The Life of Francis Marion
by William Gilmore Simms · English · Gutenberg #843 · 659,283 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Life of Francis Marion
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Life of Francis Marion
Author: William Gilmore Simms
Release date: March 1, 1997 [eBook #843]
Most recently updated: November 3, 2009
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/843
Credits: Produced by Alan Light, and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF FRANCIS MARION ***
Produced by Alan Light
THE LIFE OF FRANCIS MARION
By W. Gilmore Simms
Author of "Yemassee", "History of South Carolina", etc.
"The British soldier trembles
When Marion's name is told."
--Bryant.
[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases are capitalized.
Some obvious errors have been corrected.]
[William Gilmore Simms, American (South Carolinian) Writer.
1806-1870.]
Contents.
Chapter 1. Introduction--The Huguenots in South Carolina.
Chapter 2. The Marion Family--Birth of Francis Marion--His
Youth--Shipwreck.
Chapter 3. Marion a Farmer--Volunteers in the Cherokee
Campaign.
Chapter 4. Cherokee War continues--Marion leads the Forlorn
Hope at the Battle of Etchoee.
Chapter 5. Marion is returned for the Provincial Congress
from St. John's, Berkeley--Made Captain in the Second
Regiment--Fort Johnson taken--Battle of Fort Moultrie.
Chapter 6. From the Battle of Fort Moultrie to that of
Savannah--Anecdote of Jasper--His Death.
Chapter 7. From the Battle of Savannah to the Defeat of
Gates at Camden.
Chapter 8. Organization of "Marion's Brigade"--Surprise of
Tories under Gainey--Defeat of Barfield--Capture of British
Guard with Prisoners at Nelson's Ferry.
Chapter 9. Marion retreats before a superior Force--Defeats
the Tories at Black Mingo--Surprises and disperses the Force
of Colonel Tynes at Tarcote--Is pursued by Tarleton.
Chapter 10. Marion attempts Georgetown--Horry defeats
Merritt--Melton defeated by Barfield--Gabriel Marion taken
by the Tories and murdered--Marion retires to Snow's Island.
Chapter 11. Marion's Camp at Snow's Island--The Character
of his Warfare--Of his Men--Anecdotes of Conyers and Horry--
He feasts a British Officer on Potatoes--Quells a Mutiny.
Chapter 12. General Greene assumes Command of the Southern
Army--His Correspondence with Marion--Condition of the
Country--Marion and Lee surprise Georgetown--Col. Horry
defeats Gainey--Marion pursues McIlraith--Proposed Pitched
Battle between Picked Men.
Chapter 13. Watson and Doyle pursue Marion--He baffles and
harasses them--Pursues Doyle--His Despondency and final
Resolution.
Chapter 14. Marion renews his Pursuit of Doyle--Confronts
Watson--Is joined by Col. Lee--Invests and takes Fort
Watson--Fort Motte taken--Anecdote of Horry and Marion.
Chapter 15. Correspondence of Marion and Greene--Anecdote
of Colonel Snipes--Marion takes Georgetown--Attempt of
Sumter and Marion on Col. Coates--Battle of Quinby Bridge.
Chapter 16. Marion moves secretly to Pon-Pon--Rescues Col.
Harden--Defeats Major Frazier at Parker's Ferry--Joins the
main Army under Greene--Battle of Eutaw.
Chapter 17. Retreat of the British from Eutaw--Pursuit of
them by Marion and Lee--Close of the Year.
Chapter 18. Marion summoned to the Camp of Greene--Defeats
the British Horse at St. Thomas--Leaves his Command to
Horry, and takes his Seat in the Assembly at Jacksonborough,
as Senator from St. John's, Berkeley--Proceedings of the
Assembly--Confiscation Act--Dispute between Cols. Mayham and
Horry--The Brigade of Marion surprised, during his absence,
by a Detachment from Charleston--Marion's Encounter with the
British Horse--Conspiracy in the Camp of Greene.
Chapter 19. Marion summoned with his Force to that of
Greene--Insurrection of the Loyalists on the Pedee--Marches
against them--Subdues them--Treats with Gainey--Fanning--
Protects the Tory, Butler, from his Men--Returns to the
Country between the Santee and the Cooper--Moves to protect
Georgetown from the British Fleet--Takes post at Watboo, on
Cooper River--Defeats the British Cavalry under Major
Frasier.
Chapter 20. The British propose Terms of Pacification--
Rejected by the Civil Authorities--They penetrate the
Combahee with their Fleet--Death of Col. Laurens--Anecdote
of Marion--Death of Wilmot--The British evacuate Charleston--
Marion separates from his Brigade at Watboo--His Military
Genius.
Chapter 21. Marion retires to his Farm, which he finds in
Ruins--Is returned to the Senate from St. John--His Course
on the Confiscation Act--Anecdotes--Is made Commandant at
Fort Johnson--His Marriage--A Member of the State Convention
in 1794--Withdraws from Public Life--His Death.
Appendix A. Notes on the Electronic Text.
Appendix B. Song of Marion's Men. By William Cullen Bryant
[1794-1878].
Note.
In preparing this biography, the following works have been consulted:
1. A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion, and a
History of his Brigade, &c. By Wm. Dobein James, A.M.
Charleston, S.C. 1821.
2. The Life of Gen. Francis Marion, &c. By Brig. Gen. P.
Horry, and M. L. Weems. Philadelphia. 1833.
3. A MS. Memoir of the Life of Brig. Gen. P. Horry. By
Himself.
4. Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael
Greene, &c. By William Johnson. Charleston. 1822.
5. Memoirs of the American Revolution, &c. By William
Moultrie. New York. 1802.
6. Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War in America (1st and
2d series). By Alex. Garden. 1822 and 1828.
7. Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the
United States. By Henry Lee, &c. Philadelphia. 1812.
8. Memoirs of the American Revolution, &c., as relating to
the State of South Carolina, &c. By John Drayton, LL.D.
Charleston. 1821.
9. The History of South Carolina, &c. By David Ramsay.
Charleston. 1809.
10. The History of Georgia, &c. By Capt. Hugh M'Call.
Savannah. 1811.
11. A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the
Southern Provinces of North America. By Lieut. Col.
Tarleton, Commandant of the late British Legion. London.
1797.
12. Strictures on Lieut. Col. Tarleton's History, &c. By
Roderick Mackenzie, late Lieutenant in the 71st Regiment,
&c. London. 1787.
13. History of the Revolution of South Carolina from a
British Province to an Independent State. By David Ramsay,
M.D. Trenton. 1785.
14. An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the
Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia. (Hewatt.) London.
1779.
15. A New Voyage to Carolina, &c. By John Lawson, Gent.,
Surveyor-General of North Carolina. London. 1709.
16. The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of
the Independence of the United States of America, &c. By
William Gordon, D.D. New York. 1789.
17. Five volumes of MS. Letters from distinguished officers
of the Revolution in the South. From the Collection of Gen.
Peter Horry.
Preface.
The facts, in the life of Francis Marion, are far less generally
extended in our country than his fame. The present is an attempt to
supply this deficiency, and to justify, by the array of authentic
particulars, the high position which has been assigned him among
the master-workers in our revolutionary history. The task has been a
difficult, but I trust not entirely an unsuccessful one. Our southern
chronicles are meagre and unsatisfactory. South Carolina was too long in
the occupation of the British--too long subject to the ravages of civil
and foreign war, to have preserved many of those minor records which
concern only the renown of individuals, and are unnecessary to the
comprehension of great events; and the vague tributes of unquestioning
tradition are not adequate authorities for the biographer, whose laws
are perhaps even more strict than those which govern the historian.
Numerous volumes, some private manuscripts, and much unpublished
correspondence, to which reference has been more particularly made in
the appendix, have been consulted in the preparation of this narrative.
The various histories of Carolina and Georgia have also been made use
of. Minor facts have been gathered from the lips of living witnesses.
Of the two works devoted especially to our subject, that by the Rev.
Mr. Weems is most generally known--a delightful book for the young. The
author seems not to have contemplated any less credulous readers, and
its general character is such as naturally to inspire us with frequent
doubts of its statements. Mr. Weems had rather loose notions of the
privileges of the biographer; though, in reality, he has transgressed
much less in his Life of Marion than is generally supposed. But the
untamed, and sometimes extravagant exuberance of his style might well
subject his narrative to suspicion. Of the "Sketch" by the Hon. Judge
James, we are more secure, though, as a literary performance, it is
quite as devoid of merit as pretension. Besides, the narrative is not
thorough. It dwells somewhat too minutely upon one class of facts, to
the neglect or the exclusion of others. I have made both of these works
tributary to my own whenever this was possible.
Woodland, S.C., May 25, 1844.
THE LIFE OF FRANCIS MARION
Chapter 1.
Introduction--The Huguenots in South Carolina.
The name of FRANCIS MARION is identified, in the history of South
Carolina, his parent state, with all that is pleasing and exciting in
romance. He is, par excellence, the famous partisan of that region.
While Sumter stands conspicuous for bold daring, fearless intrepidity
and always resolute behavior; while Lee takes eminent rank as a gallant
Captain of Cavalry, the eye and the wing of the southern liberating army
under Greene; Marion is proverbially the great master of strategy--the
wily fox of the swamps--never to be caught, never to be followed,--yet
always at hand, with unconjectured promptness, at the moment when he
is least feared and is least to be expected. His pre-eminence in this
peculiar and most difficult of all kinds of warfare, is not to be
disputed. In his native region he has no competitor, and it is scarcely
possible to compute the vast influence which he possessed and exercised
over the minds and feelings of the people of Carolina, simply through
his own resources, at a period most adverse to their fortunes, and
when the cause of their liberties, everywhere endangered, was almost
everywhere considered hopeless. His name was the great rallying cry
of the yeoman in battle--the word that promised hope--that cheered the
desponding patriot--that startled, and made to pause in his career of
recklessness and blood, the cruel and sanguinary tory. Unprovided with
the means of warfare, no less than of comfort--wanting equally in food
and weapons--we find him supplying the one deficiency with a cheerful
courage that never failed; the other with the resources of a genius
that seemed to wish for nothing from without. With a force
constantly fluctuating and feeble in consequence of the most ordinary
necessities--half naked men, feeding upon unsalted pottage,--forced to
fight the enemy by day, and look after their little families, concealed
in swamp or thicket, by night--he still contrived,--one knows not
well how,--to keep alive and bright the sacred fire of his country's
liberties, at moments when they seemed to have no other champion.
In this toil and watch, taken cheerfully and with spirits that never
appeared to lose their tone and elasticity, tradition ascribes to him a
series of achievements, which, if they were small in comparison with the
great performances of European war, were scarcely less important; and
which, if they sometimes transcend belief, must yet always delight the
imagination. His adventures have given a rich coloring to fable, and
have stimulated its performances. The language of song and story has
been employed to do them honor, and our children are taught, in lessons
that they love, to lisp the deeds and the patriotism of his band.
"Marion"--"Marion's Brigade" and "Marion's men", have passed into
household words, which the young utter with an enthusiasm much more
confiding than that which they yield to the wondrous performances of
Greece and Ilium. They recall, when spoken, a long and delightful series
of brilliant exploits, wild adventures, by day and night, in swamp
and thicket, sudden and strange manoeuvres, and a generous, unwavering
ardor, that never found any peril too hazardous, or any suffering
too unendurable. The theme, thus invested, seems to have escaped the
ordinary bounds of history. It is no longer within the province of the
historian. It has passed into the hands of the poet, and seems to scorn
the appeal to authentic chronicles. When we look for the record we
find but little authority for a faith so confiding, and seemingly so
exaggerated. The story of the Revolution in the southern colonies has
been badly kept. Documentary proofs are few, bald and uninteresting.
A simple paragraph in the newspapers,--those newspapers issued not
unfrequently in cities where the enemy had power, and in the control of
Editors, unlike the present, who were seldom able to expatiate upon the
achievement which they recorded;--or the brief dispatches of the Captain
himself, whose modesty would naturally recoil from stating more than the
simple result of his performances;--these are usually the sum total of
our authorities. The country, sparsely settled, and frequently overrun
by the barbarous enemy, was incapable of that patient industry and
persevering care, which could chronicle the passing event, give place
and date to the brilliant sortie, the gallant struggle, the individual
deed of audacity, which, by a stroke, and at a moment, secures an
undying remembrance in the bosoms of a people. The fame of Marion rests
very much upon tradition. There is little in the books to justify the
strong and exciting relish with which the name is spoken and remembered
throughout the country. He was not a bloody warrior. His battle fields
were never sanguinary. His ardor was never of a kind to make him
imprudent. He was not distinguished for great strength of arm, or great
skill in his weapon. We have no proofs that he was ever engaged in
single combat: yet the concurrent testimony of all who have written,
declare, in general terms, his great services: and the very exaggeration
of the popular estimate is a partial proof of the renown for which it
speaks. In this respect, his reputation is like that of all other heroes
of romantic history. It is a people's history, written in their hearts,
rather than in their books; which their books could not write--which
would lose all its golden glow, if subjected to the cold details of the
phlegmatic chronicles. The tradition, however swelling, still testifies
to that large merit which must have been its basis, by reason of which
the name of the hero was selected from all others for such peculiar
honors; and though these exaggerations suggest a thousand difficulties
in the way of sober history, they yet serve to increase the desire, as
well as the necessity, for some such performance.
*****
The family of Marion came from France. They emigrated to South Carolina
somewhere about the year 1685, within twenty years after the first
British settlement of the province. They belonged, in the parent
country, to that sect of religious dissenters which bore the name of
Huguenots; and were among those who fled from the cruel persecutions
which, in the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV., followed close upon
the re-admission of the Jesuits into France. The edict of Nantz, which
had been issued under the auspices of Henri IV., and by which the
Huguenots had been guaranteed, with some slight qualifications, the
securities of the citizen, almost in the same degree with the Catholic
inhabitants, had, under the weak and tyrannous sway of the former
monarch, proved totally inadequate to their protection. Long before its
formal revocation, the unmeasured and inhuman persecutions to which they
were subjected, drove thousands of them into voluntary banishment. The
subsequent decree of Louis, by which even the nominal securities of
the Huguenots were withdrawn, increased the number of the exiles, and
completed the sentence of separation from all those ties which bind
the son to the soil. The neighboring Protestant countries received the
fugitives, the number and condition of whom may be estimated by the
simple fact, not commonly known, that England alone possessed "eleven
regiments composed entirely of these unhappy refugees, besides others
enrolled among the troops of the line. There were in London twenty
French churches supported by Government; about three thousand refugees
were maintained by public subscription; many received grants from the
crown; and a great number lived by their own industry.* Some of the
nobility were naturalized and obtained high rank; among others, Ruvigny,
son of the Marquis, was made Earl of Galway, and Schomberg received the
dignity of Duke."**
* Memoires et Observations faites par un Voyageur en
Angleterre, 12mo. La Haye, 1698, p. 362. Quoted by Browning
in his History of the Huguenots.
** Browning, [William Shergold]: History of the Huguenots.
London: Whittaker and Co. 1840. p. 256. Of the Refugees
from France, Hume says, "near fifty thousand passed over
into England;" and Voltaire writes that "one of the suburbs
of London was entirely peopled with French workers of silk."
[W. S. Browning was uncle to the poet, Robert Browning.
A. L., 1996.]
America, the new world, was naturally a land of refuge, and soon
received her share of these unhappy fugitives. The transition was easy
from England to her colonies. Every facility was afforded them for
transportation, and the wise policy which encouraged their settlement
in the new countries was amply rewarded by the results. Altogether,
the Huguenots were a much better sort of people than those who usually
constituted the mass of European emigrants. The very desperation of
their circumstances was a proof of their virtues. They were a people of
principle, for they had suffered everything for conscience sake. They
were a people of pure habits, for it was because of their religion
that they suffered banishment. In little patriarchal groups of sixty,
seventy, or eighty families, they made their way to different parts
of America; and with the conscious poverty of their own members, were
generally received with open arms by those whom they found in possession
of the soil. The English, as they beheld the dependent and destitute
condition of the fugitives, forgot, for a season, their usual national
animosities; and assigning ample tracts of land for their occupation,
beheld them, without displeasure, settling down in exclusive colonies,
in which they sought to maintain, as far as possible, the pious habits
and customs of the mother country. One of these communities, comprising
from seventy to eighty families, found their way to the banks of
the Santee in South Carolina.* From this point they gradually spread
themselves out so as to embrace, in partial settlements, the spacious
tract of country stretching to the Winyah, on the one hand, and
the sources of Cooper River on the other; extending upward into the
interior, following the course of the Santee nearly to the point where
it loses its identity in receiving the descending streams of the
Wateree and Congaree. These settlers were generally poor. They had been
despoiled of all their goods by the persecutions which had driven them
into exile. This, indeed, had been one of the favorite modes by which
this result had been effected. Doubtless, also, it had been, among the
subordinates of the crown, one of the chief motives of the persecution.
It was a frequent promise of his Jesuit advisers, to the vain and
bigoted Louis, that the heretics should be brought into the fold of the
Church without a drop of bloodshed; and, until the formal revocation of
the edict of Nantz, by which the Huguenots were put without the pale and
protection of the laws, spoliation was one of the means, with others,
by which to avoid this necessity. These alternatives, however, were of
a kind not greatly to lessen the cruelties of the persecutor or the
sufferings of the victim. It does not fall within our province to detail
them. It is enough that one of the first and most obvious measures
by which to keep their promise to the king, was to dispossess the
proscribed subjects of their worldly goods and chattels. By this measure
a two-fold object was secured. While the heretic was made to suffer, the
faithful were sure of their reward. It was a principle faithfully kept
in view; and the refugees brought with them into exile, little beyond
the liberties and the virtues for which they had endured so much. But
these were possessions, as their subsequent history has shown, beyond
all price.
