the vicinity of Charlestown, retreating from one to another till they arrived at Port Royal and Savannah. The sea-coast of South Carolina, to the southward of Charlestown, is so chequered with islands and intersected with creeks and marshes, as to make the movements of an army extremely difficult. The British were much better provided with boats than the Americans, and therefore could retire with expedition and safety. Various projects were attempted to enable General Lincoln to pursue them. Boats on wheel-carriages, so constructed as to suit the variegated face of the country, were proposed; but before anything of this sort could be completed, the British had retreated to places of security.

This incursion into South Carolina, and subsequent retreat, contributed very little to the advancement of the royal cause; but it added much to the wealth of the officers, soldiers, and followers of the British army, and still more to the distresses of the inhabitants. The forces under the command of General Prevost marched though the richest settlements of the State, where are the fewest white inhabitants in proportion to the number of slaves. The hapless Africans, allured with hopes of freedom, forsook their owners and repaired in great numbers to the royal army. They endeavored to recommend themselves to their new masters by discovering where their owners had concealed their property, and were assisting in carrying it off. All subordination being destroyed, they became insolent and rapacious, and in some instances exceeded the British in their plunderings and devastations. Collected in great crowds near the royal army, they were seized with the camp fever in such numbers that they could not be accommodated either with proper lodgings or attendance. The British carried out of the State, it is supposed, about three thousand slaves, many of whom were shipped from Georgia and East Florida, and sold in the West Indies. When the the British retreated, they had accumulated so much plunder that they had not the means of removing the whole of it. The vicinity of the American army made them avoid the main land, and go off in great precipitation from one island to another. Many of the horses which they had collected from the inhabitants were lost in ineffectual attempts to transport them over the rivers and marshes. For want of a sufficient number of boats, a considerable part of the negroes were left behind. They had been so thoroughly impressed by the British with the expectation of the severest treatment, and even of certain death from their owners, in case of their returning home, that in order to get off with the retreating army they would sometimes fasten themselves to the sides of the boats. To prevent this dangerous practice, the fingers of some

of them were chopped off, and soldiers were posted with cutlasses and bayonets to oblige them to keep at a proper distance. Many of them, laboring under diseases, afraid to return home, forsaken by their new masters, and destitute of the necessaries of life, perished in the woods. Those who got off with the army were collected on Otter Island, where the camp fever continued to rage. Without medicine, attendance, or the comforts proper for the sick, some hundreds of them expired. Their dead bodies, as they lay exposed in the woods, were devoured by beasts and birds, and to this day the island is strewed with their bones. The British carried with them several rice-barrels full of plate, and household furniture in large quantities, which they had taken from the inhabitants. They had spread over a considerable extent of country, and small parties visited almost every house, stripping it of whatever was most valuable, and rifling the inhabitants of their money, rings, jewels, and other personal ornaments. The repositories of the dead were in several places opened, and the grave itself searched for hidden treasure.* Feather-beds were ripped open for the sake of the ticking. Windows, china-ware, looking-glasses and pictures were dashed to pieces. Not only the larger domestic animals were cruelly and wantonly shot down, but the licentiousness of the soldiery extended so far that, in several places, nothing within their reach, however small and insignificant, was suffered to live. The gardens which had been improved with great care, and ornamented with many foreign productions, were laid waste, and their nicest curiosities destroyed. The houses of the planters were seldom burnt, but in every other way the destruction and depredations committed by the British were enormous.

Soon after the affair at Stono, on the 20th of June, the continental forces under the command of General Lincoln retired to Sheldon. Both armies remained in their respective encampments till the arrival of the French fleet on the coast roused the whole country to immediate activity.

After the conquest of Grenada, in the summer of 1779, Count D'Estaing with the force under his command retired to Cape François. Thence he sailed for the American continent and arrived early in September with a fleet consisting of twenty sail of the line, two of fifty guns, and eleven frigates. As soon as his arrival on the coast was known, General Lincoln, with the army under his command, marched for Savannah;

Several of the first settlers of Carolina laid off spots of ground on their plantations for the interment of their dead, when there were no, or very few, public church yards. These private cemeteries are still used by their descendants and others for the same purpose.

and orders were issued for the militia of South Carolina and Georgia to rendezvous immediately near the same place. The British were equally diligent in preparing for their defence. Lieutenant-Colonel Cruger, who had a small command at Sunbury, and Lieutenant-Colonel Maitland, who was in force. at Beaufort, were ordered to repair to Savannah. Count D'Estaing made repeated declarations, that he could not remain more than fifteen days on shore. Nevertheless the fall of Savannah was considered as certain. It was generally believed that in a few days the British would be stripped of all their southern possessions. Flushed with these romantic hopes, the militia turned out with a readiness that far surpassed their exertions in the preceding campaign. Every aid was given from Charlestown, by sending small vessels to assist the French in their landing; but as the large ships of Count D'Estaing could not come near the shore, this was not effected till the 12th of September. On the 16th, Savannah was summoned to surrender. The garrison requested twenty-four hours to consider of an answer. This request was made with a view of gaining time for the detatchment at Beaufort, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Maitland, to join the royal army in Savannah. An enterprise was undertaken to prevent this junction, but it proved unsuccessful. Lieutenant-Colonel Maitland pushed through by Dawfuskies, dragged his boats through a gut, and joined Prevost before the time granted for preparing an answer to D'Estaing's summons had elapsed. The arrival of such a reinforcement, and especially of the brave Lieutenant-Colonel Maitland, determined the garrison to risk an assault. The French and Americans, who formed a junction the evening after, were therefore reduced to the necessity of storming or of besieging the garrison. On the evening of the 23d they broke ground. On the 4th of October the besiegers opened with nine mortars, thirty-seven pieces of cannon from the land side, and sixteen from the water. These continued to play with short intervals for four or five days, but without any considerable effect.

