USA > South Carolina > The history of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1775-1780 > Part 43
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Williamson did not however even yet give in. He per- severed, as Hammond says, to induce his people to con-
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tinue the struggle. Colonel Pickens was not of the council, but encamped a few miles off. Williamson again addressed the council urging a different determination, and induced a number of officers to accompany him to Pickens's camp that he might advise with Pickens and address the citizens under his command. Arrived there, Williamson had a short consultation with Pickens, and then addressed his troops drawn up in a square-all mounted. His address is said to have been spirited. He told them that with his command alone he could drive all the British forces in their district before him. The articles of capitulation at Charlestown were then again read, and he again addressed the troops. He told them there was nothing in the way of a safe retreat to North Carolina; and that he had no doubt that they would soon be able to return in such force as to keep the enemy at least confined to Charlestown. He reminded them of what they had already done and urged them to persevere; but left it to themselves to say what they would do, and that he would go or stay as they should resolve. A short pause then took place, when Williamson called to them, saying: "My fellow-citizens, all of you who are for going with me on a retreat, with arms in your hands, will hold up your hands, and all who are for staying and accepting the terms made for you by General Lincoln will stand as you are." Two officers with three or four privates held up their hands; all the rest stood as they were. The question was again put, and the result was the same.1
It is manifest from this account that Williamson up to this time was true to the cause with which he had been prominently connected from its commencement. Indeed, it appears that he was more steadfast to it than Pickens, for Pickens was not one of those who held up their hands 1 Johnson's Traditions, 149-152.
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to follow him in an effort to force their way to their friends in North Carolina. Nor indeed does Captain Hammond, who was present at these conferences, blame Williamson for his conduct, nor did the people living in his neighbor- hood ever join in the cry against him of treason. The truth was that the people of Ninety-Six, who had never taken an active or an enthusiastic part in the Revolution, refused to go on in the face of disaster with a movement "they had not generally or cordially espoused, and were ready to accept the terms offered at Charlestown. If Williamson is at this time to be condemned, for acqui- escing in the decision of his people against his urgent advice, still more so must Pickens, who refused to join in his earnest appeals to them not to submit. Nor did their courses immediately separate here. Pickens remained for six months, and those of the most stirring times and events, as quietly at home as did Williamson. Ulti- mately Williamson went to Charlestown, was taken under the special protection of the British, and in some way was employed by them. Pickens joined the Americans, 1 and, as Johnson, in his Life of Greene, observes, fought literally with a halter around his neck. The story of these two men is not a mere episode in this history. It illustrates the struggle which was going on in the minds and hearts of the people generally throughout the State.
1 Johnson's Traditions, 153. Captain Hammond refused to abide by the decision of the council and with a small party of seventy made his way to North Carolina, and later became a Colonel in Pickens's command.
CHAPTER XXV
1780
ON the 4th of June, 1780, Sir Henry Clinton wrote from the Brewton mansion, his headquarters in Charles- town, to Lord George Germain, Secretary of State in Eng- land, "I may venture to assert that there are few men in South Carolina who are not either our prisoners or in arms with us."1 And this was undoubtedly true. There was not a Continental officer or soldier in the field. Lieu- tenant Colonel Francis Marion and Major Thomas Pinck- ney had been sent out of the garrison before the surrender and had escaped into North Carolina, and so had also General Isaac Huger, who had not been in the town and so was not among the prisoners. All the rest of the South Carolina Continental officers, including General William Moultrie, Colonel C. C. Pinckney, and Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens, were prisoners at Haddrell's Point, and the Continental soldiers on prison ships in the harbor. The militia were disbanded. General Rich- ardson had resigned before the siege, Williamson, Pick- ens, and Kershaw had surrendered on parole, and Bull had retired from the field. Governor Rutledge had escaped into North Carolina. Charles Pinckney and Daniel Huger, members of the Council who had left the town with Governor Rutledge, had come in and given their paroles. John Lewis Gervais, the other member of the Council who had gone out with them, was at Williams-