* Dalcho, in his Church History, says, "upwards of one
hundred families."
Our humble community along the Santee had suffered the worst privations
of their times and people. But, beyond the necessity of hard labor, they
had little to deplore, at the outset, in their new condition. They had
been schooled sufficiently by misfortune to have acquired humility. They
observed, accordingly, in their new relations, a policy equally prudent
and sagacious. More flexible in their habits than the English, they
conciliated the latter by deference; and, soothing the unruly passions
of the Indians--the Santee and Sewee tribes, who were still in
considerable numbers in their immediate neighborhood--they won them
to alliance by kindness and forbearance. From the latter, indeed, they
learned their best lessons for the cultivation of the soil. That, upon
which they found themselves, lay in the unbroken forest. The high
lands which they first undertook to clear, as less stubborn, were most
sterile; and, by a very natural mistake, our Frenchmen adopted the
modes and objects of European culture; the grains, the fruits and
the vegetables, as well as the implements, to which they had been
accustomed. The Indians came to their succor, taught them the
cultivation of maize, and assisted them in the preparation of their
lands; in return for lessons thought equally valuable by the savages, to
whom they taught, along with gentler habits and morals, a better taste
for music and the dance! To subdue the forest, of itself, to European
hands, implied labors not unlike those of Hercules. But the refugees,
though a gentle race, were men of soul and strength, capable of great
sacrifices, and protracted self-denial. Accommodating themselves with
a patient courage to the necessities before them, they cheerfully
undertook and accomplished their tasks. We have more than one lively
picture among the early chroniclers of the distress and hardship which
they were compelled to encounter at the first. But, in this particular,
there was nothing peculiar in their situation. It differed in no respect
from that which fell to the lot of all the early colonists in America.
The toil of felling trees, over whose heavy boughs and knotty arms
the winters of centuries had passed; the constant danger from noxious
reptiles and beasts of prey, which, coiled in the bush or crouching in
the brake, lurked day and night, in waiting for the incautious victim;
and, most insidious and fatal enemy of all, the malaria of the swamp,
of the rank and affluent soil, for the first time laid open to the sun;
these are all only the ordinary evils which encountered in America,
at the very threshold, the advances of European civilisation. That the
Huguenots should meet these toils and dangers with the sinews and
the hearts of men, was to be expected from their past experience and
history. They had endured too many and too superior evils in the old
world, to be discouraged by, or to shrink from, any of those which hung
upon their progress in the new. Like the hardy Briton, whom, under
the circumstances, we may readily suppose them to have emulated, they
addressed themselves, with little murmuring, to the tasks before them.
We have, at the hands of one of their number,--a lady born and raised in
affluence at home,--a lively and touching picture of the sufferings
and duties, which, in Carolina, at that period, neither sex nor age was
permitted to escape. "After our arrival," she writes, "we suffered every
kind of evil. In about eighteen months our elder brother, unaccustomed
to the hard labor we were obliged to undergo, died of a fever. Since
leaving France, we had experienced every kind of affliction, disease,
pestilence, famine, poverty and hard labor! I have been for six months
together without tasting bread, working the ground like a slave; and
I have even passed three or four years without always having it when I
wanted it. I should never have done were I to attempt to detail to you
all our adventures."*
* The narrative of Mrs. Judith Manigault, wife of Peter
Manigault, as quoted by Ramsay.--Hist. S. C. Vol. I., p.
4. For a graphic detail of the usual difficulties and
dangers attending the escape of the Huguenots from France,
at the period of migration, see the first portion of this
letter.--
We may safely conclude that there was no exaggeration in this picture.
The lot of all the refugees seems to have been very equally severe.
Men and women, old and young, strove together in the most menial and
laborious occupations. But, as courage and virtue usually go hand in
hand with industry, the three are apt to triumph together. Such was
the history in the case of the Carolina Huguenots. If the labor and
the suffering were great, the fruits were prosperity. They were more.
Honors, distinction, a goodly name, and the love of those around
them, have blessed their posterity, many of whom rank with the noblest
citizens that were ever reared in America. In a few years after their
first settlement, their forest homes were crowned with a degree of
comfort, which is described as very far superior to that in the
usual enjoyment of the British colonists. They were a more docile and
tractable race; not so restless, nor--though this may seem difficult
to understand to those who consider their past history--so impatient
of foreign control. Of their condition in Carolina, we have a brief but
pleasing picture from the hands of John Lawson, then surveyor-general of
the province of North Carolina.* This gentleman, in 1701, just fifteen
years after its settlement, made a progress through that portion of the
Huguenot colony which lay immediately along the Santee. The passages
which describe his approach to the country which they occupied, the
hospitable reception which they gave him, the comforts they enjoyed,
the gentleness of their habits, the simplicity of their lives, and their
solicitude in behalf of strangers, are necessary to furnish the moral
of those fortunes, the beginning of which was so severe and perilous.
"There are," says he, "about seventy families seated on this river, WHO
LIVE AS DECENTLY AND HAPPILY AS ANY PLANTERS IN THESE SOUTHWARD PARTS OF
AMERICA. THE FRENCH BEING A TEMPERATE, INDUSTRIOUS PEOPLE, some of them
bringing very little of effects, YET, BY THEIR ENDEAVORS AND MUTUAL
ASSISTANCE AMONG THEMSELVES (which is highly to be commended), HAVE
OUTSTRIPT OUR ENGLISH, WHO BROUGHT WITH THEM LARGER FORTUNES, though (as
it seems) less endeavor to manage their talent to the best advantage.
'Tis admirable to see what time and industry will (with God's blessing)
effect," &c.... ... "We lay all that night at Mons. EUGEE'S (Huger), and
the next morning set out farther, to go the remainder of our voyage by
land. At ten o'clock we passed over a narrow, deep swamp, having left
the three Indian men and one woman, that had piloted the canoe from
Ashley river, having hired a Sewee Indian, a tall, lusty fellow, who
carried a pack of our clothes, of great weight. Notwithstanding his
burden, we had much ado to keep pace with him. At noon we came up with
several French plantations. Meeting with several creeks by the way, THE
FRENCH WERE VERY OFFICIOUS IN ASSISTING US WITH THEIR SMALL DORIES TO
PASS OVER THESE WATERS: whom we met coming from their church, BEING
ALL OF THEM VERY CLEAN AND DECENT IN THEIR APPAREL; their HOUSES AND
PLANTATIONS SUITABLE IN NEATNESS AND CONTRIVANCE. They are all of the
same opinion with the church of Geneva,** there being no difference
among them concerning the punctilios of their Christian faith; WHICH
UNION HATH PROPAGATED A HAPPY AND DELIGHTFUL CONCORD IN ALL OTHER
MATTERS THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE NEIGHBORHOOD; LIVING AMONGST THEMSELVES AS
ONE TRIBE OR KINDRED, EVERY ONE MAKING IT HIS BUSINESS TO BE ASSISTANT
TO THE WANTS OF HIS COUNTRYMEN, PRESERVING HIS ESTATE AND REPUTATION
WITH THE SAME EXACTNESS AND CONCERN AS HE DOES HIS OWN: ALL SEEMING TO
SHARE IN THE MISFORTUNES, AND REJOICE AT THE ADVANCE AND RISE OF THEIR
BRETHREN." Lawson fitly concludes his account of the settlers upon
the Santee, by describing them as "a very kind, loving, and affable
people"--a character which it has been the happy solicitude of their
descendants to maintain to the present day.***
* Lawson's "Journal of a Thousand Miles' Travel among the
Indians, from South to North Carolina", is a work equally
rare and interesting. This unfortunate man fell a victim to
his official duties. He was confounded, by the savages, with
the government which he represented, and sacrificed to their
fury, under the charge of depriving them, by his surveys, of
their land. He was made captive with the Baron de
Graffenreid. The latter escaped, but Lawson was subjected
to the fire-torture.
** "The inhabitants [of St. James, otherwise French Santee]
petitioned the Assembly, in 1706, to have their settlement
made a parish; and, at the same time, expressed their desire
of being united to the Church of England, whose doctrines
and discipline they professed highly to esteem. The
Assembly passed an act, April 9, 1706, to erect the French
settlement of Santee into a parish."--'Dalcho's Historical
Account', ch. 9, p. 295.
*** See "A new Voyage to Carolina, containing the exact
description and natural history of that country, &c.; and a
journey of a thousand miles, travelled through several
nations of Indians. By John Lawson, Gent., Surveyor-General
of North Carolina. London, 1709."--
A more delightful picture than this of Mr. Lawson, could not well be
drawn by the social perfectionist. The rational beauty of the voluntary
system could not find a happier illustration; and, duly impressed with
its loveliness, we shall cease to wonder at the instances of excellence,
equally frequent and admirable, which rose up among this little group of
exiles, to the good fortune of the country which gave them shelter,
and in attestation of their own virtues. But this happy result was due
entirely to their training. It would be wonderful, indeed, if such an
education, toil and watch, patient endurance of sickness and suffering,
sustained only by sympathy with one another and a humble reliance upon
divine mercy, should not produce many perfect characters--men like
Francis Marion, the beautiful symmetry of whose moral structure leaves
us nothing to regret in the analysis of his life. Uncompromising in
the cause of truth, stern in the prosecution of his duties, hardy
and fearless as the soldier, he was yet, in peace, equally gentle
and compassionate, pleased to be merciful, glad and ready to forgive,
sweetly patient of mood, and distinguished throughout by such prominent
virtues, that, while always sure of the affections of followers and
comrades, he was not less secure in the unforced confidence of his
enemies, among whom his integrity and mercy were proverbial. By their
fruits, indeed, shall we know this community, the history of which
furnishes as fine a commentary upon the benefit of good social training
for the young--example and precept happily keeping concert with the
ordinary necessities and performances of life, the one supported by the
manliest courage, the other guided by the noblest principle--as any upon
record.*
* It is one of the qualifications of the delight which an
historian feels while engaged in the details of those
grateful episodes which frequently reward his progress
through musty chronicles, to find himself suddenly arrested
in his narrative by some of those rude interruptions by
which violence and injustice disfigure so frequently, in the
march of history, the beauty of its portraits. One of these
occurs to us in this connection. Our Huguenot settlers on
the Santee were not long suffered to pursue a career of
unbroken prosperity. The very fact that they prospered--
that, in the language of Mr. Lawson, "they outstript our
English," when placed in like circumstances--that they were
no longer desolate and dependent, and had grown vigorous,
and perhaps wanton, in the smiles of fortune--was quite
enough to re-awaken in the bosoms of "our English" the
ancient national grudge upon which they had so often fed
before. The prejudices and hostilities which had prevailed
for centuries between their respective nations, constituted
no small part of the moral stock which the latter had
brought with them into the wilderness. This feeling was
farther heightened, at least maintained, by the fact that
France and England had contrived to continue their old
warfare in the New World; and, while French emissaries were
busy in the back parts of the colony, stimulating the Creeks
and Cherokees to hostility, it was perhaps natural enough
that the English, whose frontiers were continually ravaged
in consequence, should find it easy to confound the "parley-
vous", their enemies, with those, their neighbors, who spoke
the same unpopular language. It is not improbable, on the
other hand, that the Huguenot settlers were a little too
exclusive, a little too tenacious of their peculiar habits,
manners, and language. They did not suffer themselves to
assimilate with their neighbors; but, maintaining the policy
by which they had colonized in a body, had been a little too
anxious to preserve themselves as a singular and separate
people. In this respect they were not unlike the English
puritans, in whom and their descendants, this passion for
homogeneousness has always been thought a sort of merit,
appealing very much to their self-esteem and pride. In the
case of the French colonists, whether the fault was theirs
or not, the evil results of being, or making themselves, a
separate people, were soon perceptible. They were subjected
to various political and social disabilities, and so odious
had they become to their British neighbors, that John
Archdale, one of the proprietors, a man like Wm. Penn (and
by Grahame, the historian, pronounced very far his
superior), equally beloved by all parties, as a man just and
fearless, was, when Governor of the colony, compelled to
deny them representation in the colonial Assembly, under
penalty of making invalid all his attempts at proper
government. Under this humiliating disability the Huguenots
lived and labored for a considerable period, until the
propriety of their lives, the purity of their virtues, and
their frequently-tried fidelity in the cause of the country,
forced the majority to be just. An act, passed in 1696,
making all aliens, THEN inhabitants, free--enabling them to
hold lands and to claim the same as heirs--according
liberty of conscience to all Christians (except Papists),
&c.--placed our refugees on a footing of equality with the
rest of the inhabitants, and put an end to the old
hostilities between them.--
When our traveller turned his back upon this "kind, loving, and affable
people," to pursue his journey into North Carolina, his first forward
step was into a howling wilderness. The Santee settlement, though but
forty miles distant from Charleston, was a frontier--all beyond was
waste, thicket and forest, filled with unknown and fearful animals, and
"sliding reptiles of the ground,
Startlingly beautiful,"--
which the footstep of man dreaded to disturb. Of the wild beasts by
which it was tenanted, a single further extract from the journal of
Mr. Lawson will give us a sufficient and striking idea. He has left
the Santee settlements but a single day--probably not more than
fifteen miles. His Indian companion has made for his supper a bountiful
provision, having killed three fat turkeys in the space of half an hour.
"When we were all asleep," says our traveller, "in the beginning of the
night, we were awakened with the dismallest and most hideous noise that
ever pierced my ears. This sudden surprisal incapacitated us of guessing
what this threatening noise might proceed from; but our Indian pilot
(who knew these parts very well) acquainted us that it was customary to
hear such musick along that swamp-side, there being endless numbers
of panthers, tygers, wolves, and other beasts of prey, which take this
swamp for their abode in the day, coming in whole droves to hunt the
deer in the night, making this frightful ditty till day appears, then
all is still as in other places." (Page 26.)
Less noisy, except in battle, but even more fearful, were the half-human
possessors of the same regions, the savages, who, at that period, in
almost countless tribes or families, hovered around the habitations
of the European. Always restless, commonly treacherous, warring or
preparing for war, the red men required of the white borderer the
vigilance of an instinct which was never to be allowed repose. This
furnished an additional school for the moral and physical training of
our young Huguenots. In this school, without question, the swamp and
forest partisans of a future day took some of their first and
most valuable lessons in war. Here they learned to be watchful and
circumspect, cool in danger, steady in advance, heedful of every
movement of the foe, and--which is of the very last importance in such
a country and in such a warfare as it indicates--happily dextrous in
emergencies to seize upon the momentary casualty, the sudden chance--to
convert the most trivial circumstance, the most ordinary agent, into
a means of extrication or offence. It was in this last respect
particularly, in being quick to see, and prompt to avail themselves of
the happy chance or instrument, that the partisans of the revolution
in the southern colonies, under Marion and others, asserted their vast
superiority over the invader, and maintained their ground, and obtained
their final triumph, in spite of every inequality of arms and numbers.
Chapter 2.
The Marion Family--Birth of Francis Marion--His Youth--
Shipwreck.
We have dwelt upon the Huguenot Settlement in Carolina, somewhat more
largely than our immediate subject would seem to require. Our apology
must be found in the obvious importance and beauty of the fact, could
this be shown, that the character of Francis Marion was in truth a
remarkable illustration, in all its parts, of the moral nature which
prevailed in this little colony of exiles: that, from the harmony
existing among them, their purity of conduct, propriety of sentiment,
the modesty of their deportment and the firmness of their virtues,
he most naturally drew all the components of his own. His hardihood,
elasticity, great courage and admirable dexterity in war, were also the
natural results of their frontier position. We do not pretend that his
acquisitions were at all peculiar to himself. On the contrary, we take
for granted, that every distinguished person will, in some considerable
degree, betray in his own mind and conduct, the most striking of those
characteristics, which mark the community in which he has had his early
training; that his actions will, in great measure, declare what sort
of moral qualities have been set before his eyes, not so much by his
immediate family, as by the society at large in which he lives; that he
will represent that society rather than his immediate family, as it
is the nature of superior minds to rush out of the narrow circles of
domestic life; and that his whole after-performances, even where he may
appear in the garb and guise of the reformer, will indicate in
numerous vital respects, the tastes and temper of the very people whose
alteration and improvement he seeks. The memoir upon which we are about
to enter, will, we apprehend, justify the preliminary chapter which
has been given to the history of the Huguenots upon the Santee. Gabriel
Marion, the grandfather of our subject, was one of those who left France
in 1685. His son, named after himself, married Charlotte Cordes, by
whom he had seven children, five of whom were sons and two daughters.*
Francis Marion was the last. He was born at Winyah, near Georgetown,
South Carolina, in 1732; a remarkable year, as, in a sister colony
(we are not able to say how nearly at the same time), it gave birth
to GEORGE WASHINGTON. This coincidence, which otherwise it might seem
impertinent to notice here, derives some importance from the fact that
it does not stand alone, but is rendered impressive by others, to be
shown as we proceed; not to speak of the striking moral resemblances,
which it will be no disparagement to the fame of the great Virginian to
trace between the two.
* Weems speaks of six children only, naming all the sons and
one of the daughters. Of her, he frankly says, "I have
never heard what became; but for his four brothers, I am
happy to state, that though not formidable as soldiers, they
were very amiable as citizens." James tells us of two
daughters, not naming either, but describing them as
"grandmothers of the families of the Mitchells, of
Georgetown, and of the Dwights, formerly of the same place,
but now of St. Stephen's parish." Such particularity might
be presumed to settle the question.--
The infancy of Marion was unpromising. At birth he was puny and
diminutive in a remarkable degree. Weems, in his peculiar fashion,
writes, "I have it from good authority, that this great soldier, at
his birth, was not larger than a New England lobster, and might easily
enough have been put into a quart pot." It was certainly as little
supposed that he should ever live to manhood, as that he should then
become a hero. But, by the time that he had reached his twelfth year,
his constitution underwent a change. His health became good. The bracing
exercises and hardy employments of country life invigorated his frame,
and with this improvement brought with it a rare increase of energy.
