"and proved that freemen, without training and without discipline, were too brave to be conquered"

   "The Chairman [Mr. W.] has told us, these officers broke up their connexions in life, and left their families and their homes to serve their country. And so devoted was one of them, that he left his dead father unburied, to enter the army. This, all will admit, was patriotic. But What does this Weigh, when compared to the bloody scenes that spread horror and desolation throughout the two Carolinas and Georgia, during the years of 1779, 1780 and 1781; a good part of which time you had no regular Army there. Whilst the British Army were there ravaging the country wherever they went; not a horse in the country upon which they could lay their hands, that they did not take, to repair the waste in their own cavalry, or for the use of their baggage wagons. All the cattle, hogs, sheep, flour, wheat, corn, and every description of forage, fell a prey to their rapacity. And what was not consumed, was wantonly burned and destroyed. The tories, following in their train, burning dwelling houses, out buildings, and fences, and laying waste with fire and sword all that came in their way. Plundering the defenceless women and children of any little remains of provisions that the Army might have left, and stripping them of their wearing apparel, and the very bed clothes that covered them by night. Mothers and daughters who had seen better times, labored in the field to procure a scanty subsistence: whilst the fathers and brothers were harassing the enemy, and fighting the battles of their country. Not in the regular Army, but in volunteer and self-created bodies; self-trained, and mounted on their own horses, and armed with their own rifles, and other arms, such as they could procure; all at their own expense, without the aid, or even the knowledge the General Government. They annoyed the enemy by hanging on their borders, killing their light troops, cutting off their foraging parties, shooting their sentries at their posts, and destroying and dispersing the tory parties wheresoever they assembled. No friend of his country could remain at home in safety. Many who ventured there for a moment, were dragged from the bosoms of their families, and butchered at their own doors. Others who were taken in arms, were treated as rebels, and hung upon the limbs of trees, on the road sides. These scenes became so familiar, that the spilling of human blood lost the most of its horrors." [Pgs. 190-91]

"...Under all those disadvantages, these volunteer officers and citizens, without a moment's training, met a veteran officer of great experience, and as brave a partisan officer as any in the British army, on ground chosen for the occasion by himself; and with a very small loss on their part, killed and wounded 225, among them Col. Ferguson, their commander; and took 800 prisoners, with all their arms, ammunition, and baggage. The annals of the whole revolutionary war do not afford a more brilliant achievement, or one effected with more cool and deliberate bravery, by any portion of the regular army.

   "It were these resistances and these successes that gave the first check to the British arms. It destroyed their hopes of submission; and proved that freemen, without training and without discipline, were too brave to be conquered.

   "Those men and officers did not fight your battles for money. They never cost your government a single cent. They furnished their own rifles, with which they principally fought. They furnished their own clothes, and their own horses; and their slender and humble rations they picked up where they could find them; and, like the other citizens who fought our battles, without the aid of government, if any were wounded or disabled, the government has positively refused to place them on the Pension Roll, but has left them to beg their bread, or starve, if they could find no other relief. And yet we are confidently told by gentlemen, in this debate, that we owe our independence as a nation, and the freedom of debate which we enjoy in this Senate, exclusively to the officers of the revolutionary army." [Pg. 193] --Senator William Smith, of South Carolina, Jan. 29, 1828. (William Smith (1762 – June 26, 1840) was a Democratic-Republican elected to the U.S. Senate representing South Carolina in 1816, and again in 1826. In 1832, he moved to Louisiana, having lost his political base in South Carolina. In 1836, he moved on to Huntsville, Alabama, and was elected to the Alabama Legislature; he held that seat for the rest of his life. On March 3, 1837, outgoing President Andrew Jackson nominated Smith to the Supreme Court. The Senate confirmed his nomination by a vote of 23–18. Mr. Smith declined to serve however.)

[REGISTER OF DEBATES IN CONGRESS, COMPRISING THE LEADING DEBATES AND INCIDENTS OF THE FIRST SESSION OF THE TWENTIETH CONGRESS: TOGETHER WITH AN APPENDIX, CONTAINING IMPORTANT STATE PAPERS AND PUBLIC DOCUMENTS AND THE LAWS ENACTED DURING THE SESSION, WITH A COPIOUS INDEX TO THE WHOLE. VOLUME IV. WASHINGTON: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY GALE AND SEATON. 1828.]