1 Tarleton's Campaigns.
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burg, Virginia.1 Gadsden and his party of the Council, Ferguson, Hutson, Cattell, and Dr. Ramsay, with Edward Rutledge, Arthur Middleton, and Thomas Heyward, Jr., the three surviving signers of the Declaration of Inde- pendence, and all other prominent men of the Low Coun- try in rebellion, were prisoners of war in Charlestown. Death, too, had been very busy in the ranks of the origi- nal movers in the Revolution. Thomas Lynch had died in December, 1776, and his son, Thomas Lynch, Jr., the fourth signer of the Declaration of Independence, was lost at sea in 1779. The Rev. William Tennent had not long survived his efforts for civil and ecclesiastical freedom. He had died of a nervous fever on the 11th of August, 1777. Miles Brewton, one of the original Council of Safety of 1775, had left the country, as it will be remem- bered, in 1775, and had also perished at sea. William Henry Drayton, too, was dead. He had died in Phila- delphia, while there as a member of Congress, in Septem- ber, 1779.2 In this year, also, had died James Parsons,
1 Hist. of the Old Cheraws (Gregg), 321.
2 Early in 1778 Mr. Drayton was elected by the General Assembly of South Carolina a delegate to the Continental Congress, to which he repaired at Yorktown in Pennsylvania in the latter part of March. He there took an active part against the conciliatory measures of Parlia- ment, not only in the Congress itself, but by publication in the press. "This," says Ramsay, "is supposed to be the last offering made by his pen in favor of America. He was a statesman of great decision and energy, and one of the ablest political writers Carolina has produced " (Hist. of So. Ca., vol. II, 456). While in Congress Mr. Drayton was sent on two important missions. One of these was as a member of a committee sent to General Washington at Valley Forge; the other, to meet the French minister on his arrival in the Delaware. He was called to account by General Charles Lee for animadversions made by him upon the general's conduct at the battle of Monmouth, 28th of June, 1778, and challenged, but he declined to meet Lee because of the office he still held of Chief Justice of South Carolina, which he regarded as precluding his meeting him on the field. He died while attending Congress in Phila-
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broken in spirit after giving his parole to Prévost during his invasion ; George Gabriel Powell, who had presided at the first convention in 1775, was also dead; Colonel Owen Roberts had been killed at Stono. Rawlins Lowndes, who had always been opposed to independence and separation from England, though he had, as president, approved the constitution of 1778, had abandoned the struggle, and, with the old men Henry Middleton and Gabriel Maingault, had retired to their plantations and accepted the reestablish- ment of British rule. Henry Laurens, the first president of the Council of Safety, and afterward president of the Continental Congress, was in Philadelphia preparing to sail for Holland as Minister Plenipotentiary to that king- dom, and was soon to be captured at sea and thrown into the Tower of London, where he was to remain until the end of the war. The Revolutionary party was thus com- pletely broken up. There remained of them, out of prison or the grave, but one man to continue the struggle; and that was John Rutledge. Fortunately, he was clothed with full powers to keep alive in his own person, and ultimately, if possible, to restore, the State government.
There can be little doubt that at this time wise rulers might with care and moderation have reestablished the Royal authority. Had Lieutenant Governor William Bull been sent back from England, whither he had gone, and reinstated in his government with full commission and powers such as the Revolutionists had conferred upon John Rutledge; had military rule been superseded, and the violence and rapacity of the army put down, - South Carolina might probably, even at this late day, have been reconciled again to become a British province. But the Ruler of Nations had ordered otherwise.
delphia in September, 1779. His remains were interred in the cemetery of Christ Church in that city.