He grew restless and impatient. The tendency of his mind, which was so
largely developed in the partisan exercises of after years, now began to
exhibit itself. Under this impulse he conceived a dislike to the staid
and monotonous habits of rural life, and resolved upon seafaring as
a vocation. Such, it may be remarked, was also the early passion of
Washington; a passion rather uncommon in the history of a southern
farmer's boy. In the case of Washington the desire was only overcome at
the solicitations of his mother. The mother of Marion, in like manner,
strove to dissuade her son from this early inclination. She did not
succeed, however, and when scarcely sixteen, he embarked in a small
vessel for the West Indies. The particulars of this voyage, with the
exception of the mode in which it terminated, have eluded our inquiry.
We have looked for the details in vain. The name of the vessel, the
captain, the port she sailed from, have equally escaped our search. To
the wanton destruction of private and public records by the British,
together with the heedless improvidence of heads of families in the
South, we owe this poverty of historical resource. The voyage must have
been taken somewhere about the year 1747-8. At that period there were
perils of the sea to which the mariner is not often exposed at the
present day. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico, in particular, were
covered with pirates. The rich produce of New Spain, the West Indies,
and the Southern Colonies of the English, were rare temptations. The
privateers of Spain and France, a sort of legalized pirates, hung about
the ports of Carolina, frequently subjecting them to a condition of
blockade, and sometimes to forced contributions. In the occasional
absence of the British armed vessels appointed for the protection of
these ports, the more enterprising and spirited among their citizens
frequently fitted out their own cruisers, drawing them, for this
purpose, from the merchant service; manning them in person, and
requiting themselves for their losses of merchandise by the occasional
capture of some richly laden galleon from New Spain. No doubt the
imagination of young Marion was fired by hearing of these exploits.
The sensation produced in the community, by the injuries done to its
commerce, in all probability gave the direction to his already excited
and restless disposition. It does not appear, however, that Marion's
first and only voyage was made in an armed vessel. Such, we may well
suppose, would have been his desire; but the period when he set forth to
procure service upon the seas, may not have been auspicious. He may have
reached the seaport a moment too soon or too late, and the opportunities
of this kind were necessarily infrequent in a small and frontier city,
whose commerce lay mostly in the hands of strangers. His small size
and puny appearance must have operated very much against his hopes of
obtaining employment in a service which particularly calls for manhood
and muscle. In what capacity, or in what sort of vessel he obtained a
berth, we are left wholly to conjecture. Choosing the sea as a vocation,
and laudably resolved on acquiring a proper knowledge of his business
(as from what we know of his character, we may suppose was the case),
he most probably went before the mast. His first and only voyage was
unfortunate. The ship in which he sailed was no doubt equally frail and
small. She foundered at sea, whether going or returning is not said;
in consequence, we are told, of injuries received from the stroke of
a whale, of the thornback species. So suddenly did she sink, that her
crew, only six in number, had barely time to save themselves. They
escaped to the jolly boat, saving nothing but their lives. They took
with them neither water nor provisions; and for six days, hopeless of
succor, they lay tossing to and fro, upon the bald and cheerless ocean.
A dog, which swam to them from the sinking vessel, was sacrificed to
their hunger. His raw flesh was their only food, his blood their only
drink, during this distressing period. Two of their number perished
miserably.* The survivors, on the seventh day, were found and taken up
by a passing vessel, nourished carefully and finally restored to their
homes.
* Weems represents the captain and mate, as throwing
themselves overboard in a state of phrenzy, and there is
nothing improbable or unnatural in the statement. Privation
of food, the use of salt water, and exposure in an open boat
to a burning sun, might very well produce such an effect.
The only difficulty, however, consists in the simple fact
that we have no other authority for the statement. James is
silent on the point, and contents himself with simply
stating the death of two of the crew. Weems, however, adds
that of two others, whose end receives, as usual, quite a
dramatic finish at his hands. He suffers none to live but
"little Marion", and, in the exuberance of his imagination,
actually goes so far as to describe the particular food,
"chocolate and turtle broth", by which the youthful hero is
recruited and recovered. By this he designs to show, more
emphatically, the immediate interposition, in his behalf, of
an especial providence. The truth is, that any attempt at
details where so little is known to have been preserved,
must necessarily, of itself, subject to doubt any narrative
not fortified by the most conclusive evidence. Unfortunately
for the reverend historian, his known eccentricities as a
writer, and fondness for hyperbole, must always deprive his
books--though remarkably useful and interesting to the
young--of any authority which might be claimed for them as
histories. As fictions from history, lively and romantic,
they are certainly very astonishing performances; have
amused and benefited thousands, and entitle the writer to a
rank, in a peculiar walk of letters, which has not yet been
assigned him.--
Francis Marion was one of these survivors. The puny boy lived through
the terrors and sufferings under which the strong men perished. So
intense were their sufferings, so terrible the trial, that it will not
greatly task the imagination to recognize in the preservation of the
youth,--looking to his future usefulness--the agency of a special
providence. The boy was preserved for other times and fortunes; and,
in returning to his mother, was perhaps better prepared to heed her
entreaties that he should abandon all idea of an element, from which
his escape had been so hazardous and narrow. It was well for himself
and country that he did so. It can scarcely be conjectured that his
achievements on the sea would have been half so fortunate, or half so
honorable to himself and country, as those which are now coupled with
his name.
Returning to his home and parents, young Marion sunk once more into the
humble condition of the farmer. His health and strength had continued to
improve. His adventures by sea had served, seemingly, to complete that
change for the better, in his physical man, which had been so happily
begun on land; and, subduing his roving inclinations, we hear of him
only, in a period of ten years, as a tiller of the earth. In this
vocation he betrayed that diligent attention to his duties, that patient
hardihood, and calm, equable temper, which distinguished his deportment
in every part of his career. He is represented as equally industrious
and successful as a farmer. The resources of his family seem to have
been very moderate. There were several children, and before Francis
was yet twenty-five years of age, he lost his father. In 1758 he was
planting with his mother and brother Gabriel, near Friersons Lock on the
Santee Canal. In 1759 they separated. Gabriel removed to Belle Isle--the
place where the mortal remains of Francis Marion now repose--while the
latter settled at a place called Pond Bluff in the Parish of St. John.*
This place he continued to hold during life. It is still pointed out to
the traveller as Marion's plantation, and is the more remarkable, as it
lies within cannon shot of the battle ground of Eutaw, which his valor
and conduct contributed to render so justly famous in the history of his
native state. During this long period of repose--the interval between
his shipwreck, and removal to Pond Bluff,--we are only left to
conjecture his employments. Beyond his agricultural labors, we may
suppose that his chief tasks were the cultivation of his mind, by close
application to those studies which, in the condition of the country,
sparsely settled, and without teachers, were usually very inadequately
urged. It does not appear that his acquisitions in this respect were
more valuable than could be afforded at the present day by the simplest
grammar-school of the country. Here again we may trace the resemblance
between his career and that of Washington. Equally denied the advantages
of education, they equally drew from the great mother-sources of
nature. Thrown upon their own thoughts, taught by observation and
experience--the same results of character,--firmness, temperance, good
sense, sagacious foresight, and deliberate prudence--became conspicuous
in the conduct and career of both. In the fortunes of neither--in the
several tasks allotted to them,--in their various situations,--did their
deficiencies of education appear to qualify their successes, or diminish
the respect and admiration of those around them,--a singular fact, as
indicative equally of the modesty, the good sense, and the superior
intrinsic worth of both of these distinguished persons. In the case
of Marion, his want of education neither lessened his energies, his
confidence in himself, nor baffled any of his natural endowments. On the
contrary, it left his talents free to their natural direction. These, it
is probable, were never of a kind to derive, or to need, many advantages
from a very superior or scientific education. His mind was rather
practical than subtile--his genius prompted him to action, rather than
to study,--and the condition and necessities of the country, calling for
the former rather than the latter character, readily reconciled him to a
deficiency the importance of which he did not feel.
* Pond Bluff now lies at the bottom of Lake Marion.
--A.L., 1996.
Chapter 3.
Marion a Farmer--Volunteers in the Cherokee Campaign.
From the readiness with which young Marion yielded himself to the
entreaties of his mother, and resumed the occupations of agriculture,
and from the quiet and persevering industry with which he pursued them
for a period of nearly or quite ten years, it might be supposed that
the impatience and restlessness of mood, which had formerly led him
to revolt at the staid drudgery of rural life, had been entirely
extinguished in his bosom. But such was not the case. It was only
subdued, and slumbering for a season, ready to awaken at the first
opportunity, with all the vigor and freshness of a favorite passion.
That opportunity was at hand. Events were in progress which were to
bring into the field, and prepare by the very best sort of training, for
the most noble trials, the great military genius of the Partisan. At the
opening of the year 1759, the colony of South Carolina was on the eve
of an Indian war. The whole frontier of the Southern Provinces,
from Pennsylvania to Georgia, was threatened by the savages, and the
scalping-knife had already begun its bloody work upon the weak and
unsuspecting borderers. The French had been conquered upon the Ohio.
Forts Frontenac and Duquesne had fallen. British and Provincial valor,
aided by strong bodies of Cherokee warriors, had everywhere placed the
flag of Britain above the fortresses of France. With its elevation, the
Indian allies of the French sent in their adhesion to the conquerors;
and, their work at an end, the Cherokee auxiliaries of Britain prepared
to return to their homes, covered with their savage trophies, and
adequately rewarded for their services. It happened, unfortunately,
that, while passing along the frontiers of Virginia, the Cherokees, many
of whom had lost their horses during the campaign, supplied themselves
rather unscrupulously from the pastures of the colonists. With
inconsiderate anger, the Virginians, forgetting the late valuable
services of the savages, rose upon their footsteps, slew twelve or
fourteen of their warriors, and made prisoners of as many more. This
rash and ill-advised severity aroused the nation. The young warriors
flew to arms, and pouring their active hordes upon the frontier
settlements, proceeded to the work of slaughter, without pausing to
discriminate between the offending and the innocent. The emergency was
pressing, and Governor Lyttleton, of South Carolina, called out the
militia of the province. They were required to rendezvous at the
Congarees, about one hundred and forty miles from Charleston. To this
rendezvous Francis Marion repaired, in a troop of provincial cavalry
commanded by one of his brothers.* But he was not yet to flesh his
maiden valor upon the enemy. The prompt preparation of the Carolinians
had somewhat lessened the appetite of the savages for war. Perhaps their
own preparations were not yet sufficiently complete to make them hopeful
of its issue. The young warriors were recalled from the frontiers, and
a deputation of thirty-two chiefs set out for Charleston, in order to
propitiate the anger of the whites, and arrest the threatened invasion
of their country. Whether they were sincere in their professions, or
simply came for the purpose of deluding and disarming the Carolinians,
is a question with the historians. It is certain that Governor Lyttleton
doubted their sincerity, refused to listen to their explanations, and,
carrying them along with him, rather as hostages than as commissioners
in sacred trust, he proceeded to meet the main body of his army, already
assembled at the Congarees. The treatment to which they were thus
subjected, filled the Cherokee deputies with indignation, which, with
the usual artifice of the Indian, they yet contrived to suppress. But
another indiscreet proceeding of the Governor added to the passion which
they felt, and soon baffled all their powers of concealment. In resuming
the march for the nation, he put them into formal custody, placed
a captain's guard over them, and in this manner hurried them to the
frontiers. Whatever may have been the merits of this movement as a mere
military precaution, it was of very bad policy in a civil point of view.
It not only degraded the Indian chiefs in their own, but in the eyes of
their people. His captives deeply and openly resented this indignity
and breach of faith; and, brooding in sullen ferocity over the disgrace
which they suffered, meditated in silence those schemes of vengeance
which they subsequently brought to a fearful maturity. But though thus
impetuous and imprudent, and though pressing forward as if with the most
determined purposes, Lyttleton was in no mood for war. His policy seems
to have contemplated nothing further than the alarm of the Indians.
Neither party was exactly ripe for the final issue. The Cherokees needed
time for preparation, and the Governor, with an army ill disciplined and
imperfectly armed, found it politic, when on the very confines of
the enemy's country, to do that which he might very well have done
in Charleston--listen to terms of accommodation. Having sent for
Attakullakullah, the wise man of the nation, who had always been the
staunch friend of the whites, he made his complaints, and declared his
readiness for peace;--demanding, however, as the only condition on
which it could be granted, that twenty-four men of the nation should be
delivered to him, to be disposed of as he should think proper, by death
or otherwise, as an atonement for that number of Carolinians, massacred
in the late foray of the savages. A treaty was effected, but with some
difficulty, on these terms. Compliance with this requisition was not
so easy, however, on the part of the Cherokee chiefs. The moment it was
understood, the great body of their people fled to the mountains,
and the number of hostages could be secured only by the detention
of twenty-two of those chiefs already in the Governor's custody. The
captives were placed, for safe keeping, at the frontier fort of Prince
George.
* Judge James' Life of Marion, p. 17.--
But the natural sense of the savage is not inferior to that by which
the laws of the civilized are prescribed, in their dealings with one
another. The treaty thus extorted from their leaders, while in a state
of duress, was disregarded by the great body of the nation. They watched
their opportunity, and, scarcely had the Governor disbanded his forces,
when the war-whoop resounded from the frontiers.
Fort Prince George was one of the most remote of a chain of military
posts by which the intercourse was maintained between the several white
settlements of the seaboard and the interior. It stood on the banks of
the Isundiga River, about three hundred miles from Charleston, within
gunshot of the Indian town of Keowee. This post, to which the Cherokee
hostages were carried, was defended by cannon, and maintained by a small
force under Colonel Cotymore. It was in this neighborhood, and, as it
were in defiance of this force, that the war was begun. Fourteen whites
were massacred at a blow, within a mile of this station. This was
followed up by a stratagem, by which Occonostota, one of the principal
warriors, aimed to obtain possession of the fort. Pretending to have
something of importance to communicate to the commander, he dispatched
a woman who had usually obtained access to the station, to solicit an
interview with him. This was to take place on the banks of the river.
Meanwhile the savage prepared his ambush. Cotymore imprudently assented
to the meeting, and, attended by Lieutenants Bell and Foster, walked
down towards the river, from the opposite side of which Occonostota
addressed him. While they spoke, the Indian was seen to wave a bridle
over his head. This was the signal agreed upon with the ambushed
warriors. At this signal they rose and poured in their fire. Cotymore
was slain on the spot, and his companions wounded. But the savages
failed to get possession of the fort. Suspecting a concerted movement
among the hostages, by which they would cooperate with the assailing foe
without, the officer in command of the fort gave orders to secure them
with irons. The attempt to obey these orders ended in a bloody tragedy.
The Indians resisted with arms, and, stabbing three of the soldiers, so
exasperated the rest, already excited by the murder of their captain,
that they fell upon the miserable wretches and butchered them to a man.
This unhappy event, completing what the indiscreet severities of
Governor Lyttleton had begun, united the whole nation of Cherokees in
war. There had been a strong party favorable to peace, and friendly to
the whites. This unfortunate proceeding involved the loss of this party.
The hostages were among their chief men, and scarcely a family in the
nation but lost a relative or friend in their massacre. They were now
unanimous for battle; and, numerous parties rushing simultaneously down
upon the frontiers, baffled the courage and prevented the flight of the
fugitives. They fell without distinction upon men, women and children.
"Such as fled to the woods and escaped the scalping-knife, perished
of hunger.... Every day brought fresh accounts to the capital of their
ravages, murders and desolations. But while the back settlers looked to
their governor for relief, the small-pox raged to such a degree in
town that few of the militia could be prevailed upon to leave their
distressed families to serve the public."* Lyttleton, meanwhile, by whom
all the mischief was occasioned, was made Governor of Jamaica, and the
charge of the colony devolved on William Bull, a native--"a man of
great integrity and erudition." In the almost hopeless condition of the
province, her sisters, North Carolina and Virginia, raised seven troops
of rangers for the frontiers; and Colonel Montgomery, afterwards Earl of
Eglintoun, was dispatched from Canada, with a battalion of Highlanders
and four companies of Royal Scots. Before the end of April, 1760, the
camp of rendezvous for a new invasion of the Cherokee territories was
established at Monk's Corner. Meanwhile, the health of Carolina had
undergone some improvement, and the gentlemen of the country were not
idle. They turned out in force as volunteers, and under the spirited
direction of Governor Bull, the whole disposable force of the province
was put in requisition. Among these, it is not so sure, but is believed,
that Francis Marion once more made his appearance as a volunteer. From
what we know of his character, his temperament, and that unsatisfied
craving which he seems to have shown from the beginning for such
excitements, it is reasonable to infer his presence in the field. But,
though asserted by tradition, we confess that the records are silent
on the subject. Unsatisfactory as at that period they generally are, on
this point they are particularly so; and but that his share in this
war, before its final conclusion, was not only unquestionable but
conspicuous, we should pass over the campaign of Montgomery, with a
simple reference to its results.
