of Sir Henry Clinton, overawed as was the entire country below the Santee by the immediate presence in force of the British army, he had tendered his submission along with the rest of the inhabitants, despairing of any better fortune. The specious offers of amnesty made by Clinton and Arbuthnot, in the character of commissioners for restoring peace to the revolted colonies, and which called for nothing but neutrality from the inhabitants, had the effect of deceiving him, in common with his neighbours. Nor was this submission so partial as we have been taught to think it. To the southward of Charleston, the militia, without summons, sent in a flag to the British garrison at Beaufort, and made their submission. At Camden, the inhabitants negotiated their own terms of repose. In Ninety-Six the submission was the same; and, indeed, with the exception of the mountainous borders, which were uninvaded, and heard only faint echoes of the conflict from afar, all show of hostility ceased throughout the colony—the people, generally, seeming to prefer quiet on any terms to a resistance which, at that moment of despondency, seemed worse than idle.
This considerate pliability secured Walton, as it was thought, in all the immunities of the citizen, without subjecting him to any of those military duties which, in other respects, his majesty had a perfect right to call for from his loyal subjects. Such, certainly, were the pledges of the British commanders—pledges made with little reflection, or with designed subterfuge, and violated with as little hesitation. They produced the effect desired, in persuading to easy terms of arrangement the people who might not have been conquered but with great difficulty. Once disarmed and divided, they were more easily overcome; and it was not long, after the first object had been obtained, before measures were adopted well calculated to effect the other.
Colonel Walton, though striving hard to convince himself of the propriety of the course which he had taken, remained still unsatisfied. He could not be assured of the propriety of submission when he beheld, as he did hourly, the rank oppression and injustice by which the conquerors strove to preserve their ascendency over the doubtful, while exercising it wantonly among the weak. He could not but see how uncertain was the tenure of his