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Three weeks after the capture of the town, to wit, on the 5th of June, more than two hundred citizens presented an address to Sir Henry Clinton and Admiral Arbuthnot, congratulating them upon their success and declaring their readiness to return to their allegiance to his Majesty. These "addressers," as they were styled, were doubtless substantial and respectable citizens, but they were neither principal inhabitants, as Rivington's Royal Gazette an- nounced,1 nor had any of them been leaders in the popular government, as Ramsay alleges.2 If they had, neither he nor any other historian of the times has men- tioned wherein they took such leading parts. They were mostly Scotch merchants doing business in Charlestown ; but among them were men of well-known families and stanch Royalists. John Wragg heads the list, and among the signers were Gideon Dupont, Jr., Jacob Valk, Christopher FitzSimons, Alexander Oliphant, Paul Ham- ilton, Robert Wilson, Hugh Rose, Christopher Williman, Hopkins Price, Thomas Elfe, Aaron Locock, Isaac Maryck (Mazyck), Allard Belin, and John Wagner. None of these names appears in any of the revolutionary proceed- ings. That the greater part of these addressers had been in arms against the British during the siege was not to be wondered at when every able-bodied man in the town was compelled to do militia duty. One of them, John Wells, Jr., it is true, had kept a diary during the siege, from which we have quoted and which gives no intimation of his favoring the British cause; but his is the only name connected with the defence of the town which appears in the address. Against these addressers there was much bitterness of feeling on the part of the Revolutionists; and their estates were confiscated by an act of a General
1 Siege of Charlestown (Munsell), 148.
2 Ramsay's Revolution in So. Ca., vol. II, 110.
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Assembly which met in 1782, before the formal end of the war. But the address itself when read, except for the fact that it congratulated the British commanders upon their victory, expressed only the sentiments of a great number of their fellow-citizens. It declared that, although the right of taxing America in Parliament excited consider- able ferment in the minds of the people, yet it might, with a religious adherence to truth, be affirmed that the people of South Carolina did not entertain the most dis- tant thought of dissolving the union that so happily sub- sisted between them and their parent country; and that when, in the progress of that fatal controversy, the doc- trines of independence (which originated in the more northern colonies ) made its first appearance among them, their very nature revolted at the idea; and they looked back with the most profound regret at those convulsions that gave existence to a power for subverting a constitu- tion for which they always had, and ever should retain, the most profound veneration, and substituting in its stead a rank democracy which, however carefully digested in theory, on being reduced into practice had exhibited a system of domination only to be found among the unciv- ilized part of mankind or in the history of the dark and barbarous ages of antiquity.1 There was in this but little enlargement upon John Rutledge's address when he refused to approve the constitution of 1778. He had refused to approve that document because, he said, it closed the door to a reconciliation with the mother coun- try, which, he declared, was as desirable then as ever. He had then declared, also, that "the people preferred a compound or mixed government to a simple democracy or one verging toward it, perhaps because, however unex- ceptionable democratic power might appear at the first
1 Ramsay's Revolution in So. Ca., vol. II, 443.
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view, its effect had been found arbitrary, severe, and destructive." 1
The addressers went on to declare that they sincerely lamented that after the repeal of those statutes which gave rise to the trouble in America, the overtures made by his Majesty's commissioners from time to time had not been regarded by their late rulers. To this fatal inattention were to be attributed, they said, those calamities which had involved the country in a state of misery and ruin, from which, however, they trusted it would soon emerge by the wisdom and clemency of his Majesty's auspicious government and the influence of prudential laws adapted to the nature of the evils they labored under; and that the people would be restored to those privileges in the enjoy- ment whereof their former felicity consisted.
Though their estates were to be confiscated for the declaration of these views in this manner, these address- ers doubtless expressed the opinions of many more than the two hundred and ten who signed their names to the paper. None others, it is true, addressed the British commanders in a congratulatory manner, but many applied to them for a restoration to their rights as subjects of Great Britain upon substantially the same grounds. Ram- say declares that after the fall of Charlestown, excepting in the extremities of the State which border on North Carolina, the inhabitants who continued in the country preferred submission to resistance.
