"
Often in after life, when he would meet a long string of wagons in the
country loaded with cotton or rice, he would relate this reminiscence of
his childhood, and add:
"How happy my father would have been in the growth and prosperity of
Carolina!"
These young men from the beginning of the Stamp Act agitation, when they
were just coming of age, sympathized warmly with their oppressed
countrymen on the other side of the ocean, and soon after their return
home they entered the Continental army and served gallantly throughout
the war. In 1780 we find Charles Cotesworth Pinckney writing to his wife
in the following noble strain:
"Our friend, Philip Neyle was killed by a cannon-ball coming through one
of the embrasures; but I do not pity him, for he has died nobly in the
defense of his country; but I pity his aged father, now unhappily
bereaved of his beloved and only child."
To one of his young friends he wrote soon after:
"If I had a vein that did not beat with love for my country, I myself
would open it. If I had a drop of blood that could flow dishonorably, I
myself would let it out."
It was the fortune of both these brothers to be held for a long time by
the enemy as prisoners of war.
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