Page:The Partisan (revised).djvu/105

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THE CAROLINA TORIES.
95

seized the moment of British ascendency in the South, to inundate Carolina and Georgia with their masses. Without leading principles and miserably poor—not recognised, except as mercenaries, in the social aristocracies which must always prevail in slaveholding nations—they had no sympathy with the more influential classes,—those who were the first to resist the authority of England. The love of gain, the thirst for rapine, and that marauding and gipsy habit of life which was now familiar to them, were all directly appealed to in the tory mode of warfare. They were ready on any side which offered them the greatest chance for indulging in these habits. The tories forming Huck's cavalry were all of this sort; and the small detachment just overthrown by Singleton had no sympathy with their leader, only as his known character promised them plunder. Defeat had no attraction in their eyes; and, as that is always the true cause which is triumphant, they now freely tendered themselves, with clamorous tongues, and to the no small chagrin of the wounded Clough, as recruits for Singleton. The Briton denounced their perfidy in fearless language, and threatened them terribly with the vengeance of Huck and Tarleton; but the remote fear is no fear with the vulgar. They seldom think in advance of the necessity, and the exhortation of their wounded officer had no visible effect. They persisted in their determination to fight on the right side, and earnestly asserted their love of country, alleging that force only had placed them in the ranks of the enemy. Major Singleton conferred with Humphries on the course to be taken in this matter. The latter knew most of the parties, but had been prudent to keep from sight, and they had not seen him, only in the brief glimpse which they had of him in the pursuit, when, at such a distance, perpetually moving, and with his face well smeared with the rank ooze from the creek around him, he must have been unknown, except upon the narrowest examination, even to the mother that had borne him. It was still his policy to keep from sight in connexion with his whig partisans; for, passing in Dorchester as a loyal citizen—a character in part obtained through his father's loudly-voiced attachment to the existing powers—he was of far greater advantage to the cause of the country than he pos-