Besides the dispersion or capture of all the leading Revolutionists in the State, and the prevalence of the sen- timents expressed in the address to Sir Henry Clinton and Admiral Arbuthnot, there was another powerful motive inducing the people to hasten their submission; and that was the widespread belief, to which we have before alluded,
1 Ramsay's Revolution in So. Ca., vol. I, 136.
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that in order to secure the independence of the others Congress had determined to sacrifice the Southern States. The mere fact of the failure of Congress to send assistance at all adequate to meet the powerful efforts which the British put forth in the invasion of South Carolina was of course in itself sufficient to give rise to such an impres- sion. But there is strong reason to believe that the appre- hension had also substantial basis of fact upon which to rest. General Thomas Pinckney, then a Major in the Continental service, who, as it has appeared, had been sent out of Charlestown and who was with Governor Rut- ledge at this time, relates that while at Camden on their retreat, Governor Rutledge received a letter from a mem- ber of the South Carolina delegation in Congress, inform- ing him that despondency for the fate of the Southern States was the universal sentiment; but that he still indulged the hope that Carolina would remain a member of the Union.1 This guarded and diplomatic language, necessarily employed in a correspondence running the danger of interception at the time, was fully explained by John Mathews, who succeeded Rutledge as Governor, but who was then a member of Congress. In after life Mathews repeatedly declared that through the intrigues and the suggestion of the French ambassador, it was at the time contemplated by some in Congress to purchase from Great Britain peace and independence of a large portion of the United States by the sacrifice of the Carolinas and Georgia. Garden, who makes the statement, declares that Governor Mathews did not conceal the name of the individual who had engaged to introduce and advocate the measure. Fired with resentment and indignant that even in the private circles of society a proposal so base and disgraceful should have been inspired, Mathews deter-
1 Garden's Anecdotes, 189-191.
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· mined at once to put the virtue of the delegated represen- tatives of his country to the test. Repairing to Congress, he forcibly reminded them of their bond of union; that the several States were pledged to each other through every variety of fortunes to accomplish the end of their associa- tion or to fall together. "I will regard the man," he exclaimed, "who would attempt to weaken those sacred ties as the fit object of universal execration; and in the event that the members of Congress should so far debase themselves as to listen to his nefarious proposal, after having in conjunction with my colleagues protested against the measure and pointed out the source of the evil, I will say to my constituents, make your own terms with the enemy - no longer regard as associates, nor put your trust in men who, appalled by their fears and under the influence of a foreign power, to secure themselves from harm make no scruple to doom their friends to destruction." Mr. Bee and Mr. Eveleigh, two other members of Congress from South Carolina, supported Mr. Mathews in this remonstrance.
That the subject had been broached and discussed in Congress there is no doubt. M. de la Luzerne, writing to the Count de Vergennes, thus discusses it: -
" After the taking of Charlestown the English practised much greater moderation towards the inhabitants of the South than they had done towards those of the Middle and Eastern States. Their plan was to sever the Carolinas and Georgia, and they seemed at this time to have abandoned the idea of reducing the Northern States. They commenced publishing a gazette at Charlestown in which they circulated insinuations that the Northern States had abandoned the South, and that they were about to make an arrangement with Eng- land which would exclude the Carolinas and Georgia. The members of Congress are divided as to their interest and objects. Some are for using all efforts for rescuing the South. Others think the people there have shown too little zeal and activity in the cause, and that it is not expe-
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dient to put in jeopardy the safety of the North by rendering extraor- dinary aid to people who are so indifferent about their own independence. One party speaks secretly of an expedition against Canada, another magnifies the difficulties of taking New York, one insists on an ex- pedition to the South during the summer, another is for a combined enterprise against Quebec. The British at the South talk of peace and encourage the people to return to their former allegiance. It is possible that the British will make a proposition to the ten Northern States tending to assure their independence, and their scheme will be to form into a new government the two Carolinas, Georgia, East Florida, and the Bahama Islands, which together would make a possession." 1
But there is still more direct evidence. A committee had been appointed by Congress to remain near Washing- ton's headquarters, with large powers as to men and supplies, and to sanction any operations which the Com- mander-in-chief might not think himself at liberty to take without it. This committee consisted of General Philip Schuyler, who had been made to give way to Gates just before Saratoga, John Mathews from South Carolina, just mentioned, and Nathaniel Peabody. On the 21st of May Duane, a member of Congress, wrote to Schuyler: -
"That the reinforcements ordered to the southward should be halted is obvious for the reasons you assign. But do you expect such a proposition from a Northern member, deeply interested in strengthening the main army? It is a question of the utmost deli- cacy and even danger; for, however groundless, an opinion has been propagated that Congress means to sacrifice the two Southernmost States, and it has been productive of the greatest animosity and discontent. We have privately stated the subject to some of the Southern gentlemen, who, though I believe convinced of the propriety of the measure, did not choose to have it adopted, much less to propose it. There is but one person from whom it can originate with any prospect of success. If we had undertaken it, nothing would have resulted but disappoint- ment and the loss of personal confidence." 2