* Hewatt's Hist. S.C.--
The Cherokees, meanwhile, were not unobservant of the preparations and
approaches of the Carolinians. They gathered themselves up for defence,
and in silence matured their half civilized, half primitive modes of
warfare. This people, at the period of which we write, were a people of
very superior endowments and resources to any of the neighboring savage
nations. If less warlike, in the simple sense of the word, than their
rivals the Creeks, they were really more to be feared, as it was in
consequence of their superior civilisation that they had lost some
of their brute ferocity. If they were less reckless, they were better
skilled; if less frantic in their fury, they coupled it with a wary
vindictiveness which rendered the blow more fatal when it fell. The
advances which they had made in civilisation had naturally increased
their numbers; while the novel tastes by which their wandering habits
were diminished, had necessarily added to their love of country, in
adding to the resources and improvements by which its comforts and
delights were increased. Thus, neither degraded by the lowest condition
in which we find the human animal, nor enervated by the superior
luxuries to which he may attain, the Cherokee was perhaps at this time
in possession of his greatest vigor; not very remote, in his moral and
physical condition, from the Roman when he overcame his Etrurian and
Sabine neighbors. The Cherokees occupied a country equally broad and
beautiful. It lay in fertile valleys, green meadows, sunny slopes, and
mighty forests, along the sides of lofty summits, that circled their
extensive territory with natural fortresses of giant grandeur. Spreading
from the Broad, or Cherokee river, beyond the Tennessee and the
Savannah, it comprised every variety of soil and surface, and while
adapted in a high degree to the hands of the agriculturist, seemed
almost as easily made secure against the footsteps of invasion. Its
apparent securities had made them insolent. Their mountain recesses had
never known the presence of this foe. Their fruits and fields, their
villages and towns, with the exception of a district that lay upon the
Atlantic slopes, were generally fenced in, and admirably protected,
by wild and rugged masses of rocky mountains, natural defences,
impenetrable, unless through certain passes which a few determined
hearts might easily make good against twenty times their number. But
the numerical force of this great aboriginal people, seemed of itself
sufficiently strong to promise security to their country. At the time
of Montgomery's invasion they had no less than sixty-four towns and
villages. In an emergency, they could send six thousand warriors
into the field. Many of these were armed with the weapons of European
warfare--were accustomed to that warfare, and were thus doubly prepared
to encounter the enemy in whose ranks they had received their
best military lessons. Such a force very far exceeded that of the
Carolinians. Mustering but two thousand men, Col. Montgomery found it
advisable to urge his march upon the nation with equal celerity and
caution. Having reached a place called Twelve-mile River, within twenty
miles of the Indian town of Estatoee, he advanced by night upon it,
secretly, and with a view to its surprise. In his march, surrounding the
town of Little Keowee, not a warrior of the Cherokees escaped the sword.
His success was less complete at Estatoee. The Indians, apprised of his
approach, with few exceptions, succeeded in making their escape; but the
town, consisting of more than two hundred houses, and well stored with
corn, hogs, poultry and ammunition, perished in the flames. Shugaw Town
and every other settlement in the "Lower Nation", shared the same
fate. The lightning-like rapidity of the march had taken the savages
everywhere, in this part of the country, by surprise. They fled rather
than fought, and while they lost everything in the shape of property,
but few of them were slain. They sought for shelter among their more
numerous and better protected brethren of the mountains; a people
neither so easily approached, nor so easily overcome.
Montgomery, having finished this part of his work so successfully,
hurried on to the relief of Fort Prince George, which, from the time
when their Chiefs were so cruelly butchered within its walls, had
been closely invested by a formidable force of Cherokees. The fort
was relieved. The Indians fled at his approach; and, thinking that the
severe chastisement which he had inflicted upon them, had inclined their
hearts to peace, the General of the Carolinians paused in his progress,
to give them an opportunity to sue for it, as the former friends and
allies of the English. But he had mistaken the stubborn nature of his
foe. They were not sufficiently humbled, and it was resolved to march
upon the "middle settlements". To this task, that which had been
performed was comparatively easy. They were now to enter upon a
different country, where the Indians were better prepared for them--nay,
where they HAD prepared for them,--in all probability, to the neglect of
the lower towns. Toilsome and full of peril was this march. Dismal and
dense was the wilderness which they were now to penetrate. Rugged paths,
narrow passes, gloomy thickets and dark ravines, encountered them
in their hourly progress, calling for constant vigilance and the
maintenance of all their courage. Rivers, fordable in unfrequent
places and overlooked by precipitous banks on either side, crowned most
commonly by dense and intricate masses of forest, through which and
without a guide, our little army was compelled to pass,--presented
opportunities for frequent ambush and attack, in which, very inferior
forces, if properly commanded, might, with little danger to themselves,
overwhelm and utterly destroy an advancing enemy. It was in such a
region that the Cherokees made their first and formidable stand. Within
five miles of Etchoee, the nearest town of the middle settlements, the
army of Montgomery approached a low valley, clothed with a thicket
so dense that the soldiers could scarcely discern objects three paces
ahead. Through this thicket ran a muddy river, enclosed between steep
banks of clay. This passage, where but few men could act in unison, was
that through which it became necessary that the army should proceed.
It was the very spot, which, over all others, a sagacious warrior
would choose in which to place an ambush, or meet a superior assailant.
Montgomery knew his enemy, and prepared for the encounter. Captain
Morrison, commanding a company of rangers, native marksmen and well
acquainted with the forest--was sent forward to scour the thicket. His
advance was the signal for battle. Scarcely had he entered upon the
dismal passage when the savages rose from their hiding-places and poured
in a severe fire. Morrison, with several of his men, perished at
the first discharge. They were sustained by the light Infantry and
Grenadiers, who boldly advanced upon the wood in the face of the
invisible foe. A heavy fire followed on both sides, the Cherokees, each
with his eye upon his man, the Carolinians aiming at the flash of the
enemy's guns. The pass was disputed by the savages with a degree of
conduct and courage, which left the issue doubtful. The necessity was
apparent for extraordinary effort. The Royal Scots, who were in the
rear, were now pushed forward to take possession of a rising ground on
the right, while the Highlanders were marched forward to the immediate
support of the Infantry and Grenadiers. This movement had the effect of
bringing the enemy into close action. The bayonet stirred and laid
bare the thicket. The woods resounded with the shouts and yells of
the Cherokees, but they no longer fell with terror upon the ear of
the whites. They had grown familiar. The savages yielded slowly as the
bayonet advanced. Suffering severely as they fled, they yet displayed
the native obstinacy of their race,--turning upon the pursuer when they
could, availing themselves of tree or thicket to retard, by shot or
stroke, the assailants; and, even in flight, only so far keeping ahead
of the bayonet as to avoid its stroke. As he beheld this, Montgomery
changed the head of his army, and advanced upon the town of Etchoee,
which it had been their purpose to defend, and from which they now
strove to divert him. This movement alarmed them for their wives and
children. Their retreat became a flight; and, satisfied with having
inflicted upon them this measure of punishment, the British General
prepared to march back to Fort Prince George.
This decision was the result of his exigencies. The situation of his
army was neither a safe nor an agreeable one. The victory was with
the Carolinians, yet the affair was very far from decisive in its
consequences. The enemy had only retired from one advantageous position
to another. They waited his approach only to renew a conflict in which
even victory might be without its fruits. To gain a battle, unless a
final one, was, with a force so small as his, a matter of very doubtful
advantage. He was already encumbered with his wounded, to furnish horses
for whom, he was compelled to discard, and to destroy, a large quantity
of the provisions necessary for the army. What remained was measured
with a nice reference to their absolute wants on the return march to
Prince George. Under these suggestions of prudence the retreat was
begun. It was conducted with admirable regularity. The Cherokees,
meanwhile, hung upon the retiring footsteps of the invaders, annoying
them to the utmost of their power. Sixty miles of mountainous country
were traversed in this manner, and under various hardships, with a
skill and intrepidity which confer the highest credit upon the English
captain. A large train of wounded was brought to the frontier without
the loss of a man.
We have admitted an uncertainty as to the presence of Marion in this
campaign. It would be impertinent and idle, therefore, to speculate upon
his performances, or the share which he might have taken in its events.
Tradition simply assures us that he distinguished himself. That, if
present, he did his duty, we have no question; and, enduring with
becoming resolution the worst severities of the march, proved himself
possessed of the first great requisite for soldiership in Indian
warfare.
Chapter 4.
Cherokee War continues--Marion leads the Forlorn Hope at
the Battle of Etchoee.
The Cherokees were very far from being subdued or satisfied. The snake
had been "scotched not killed", and stung, rather than humbled by the
chastisement they received, they prepared to assume the offensive with
sudden vigor. Concentrating a numerous force upon the distant garrison
of Fort Loudon, on the Tennessee river, they succeeded in reducing it by
famine. Here they took bloody revenge for the massacre of their chiefs
at Prince George. The garrison was butchered, after a formal surrender
upon terms which guaranteed them protection. This wholesale and
vindictive barbarity, while it betrayed the spirit which filled the
savages, had the still farther effect of encouraging them in a warfare
which had so far gratified very equally their appetites for blood and
booty. In addition to this natural effect, the result of their own wild
passions, there were other influences, from without, at work among them.
Certain French emissaries had crept into their towns and were busily
engaged, with bribes and arguments, in stimulating them to continued
warfare. This, in all probability, was the secret influence, which, over
all, kept them from listening, as well to their own fears, as to the
urgent suggestions of the British authorities, for peace. Hitherto, the
Cherokees had given no ear to the temptations of the French, whom they
considered a frivolous people, and whose professions of faith they were
very likely to have regarded with distrust. But the labors of their
emissaries at this juncture, harmonizing with the temper of the nation,
were necessarily more than usually successful. One of these emissaries,
Louis Latinac, an officer of considerable talent, proved an able
instigator to mischief. He persuaded them, against the better reason of
their older chiefs, to the rejection of every overture for peace. Their
successes at Fort Loudon were, perhaps, sufficient arguments for the
continuance of war, but there were others not less potent. The king of
France was now to be their ally in place of him of Great Britain. The
one "great father" was no less able than the other to minister to their
appetites and necessities. His arms and ammunition replaced those which
had been withdrawn by the latter; and we may suppose that the liberality
of the new allies was such as to admit of very favorable comparison
and contrast with that which they had experienced at the hands of
the British. Their very excesses in the war were favorable to its
continuance; as they might very well doubt the binding force of treaties
between parties, the bad faith of whom had been written so terribly
in blood. At a great meeting of the nation, at which Louis Latinac was
present, he, with something of their own manner, seizing suddenly upon a
hatchet, struck it violently into a block of wood, exclaiming, as he did
so, "Who is the warrior that will take this up for the king of France?"
Salouee, a young chief of Estatoee, instantly tore the weapon from the
tree. He declared himself for instant and continued war. "The spirits
of our slain brothers," was his cry, "call upon us to avenge their
massacre. He is a woman that dares not follow me!"
Such being the spirit of the savages, the Carolinians had no alternative
but to resume their arms. Col. Montgomery having gone to England, the
command devolved upon Colonel Grant, and the Highlanders were once more
ordered to the relief of the province. The Carolinians were now somewhat
better prepared to cooperate with their allies. A native regiment of
twelve hundred men was raised, and the command given to Col. Middleton,
a brave and accomplished provincial officer.
To this regiment Marion was attached, under the immediate command
of Moultrie. Many of his associates in this Cherokee war became
subsequently, like himself, distinguished in the war with Great Britain.
Among these may be mentioned the names of Moultrie,* Henry Laurens,
Andrew Pickens and Isaac Huger. These were all officers, even in that
early day, and Marion himself held a lieutenancy--some proof that,
however little we may know of the circumstances by which he secured the
confidence of his neighbors, he was already in full possession of it.
How much of the future acts and successes of these brave men was due
to the exercises and events of this Cherokee war, may reasonably
be conjectured by every reader who knows the value of a stern
apprenticeship to a hazardous profession. Its successive campaigns
against no inferior enemy, and under circumstances of peril and
privation of no common order, were such as must have afforded them
frequent opportunity of making themselves familiar equally with the
exigencies and responsibilities of command.
* Moultrie in his Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 223, would seem to
settle the question in the negative, whether Marion was or
was not in the preceding campaign. He says, "General Marion
and myself ENTERED THE FIELD OF MARS TOGETHER, in an
expedition against the Cherokee Indians, under the command
of Colonel James Grant, in 1761, when I had the honor to
command a light infantry company in a provincial regiment;
he was my first lieutenant. He was an active, brave and
hardy soldier, and an excellent partisan officer." This is
very far however from being conclusive, inasmuch as we have
seen that Marion 'entered the field of Mars' two years
before, under the command of his brother, in the first
campaign of Lyttleton against the Indians. This latter fact
is settled beyond all question.--
To the united forces of Colonels Grant and Middleton, were added a
certain number of Chickasaw and Catawba Indians; making a total of
twenty-six hundred men. This army reached Fort Prince George on the 29th
of May, 1761. On the 7th of June following, it took up the line of march
for the enemy's country. The advance was conducted with caution, but
without molestation, until it reached the place where Montgomery, in
the previous campaign, had encountered the Indians, near the town of
Etchoee. Here the Cherokees were again prepared to make a stand, and to
dispute a pass which, above all others, seemed to be admirably designed
by nature for the purposes of defence. Their position was not exactly
what it had been on the previous occasion, but its characteristic
advantages were the same. Hitherto, the Indians had shown considerable
judgment in the selection of their battle-grounds, and in the general
employment of their strength. This judgment they probably owed in
great part to their present adversaries. Quick in their instinct,
and surprisingly observant, they had soon learned the use of European
weapons. The various lessons of European tactics, the modes of attack
and defence, were, in their united struggles with the French, equally
open to their study and acquisition. They had not suffered these lessons
to escape them. But they probably owed something of their skill in the
present war to the active counsels of the French emissaries. The fact
is not recorded by the historian, but there is no reason to suppose that
the officers who counselled the war, would withhold themselves when the
opportunity offered, from giving directions in the field. The French
had frequently distinguished themselves, by leading on forces entirely
composed of Indians. The practice was common. Even at the defeat of
Braddock, the French troops bore but a small proportion to their Indian
allies. There is no reason to suppose that Louis Latinac was not present
at one or both of the bloody fields of Etchoee.
The provincial army marched in good order upon the suspected position.
The Indian auxiliaries, who were in the van, first discovered signs of
an enemy. The Cherokees were in possession of a hill, strongly posted,
and in considerable force, upon the right flank of the army. Finding
themselves discovered, they opened their fire upon the advanced guard,
and followed it up with a gallant charge. But the van being vigorously
and promptly supported, they were driven back, and resumed their
position upon the hill. Under this hill the line of march lay for a
considerable distance. To attempt, therefore, to continue the march
before dislodging the enemy in possession of it, would be to expose
the troops to a protracted fire, the more murderous, as it would be
delivered by a foe in a position of perfect security. The advanced guard
was ordered upon this duty, and from this body a forlorn-hope of thirty
men was chosen, to force the perilous entrance to the foe. The command
of this devoted corps was assigned to Francis Marion, still a lieutenant
under the command of Moultrie, in the provincial regiment of Middleton.
The ascent of the hill was by means of a gloomy defile, through which
the little band, headed gallantly by their leader, advanced with due
rapidity; a considerable body of the army moving forward at the same
time in support of the advance. Scarcely had the detachment penetrated
the defile, when the war-whoop gave the signal. The savages, still
concealed, poured in a deadly fire, by which no less than twenty-one of
this fated band were prostrated.* Fortunately their leader was not
among them. He seems, like Washington, to have been the special care
of Providence. The residue were only saved from destruction by the
proximity of the advance, whose hurried approach, while giving them
safety, brought on the main action. The battle was fought with great
carnage on both sides. The Cherokees were not only well posted, but
they were in great numbers. Repeatedly dislodged by the bayonet, they as
repeatedly returned to the attack; and, driven from one quarter, rallied
upon another, with a tenacious and unshaken valor becoming in men who
were defending the passes to the bosom of their country. From eight
in the morning until noon, the fight was continued, not only without
intermission, but seemingly without any decisive results on either side.
But, at length, the patient resolution of the whites prevailed; and,
about two o'clock in the day, the field was yielded by the reluctant
Cherokees to their superior foes. This victory determined the fate of
Etchoee, a town of considerable size, which was reduced to ashes.
* Weems, p. 21. Horry's MS. Memoir, p. 58.--
The result of this fierce engagement seems to have broken the spirit of
the nation. They had chosen the position of greatest strength to make
their stand, and brought to the struggle their best spirits and bravest
warriors. In the issue, they had shown, by their dogged and determined
valor, the great importance which it carried in their eyes. The day
once decided against them, they appeared to be equally without heart and
hope; they no longer appeared in arms--no longer offered defence--and
the army of the Carolinians marched through the heart of the nation,
searching its secret settlements, and everywhere inflicting the severest
penalties of war. The rest of the campaign was an easy progress, and
terrible was the retribution which it brought with it. No less than
fourteen of their towns, in the middle settlements, shared the fate of
Etchoee. Their granaries were yielded to the flames, their cornfields
ravaged, while the miserable fugitives, flying from the unsparing sword,
took refuge, with their almost starving families, among the barren
mountains, which could yield them little but security. A chastisement so
extreme was supposed to be necessary, in order to subdue for ever that
lively disposition for war, upon the smallest provocation, which, of
late years, the Cherokees had manifested but too frequently; but it may
be doubted whether the means which were employed for administering this
admonitory lesson, were of the most legitimate character. We must always
continue to doubt that humanity required the destruction of towns and
hamlets, whose miserable walls of clay and roofs of thatch could give
shelter to none but babes and sucklings--women with their young--those
who had never offended, and those who could not well offend--the
innocent victims to an authority which they never dared oppose. The
reckless destruction of their granaries--fields yet growing with
grain--necessarily exposed to the worst privations of famine only those
portions of the savage population who were least guilty. The warrior
and hunter could readily relieve himself from the gnawing necessities of
hunger. He could wander off to remote tribes, and, armed with rifle or
bow, could easily secure his game, sufficient for his own wants, from
the contiguous forest. But these were resources inaccessible to the
weak, the old, the timid, and the imbecile. Surely, it was a cruel
measure of war, and if necessary to the safety of the whites, renders
still more criminal the wanton excesses of the latter, by which it was
originally provoked. It is pleasing to be able to show that Marion felt,
in this matter, as became that rare humanity which was one of the most
remarkable and lovely traits in his character,--the more remarkable,
indeed, as shining out among endowments which, in particular, designated
him for a military life--a life which is supposed to need for its
stimulus so much that is sanguinary, if not brutal, in one's nature.
