At the celebration of our national Independence, in 1797, the orator of the society of the Cincinnati of South Carolina, paid the following tribute to the magnanimity of Mrs. Rebecca Edwards:—"The Spartan mother, on delivering his shield to her son departing for the army, nobly bade him 'return with it or on it.' The sentiment was highly patriotic, but surely not superior to that which animated the bosom of the distinguished female of our own state, who, when the British officer presented the mandate which arrested her sons as objects of retaliation, less sensible of private affection than attached to her honor and the interest of her country, stifled the tender feelings of the mother, and heroically bade them despise the threats of their enemies, and steadfastly persist to support the glorious cause in which they had engaged—that if the threatened sacrifice should follow, they would carry a parent's blessing, and the good opinion of every virtuous citizen along with them to the grave: but if from the frailty of human nature—of the possibility of which she would not suffer an idea to enter her mind—they were disposed to temporize, and exchange their liberty for safety, they must forget her as a mother, nor subject her to the misery of ever beholding them again."[53]