Extract of a Letter from South-Carolina

v4:199

Having an opportunity to Virginia, I embrace it with pleasure, to inform you what confusions we have in this Province. The upper part are against the lower part. The former call themselves King' s men, and as such will not submit to the laws of the Provincial Congress; they are even raising a party to put a stop to their proceedings. Many of our lives are threatened by them. One Colonel Fletchall, and Colonel Kirkland, are at the head of this party. They have the vanity to think that they can influence the minds of the people in general, and by that means subdue the rest; then proceed to North-Carolina and Virginia, and so on, till they meet General Gage; then to compel the Americans to swallow those unreasonable acts which Lord North and his party have made; and after all is accomplished, they expect that the King will make one of them Generalissimo over all the Continent.

A few days past, a number of the Sons of Liberty went and took a certain Mr˙ Brown, the principal man they had that could say any thing worth hearing, and gave him a genteel suit of tar and feathers, which so exasperated his clan that they raised a company, which was coming down to take every person that had a hand in it; but the report of a few great guns, which we had luckily procured, put an entire stop to them with respect to that manoeuvre.

My dear friend, only observe the vanity, pride, and ambition of these men. Let us be aware of their abominable principles, and pity such who are led by them. We have entirely overcome that body in the aforesaid quarter, and reduced them to their former submission.