It is recorded of him, that the severities practised in this campaign
filled him, long after, with recollections of sorrow. Writing to a
friend,* he gives a brief description of the calamities of the war, in
terms equally touching and picturesque. "We arrived," he writes, "at
the Indian towns in the month of July. As the lands were rich, and the
season had been favorable, the corn was bending under the double weight
of lusty roasting ears and pods of clustering beans. The furrows seemed
to rejoice under their precious loads--the fields stood thick with
bread. We encamped the first night in the woods, near the fields, where
the whole army feasted on the young corn, which, with fat venison, made
a most delicious treat.
* In a letter quoted by Weems. [The poetic language here
suggests the possibility that this letter may be one of
Weems' inventions.--A. L., 1996.]--
"The next morning we proceeded, by order of Colonel Grant, to burn down
the Indian cabins. Some of our men seemed to enjoy this cruel
work, laughing very heartily at the curling flames as they mounted,
loud-crackling, over the tops of the huts. But to me it appeared a
shocking sight. "Poor creatures!" thought I, "we surely need not grudge
you such miserable habitations." But when we came, ACCORDING TO ORDERS,
to cut down the fields of corn, I could scarcely refrain from tears. For
who could see the stalks that stood so stately, with broad green leaves
and gaily-tasselled shocks, filled with sweet milky fluid, and flour,
the staff of life--who, I say, without grief, could see these sacred
plants sinking under our swords, with all their precious load, to wither
and rot untasted, in their mourning fields!
"I saw everywhere around the footsteps of the little Indian children,
where they had lately played under the shelter of the rustling corn.
No doubt they had often looked up with joy to the swelling shocks,
and gladdened when they thought of their abundant cakes for the coming
winter. When we are gone, thought I, they will return, and peeping
through the weeds with tearful eyes, will mark the ghastly ruin poured
over their homes, and the happy fields where they had so often played.
'Who did this?' they will ask their mothers. 'The white people, the
Christians did it!' will be the reply."
"It would be no easy matter," says Hewatt, the earliest regular
historian of Carolina, "to describe the hardships which this little army
endured, in the wilderness, from heat, thirst, watching, danger, and
fatigue. Thirty days did Colonel Grant continue in the heart of the
Cherokee territories, and upon his return to Fort Prince George, the
feet and legs of many of his army were so mangled, and their strength
and spirits so much exhausted, that they were unable to march farther."
But the chastisement which the Indians had received, secured the object
for the attainment of which it was inflicted. The Cherokees sued for
peace, and Marion once more retired to the obscurity of rural life; we
may well believe with a human sense of satisfaction, that the painful
duty upon which he had been engaged was at length over. Unhappily, the
details of the war, beyond those which we have given, do not enable
us to ascertain the extent of his services. We are simply told that he
behaved well, with skill and spirit. More than this perhaps it would
be unreasonable to expect from any degree of talent, in the subordinate
situation which he at that time occupied.
Chapter 5.
1775. Marion is returned for the Provincial Congress from
St. John's, Berkeley--Made Captain in the Second Regiment
--Fort Johnson taken--Battle of Fort Moultrie.
Engaged in rural and domestic occupations we hear no more of Marion,
except as a citizen and farmer, until the beginning of the year 1775. In
the latter capacity he is reputed to have been successful; and between
the labors and sports of the field, the more violent humors of youth
seem to have been dissipated in exercises which are seldom followed by
reproach. He was very fond of angling and hunting, and with rod or gun,
his leisure was employed in a way that would not have displeased the
gentle Isaak Walton. These constituted his chief pastimes for the
fourteen years that had elapsed since his Cherokee campaigns. His
connection with public events had long since ceased; but, from all
accounts, he still continued, in some degree, to fill the eyes of his
countrymen. His firmness and purity of character, his gentle temper,
known bravery, and the conduct which he had already manifested in war,
had secured to him the confidence and the affections of his neighbors.
He had attained that place in their esteem which naturally brought him
conspicuously before their eyes in the moment of emergency. Emergencies
were now approaching of a kind well calculated to bring into the field
all the energies, with all the patriotism of the country. The great
struggle was at hand between the colonies and that mighty empire by
which they had been established. Of the part taken by South Carolina
in this conflict, history has already sufficiently informed us. Her
movements were made without reserve--her resolves taken promptly, and
steadily maintained with her best blood and treasure. Her battles were
among the boldest and bloodiest, as they were among the first and last
of the revolution. Of the political steps by which she committed herself
to that event, it does not need that we should enter into details. These
belong rather to general history than to biography. It will be enough to
exhibit those particulars only, of her progress, in which the subject
of our memoir was more immediately interested. That he took an early and
deep concern in the contest may be inferred from his character. That he
should not have become an active politician may also be inferred from
his known modesty, and the general reserve of his deportment in society.
He was no orator, and no doubt felt quite as awkward in debate as
Washington. But his opinions were well known; he was not the person
about whose ways of thinking, in trying times, his neighbors could
entertain either doubt or discussion. He formed his opinions as promptly
as he fought for them, and his character was above concealment. We find
him accordingly, in 1775, returned to the Provincial Congress of
South Carolina, as a member from St. John, Berkeley.* This Congress
distinguished itself by committing the people of South Carolina to
the final destinies of the Revolution. It adopted the American Bill of
Rights, as declared by the Continental Congress--adopted the famous
"act of association", recommended by the same federative body to all
the colonies, by which the subscribers bound themselves to refuse and to
prevent the importation of goods, wares and merchandise, from the mother
country; established committees of safety throughout the province, and,
in short, in possession of almost dictatorial powers, did not hesitate
to use them for the public welfare. It was at particular pains to infuse
a martial spirit among the people; and, influenced by this spirit, and
under the immediate suggestion, and by direct participation, of this
assembly, certain overt acts of treason were committed. The public
armory in Charleston was broken open by night, and eight hundred stand
of arms, two hundred cutlasses, besides cartouches, flints, matches and
other necessary materials of war, were withdrawn without discovery. One
party possessed itself of the public powder at Hobcau; another emptied
Cochran's Magazine, while a third, as above stated, relieved the state
armory of its contents. In all these proceedings, the members of the
Provincial Congress displayed the energies of men, who, having once set
their hands to the plough, have resolved not to be turned away from it.
Under that bolder policy which, by provoking the danger, compels the
timid to a part in it from which they might otherwise shrink in terror,
they were personally engaged in these acts of treason. We may reasonably
conclude that, however silent as a member, Francis Marion was not the
person to forbear taking active part in the more hazardous duties which
distinguished the doings of the body to which he belonged. There was a
generous impulse in his character, which hurried him into performance,
whenever work was to be done, or daring became necessary. He could
approach such duties with a degree of cheerfulness, which to the
ordinary mind, thoughtful only of the consequences and responsibilities
of action, seemed to partake of levity and recklessness. There was,
indeed, an element of playfulness, we had almost said fun, in his
character; a quiet and unobtrusive humor, which enlivened his utterance,
and softened, with a gentle aspect, a countenance that might otherwise
have been esteemed severe. We have no doubt that the native courage, and
the elastic spirit of his temperament made him an active participant
in all those deeds of decision, which the deliberations of the body to
which he belonged, deemed it necessary should be done. We can very
well imagine him conspicuous among those masked and midnight bands,
commissioned to do mischief for the public good, by which the arsenals
were stripped of their contents, and the tea-chests tumbled into Cooper
river.**
* "For St. John's, Berkeley County--James Ravenel, Daniel
Ravenel, JOB MARION, John Frierson, Esqrs., Mr. Gabriel
Gignilliat, MR. FRANCIS MARION." Journals of the Provincial
Congress of South Carolina.
** It is not so generally known that South Carolina did her
part, as well as Massachusetts, in destroying teas and
stamped paper.--
The Provincial Congress having thus committed the country, without
doubt, to the destinies of war, and having, to some extent, provided
against its consequences, adjourned to re-assemble on the 20th June,
1775. But this interval was shortened by the occurrence of events
equally unexpected and important. The battle of Lexington, in the
meantime, had taken place, and any hopes which might have been
entertained, of a final reconciliation between the two countries,
without a trial of strength, was fairly dismissed from every reflecting,
if not every loyal mind. Instead of the 20th of June, the Provincial
Congress was brought together on the first day of that month.*
* A letter from ISAAC MARION, one of the brothers of our
subject, who dwelt at Little River, the Northern boundary of
the province, is worthy of quotation, as serving to show
that he was animated with the same public spirit that
possessed his more distinguished kinsman. It was written to
accompany the express, which brought the news of the battle
of Lexington. A letter to him, from R. Howe, of N.C.,
forwarding the express, remarking, "I know you stand in no
need of being prompted when your country requires your
service"--would seem to show that he too had shared in the
reputation of his brother. The following is the letter of
Isaac Marion, addressed to the Committee of Safety of Little
River.
Boundary, May 9, 1775, Little River.
Gentlemen of the Committee;--I have just now received an
express, from the Committee of the Northern Provinces,
desiring I would forward the enclosed packet to the Southern
Committees. As yours is the nearest, I request FOR THE GOOD
OF YOUR COUNTRY, AND THE WELFARE OF OUR LIVES, LIBERTIES,
AND FORTUNES, you'll not lose a moment's time, but dispatch
the same to the Committee of Georgetown, to be forwarded to
Charleston. In meantime, am, gentlemen, Your obliged humble
servant, &c. Isaac Marion. To Danness, Hawkins and others.--
The members of this body, assembling according to summons, proceeded,
with the utmost vigor, to the consideration of the subjects before them.
They approached their tasks with equal speed and solemnity. Their labors
were commenced with Divine Service, and an act of association was then
passed, though not without considerable opposition. This act ran as
follows:--
"The actual commencement of hostilities against this Continent by the
British troops, in the bloody scene of the 19th of April last, near
Boston--the increase of arbitrary imposition from a wicked and despotic
ministry--and the dread of insurrections in the Colonies--are causes
sufficient to drive an oppressed people to the use of arms. We,
therefore, the subscribers, inhabitants of South Carolina, holding
ourselves bound by that most sacred of all obligations, the duty of good
citizens to an injured country, and thoroughly convinced, that, under
our present distressed circumstances, we shall be justified before God
and man, in resisting force by force--do unite ourselves, under every
tie of religion and honor, and associate as a band in her defence,
against every foe--hereby solemnly engaging, that, whenever our
Continental and Provincial Councils shall deem it necessary, we will go
forth, and be ready to sacrifice our lives and fortunes to secure
her freedom and safety. This obligation to continue in force, until a
reconciliation shall take place between Great Britain and America, upon
Constitutional principles--an event which we most ardently desire. And,
we will hold all those persons inimical to the liberty of the Colonies,
who shall refuse to subscribe to this association."*
* Drayton's Memoirs, Vol. 1, p. 28.--
This open declaration was followed up with measures equally fearless
and decisive. On the fourth day of the session, the Provincial Congress
resolved to raise fifteen hundred infantry, rank and file, in two
regiments; and four hundred and fifty horse, constituting another
regiment. The troops so to be raised, were to be subjected to military
discipline, and to the articles of war, in like manner with the British.
On the fourteenth day of their session, a million of money was voted,
and a council of safety was elected, vested with the executive power
of the colony. Among other acts of this body, non-subscribers to the
association were made amenable to the General Committee, and punishable
ACCORDING TO SOUND POLICY. Absentees having estates, were, with certain
exceptions, required to return; and it was further resolved that no
persons ought to withdraw from the service of the Colony, without giving
good and sufficient reasons to the Provincial Congress. Military duty
was performed day and night, as in a state of actual warfare, by the
militia companies in rotation; and thus, having placed the province in a
state of preparation, with arms in the hands of the people, and given
to the newly arrived Governor, Lord William Campbell, a reception which
boded small repose to his authority, the Provincial Congress adjourned
itself on the 22d day of June, leaving their authority, in great part,
to the Council of Safety and General Committee.
It has been seen that the only share which Marion had in the proceedings
of this body, was that of an assenting member. He was not endowed
with those talents which could have rendered him conspicuous in a
deliberative assembly. But he is not the less entitled to his share
in the merit of those proceedings, which so admirably declared and
illustrated the patriotism and the spirit of the province; and one of
the last, decisive measures of the Provincial Congress, happily enabled
him to appear in the character upon which he was more likely to confer
distinction, than that of the orator. He was elected a captain in the
Second Regiment, of which William Moultrie, formerly his captain in the
Cherokee campaign, was made Colonel. The duties of this appointment were
immediately begun, with a promptness at once due to the necessities of
the case, and his own character. As a proof of the zeal by which the
newly made officers were distinguished, we find them seeking recruits
so early as the 20th of June, and while the body to which they belonged
were still engaged in the most laborious duties of the session.*
* Drayton's Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 265. NOTE.--
Marion's commission was made out on the 21st June. Weems, in his life
of our subject, gives us some pictures, equally lively and ludicrous,
of his progress in the business of recruiting, upon which, in connection
with his friend, Captain Horry, he at once begun. This gentleman
received his appointment as captain at the same time, and in the same
regiment, with Marion. The Provincial Congress had voted a million of
money, by which to carry out their measures, but this was yet to be
procured, and, as it appears, rather more upon the credit of individuals
than that of the colony. But money, in times of danger, seems to have
an instinct of its own, by which it hides itself readily from sight and
touch. It was no easy matter for our captains to obtain the requisite
sums. But faith and zeal did more for them, and for the cause, than gold
and silver; and with very inadequate supplies, but in fresh and showy
uniforms, our young officers set forth on the recruiting service. Their
route lay in the several neighborhoods of Georgetown, Black River, and
the Great Pedee. In these parts both of them were known. Here, indeed,
Marion was already a favorite. Accordingly, they succeeded beyond their
expectations, and were soon enabled to complete the full number for
their two companies, of fifty men each. Another circumstance, apart from
their personal popularity, probably facilitated their objects. Some of
the settlements into which they penetrated were originally founded
by the Irish. The bitter heritage of hate to the English, which they
brought with them to America, was transmitted with undiminished fervor
to their descendants. It was easy to show that the power which had
trampled upon the affections of their fathers, and tyrannized over their
rights in the old world, was aiming at the same objects in the case
of their children in the new. At one remove only from the exiled and
suffering generation, the sons had as lively a recollection of the
tyrannies of Britain as if the experience had been immediately their
own. To this cause our recruiting officers owed some of their success
in the present expedition. Some of the bravest fellows of the second
regiment were picked up on this occasion. It was the spirit which they
brought, and to which the genius of Marion gave lively exercise, that
imparted a peculiar vitality at all times to his little brigade. Among
these gallant young men there were two in particular, of whom tradition
in Carolina will long retain a grateful recollection; these were Jasper
and Macdonald. Of these two, both of whom sealed their patriotism with
their blood, we shall yet have something further to deliver.
While the friends of liberty were thus active, the adherents of the
crown, in the colony, were not less so. These, in many parts of the
country, were equally numerous and influential. They possessed, indeed,
certain advantages in the discussion, which, in some degree, served to
counterbalance the impelling and stimulating influences which always
belong to a 'mouvement' party. They carried with them the PRESTIGE
of authority, of the venerable power which time and custom seemed to
hallow; they appealed to the loyalty of the subject; they dwelt upon the
dangers which came with innovation; they denounced the ambition of
the patriot leaders; they reminded the people of the power of Great
Britain--a power to save or to destroy--which had so frequently and so
successfully been exerted in their behalf in their numerous and bloody
conflicts with the Indians, and which might be brought, with such
fearful emphasis, upon their own heads. They reminded the people that
the Indians were not exterminated, that they still hung in numerous
hordes about the frontiers, and that it needed but a single word from
the Crown, to bring them, once more, with tomahawk and scalping-knife,
upon their defenceless homes. Already, indeed, had the emissaries of
Great Britain taken measures to this end. The savage was already shaking
off his apathy, scenting the carnage from afar, and making ready for
the onset. The assurance, that such was the case, was doing the work
of numerous arguments among the timid and the exposed. Such were the
suggestions, appealing equally to their fears and gratitude, which the
leading loyalists addressed to the people. They were supported by other
suggestions, scarcely less potent, which naturally flowed from their own
thoughts. Why should they dare the conflict with Great Britain? There
was no such reason for it as in the case of the northern colonies. They
had known her chiefly by benefactions; they did not conflict with her
in shipping or in manufactures; and the arguments for discontent and
resistance, as urged by the patriot leaders, did not reach them with
sufficient force. What was the tax on tea, of which they drank little,
and the duty on stamps, when they had but little need for legal papers?
And why should not taxes follow protection, which Great Britain had not
often withheld in the need of a favorite colony, as South Carolina
had unquestionably been? Let us do justice to this people. The
loyalists--or, as they were more commonly called, and as we shall
hereafter be compelled to call them, the Tories--were, probably, in
the majority of cases, governed by principle, by a firm and settled
conviction, after deliberate examination of the case. That they might
have thought otherwise, nay, would gradually have adopted the opinions
of the patriots, is not improbable, had more time been allowed them,
and had the course of the latter been more indulgent and considerate.
Unfortunately, this was not the case; and the desire to coerce where
they could not easily convince, had the effect of making a determined
and deadly, out of a doubtful foe. This was terribly proved by the after
history. To this cause we may ascribe, in some degree, the terrors of
that sanguinary strife, in which, to use the language of a distinguished
officer, they "pursued each other rather like wild beasts than men."* We
shall see something of this history as we proceed in ours.
