The animosity between the Whigs and Tories of this State renders their situation truly deplorable. There is not a day passes but there are more or less who fall a sacrifice to this savage disposition. The Whigs seem determined to extirpate the Tories and the Tories the Whigs. Some thousands have fallen in this way in this quarter, and the evil rages with more violence than ever. If a stop cannot be put to these massacres, the country will be depopulated in a few months more, as neither Whig nor Tory can live. The southern Whigs included among their numbers both rich and poor. They were people who placed principle above personal gain. They came, or were descended from people who had come, from Western Europe to America to escape religious and civil persecution and to find a new life where the dignity of the individual would be respected. [Illustration: _Recruit for the British Army._ Drawing by H. W. Bunbury, London, 1780. Courtesy New York Public Library.] Among these immigrants were numerous Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. They had settled first in the eastern sections of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Later, they migrated in considerable numbers to the interior of the Carolinas and present-day eastern Tennessee. As they cleared new land for settlement and established their churches, they enjoyed for the first time complete religious and civil liberty. Moreover, they believed in the family as the important unit in all human life and patterned their lives accordingly. The invasion of the South now threatened to destroy their democratic society. They also feared it would lead to the loss of their hard-won individual liberty and force them to give up their right to develop the frontier and its resources as they wished. _The British Threaten the Carolina Frontier_ When Cornwallis began his march from Charleston, Maj. Patrick Ferguson had been detached to lead a smaller Loyalist force into the western section of South Carolina. Ferguson was ordered to use the settlement of Ninety-Six as a base from which to organize Tory militia, subdue rebellious Whigs, and reestablish British civil government in the upcountry. He was also to protect the western flank of Cornwallis’ advancing army.