Among these was Capt. James Butler, who, when informed of what was demanded of him, positively refused to conform to the terms of the proclamation. The British officers in command immediately put him in irons and threw him in Ninety-Six jail, from whence he was transferred to Charleston where he was confined in the provost for eighteen months. Upon his release, towards the last of the year 1781, from this severe and lengthened imprisonment he returned once more to his home, where he was fated to remain but three weeks before he was called on to seal with his life his devotion to the cause in which he had already suffered so much. The incidents of the bloody tragedy in which he died can be paralleled only in the annals of civil strife.
From the beginning of the contest with the mother country a difference of sentiment had existed in the State on this subject. South Carolina had been a pet province of the Crown. The grievances complained of
by the commercial colonies were unfelt by her, and a strong conservative feeling pervaded a large class of her people. This feeling war strongest in the up country where the inhabitants took arms from the beginning upon either side of the quarrel, and the contest conducted by irregular troops assumed a savage guerilla character, in which, says General Greene, the inhabitants pursued each