* Letter of General Greene. See Johnson's Greene.--
There was yet another circumstance which tended, in some degree, to give
courage to the Tories. It was the somewhat temporizing policy of the
patriots. There was still a feeling of doubt, a hesitancy, on the part
of the latter, as the prospects grew stronger of a final breach with
Great Britain. There were many who still clung to the hope that the
differences of the two nations might yet be reconciled; and though the
means of such reconciliation did not make themselves obvious, they yet
fondly cherished the conviction that something might turn up, at the
last moment, to prevent the absolute necessity of bloodshed. This
portion of the patriots necessarily influenced the rest; those who,
looking beyond the moment, saw the true issue, and properly regarded the
declared objects of difference as pretexts which must suffice when the
better reasons might not be expressed. They dared not openly broach the
idea of national independence, which, there is very little question
that the noblest of the American patriots everywhere, though secretly,
entertained from the beginning. The people were not prepared for such
a revelation--such a condition; and appearances were still to be
maintained. Their proceedings, accordingly, still wore, however loosely,
a pacific aspect. Though actively preparing for war, the professions of
the patriots declared their measures to be precautionary only--a refuge,
an alternative, in the event of greater oppression. They still spoke the
language of loyalty, still dealt in vague assurances of devotion to
the crown. But such professions deceived nobody, and least of all the
loyalists. They derived courage from the reluctance of the patriots
to embark in a struggle, for the fruits of which, if successful, they
evidently longed. They were not less active--nay, in the interior, they
were even more active--than their opponents; had already taken arms, and
gained advantages, which nothing but decisive movements on the part of
the people along the seaboard could possibly induce them to forego.
This necessity was apparent for other reasons. In consequence of the
temporizing policy already mentioned, the crown was still in possession
of most of the shows of power in and about Charleston. The royal
governor was still in the city, and in some degree exerting his
authority. Fort Johnson, on James' Island, was suffered to remain in
the hands of the king's troops for more than three months after the
Provincial Congress had ordered a levy of troops, and had resolved on
taking up arms. Two British armed vessels, the Tamar and Cherokee, lay
in Rebellion Roads, opposite Sullivan's Island. This force was quite
sufficient, under existing circumstances, to have destroyed the town.
But the royal leaders were not prepared for this issue; they shared the
reluctance of the patriots to begin a conflict, the issues of which were
so extreme. Their policy, like that of the patriots--influencing it, and
possibly influenced by it--was equally halting and indecisive. It was
sufficiently satisfactory if, by the presence of such a force, the
citizens should be overawed and kept from action.
This condition of things could not continue. The very nature of the
movement was adverse to indecision. It needed but a first step--a
first stroke--and this was to be taken by the patriots. They brooked
impatiently the humiliating position in which the city stood, controlled
by an inferior enemy; and it was resolved that Fort Johnson should
be subdued. It was on this occasion that Marion first drew his sword
against the British. He was one of those Captains who, with their
companies, were dispatched on this expedition. The command was given to
Col. Moultrie. A strong resistance was expected, as, but a short time
before, the garrison had been reinforced from the armed vessels. At
midnight on the fourteenth of September, 1775, the detachment crossed
to James' Island. The disembarkation was effected with delay and
difficulty, occasioned by the inadequate size and number of the boats.
The forlorn hope, consisting of a detachment from the grenadiers of
Capt. Pinckney, joined by the Cadets, and led by Lieut. Mouatt, were to
scale the walls of the fort on its south bastion; Col. Moultrie with
the rest of Pinckney's Grenadiers, and Marion's Light Infantry, were to
enter or force the gates over the ravelin; while Capt. Elliott, with
his grenadiers, penetrated the lower battery over the left flank. It
was broad daylight before the landing was effected; and on making the
assault they were surprised by an easy victory. The fort was abandoned.
The enemy had probably been apprised of the attack. A detachment
from the ships had landed some hours before--had dismantled the fort,
dismounted the cannon, and withdrawn the garrison; retreating in safety
to the ships. A gunner and three men only, fell into the hands of
the provincials. The very day that this event occurred, Lord William
Campbell, the Governor, fled to the Tamar sloop of war. His flight
was no doubt hastened by a proceeding so decisive. That evening he
dispatched his secretary to Fort Johnson, which he was not permitted
to enter. He was met at the water-side by Capt. Pinckney, of whom he
demanded, in the name of the Governor, by what authority he had taken
and held possession of the fortress. The answer to this demand brought
up the vessels of war, which, on the seventeenth of September, presented
themselves within point blank shot of the fort. Up to this time, but
three of the dismantled cannon had been remounted and put in order
for action. With these, the provincials prepared for battle, relying,
however, less upon their cannon than upon their ability to oppose the
landing of any body of men. But the demonstration of the squadron was
without fruits. They hauled off without a shot, and resumed their former
less offensive position.
Here, however, the popular leaders were not disposed to suffer them to
remain. Still they hesitated at coming to blows. They adopted a middle
course, which, in such cases, is generally the worst. They ordered that
the ships should not be victualled or supplied with water from the city,
except from day to day. This produced a threat from Captain Thornborough
that, unless supplied as before, he should prevent the ingress, or
departure, of any vessel from the harbor. A menace of this kind, to have
been properly met, should have been answered from the eighteen pounders
of Fort Johnson. And, but for the reluctance of several highly esteemed
patriots, such would have been the mode of answer. This temporizing
policy continued to prevail until the 9th November, 1775, when the
Provincial Congress resolved, "by every military operation, to oppose
the passage of any British Armament." Such were the orders issued to the
officer commanding at Fort Johnson. This fort had now been in possession
of the popular party for nearly two months. It was in some degree
prepared for use. It was well manned with a portion of those brave
fellows who afterwards fought the good fight of Fort Sullivan. They
would have done as good service here. The resolution of the Province
once adopted, it was communicated as well to the commanders of the
British vessels, as to the officers of the fort. There was still an open
passage, through Hog-Island channel, by which the British vessels might
approach the town without incurring any danger from the Fort. This
passage it was determined to obstruct; and an armed schooner, called the
Defence, fitted up for the occasion, was ordered to cover and protect
a party which was employed to sink a number of hulks in that narrow
strait. This drew upon them the fire of the British. It was returned by
the "Defence", but with little injury to either side. The garrison at
Fort Johnson endeavored to take part in this little action, but the
distance was too great for any decisive results from its fire. Some of
the shots took effect, but after a few rounds the fire was discontinued.
Meanwhile, the alarm was beat in Charleston, where the troops stood to
their arms, and every heart throbbed with the expectation of a close and
bloody fight. But the time was not yet. Indecisive in itself, this
brief combat was of great importance in one point of view. It was the
beginning of the game. The blow for which all parties had been waiting,
was now fairly struck. The sword had been drawn from the scabbard,
not again to be sheathed, till the struggle was concluded. The local
Congress proceeded vigorously. Ships were impressed for the purpose of
war, new troops were enlisted and armed, and bills of credit issued.
The British vessels, meanwhile, became more than ever troublesome,
and, carrying out the menace of Captain Thornborough, proceeded to
the seizure of all vessels within their reach, whether going from
or returning to the port. It became necessary to drive them from the
roadstead. To effect this, Col. Moultrie, with a party of newly raised
Provincials and the Charleston Artillery, took post on Haddrill's Point,
and, mounting a few pieces of heavy artillery, opened upon them with a
well-directed fire, which drove them out to sea. This step was followed
by one of preparation. The fortifications at Fort Johnson and Haddrill's
Point were completed--the city was fortified--a new fort was raised
on James', and another begun on Sullivan's Island. The militia were
diligently trained, the provincial troops augmented and disciplined,
and all means within the power of the Colony were put in requisition to
prepare it for defence. Among other preparations, a military post was
established at the town of Dorchester, and strongly fortified. This
post was nearly at the head of navigation, on Ashley river, about twenty
miles from Charleston. Though now utterly desolate, Dorchester
was, prior to the Revolution, a town of considerable population and
importance. Its abandonment may be ascribed to the Revolution, during
which it was maintained as a military post by the Americans or
British. To this place the public stores and records were in great part
transferred from Charleston, as to a place of safe-keeping. The command
was given to Marion. While in this command we do not find the occurrence
of any events of importance. A couple of his original letters, dated
from this post, lie before us. They refer only to ordinary events, but
contain some expressions which denote the ardency of his patriotism,
and the disappointments to which it was not unfrequently subjected in
consequence of the apathy of others. Referring to the reluctance shown
by many, of whom the utmost patriotism was expected, to rally around the
flag of the country, he exclaims--in a partial perversion of Scripture
language, but without irreverence, "Tell this not in the streets of
Charleston," &c.
From this post Marion was removed to Charleston, very probably at his
own solicitation. Events were ripening in that quarter, of a nature
calculated to give becoming employment to a mind always active, and
desiring nothing more than to serve his country. From Charleston, he was
dispatched to Fort Johnson, where he was busily employed in completing
the defences of that place. Weems preserves an anecdote of him, while in
command of this fort, in January, 1776, which pleasantly describes the
quiet and not unamiable sort of humor in which Marion was frequently
said to indulge. While exceedingly busy in his preparations for defence,
there came to him a thoughtless young officer, who loved the cockpit
much better than consisted entirely with his duties. Christmas and New
Year's Holidays were famous at that early period, for the exercise of
this cruel sport in some parts of Carolina. To obtain leave of absence,
however, on any holiday pretence, the young officer very well knew
was impossible. Approaching his Commander with a lie in his mouth, he
obtained the desired permission, in order to receive the last blessing
of a dying father; and, exulting in the unworthy artifice, he hurried
to Dorchester, which, on that occasion, was to be the scene of his
recreation. During his absence, Marion arrived at the truth of the
story, but said nothing. When the youth returned, which he did after two
weeks' absence, he proceeded to the marquee of his Commander, to report
himself, and began a tedious apology for having stayed, so long. Marion
gently interrupted him, and, with a smile, in the presence of all the
officers, replied--"Never mind it, Lieutenant--there's no harm done--we
never missed you." The effect of this sarcasm is said to have been
admirable; and to have resulted in the complete reform of the offender,
who, from being a trifling, purposeless, and unscrupulous young man,
grew considerate equally of his duties and his word, and, by a career of
industry, sobriety and modesty, made ample amends, in future days, for
all the errors of the past.
With the formation of new regiments, under the resolves of the
Council of Safety, Marion was promoted to a Majority. This appointment
materially enlarged the sphere of his duties. But he was one of those
remarkable men, who, without pretension, prove themselves equal to any
trust which may be imposed upon them. Without the presence of an actual
enemy, he addressed himself to the task of preparing his men for the
encounter with them. He was constantly on parade, at the drill, closely
engaged in the work of training, in which business, while very gentle,
he was very exact; and, in such a degree had he improved the officers
and men immediately under his charge, that they were very soon regarded
as a model for all the rest. He was called the "architect of the Second
Regiment". Weems, speaking for Col. Horry, says, "Indeed, I am not
afraid to say that Marion was the ARCHITECT of the Second Regiment,
and laid the foundation of that excellent discipline and confidence in
themselves, which gained them such reputation whenever they were brought
to face their enemies." The value of this training was very soon to be
subjected to the most thorough of all possible tests. He was ordered
with his Regiment, under command of Col. Wm. Moultrie, to take post at
Fort Sullivan, on the island of that name, which stands at the entrance
of Charleston harbor, and within point blank shot of the channel. The
difficulties and deficiencies of this post, furnished some admirable
preparatory lessons for the great conflict which was to follow. They
imposed the necessity of diligent industry and hard labor, equally
on men and soldiers. This was one of the famous schools of Roman
discipline. Fort Sullivan, better known as Fort Moultrie--was yet to be
built. When the Second Regiment entered it, it was little more than an
outline. Its shape was described upon the sand, and the palmetto rafts
lay around it, waiting to be moulded into form. The structure was an
inartificial one--a simple wall, behind which young beginners might
train guns to do mischief to a veteran enemy in front. Its form was
square, with a bastion at each angle, sufficiently large, when finished,
to cover a thousand men. It was built of logs, laid one upon another in
parallel rows, at a distance of sixteen feet, bound together at frequent
intervals with timber, dovetailed and bolted into the logs. The spaces
between were filled up with sand. The merlons were walled entirely
by palmetto logs, notched into one another at the angles, well bolted
together and strengthened with pieces of massy timber. Such was the plan
of the work; but, with all the diligence of the officers, and all the
industry of the men, it remained unfinished at the perilous moment when
a powerful British fleet appeared before its walls. The defence was
confided to Col. Moultrie. The force under his command was four hundred
and thirty-five men, rank and file, comprising four hundred and thirteen
of the Second Regiment of Infantry, and twenty-two of the Fourth
Regiment of Artillery. The whole number of cannon mounted on the
fortress was thirty-one, of these, nine were French twenty-sixes; six
English eighteens; nine twelve and seven nine pounders.*
* Weems, in his Life of Marion, represents the cannon as
made up principally of TWENTY-FOUR and THIRTY-SIX pounders;
but the official accounts are as I have given them. See
Drayton's Memoirs, vol. 2, pp. 290-1.--
General Charles Lee, who had been dispatched by the Continental
Congress, to take command of the Army of the South, would have abandoned
the fortress even before the appearance of the enemy. He was unwilling,
in such a position, to abide the conflict. He seems, naturally enough
for an officer brought up in a British Army, to have had an overweening
veneration for a British fleet, in which it is fortunate for the country
that the Carolinians did not share. In the unfinished condition of the
fort, which really presented little more than a front towards the
sea, his apprehensions were justifiable, and, could the fort have
been enfiladed, as the British designed, it certainly would have been
untenable. From the moment of his arrival, to the very moment when the
action was raging, his chief solicitude seems to have been to ensure the
defenders of the fortress a safe retreat. It is to their immortal honor
that this mortifying measure was unnecessary.
On the 20th of June, 1776, a day ever memorable in the annals of
Carolina, the British ships of war, nine in number,*1* commanded by Sir
Peter Parker, drew up abreast of the fort, let go their anchors, with
springs upon their cables, and commenced a terrible bombardment. The
famous battle which followed makes one of the brightest pages in
our history. Its events, however, are too generally known to make it
necessary that we should dwell upon them here. A few, however, belong
properly and especially to our pages. The subject of this memoir was
a conspicuous sharer in its dangers and in its honors. The fire of the
enemy was promptly answered, and with such efficiency of aim as to be
long remembered by the survivors. Having but five thousand pounds of
powder, with which to maintain a conflict that raged for eleven hours,
with unabated violence, it became necessary, not only that the discharge
from the fort should be timed, but that every shot should be made to
do execution. In order to do this the guns were trained by the
field-officers in person; hence, perhaps, the terrible fatality of their
fire. The Bristol, 50 gun ship, Commodore Sir Peter Parker, lost 44
men killed and thirty*2* wounded. Sir Peter himself lost an arm. The
Experiment, another 50 gun ship, had 57 killed and 30 wounded.*3* To
these two vessels in particular, the attention of the fort was directed.
The words, passed along the line by officers and men, were--"Look to the
Commodore--look to the fifty gun ships."*4* The smaller vessels suffered
comparatively little. Their loss of men was small. The injury to
the vessels themselves was greater, and one of them, the Acteon, run
aground, and was subsequently burnt. The Carolinians lost but twelve men
killed and twice that number wounded. One of the former was the brave
fellow Macdonald, of whom we have already spoken. When borne from the
embrasure where he received his mortal wound, he cried out to those
around him--"Do not give up--you are fighting for liberty and country."
The want of powder was severely felt. But for this, judging from the
effects of the fire from the fort, the British Commodore must have
struck, or his fleet must have been destroyed. So slow, at one time,
were the discharges--so great the interval of time between them,--that
the British were of opinion that the place was abandoned. But a new
supply of powder was obtained by Marion, who, with a small party,
leaving the fort, proceeded to the armed schooner Defence, lying in Stop
Gap Creek, and seized upon her powder, by which the fire was kept up
until a supply of five hundred weight was received from the city.*5*
This caused a renewal of the conflict in all its fury. The garrison
fought with a coolness which would have done honor to veterans. The
day was very warm, and the men partially stripped to it. Moultrie says,
"When the action begun (it being a warm day), some of the men took off
their coats and threw them upon the top of the merlons. I saw a shot
take one of them and throw it into a small tree behind the platform. It
was noticed by our men, and they cried out, "look at the coat!" A little
incident that speaks volumes for their coolness. Moultrie himself and
several of his officers smoked their pipes during the action, only
removing them when it became necessary to issue orders. In the hottest
fire of the battle the flag of the fort was shot away, and fell
without the fort. Jasper, with whom we have already brought the reader
acquainted as one of Marion's men, instantly sprang after it upon the
beach, between the ramparts and the enemy, and binding it to a sponge
staff, restored it to its place, and succeeded in regaining his own in
safety. We shall hear more hereafter, of this gallant fellow.*6* The
coolness--nay the cavalier indifference--displayed by the Carolinians
throughout the combat, is not its least remarkable feature. There is
something chivalric in such deportment, which speaks for larger courage
than belongs to ordinary valor. Mere bull-dog resolution and endurance
is here lifted, by a generous ardor of soul, into something other than a
passive virtue. The elasticity of spirit which it shows might be trained
to any performance within the compass of human endowment.
*1* Two ships of fifty guns; five of twenty-eight; 1 of
twenty-six and a bomb-vessel. Moultrie, vol. 1 pp. 174-5.
*2* Weems says 100. *3* British account.
*4* Moultrie, Memoirs, Vol. 1, NOTE, p. 177.
*5* MS. Life of Brig.-Gen. Peter Horry, p. 21.
*6* Gen. Horry (then a captain) thus relates the incident:
"I commanded an eighteen pounder in the left wing of the
fort. Above my gun on the rampart, was a large American flag
hung on a very high mast, formerly of a ship; the men of war
directing their fire thereat, it was, from their shot, so
wounded, as to fall, with the colors, over the fort.
