"Every addition they [Georgia and South Carolina] receive to their number of slaves tends to weaken, and render them less capable of self-defence."[120]
The historian of South Carolina, Dr. Ramsay, a contemporary observer of the very scenes which he describes, to whom I have already referred, also exposes this weakness.
"The forces under the command of General Prevost marched through 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."[121]
The same candid historian, describing the invasion of the next year, says:—
"The slaves a second time flocked to the British army."[122]
At a still later day, Mr. Justice Johnson, of the Supreme Court of the United States, and a citizen of South Carolina, in his elaborate Life of General Greene, speaking of negro slaves, makes the same unhappy admission. He says:—
"But the number dispersed through these [Southern] States was very great,—so great as to render it impossible for the citizens to muster freemen enough to withstand the pressure of the British arms."[123]
Here is illustration from an English pamphlet entitled "Account of the Duckenfield Hall Estate Negroes, 1806, Law Case," where will be found the following incident.
"In 1779 I bought ten negroes, which, with sixty others, were taken by a privateer from a plantation in South Carolina."