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were mounted, and about a hundred of the infantry,
saved themselves by a precipitate flight.
The rest, making no resistance, sued for quarter.
None was granted.
A hundred and thirteen were killed on the spot; a hundred and fifty were too badly hacked to be moved; fifty-three only could be brought into
Camden as prisoners.
The tidings of this massacre carried through the southern forests mingled horror and anger; but
Tarleton received from Cornwallis the highest encomiums.
The universal panic consequent on the capture of
Charleston had suspended all resistance to the
British army.
The men of
Beaufort, of Ninety-Six, and of
Camden, had capitulated under the promise of security.
They believed that they were to be treated as neutrals, or as prisoners on parole.
There remained to them no possibility of flight with their families; and if they were inclined to take up arms, there was no American army around which they could rally.
The attempt was now made to crush the spirit of independence in the heart of a people of courage and honor, to drive every man of
Carolina into active service in the
British army, and to force the dwellers in the land of the sun, which ripened passions as fierce as the clime, to become the instruments of their own subjection.
On the twenty-second of May, confiscation of prop-
erty and other punishments were denounced against all who should thereafter oppose the king in arms, or hinder any one from joining his forces.
On the first
of June, a proclamation by the commissioners,
Clinton and
Arbuthnot, offered pardon to the penitent, on
