quoted we have the
following words:

"What was the nature of the conflict between the two parties in South
Carolina? Did the Whigs and their opponents meet in open and fair fight,
and give and take the courtesies and observe the rules of civilized
warfare? Alas, no! They murdered one another. I wish it were possible to
use a milder word; but murder is the only one that can be employed to
express the truth. Of this, however, the reader shall judge. I shall
refrain from a statement of my own, and rely on the testimony of others.

"Gen. Greene thus spoke of the hand-to-hand strifes, which I stigmatize
as murderous. 'The animosity,' said he, 'between the Whigs and Tories
renders their situation truly deplorable. The Whigs seem determined to
extirpate the Tories, and the Tories the Whigs. Some thousands have
fallen in this way in this quarter, and the evil rages with more
violence than ever. If a stop cannot be soon put to these massacres, the
country will be depopulated in a few months more, as neither 'Whig' nor
'Tory' can live." (Historical Introduction to Colonel Sabine's
Biographical Sketches of the American Loyalists, p. 33.)]

CHAPTER XXXVII.

TREATMENT OF THE LOYALISTS BY THE AMERICANS, AT AND AFTER THE AMERICAN
REVOLUTION.

It remains now to ascertain the reception with which the applications of
Loyalists were met in the several State Legislatures. During the last
three years of the war, the principal operations of the British army
were directed to the Southern States; and there the exasperations of
party feeling may be supposed to have been the strongest.[116]

No where had arbitrary authority been exercised more unmercifully
towards the revolutionists than by Earl Cornwallis and Lord Rawdon in
South and North Carolina. Dr. Ramsay says: "The troops under the command
of Cornwallis had spread waste and ruin over the face of all the
country, for 400 miles on the sea coast, and for 200 miles westward.
Their marches from Charleston to Camden, from Camden to the River Dan,
from the Dan through North Carolina to Wilmington, from Wilmington to
Petersburg, and from Petersburg through many parts of Virginia, till
they finally settled in Yorktown, made a route of more than 1,100 miles.
Every place through which they passed in these various marches
experienced the effects of their rapacity. Their numbers enabled them to
go where they pleased; their rage for plunder disposed them to take
whatever they had the me