Their hospitality was, perhaps, owed more to vanity and pride than to true generosity of spirit

From The Road to Guilford Courthouse by John Buchanan. Page 20. Regarding Charleston, South Carolina, occupied by the British.

During the British occupation Sergeant Roger Lamb of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, although he took a dim view of a city in which black slaves were far more numerous than whites “in this boasted land of liberty,” and called the water “putrid” and the “climate unhealthy,” noted “splendid equipages” and inhabitants who “are very extravagant in their living.” The Hessian Jäger Captain Johann Hinrichs, who was in the city in 1780, wrote in his diary that “No other American city can compare with Charleston in the beauty of its houses and the splendor and taste displayed therein. The rapid ascendancy of families which in less than ten years have risen from the lowest rank, have acquired upwards of £100,000, and have, moreover, gained their wealth in a simple and easy manner, probably contribute a good deal toward the grandiose display of splendor, debauchery, luxury and extravagance in so short a time. Furthermore, the sense of equality which all possessed during this time of increasing incomes induced the people to bid strangers to enjoy their abundance with them and earned the renown of hospitality for this city, which she owes, perhaps, more to vanity and pride than to true generosity of spirit.