[The Life of Francis Marion by William Gilmore Simms]@TWC D-Link bookThe Life of Francis Marion CHAPTER 8 6/37
The second proclamation of the British General required them to take up arms for his Majesty, and against their countrymen.
This was a hopeful plan by which to fill the British regiments, to save farther importations of Hessians, farther cost of mercenaries, and, as in the case of the Aborigines, to employ the Anglo-American race against one another.
The loyalists of the South were to be used against the patriots of the North, as the loyalists of the latter region had been employed to put down the liberties of the former. It was a short and ingenious process for finishing the rebellion; and, could it have entirely succeeded, as in part it did, it would have entitled Sir Henry Clinton to very far superior laurels, as a civilian, than he ever won as a soldier.
The value of the Americans, as soldiers, was very well known to the British General.
Some of the most sanguinary battles of the Revolution were those in which the combatants on both sides were chiefly natives of the soil, upon which a portion of them but too freely shed their blood in a sincere desire to bolster up that foreign tyranny that mocked the generous valor which it employed. The effect of this second proclamation of the British commander was such as he scarcely anticipated.
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