Did occasion require, I might go further, and minutely portray the imbecility of Southern States, and particularly of South Carolina, in the War of the Revolution, as compared with Northern States. This is a sad chapter, upon which I dwell unwillingly. Faithful annals record, that, as early as 1778, the six South Carolina regiments, composing, with the Georgia regiment, the regular force of the Southern Department, did not, in the whole, muster above eight hundred men; nor was it possible to fill up their ranks. The succeeding year, the Governor of South Carolina, pressed by British forces, offered to stipulate the neutrality of his State during the war, leaving its permanent position to be decided at the peace: a premonitory symptom of the secession menaced in our own day. After the fatal field of Camden, no organized American force was left in this region. The three Southern States--_animis opibusque parati_, according to the vaunt of the Senator--had not a single battalion in the field. During all this period the men of Massachusetts were serving their country, not at home, but away from their own borders: for, from the Declaration of Independence, Massachusetts never felt the pressure of a hostile foot. The offer of the Governor of South Carolina to stipulate the neutrality of his State during the war has been sometimes called in question. But, unhappily, the case is too clear. General Moultrie, who commanded at Charleston, under the Governor, and whose name has been since given to one of the forts in the harbor there, has furnished an authentic record in two volumes, entitled "Memoirs of the American Revolution, so far as it related to the States of North and South Carolina and Georgia." He is my witness. As the British approached, the Governor and his Council became frightened, and proceeded forthwith to talk about capitulation. At last, after debate, "the question was carried for giving up the town upon a neutrality."[104] Colonel John Laurens was requested to carry this offer of capitulation from the Governor to General Prevost, the British commander; but "he begged to be excused from carrying such a message; that it was much against his inclination; that he would do anything to serve his country, but he could not think of carrying such a message as that." Other envoys were found who most reluctantly undertook this service. The message was as follows:-- "To propose a neutrality during the war between Great Britain and America, and the question, _whether the State shall belong to Great Britain or remain one of the United States_, be determined by the treaty of peace between those two powers."[105] [104] Moultrie, Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 432. [105] Ibid., p. 433. The same story is told by others. Ramsay, himself of South Carolina, in his "History of the American Revolution," says:--