Sergeant Jasper of the Grenadiers leapt over the ramparts,
and deliberately walked the whole length of the fort, until
he came to the colors on the extremity of the left, when he
cut off the same from the mast, and called to me for a
sponge staff, and with a thick cord tied on the colors and
stuck the staff on the rampart in the sand. The Sergeant
fortunately received no hurt, though exposed for a
considerable time, to the enemy's fire. Governor Rutledge
[after the battle], as a reward, took his small sword from
his side, and in presence of many officers, presented it to
Sergeant Jasper, telling him to wear it in remembrance of
the 28th June, and in remembrance of him. He also offered
Jasper a Lieutenant's commission, but as he could neither
read nor write, he modestly refused to accept it, saying,
'he was not fit to keep officers' company, being only bred a
Sergeant.'"--MS. Life of Brig.-Gen. Peter Horry, pp. 19-
20.--
Tradition ascribes to the hand and eye of Marion, the terrible effect
of the last shot which was fired on this bloody day. It was aimed at the
Commodore's ship, which had already received something more than her due
share of the attention of the fort. This shot, penetrating the cabin
of the vessel, cut down two young officers who were drinking, we may
suppose, to their fortunate escape from a conflict which seemed already
over--then ranging forward, swept three sailors from the maindeck
into eternity, and finally buried itself in the bosom of the sea. This
curious particular was derived from five sailors who deserted from the
fleet that very night.
Chapter 6.
1777-8-9.
From the Battle of Fort Moultrie to that of Savannah--
Anecdote of Jasper--His Death.
The battle of Fort Sullivan was of immense importance, not merely to
Carolina, but to all the confederated colonies. It saved the former,
for three years, from the calamities of invasion; a respite of the last
value to a country so greatly divided in public feeling and opinion.
The battle preceded the declaration of Independence, and, though not
generally known to have taken place before that decisive measure was
resolved upon, it came seasonably to confirm the patriots in those
principles which they had so solemnly and recently avowed. Its farther
effect was to dissipate that spell of invincibility, which, in the minds
of the Americans, seemed to hover about a British armament;--to heighten
the courage of the militia, and to convince the most sceptical, that it
needed only confidence and practice, to make the American people as good
soldiers as any in the world. The Carolina riflemen were not a little
elated to discover that they could handle twenty-six pounders as
efficiently as the smaller implements of death, to which their hands
were better accustomed. To the defenders of the fortress, their victory
brought imperishable laurels. They had shown the courage and the skill
of veterans, and their countrymen gloried in the reputation in which
they necessarily shared. Moultrie received the thanks of Congress,
of the Commander-in-Chief, and of his fellow citizens. The fort was
thenceforth called by his name, and he was made a Brigadier-General. His
Major, Marion, necessarily had his share in these public honors, and was
raised by Congress to the rank of Lieut.-Colonel in the regular service.
Two days after the battle, General Lee reviewed the garrison at Fort
Moultrie, and thanked them "for their gallant defence of the fort
against a fleet of eight men-of-war and a bomb, during a cannonade
of eleven hours, and a bombardment of seven." At the same time, Mrs.
Barnard Elliott presented an elegant pair of embroidered colors to
the Second Regiment, with a brief address, in which she expressed her
conviction that they would "stand by them as long as they can wave in
the air of liberty." It was in fulfilling the pledge made by General
Moultrie, on this occasion, in behalf of the regiment, that the brave
Jasper lost his life before the walls of Savannah.
The three years' respite from the horrors of war, which this victory
secured to Carolina, was not, however, left unemployed by her citizen
soldiery. The progress of events around them kept their services in
constant requisition. While a part of them, in the interior, were
compelled to take arms against the Cherokee Indians, the troops of the
lower country were required against the Tories in Florida and Georgia.
Governor Tonyn of the former, an active loyalist, proved a formidable
annoyance to the patriots of the latter province. Florida, under his
administration, was the secure refuge and certain retreat for all the
malcontents and outlaws of the neighboring colonies. He gave them ample
encouragement, put arms into their hands, and even issued letters of
marque against the property of the colonists, in anticipation of the act
for that purpose, in the British parliament. General Lee marched upon
Florida with the Virginia and North Carolina troops. He was subsequently
joined by those of South Carolina; but, owing to his own ill-advised and
improvident movements, the expedition was a total failure.* This result
necessarily gave encouragement to the Tories; and, though in too small
numbers to effect any important objects without the cooperation of a
British force, they were yet sufficiently active to invite the presence
of one. They formed themselves into little squads, and, moving through
the country with celerity, pursued their marauding habits at little
risk, as they sought only unsuspecting neighborhoods, and promptly fled
to the fastnesses of Florida on the approach of danger. To direct and
properly avail themselves of these parties, the British commanders in
America addressed their attention to Georgia. The infancy of that colony
necessarily led them to hope for an easy conquest in attempting it.
In February, 1777, General Howe, then commanding the troops in North
Carolina and Georgia, was advised of the approach of Colonel Fuser, to
the invasion of Georgia. He hurried on immediately to prepare Savannah
for defence; while Marion, with a force of 600 men, in several vessels,
provided with cannon and ammunition, was dispatched, by the inland
passage, to his assistance. Marion left Charleston on the 28th of
February, but his approach had no farther effect than to precipitate the
flight of the enemy, who, meeting with a stout opposition from Colonel
Elbert, at Ogechee ferry, had already desisted from farther advance.
The British attempts on Georgia were deferred to a later period. But the
loyalists were busy, particularly that portion of them, which took the
name of Scopholites, after one Scophol, a militia Colonel, whom Moultrie
describes as an "illiterate, stupid, noisy blockhead". He proved not the
less troublesome because of his stupidity.
* Drayton's Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 336.--
Marion was more or less employed during this period, in various
situations. He was never unemployed. We find him at length in command of
the fort which he had formerly contributed to defend and render famous.
He was placed in charge of the garrison at Fort Moultrie. The value of
this fort was estimated rather according to its celebrity, than its real
usefulness. Subsequent events have shown that its capacity was not great
in retarding the approach of an enemy's fleet to the city. It was the
error of Sir Peter Parker--obeying an old but exploded military maxim,
not to leave an armed post of the enemy in his rear--to pause before
a fortress, the conquest of which could in no wise contribute to his
success,--and defeat before which, must necessarily endanger his final
objects. It was still the impression of the Carolinians that Fort
Moultrie must be assailed as a preliminary step to the conquest of
Charleston, and the post, as one of the highest honor and danger, was
conferred upon Marion.* It was not known, indeed, at what moment the
gallantry of the garrison might be put to the proof. The British were
known to be making large marine and military preparations at New York,
intended, as it was generally understood, for the south. Charleston
or Savannah, were supposed indifferently to be the places of its
destination. It might be very well supposed that the enemy would seek,
at the former place, to recover those honors of war of which its gallant
defenders had deprived him.
* When the British under Prevost, were in possession of the
neighboring islands, Moultrie writes, "we were apprehensive
the enemy would attempt to surprise Fort Moultrie; we,
therefore, always kept a strong garrison there under General
Marion."--
But, any doubt as to the destination of the British fleet was soon
removed. In December, 1778, thirty-seven sail appeared before Savannah,
and four thousand British regulars were disembarked. The American force
left in defence of Savannah was a feeble one, of six or seven hundred
men, under General Howe. General Howe was but little of a soldier.
Instead of withdrawing this force, he suffered it to be sacrificed.
Badly posted, he was surprised, and his troops beaten and dispersed with
little difficulty. Savannah fell at once into the hands of the enemy,
and the whole colony very shortly after. General Prevost was in command
of the British. Opposed to him was Major-General Lincoln, of the
Continental army. While Prevost occupied the posts of Savannah,
Ebenezer, Abercorn, and other places, he was active in pushing select
parties forward to Augusta, and other commanding points in the
interior. The force under Lincoln did not enable him to offer any active
opposition to their progress. His headquarters were at Purysburg, on the
Savannah river, but a few miles from Abercorn, where Colonel Campbell
lay with the main body of the enemy. General Ashe, of the Americans,
occupied the post at Brier Creek, and, thus placed, the opposing
commanders seemed disposed for a while to rest upon their arms, waiting
events and reinforcements.
It was while the second South Carolina regiment lay at Purysburg, that
an adventure occurred, which has so often been repeated in connection
with the name and life of Marion, that we should scarcely be excused
from introducing it here, as properly in place in this memoir. Weems
asserts that Marion was present at this time with his regiment at
Purysburg. It is impossible to say whether he was or not. It is not
improbable that he was with his regiment, and yet the weight of evidence
inclines us to the opinion that he was still at Fort Moultrie. It is
not unlikely, however, that, when the direction of the British fleet was
known, and it was ascertained that Savannah and not Charleston was its
object, he immediately joined his regiment at Purysburg, leaving Fort
Moultrie in the charge of some less distinguished officer. At all
events the point is not of importance to the anecdote we have to relate.
Personally, Marion had nothing to do with it. It was only because the
actors in the adventure belonged to his regiment, and were of "Marion's
men", that tradition has insisted on associating his name with theirs.
It is not for us to have it otherwise. The reader is already somewhat
acquainted with the name of William Jasper--perhaps Sergeant Jasper
is the better known. This brave man possessed remarkable talents for a
scout. He could wear all disguises with admirable ease and dexterity.
Garden styles him "a perfect Proteus".* He was equally remarkable for
his strategy as for his bravery; and his nobleness and generosity were,
quite as much as these, the distinguishing traits of his character. Such
was the confidence in his fidelity and skill that a roving commission
was granted him, with liberty to pick his associates from the Brigade.
Of these he seldom chose more than six. "He often went out," says
Moultrie, "and returned with prisoners, before I knew that he was gone.
I have known of his catching a party that was looking for him. He has
told me that he could have killed single men several times, but he would
not; he would rather let them get off. He went into the British lines at
Savannah, as a deserter, complaining, at the same time, of our ill-usage
of him; he was gladly received (they having heard of his character) and
caressed by them. He stayed eight days, and after informing himself well
of their strength, situation and intentions, he returned to us again;
but that game he could not play a second time. With his little party he
was always hovering about the enemy's camp, and was frequently bringing
in prisoners."** We have seen what reason was alleged by this brave
fellow for not accepting the commission tendered to him by Governor
Rutledge, for his gallantry in the battle of Fort Moultrie. The
nature of his services was no less a reason why he should reject the
commission. The fact that he seldom allowed himself a command of more
than six men declared sufficiently the degree of authority to which he
thought his talents were entitled.
* "He was a perfect Proteus, in ability to alter his
appearance; perpetually entering the camp of the enemy,
without detection, and invariably returning to his own, with
soldiers he had seduced, or prisoners he had captured."
** Moultrie's Mem., vol. 2, p. 24.--
It was while in the exercise of his roving privileges that Jasper
prepared to visit the post of the enemy at Ebenezer. At this post he had
a brother, who held the same rank in the British service, that he held
in the American. This instance was quite too common in the history
of the period and country, to occasion much surprise, or cause any
suspicion of the integrity of either party. We have already considered
the causes for this melancholy difference of individual sentiment in
the country, and need not dwell upon them here. William Jasper loved
his brother and wished to see him: it is very certain, at the same time,
that he did not deny himself the privilege of seeing all around him. The
Tory was alarmed at William's appearance in the British camp, but
the other quieted his fears, by representing himself as no longer an
American soldier. He checked the joy which this declaration excited
in his brother's mind, by assuring him that, though he found little
encouragement in fighting for his country, "he had not the heart to
fight against her." Our scout lingered for two or three days in the
British camp, and then, by a 'detour', regained that of the Americans;
reporting to his Commander all that he had seen. He was encouraged to
repeat his visit a few weeks after, but this time he took with him a
comrade, one Sergeant Newton, a fellow quite as brave in spirit, and
strong in body as himself. Here he was again well received by his
brother, who entertained the guests kindly for several days. Meanwhile,
a small party of Americans were brought into Ebenezer as captives, over
whom hung the danger of "short shrift and sudden cord". They were on
their way to Savannah for trial. They had taken arms with the British,
as hundreds more had done, when the country was deemed reconquered; but,
on the approach of the American army, had rejoined their countrymen, and
were now once more at the mercy of the power with which they had broken
faith. "It will go hard with them," said the Tory Jasper to his Whig
brother; but the secret comment of the other was, "it shall go hard with
me first." There was a woman, the wife of one of the prisoners, who,
with her child, kept them company. William Jasper and his friend were
touched by the spectacle of their distress; and they conferred together,
as soon as they were alone, as to the possibility of rescuing them.
Their plan was soon adopted. It was a simple one, such as naturally
suggests itself to a hardy and magnanimous character. The prisoners
had scarcely left the post for Savannah, under a guard of eight men, a
sergeant and corporal, when they took leave of their host, and set forth
also, though in a different direction from the guard. Changing their
course when secure from observation, they stretched across the country
and followed the footsteps of the unhappy captives. But it was only in
the pursuit that they became truly conscious of the difficulty, nay,
seeming impossibility, of effecting their object. The guard was
armed, and ten in number; they but two and weaponless. Hopeless, they
nevertheless followed on. Two miles from Savannah there is a famous
spring, the waters of which are well known to travellers. The conjecture
that the guard might stop there, with the prisoners, for refreshment,
suggested itself to our companions; here, opportunities might occur for
the rescue, which had nowhere before presented themselves. Taking an
obscure path with which they were familiar, which led them to the spot
before the enemy could arrive, they placed themselves in ambush in the
immediate neighborhood of the spring. They had not long to wait. Their
conjecture proved correct. The guard was halted on the road opposite the
spring. The corporal with four men conducted the captives to the water,
while the sergeant, with the remainder of his force, having made them
ground their arms near the road, brought up the rear. The prisoners
threw themselves upon the earth--the woman and her child, near its
father. Little did any of them dream that deliverance was at hand. The
child fell asleep in the mother's lap. Two of the armed men kept guard,
but we may suppose with little caution. What had they to apprehend,
within sight of a walled town in the possession of their friends? Two
others approached the spring, in order to bring water to the prisoners.
Resting their muskets against a tree they proceeded to fill their
canteens. At this moment Jasper gave the signal to his comrade. In an
instant the muskets were in their hands. In another, they had shot down
the two soldiers upon duty; then clubbing their weapons, they rushed out
upon the astonished enemy, and felling their first opponents each at a
blow, they succeeded in obtaining possession of the loaded muskets. This
decided the conflict, which was over in a few minutes. The surviving
guard yielded themselves to mercy before the presented weapons. Such an
achievement could only be successful from its audacity and the operation
of circumstances. The very proximity of Savannah increased the chances
of success. But for this the guard would have taken better precautions.
None were taken. The prompt valor, the bold decision, the cool
calculation of the instant, were the essential elements which secured
success. The work of our young heroes was not done imperfectly. The
prisoners were quickly released, the arms of the captured British put
into their hands, and, hurrying away from the spot which they have
crowned with a local celebrity not soon to be forgotten, they crossed
the Savannah in safety with their friends and foes. This is not the last
achievement of the brave Jasper which we shall have occasion to record.
The next, however, though not less distinguished by success, was
unhappily written in his own blood.
The campaign which followed was distinguished by several vicissitudes,
but the general result was the weakening and dispiriting of the American
forces. Brigadier General Ashe was surprised in his camp and utterly
defeated, and the British army not only penetrated into Georgia, but
made its appearance at Beaufort in South Carolina. Here it was met by
Moultrie in a spirited encounter, which resulted in a drawn battle.
Meanwhile, General Lincoln found the militia refractory. They refused
to submit to the articles of war, and desired to serve only under those
laws by which the militia was governed. Chagrined with this resistance,
Lincoln transferred the militia to Moultrie, and, at the head of
about 2000 troops of the regular service, he marched up the country to
Augusta, proposing by this course to circumscribe the progress of the
enemy in that quarter. Taking advantage of this movement, by which the
regular troops were withdrawn from the seaboard, the British General,
Prevost, immediately crossed the Savannah with the intention of
surprising Moultrie, who, with 1200 militia-men, lay at Black Swamp.
But Moultrie, advised of his enemy, retired to Coosawhatchie, where he
placed his rear guard; his headquarters being pitched on the hill, east
of Tuliffinnee, two miles in advance, and on the route to Charleston.
Here the rear-guard, under Colonel Laurens, engaged the enemy's
advance, and was driven before it. Moultrie gradually retired as Prevost
advanced, and the contest which followed between the two, seemed to be
which should reach Charleston first. The defenceless condition of that
city was known to the British General, whose object was to take it by
'coup de main'. Moultrie erred in not making continued fight in the
swamps and strong passes, the thick forests and intricate defiles, which
were numerous along the route of the pursuing army. His policy seems to
have been dictated by an undue estimate of the value of the city, and
the importance of its safety to the state. But for this, even an army
so much inferior as his, could have effectually checked the enemy long
before the city could have been reached. Moultrie continued in advance
of Prevost, and reached Charleston a few hours before him; just in
season to establish something like order, and put the place in a
tolerable state of defence. The fire from the lines arrested the British
advance. The place was summoned, and defiance returned. Night followed,
and the next morning the enemy had disappeared. His object had been
surprise. He was unprepared for the assault, having no heavy artillery,
and his departure was hastened by intercepted advices from Lincoln and
Governor Rutledge, which announced to the garrison the approach of
the regular troops and the country militia. Prevost retired to the
neighboring islands, and established himself in a strong fort at
Stono ferry. Here he was attacked by General Lincoln in a spirited but
unsuccessful affair, in which the latter was compelled to retreat.