It was determined to make an assault. This measure was forced on D'Estaing by his marine officers, who had remonstrated against his continuing to risk so valuable a fleet in its present unrepaired condition on such a dangerous coast in the hurricane season, and at so great a distance from the shore that it might be surprised by a British fleet. In a few days the lines of the besiegers might have been carried into the works of the besieged; but under these critical circumstances no further delay could be admitted. To assault or to raise the seige was the only alternative. Prudence would have dictated the latter; but a sense of honor determined to adopt the

former. The morning of the 9th of October was fixed upon for the attack. Two feints were made with the country militia; and a real attack on the Spring Hill battery with 2,500 French troops, 600 continentals, and 350 of the Charlestown militia, led by Count D'Estaing and General Lincoln. They marched up to the lines with great boldness; but a heavy and well directed fire from the batteries, and a cross fire from the galleys did such execution as threw the front of the column into confusion. A general retreat of the assailants took place after they had stood the enemy's fire for fifty-five minutes. Count D'Estaing received two wounds; 637 of his troops, and 257 continentals were killed or wounded; of the 350 Charlestown militia, who were in the hottest of the fire, six were wounded and Captain Shepherd killed. The force of the garrison was between two and three thousand, of which about one hundred and fifty were militia. The damage sustained by the besieged was trifling as they fired under cover, and few of the assailants fired at all. Immediately after this unsuccessful assault, the militia almost universally went to their homes. Count D'Estaing re-embarked his troops, artillery and baggage, and left the continent; and General Lincoln's army marched to Charlestown.

Thus ended the campaign of 1779, without anything decisive on either side. After one year, in which the British had overrun the State of Georgia for one hundred and fifty miles from the coast and had penetrated as far as the lines of Charlestown, they were reduced to their original limits in Savannah. All their schemes of co-operation with the tories had failed, and the spirits of that class of the inhabitants, by repeated disappointments, were thoroughly broken. The arrival of the French fleet protracted the execution of a plan formed for turning the force of the war against the southern States. The want of success in the attack on Savannah induced the British commander in New York, soon after Count D'Estaing's departure, to resume it.

SECTION VII.

Campaign of 1780.

No sooner was the departure of the French fleet from the coast of America known at New York, than Sir Henry Clinton set on foot a grand expedition against Charlestown. The campaigns of 1778 and 1779 to the northward, had produced nothing of importance. But he regaled himself with flattering prospects of more easy conquests among the weaker States. The almost uninterrupted march of General Prevost

through the richest parts of South Carolina to the gates of the capital; the conduct of the planters who, on that occasion, were more attentive to secure their property by submission, than to defend it by resistance, together with the recent successful defence of Savannah, all invited the British arms to the southward.

Unfortunately for Carolina, the most formidable attack was made on her capital, at a time when she was least able to defend it. In 1776 a vote of her new government stamped a value on her bills of credit, which in 1780 could not be affixed to twenty times as much of the same nominal currency. At this important juncture, when the public service needed the largest supplies, the paper bills of credit were of the least value. To a want of money was added a want of men. The militia were exhausted with an uninterrupted continuance of hard duty. The winter, to others a time of repose, had been to them a season for most active exertions. The dread of the small pox which, after seventeen years absence, was known to be in Charlestown, discouraged many from repairing to the defence of the capital. The six continental regiments, on the South Carolina establishment, in the year 1777, consisting of 2,400 men; but in the year 1780 they were so much reduced by death, desertion, battles, and the expiration of their terms of service, that they did not exceed 800. Government had neither the policy to forgive nor the courage to punish the numbers who, in the preceding campaigu, deserting their country's cause, had repaired for protection to the royal standard of General Prevost. They who stayed at home and submitted, generally saved some part of their property. They who continued with the American army were plundered of everything that could be carried away, and deprived of the remainder as far as was possible by wanton destruction. After events of this kind, it was no easy matter to call forth the militia from their homes to the defence of Charlestown. The repulse at Savannah, impressed the inhabitants with high ideas of the power of Britain. The impossibility of a retreat from an invested town, created in many an aversion from lines and ramparts. The presence of Sir Henry Clinton who, as Commander-in-Chief, could order what reinforcements he pleased, and who would naturally wish by something brilliant to efface the remembrance of his defeat in 1776, concurred with the causes already mentioned to dispirit the country. The North Carolina and Virginia continentals, amounting to 1,500 men, and also two frigates, a twenty-gun ship, and a sloop-of-war, were ordered from the northward for the defence. of Charlestown. This was all the aid that could be expected from Congress. The resolution was nevertheless unanimously