a narrow valley enclosed on each side by mountains. Twelve hundred Indians occupied these heights, and from them poured in a constant and well directed fire. Detachments were ordered to file off and gain the eminences above the Indians, and to turn their flanks. Others, whose guns were loaded, received orders from Lieutenant Hampton to advance, and after discharging to fall down and load. The Indians being hard pressed, betook themselves to flight. The army proceeded without further interruption, and on the 23d of September arrived in the vallies. Penetrating through them, they destroyed whatever came in their way. All the Cherokee settlements to the eastward of the Apalachian mountains, were so rapidly laid waste, that the business of destruction was completed, and Williamson's army disbanded early in October. Above five hundred of the Cherokees were obliged, by their distress for want of provisions, to take refuge with John Stuart, in West Florida, where they were fed at the expense of the British government. The Indian settlements to the northward were at the same time invaded by a party of Virginia militia, commanded by Colonel Christie, and nineteen hundred North Carolina militia, commanded by General Rutherford; and to the southward by the Georgia militia, commanded by Colonel Jack. Dismal was the wilderness through which the Americans had to pass. Their route was over pathless mountains, whose ascents were so steep that they could not be scaled without serious danger. At other times they had to march through thickets so impenetrable that the rays of the sun scarcely ever reached the surface of the earth. They were incessantly occupied for five days in advancing twenty-five miles. Notwithstanding all these fatigues, not one died of disease, and only one was so sick as to be unable to march.

The unfortunate misled Indians, finding themselves attacked on all sides, sued in the most submissive terms for peace. They had not the wisdom to shun war, nor the cunning to make a proper choice of the party with whom they made a common cause. About fifteen years before, by taking part with the French, they had brought on themselves a severe chastisement from the British and Americans. At this time, in consequence of joining the British and the tories, their country was laid waste, and their provisions so far destroyed

as to be insufficient for their support. And they were compelled, as a conquered people, to cede to South Carolina all their lands to the eastward of the Unacaye mountains, which now form the populous and flourishing districts of Pendleton and Greenville. These former lords of the soil have ever since been cooped up in a nook in the southwest angle of South Carolina, though the best part of that State was, about sixty years ago, their exclusive property. To preserve peace and good order, a fort called fort Rutledge was erected at Seneca, and garrisoned by two independent companies. A friendly intercourse between the savages and white inhabitants took place, and everything remained quiet till the year 1780.

None of all the expeditions before undertaken against the savages had been so successful as this first effort to the newborn commonwealth. In less than three months the business was completed, and the nation of the Cherokees so far subdued as to be incapable of annoying the settlements. The loss of the Americans in the expedition was thirty-three killed, and seventy-two wounded. The Cherokees lost about two hundred men.

From the double success of this campaign, in repelling the British and conquering the savages, the people of South Carolina began to be more and more convinced that the leading strings of the mother country were less necessary than in the days of their infancy. Through the whole of this year, though the arms of the British were successful to the northward, their interest to the southward declined. Every plan, for their acting in concert with the tories and Indians, proved abortive. Hard would it have been for the whigs of South Carolina to have opposed so formidable a combination could the friends of Britain have succeeded in their scheme of acting at one and the same time but, through the kindness of heaven, the favorers of the revolution had the opportunity of attacking them separately, and of successively pouring their whole force, and also that of a considerable aid from their neighbors, on the tories, the British, and the Indians. The first, from their premature insurrection, were crushed before their British friends arrived. The last were abandoned to the resentment of the State, by the royal fleet and army precipitately leaving the coast, and under the smiles of heaven, all three were vanquished by the infant American republics. The means adopted by the British to crush the friends of the Congress were providentially overruled, so as to produce the contrary effect. Their exciting Indians to massacre the defenceless frontier settlers increased the unanimity of the inhabitants, and invigorated their opposition to Great Britain. Several who called themselves tories in 1775 became active whigs in 1776, and cheerfully took up arms in

the first instance against Indians, and in the second against Great Britain, as the instigator of their barbarous devastations. Before this event some well-meaning people could not see the justice or propriety of contending with their formerly protecting parent State; but Indian cruelties, excited by royal artifices, soon extinguished all their predilection for the country of their forefathers.

The expedition into the Cherokee settlements diffused military ideas, and a spirit of enterprise among the inhabitants. It taught them the necessary arts of providing for an army, and gave them experience in the business of war. The new arrangements, civil and military, were followed with that energy and vigor which is acquired by an individual or a collective body of people acting from the impulse of their own minds. The peaceable inhabitants of a whole State were in a short time transformed from planters, merchants, and mechanics, into an active militia, and a well regulated selfgoverned community.

SECTION V

Of Independence and the Alliance with France.

Notwithstanding the nominal existence of royal authority in South Carolina, an independent government had a virtual operation from the 6th of July 1774. This was at first by conventions, committees, and congresses, whose resolutions had the fullest force of law on a people who thought that their liberties were endangered, and that their only safety consisted in union. It was afterwards reduced into a more regular form in March 1776; but all these institutions were temporary, and looked forward to an accommodation with Great Britain. The act of final separation from the mother country could not be the work of any one State. Everything of that magnitude was referred to the Continental Congress, to whose general superintendence the individual colonies had voluntarily submitted. That august assembly, at their first meeting in 1774, petitioned the King, and addressed the people of Great Britain for a redress of their grievances. In the year 1775 they renewed their supplications to their sovereign, in which they prayed that his majesty would be pleased "to direct some mode by which the united application of his faithful colonists to the throne, in pursuance of their common councils, might be improved into a happy and permanent reconciliation; and that in the meantime measures might be taken for preventing the further destruction of his majesty's subjects." They also a second time addressed the people of Great Britain, in which