The attack of Lincoln was followed by one of Moultrie, in galleys. The
situation of the British became unpleasant, and they did not wait a
repetition of these assaults, but retreated along the chain of islands
on the coast, until they reached Beaufort and Savannah. Both of these
places they maintained; the latter with their main army, the former
with a strong body of troops, apart from their sick, wounded and
convalescent. Here they were watched by General Lincoln, in a camp of
observation at Sheldon, until the appearance of a French fleet on the
coast led to renewed activity, and hopes, on the part of the Americans,
which were destined to bitter disappointment.
Marion was certainly with his regiment at Sheldon, and when it became
probable that there was some prospect of battle, we find him at Fort
Moultrie, when Prevost was in possession of the contiguous islands. But
a junction of the French and American forces, necessarily compelling the
concentration of the whole of the southern invading army at Savannah,
lessened the necessity of his remaining at a post which stood in no
manner of danger.
Early in September, 1779, the French admiral, Count D'Estaign, with
a fleet of twenty sail, appeared upon the coast. As soon as this was
certainly known, General Lincoln put his army in motion for Savannah.
But the French forces had disembarked before his arrival, and the
impatience and imprudence of their admiral did not suffer him to wait
the coming of the American. He was a rash man, and, as it appears,
on bad terms with his subordinate officers, who were, indeed, not
subordinate.* He proceeded to summon the place. The answer to his demand
was, a request of twenty-four hours for consideration. By a singular
error of judgment the French admiral granted the time required. His
only hope had been in a 'coup de main'. He had neither the time nor the
material necessary for regular approaches; nor, had he acted decisively,
do these seem to have been at all necessary. The place was not tenable
at the period of his first summons. The prompt energies of the British
commander soon made it so. Instead of considering, he consumed the
twenty-four hours in working. The arrival of Lieutenant-Colonel Cruger,
with a small command, from Sunbury, and the force of Lieutenant-Colonel
Maitland, from Beaufort, soon put the fortress in such a condition of
defence as to enable its commander to return his defiance to the renewed
summons of the combined armies. There seems to have been but one opinion
among the Americans as to the mistake of D'Estaign, in granting the
required indulgence. Weems, speaking for General Horry, says, "I never
beheld Marion in so great a passion. I was actually afraid he would have
broken out on General Lincoln. 'My God!' he exclaimed, 'who ever heard
of anything like this before? First allow an enemy to entrench, and
then fight him! See the destruction brought upon the British at
Bunker's Hill--yet our troops there were only militia; raw, half-armed
clodhoppers, and not a mortar, or carronade, not even a swivel--only
their ducking-guns! What, then, are we to expect from regulars,
completely armed, with a choice train of artillery, and covered by a
breastwork.'"
* Major-General T. Pinckney's account of the siege of
Savannah, quoted by Garden.--
The anticipations of Marion were fully realized. When the junction of
the French and American armies was effected, it was determined to reduce
the place by siege. Batteries were to be erected, and cannon brought
from the ships, a distance of several miles. Meanwhile, the works of
the besieged were undergoing daily improvements, under an able engineer.
Several hundred negroes were busy, day and night, upon the defences,
stimulated, when necessary, to exertion, by the lash. On the 4th of
October the besiegers opened with nine mortars and thirty-seven pieces
of cannon from the land side, and sixteen from the water. They continued
to play for several days, with little effect, and the anxiety of the
French admiral to leave the coast, at a season of the year when it is
particularly perilous to shipping to remain, determined the besiegers
to risk everything upon an assault. The morning of the 9th October was
fixed upon for the attack. The American army was paraded at one o'clock
that morning, but it was near four before the head of the French column
reached the front. "The whole army then marched towards the skirt of the
wood in one long column, and as they approached the open space, was to
break off into the different columns, as ordered for the attack. But, by
the time the first French column had arrived at the open space, the day
had fairly broke; when Count D'Estaign, without waiting until the other
columns had arrived at their position, placed himself at the head of his
first column, and rushed forward to the attack."* This was creditable
to his gallantry, if not to his judgment. But it was valor thrown away.
"The column was so severely galled by the grape-shot from the batteries,
as they advanced, and by both grape-shot and musketry, when they reached
the abbatis, that, in spite of the efforts of the officers, it got
into confusion, and broke away to their left, toward the wood in that
direction; the second and third French columns shared, successively,
the same fate, having the additional discouragement of seeing, as they
marched to the attack, the repulse and loss of their comrades who had
preceded them. Count Pulaski, who, with the cavalry, preceded the right
column of the Americans, proceeded gallantly, until stopped by the
abbatis; and before he could force through it received his mortal
wound."** The American column was much more successful. It was headed by
Colonel Laurens, with the Light Infantry, followed by the Second South
Carolina Regiment, of which Marion was second in command, and the first
battalion of Charleston militia. This column pressed forward, in the
face of a heavy fire, upon the Spring Hill redoubt, succeeded in getting
into the ditch, and the colors of the second regiment were planted upon
the berm. But the parapet was too high to be scaled under such a fire
as proceeded from the walls, and, struggling bravely but vainly, the
assailants were, after suffering severe slaughter, driven out of the
ditch. This slaughter was increased in the effort to retain and carry
off in safety the colors of the regiment.
* Major-General Thomas Pinckney, in a letter quoted by
Garden.
** Major-General Thomas Pinckney. See Garden.--
These colors, as we have seen, were the gift of a lady. Moultrie, in
the name of the regiment, had promised to defend them to the last. The
promise was faithfully remembered in this moment of extremity. One of
them was borne by Lieutenant Bush, supported by Sergeant Jasper; the
other by Lieutenant Grey, supported by Sergeant M'Donald. Bush being
slightly wounded early in the action delivered his standard to Jasper,
for better security. Jasper a second time and now fatally wounded,
restored it to the former. But at the moment of taking it, Bush received
a mortal wound. He fell into the ditch with his ensign under him, and
it remained in possession of the enemy. The other standard was more
fortunate. Lieutenant Grey, by whom it was borne, was slain, but
M'Donald plucked it from the redoubt where it had been planted, the
moment the retreat was ordered, and succeeded in carrying it off
in safety. The repulse was decisive. The slaughter, for so brief an
engagement, had been terrible, amounting to nearly eleven hundred men;
637 French, and 457 Americans. Of the former, the Irish Brigade, and of
the latter the 2d South Carolina Regiment, particularly distinguished
themselves and suffered most. The loss of the British was slight; the
assailants made no impression on their works. "Thus was this fine body
of troops sacrificed by the imprudence of the French General, who,
being of superior grade, commanded the whole.* In this battle Jasper was
mortally wounded. He succeeded in regaining the camp of the Americans.
The fatal wound was received in his endeavor to secure and save his
colors." Another distinguished personage who fell in this fatal affair,
was Col. Count Pulaski, a brave and skilful captain of cavalry,
better known in history for his attempt upon the life of Stanislaus
Poniatowski, King of Poland.
* Major-General T. Pinckney.--
Chapter 7.
From the Battle of Savannah to the Defeat of Gates
at Camden.
The failure of the combined forces of France and America before the
walls of Savannah, left the cause of the latter, in the South, in
much worse condition than before. The event served to depress the
Carolinians, and in the same degree, to elevate and encourage the enemy.
The allies withdrew to their ships, and, shortly after, from the coast.
General Lincoln, with the American army, retreated to the heights
of Ebenezer, and thence to Sheldon. Proceeding from this place to
Charleston, he left Marion in command of the army. On the thirty-first
of January, 1780, he writes to the latter as follows: "The state of
affairs is such as to make it necessary that we order our force to a
point as much and as soon as possible. No troops will be kept in the
field except two hundred Light Infantry and the Horse (Washington's).
You will therefore please to select from the three regiments with
you, two hundred of your best men, and those who are best clothed, and
organize them into corps, with proper officers. All the remainder, with
the baggage of the whole (saving such as is absolutely necessary for
light troops), will march immediately for this town. You will please
take command of the light infantry until Lieut. Col. Henderson arrives,
which I expect will be in a few days. After that, I wish to see you as
soon as possible in Charleston."
In the February following, Marion was dispatched to Bacon's Bridge on
Ashley river, where Moultrie had established a camp for the reception
of the militia of the neighborhood, as well as those which had been
summoned from the interior. It was to Marion that Lincoln chiefly looked
for the proper drilling of the militia. In his hands they lost the rude
and inefficient character, the inexpert and spiritless manner, which,
under ordinary commanders, always distinguish them. Feeling sure of
their Captain, he, in turn, rendered them confident of themselves.
Speaking of Marion's "PATIENCE with the militia"--a phrase of great
importance in this connection--Horry, in his own memoirs, which now
lie before us, adds, "No officer in the Union was better calculated
to command them, and to have done more than he did."* Lincoln knew his
value. The admirable training of the Second South Carolina Regiment had
already done high honor to his skill as a disciplinarian. He discovered
the secret which regularly bred military men are slow to discern, that,
without patience, in the training of citizen soldiers for immediate
service, they are incorrigible; and patience with them, on the part of
a commanding officer, is neither inconsistent with their claims nor with
their proper efficiency.
* MS. Memoir of Gen. Horry, p. 55.--
The accumulation of troops at Bacon's Bridge was made with the view to
the defence of Charleston, now threatened by the enemy. Many concurring
causes led to the leaguer of that city. Its conquest was desirable on
many accounts, and circumstances had already shown that this was not a
matter of serious difficulty. The invasion of Prevost the year before,
which had so nearly proved successful; the little resistance which had
been offered to him while traversing more than one hundred miles of
country contiguous to the Capital; and the rich spoils which, on his
retreat, had been borne off by his army, betrayed at once the wealth
and weakness of that region. The possession of Savannah, where British
Government had been regularly re-established, and the entire, if not
totally undisturbed control of Georgia, necessarily facilitated the
invasion of the sister province. South Carolina was now a frontier,
equally exposed to the British in Georgia, and the Tories of Florida
and North Carolina. The means of defence in her power were now far fewer
than when Prevost made his attempt on Charleston. The Southern army
was, in fact, totally broken up. The Carolina regiments had seen hard
service, guarding the frontier, and contending with the British in
Georgia. They were thinned by battle and sickness to a mere handful. The
Virginia and North Carolina regiments had melted away, as the term for
which they had enlisted, had expired. The Georgia regiment, captured
by the British in detail, were perishing in their floating prisons. The
weakness of the patriots necessarily increased the audacity, with the
strength, of their enemies. The loyalists, encouraged by the progress of
Prevost, and the notorious inefficiency of the Whigs, were now gathering
in formidable bodies, in various quarters, operating in desultory
bands, or crowding to swell the columns of the British army. All things
concurred to encourage the attempt of the enemy on Charleston. Its
possession, with that of Savannah, would not only enable them to
complete their ascendency in the two provinces to which these cities
belonged, but would probably give them North Carolina also. Virginia
then, becoming the frontier, it would be easy, with the cooperation
of an army ascending the Chesapeake, to traverse the entire South with
their legions, detaching it wholly from the federal compact. Such was
the British hope, and such their policy. There was yet another motive
for the siege of Charleston, considered without reference to collateral
or contingent events. Esteemed erroneously as a place of great
security--an error that arose in all probability from the simple fact
of the successful defence of Fort Moultrie--it was crowded with valuable
magazines. As a trading city, particularly while the commerce of the
North remained interrupted, it had become a place of great business. It
was a stronghold for privateers and their prizes, and always contained
stores and shipping of immense value.
The temptations to its conquest were sufficiently numerous. Ten
thousand choice troops, with a large and heavy train of artillery, were
accordingly dispatched from New York for its investment, which was
begun in February, 1780, and conducted by the Commander-in-Chief of
the British forces, Sir Henry Clinton, in person. He conducted his
approaches with a caution highly complimentary to the besieged. The
fortifications were only field works, and might have been overrun in
less than five days by an audacious enemy. The regular troops within the
city were not above two thousand men. The citizen militia increased the
number to nearly four thousand. For such an extent of lines as encircled
the place, the adequate force should not have been less than that of
the enemy. The fortifications, when the British first landed their
'materiel', were in a dilapidated and unfinished state, and, at that
time, the defenders, apart from the citizens, scarcely exceeded eight
hundred men; while the small pox, making its appearance within the
walls, for the first time for twenty years--an enemy much more dreaded
than the British,--effectually discouraged the country militia from
coming to the assistance of the citizens. Under these circumstances, the
conquest would have been easy to an active and energetic foe. But Sir
Henry does not seem to have been impatient for his laurels. He was
willing that they should mature gradually, and he sat down to a regular
and formal investment.
It was an error of the Carolinians, under such circumstances, to risk
the fortunes of the State, and the greater part of its regular military
strength, in a besieged town; a still greater to do so in defiance of
such difficulties as attended the defence. The policy which determined
the resolution was a concession to the citizens, in spite of all
military opinion. The city might have been yielded to the enemy, and the
State preserved, or, which was the same thing, the troops. The loss of
four thousand men from the ranks of active warfare, was the great and
substantial loss, the true source, in fact, of most of the miseries and
crimes by which the very bowels of the country were subsequently torn
and distracted.
It was the great good fortune of the State that Francis Marion was not
among those who fell into captivity in the fall of Charleston. He had
marched into the city from Dorchester, when his active services were
needed for its defence; but while the investment was in progress,
and before it had been fully completed, an event occurred to him, an
accident which was, no doubt, very much deplored at the time, by which
his services, lost for the present, were subsequently secured for the
country. Dining with a party of friends at a house in Tradd-street, the
host, with that mistaken hospitality which has too frequently changed
a virtue to a vice, turned the key upon his guests, to prevent escape,
till each individual should be gorged with wine. Though an amiable man,
Marion was a strictly temperate one. He was not disposed to submit to
this too common form of social tyranny; yet not willing to resent the
breach of propriety by converting the assembly into a bull-ring, he
adopted a middle course, which displayed equally the gentleness and
firmness of his temper. Opening a window, he coolly threw himself into
the street. He was unfortunate in the attempt; the apartment was on
the second story, the height considerable, and the adventure cost him
a broken ankle. The injury was a severe and shocking one, and, for the
time, totally unfitted him for service. He left the city in a litter,
while the passage to the country still remained open for retreat, in
obedience to an order of General Lincoln for the departure of all idle
mouths, "all supernumerary officers, and all officers unfit for duty."
Marion retired to his residence in St. John's parish. Here, suffering in
mind and body, he awaited with impatience the progress of events,
with which, however much he might sympathize, he could not share. His
humiliation at this unavoidable but melancholy inaction, may be imagined
from what we know of his habits and his patriotism.
The siege of Charleston, in consequence of the firm bearing of the
besieged, and the cautious policy of the British Government, was
protracted long after the works had been pronounced untenable. It was
yielded unwillingly to the conqueror, only after all resistance had
proved in vain. It fell by famine, rather than by the arms of the enemy.
The defence was highly honorable to the besieged. It lasted six
weeks, in which they had displayed equal courage and endurance. The
consequences of this misfortune leave it somewhat doubtful, whether
the determination to defend the city to the last extremity, was not the
result of a correct policy; considering less its own loss, and that
of the army, than the effect of the former upon the rustic population.
Certainly, the capture of the army was a vital misfortune to the
southern States; yet the loss of the city itself was of prodigious
effect upon the scattered settlements of the country. The character and
resolve of the capital cities, in those days, were very much the sources
of the moral strength of the interior. Sparsely settled, with unfrequent
opportunities of communion with one another, the minds of the forest
population turned naturally for their tone and direction to the capital
city. The active attrition of rival and conflicting minds, gives, in
all countries, to the population of a dense community, an intellectual
superiority over those who live remote, and feel none of the constant
moral strifes to which the citizen is subject. In South Carolina,
Charleston had been the seat of the original 'movement', had incurred
the first dangers, achieved the first victories, and, in all public
proceedings where action was desirable, had always led off in the van.
To preserve intact, and from overthrow, the seat of ancient authority
and opinion, was surely a policy neither selfish nor unwise. Perhaps,
after all, the grand error was, in not making the preparations for
defence adequate to the object. The resources of the State were small,
and these had been diminished wofully in succoring her neighbors, and
in small border strifes, which the borderers might have been taught
to manage for themselves. The military force of the State, under any
circumstances, could not have contended on equal terms with the ten
thousand well-appointed regulars of Sir Henry Clinton. The assistance
derived from Virginia and North Carolina was little more than nominal,
calculated rather to swell the triumph of the victor than to retard his
successes.
If the movements of the British were slow, and deficient in military
enterprise, where Sir Henry Clinton commanded in person, such could
not be said of them, after the conquest of Charleston was effected. The
commander-in-chief was succeeded by Earl Cornwallis, and his career was
certainly obnoxious to no such reproaches. We shall have more serious
charges to bring against him. Of the gross abuse of power, wanton
tyrannies, cruel murders, and most reckless disregard of decency
and right, by which the course of the British was subsequently
distinguished, we shall say no more than will suffice to show, in what
dangers, through what difficulties, and under what stimulating causes,
Francis Marion rose in arms, when everything appeared to be lost.
Charleston in possession of the enemy, they proceeded with wonderful
activity to use all means in their power, for exhausting the resources,
and breaking down the spirit of the country. Their maxim was that of
habitual tyranny--"might is right". They seemed to recognize no other
standard. The articles of capitulation, the laws of nations, private
treaty, the dictates of humanity and religion, were all equally set
at naught. The wealth of private families,--slaves by thousands,--were
hurried into the waists of British ships, as the legitimate spoils of
war. The latter found a market in the West India islands; the prisoners
made by the fall of Charleston were, in defiance of the articles of
capitulation, crowded into prison-ships, from whence they were only
released by death, or by yielding to those arguments of their keepers
which persuaded them to enlist in British regiments, to serve in other
countries. Many yielded to these arguments, with the simple hope of
escape from the horrors by which they were surrounded. When arts
and arguments failed to overcome the inflexibility of these wretched
prisoners, compulsion was resorted to, and hundreds were forced from
their country, shipped to Jamaica, and there made to serve in British
regiments.* