George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 6, 10th edition.

[386] his letters, still urging union, directing attention to the

Chap. XLVI.} 1770. Dec.

necessity, of finding some more efficacious method of redress than a bare resolution to suspend commerce, and encouraging in the ‘young men’ the ambition ‘of making themselves masters of the art military.’¹

Zeal for the cause was not wanting in the South. The people had their ‘tribunes’ and most determined leaders in Thomas Lynch, praised by royalists as ‘a man of sense,’ and inflexible firmness, Christopher Gadsden, the ‘enthusiast in the cause,’ ever suspicious ‘of British moderation,’ and John Mackenzie, whose English education at Cambridge furnished him with arguments for the Colonies.²

On the thirteenth of December they met the planters, merchants and mechanics of Charleston. Lynch, who had come fifty miles on purpose, exerted all his eloquence; and even shed tears for the expiring liberty of his country. He was seconded by Gadsden and Mackenzie; but South Carolina could neither continue non-importation alone; nor by itself devise a new system. Its association was dissolved, like the rest; the goods of importers which had been stored by the General Committee were delivered up, and in Charleston, the fourth largest city in the Colonies, then having five thousand and thirty white inhabitants, with five thousand eight hundred and thirtythree blacks,³ commerce resumed its wonted activity in every thing but tea.⁴

For a moment rumors of war between Great