1 Washington's Writings, vol. VI, 92, note.
2 Ibid., supra.
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Was the opinion groundless that Congress meant to sacrifice the two Southern States when a member of it was thus approving of a proposition of the chairman of the Committee on the Conduct of the War that all reenforce- ments for them should be halted? Was it not, in this letter, contemplated to abandon them to their fate? And was it surprising that such views, however carefully guarded, should be divulged, and create animosity and discontent ?
A matter of such vital importance could not be kept within the confines of secret correspondence and discus- sions. It assumed a consequence which compelled Con- gress to take formal notice of it, and to adopt a resolution denying the report, and declaring that the confederacy was most sacredly pledged to support the liberty and inde- pendence of every one of the States.1 But this, it was thought, was manifestly a case of protesting too much. Had there been no substantial ground for the report, there would have been no occasion for its denial. But whether such a proposition was ever seriously entertained in Con- gress or not, or whether or not it amounted to anything
1 The following is a copy of the resolution (Ramsay's Revolution in So. Ca., vol. II, 448) : -
" Whereas it has been reported, in order to seduce the States of South Carolina and Georgia from their allegiance to the United States, that a treaty of peace betwixt America and Great Britain was about to take place, and that these two States would be ceded to Great Britain.
" Resolved unanimously, That the said report is insidious and utterly void of foundation. That this confederacy is most sacredly pledged to support the liberty and independency of every one of the members; and in a firm reliance on the divine blessing will unremittingly persevere in every exertion for the establishment of the same, and for the recovery and preservation of any and every part of the United States that have been, or may hereafter be, invaded or possessed by the common enemy.
" Extract from the minutes.
"CHARLES THOMSON, Secretary."
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more than private suggestion and discussion, certain it is that the British commanders availed themselves of the rumor and spread it broadcast in proclamations through the country.1
This undoubtedly was a most critical period in the Revolution. What might have been the consequences if wisdom had swayed the British commanders in South Carolina, says Garden, it appalls one to contemplate. Fatigued by the toils of war, disappointed by reiterated disasters, the prospect of success but glimmering at a dis- tance and by many altogether despaired of, had the newly submitting inhabitants been suffered to enjoy the sweets of repose and the benefits of the security guaranteed by the capitulation, had kindness been substituted for oppression and persuasion used in lieu of force, though independence might ultimately have been gained it must have been at a more remote period and by far greater sacri- fices both of treasure and blood.2 Fortunately for the American cause the conduct of Sir Henry Clinton, Lord Cornwallis, and Lord Rawdon was so injudicious as to subject them to the pointed animadversions even of their own historians. The restoration of the colony to his Majesty's rule and the reestablishment of peace and pros- perity does not appear to have been their first thought. Prévost's pillage had excited their rapacity, and the seiz- ure of plunder and the division of spoils were the first matters which obtained their consideration.
Sir Henry Clinton states that, having been appointed by his Majesty his sole commissioner to his revolted colo- nies 3 and the commander-in-chief of his armies, he con-
1 Colonel Hill's MSS., Campaigns of 1780, Sumter papers.
2 Garden's Anecdotes, 248.
3 This statement of Sir Henry Clinton is inconsistent with the fact that he joins Admiral Arbuthnot with him as "his Majesty's commis-
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