Greene on the High Hills of Santee

When Greene approached Orangeburg, he found Rawdon reinforced and so strongly intrenched that he did not deem it prudent to attack him; and as the heats of summer were approaching, he crossed the Congaree and in July encamped his army on the High Hills of Santee, famous for the salubrity of the air and the purity of the water. Then Rawdon, leaving the troops at Orangeburg in command of Colonel Stewart, went down to Charleston, and complaining of ill-health soon embarked for England. A short time before he sailed, he was a party to an inhuman transaction. Among those who took protection after the fall of Charleston was Isaac Hayne, a planter in the low country. When the British were driven out of his section, by Greene's troops, they could no longer give him protection and feeling himself relieved from the obligation which it had imposed, he took command of a regiment of South Carolina militia. While in arms he was made prisoner. Colonel Balfour, then in command at Charleston, hesitated in disposing of him; but when Rawdon arrived, that officer, pursuant to the spirit of Cornwallis's orders, directed Hayne to be hung. This was done without even the form of a trial. Not even the prisoner anticipated such harsh treatment, until he was informed that he had not two days to live. The patriot's children, the women of Charleston, the lieutenant-governor of the province, all pleaded for his life in vain. The savage sentence was executed, and Isaac Hayne has been embalmed in history as a martyr. After Balfour's death, Rawdon tried to fix the ignominy of the act on that officer. It aroused the fiercest indignation even among moderate men who were inclined to feel kindly toward British rule; and the patriotic women of Charleston could not, at times, restrain their feelings of contempt for British officers after that. One day when Colonel Balfour was walking in the garden of Charles Elliot, in Charleston, with the wife of that gentleman, he pointed to a chamomile flower, and asked its name. "The rebel flower," said Mrs. Elliot. "And why is it called the rebel flower?" inquired Balfour, "Because," replied the patriotic woman, "it always flourishes most when trampled upon."