ST. STEPHEN'S PARISH. 63 



lution. These are too unimportant to have found 

 a place in history ; but we are near Eutaw and 

 Quinby ; we are on the highway that led from 

 Charleston to nearly all the scenes where great 

 deeds were performed ; the armies of both friend 

 and foe camped near us, and marched near us, and 

 the people who lived in those days had countless in- 

 cidents to relate, all of which possessed a local or an 

 individual interest, and I cannot but regret that 

 their memory has perished. None of the witnesses 

 of these scenes survive, or if any linger still, he has 

 long passed the limit allotted by the Creator as the 

 period of human life. Would it not have been well 

 had our Legislature appointed commissioners whose 

 duty it should have been to collect and preserve au- 

 thentic anecdotes which could have been furnished 

 by those witnesses ? The expense would have been 

 trifling, and when once sustained would have been 

 ever available in preserving from oblivion much 

 of local interest, which would have been valu- 

 able to posterity. We are in the midst of sa- 

 cred territory ; about us armies were encamped, 

 houses were burned, men imprisoned and brutally 

 murdered ; but as these were merely incidents to 

 more stirring and important events, they have 

 escaped the notice of the historian, and we now 

 tread the ground without a thought of the scenes 

 that were enacted upon it. 



And not our own men only, but even our foes can 



