George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

Lincoln repaired to Charleston, and was followed by what remained of his army; the militia of South Carolina returned to their homes; its continental regiments were melting away; and its paper money became so nearly worthless, that a bounty of twentyfive hundred dollars for twenty-one months service had no attraction. The dwellers near the sea between Charleston and Savannah were shaken in their allegiance, not knowing where to find protection. Throughout the state the people were disheartened, and foreboded its desolation.

The permanence of the power of the British in the southern Atlantic states depended on their treatment of the negro. Now that they held Georgia and Beaufort in South Carolina, they might have gained an enduring mastery by emancipating and arming the blacks. But the idea that slavery was a sin against humanity was unknown to parliament and to the ministry, and would have been hooted at by the army. The thought of universal emancipation had not yet conquered the convictions of the ruling class in England, nor touched the life and conscience of the nation. The English of that day rioted in the lucrative slave-trade, and the zeal of the government in upholding it had been one of the causes that provoked the American war. So the advice to organize an army of liberated negroes, though persisted in by the royal governor of Virginia, was crushed by the mad eagerness of the British officers and soldiers in America for plunder!