"I will ride for you, sister," said Henry, "I will run for you, speak for you, pray for you—if my prayers be worth anything—and strike for you, if need be. If I am but turned of sixteen, I am a man, I trow; and that's more than you are. Good bye! a soldier ought to look after his horse, you know."
"God bless you, dear brother, for an excellent boy," said Mildred smiling, "man I mean—aye and a brave one!"
Henry now walked away, and Mildred betook herself to other cares.
CHAPTER XII.
A POLITICAL RETROSPECT.—BUTLER ENTERS SOUTH CAROLINA.
It was the misfortune of South Carolina, during the revolutionary war, to possess a numerous party less attached to the union or more tainted with disaffection than the inhabitants of any of the other states. Amongst her citizens the disinclination to sever from the mother country was stronger, the spread of republican principles more limited, and the march of revolution slower, than in either of the other colonies, except, perhaps, in the neighbor state of Georgia, where the people residing along the Savannah river, were so closely allied to the Carolinians in sentiment, habits, and pursuits, as to partake pretty accurately of the same political prejudices, and to unite themselves in parties of the same complexion. Upon the first invasion of Georgia, at the close of the year 1778, the city of Savannah was made an easy conquest, and a mere handful of men, early in 1779, were enabled to penetrate the interior as far as Augusta, and to seize upon that post. The audacity with which Prevost threatened Charleston in the same year, the facility of his march through South Carolina, and the safety which attended his retreat, told a sad tale of the supineness of the people of that province. The reduction of Charleston in the following year, by Sir Henry Clinton, was followed with singular rapidity by the conquest of the whole province. A civil government was erected. The most remote posts in the mountains were at once occupied by British soldiers or provincial troops, mustered under the officers of the royal army. Proclamations were issued to call back the wandering sheep to the royal fold; and they, accordingly, like herds that had been scattered from beneath the eye of the shepherd by some rough incursion of wolves, flocked in as soon as they were aware of the retreat of their enemy. Lord Cornwallis, upon whom the command devolved after the return of Sir Henry Clinton in June to New York, recruited his army from these repentant or unwilling republicans; and the people rejoiced at what they thought the end of strife and the establishment of law. The auxiliaries who had marched from Virginia and North Carolina under Colonel Buford, to assist in the defence of the southern capital, were informed of its surrender as they journeyed thither, and soon found themselves obliged to fly through a country they had come to succor;—and when even at the distance of one hundred and fifty miles from the city, were overtaken by the ruthless troopers of Tarleton, and butchered under circumstances peculiarly deplorable.
In truth, a large proportion of the population of South Carolina seem to have regarded the revolution with disfavor, and they were slow to break their ancient friendship for the land of their forefathers. The colonial government was mild and beneficent in its action upon the province, and the people had a reverence for the mother country deeper and more affectionate than was found elsewhere. They did not resent, because, haply, they did not feel the innovations of right asserted by the British crown, so acutely as some of their neighbors; to them it did not seem to be so unreasonable that taxation should be divorced from representation. They did not quarrel with the assumption of Great Britain to regulate their trade for them in such manner as best suited her own views of interest; nor did they see in mere commercial restrictions the justification of civil war and hot rebellion;—because, peradventure, (if I may hazard a reason) being a colony of planters whose products were much in demand in England, neither the regulations of their trade nor the restrictions upon commerce, were likely to be so adjusted as to interfere with the profitable expansion of their labors.
Such might be said to be the more popular sentiment of the State at the time of its subjugation by Sir Henry Clinton and Lord Cornwallis. To this common feeling there were many brilliant exceptions; and the more brilliant because they stood, as it were, apart from the preponderating mass of public judgment. There is no trial of courage which will bear comparison with that of a man whose own opinions stand in opposition, upon fearful questions of passion, to those of the "giddy-paced" and excited multitude, and who, nevertheless, carries them "into act." That man who can stand in the breach of universal public censure, with all the fashions of opinion disgracing him in the thoughts of the lookers on, with the tide of obloquy beating against his breast, and the fingers of the mighty, combined many, pointing him to scorn; nay, with the fury of the drunken rabble threatening him with instant death; and, worse than all, having no present friend to whisper a word of defence or palliative, in his behalf, to his revilers, but bravely giving his naked head to the storm, because he knows himself to be virtuous in his purpose; that man shall come forth from this fierce ordeal like tried gold; philosophy shall embalm his name in her richest unction, history shall give him a place on her brightest page, and old, yea, hoary, far-off posterity shall remember him as of yesterday.