The Scout Author:William Gilmore Simms Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE SCOUT. CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL SUMMARY. — THE SWAMP RETREAT. At the period when our story opens, the colonies of North America united in resistance to... more » the mother-country, had closed the fifth year of their war of independence. The scene of conflict was ty this time almost wholly transferred from the northern to the southern colonies. The former were permitted to repose from the struggle; in their security almost ceasing to recognise the necessity of arms; while the latter, as if to compensate for theii respite, in the beginning of the conflict, were subjected to the worst aspects and usages of war. The south, wholly abandoned to its fate by the colonies north of the Potomac, was unequal to the struggle single-handed. Their efforts at defence, however earnestly made, were for a time, apparently made in vain. Inexperienced in regular warfare, with officers as indiscreet and rash as brave, they were everywhere exposed to surprise and consequently to defeat. They lacked money, rather than men, experience and training, rather than courage, concentration and unity, rather than strength. The two frontier colonies, South Carolina and Georgia—most feeble and most exposed, as lying upon the borders of Florida, which adhered to the crown, and which had proved a realm of refuge to all the loyalists when driven out from the other colonies—were supposed by the British commanders to be entirely recovered to the sway of their master. They suffered, in consequence, the usual fortune of the vanquished. . But the very suffering proved that they lived, and the struggle for freedom was continued. Her battles, " Once begun, Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, Though often lost," were never considered by her friends in Carolina to be utterly hopeless. Still, they had frequent reas...« less