ABSTRACT
Charlestown, the capital of South Carolina, was before the war esteemed among the most elegant, though not the largest of the cities of British America. It is situated in the 32d degree of latitude, at the con uence of the rivers Ashley and Cooper, which are navigable for between twenty and thirty miles farther up; and/ though they are inconsiderable when compared with other rivers in America, yet in Europe they would make a very respectable appearance. e entrance to the harbour is however rendered di cult by reason of a bar, which o en shi s, and never admits ships of very large burthen. e city used to contain about ten thousand white inhabitants, and perhaps three times as many black and mixed. e inhabitants were for the most part opulent, some of them extremely so: and as they were not soured by any morose sentiments about religion, being mostly of the church of England, public places were more numerous, and had a gayer appearance than in any other part of the Continent. It had been usual too, in the happy æra of peace, for the wealthier inhabitants to send their children to England for education; so that the manners and mode of thinking upon all subjects, of the higher orders in this city, were little di erent from those of similar rank in Europe; which contributed much/ to make Charlestown the most agreeable place to strangers of any on the Continent. But, alas! the infatuation of Britain in exasperating, by the most wanton outrages, all the feelings of the human heart, to procure by force, and by the violation of the very rst principles of English liberty, that revenue which they had only to ask for to obtain, had so estranged the a ections, and altered the disposition of men from one end of America to the other, that, when our voyagers arrived there, it bore no resemblance to the happy, fertile, and luxuriant country which it had been but a few years before. About nine miles above Charlestown the two rivers approach one another so as to be separated only by a narrow neck of land about half a mile over: a er that they widen again to a considerable distance before they unite their streams below the city, and fall into the Atlantic. is peninsula was in a state of the highest cultivation, covered with the villas of the richer/ inhabitants of the colony, most of whom having been educated in England, had transferred to this paradise the taste and elegance of the parent country; with this great
advantage, that the whole country being covered with timber of various kinds, and with an inconceivable variety of the most beautiful and odoriferous shrubs, they were not under the necessity of waiting half an age to create a place; but, by a judicious clearing and pruning, found it ready formed to their hands. Nothing then could have been more charming than these residences were when possessed by their owners – the happy abodes of prosperous industry, of public and private worth; of peace, opulence, innocence, and beauty. But Satan, envious of the felicity of this second Eden, hissed for the dæmon of destruction, who heard the call, though at ve thousand miles distance, and swept over the Atlantic to obey it.13 Alas! that any voice should arm kindred souls against each other. But so/ it was: and no sooner were the British in possession of the town, than this beautiful peninsula went to ruin.
