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

[310]

As fast as the districts submitted, the new com-

Chap. XV.} 1780.

mander enrolled all the inhabitants, and appointed field-officers with civil as well as military power. The men of property above forty were made responsible for order, but were not to be called out except in case of insurrection or of actual invasion; the younger men who composed the second class were held liable to serve six months in each year. Some hundreds of commissions were issued for the militia regiments. Major Patrick Ferguson, known from his services in New Jersey and greatly valued, was deputed to visit each district in South Carolina to procure on the spot lists of its militia, and to see. that the orders of Cornwallis were carried into execution. Any Carolinian thereafter taken in arms might be sentenced to death for desertion and bearing arms against his country.¹ The proposals of those who offered to raise provincial corps were accepted; and men of the province, void of honor and compassion, received commissions, gathered about them profligate ruffians, and roamed through Carolina, indulging in rapine, and ready to put patriots to death as outlaws. Cornwallis himself never regarded a deserter, or any whom a court-martial sentenced to death, as subjects of mercy. A quartermaster of Tarleton's legion entered the house of Samuel Wyly near Camden, and, because he had served as a volunteer in the defence of Charleston, cut him in pieces. The presbyterians supported the cause of independence; and indeed the American revolution was but the application of the principles of the reformation to civil government. One Huck, a captain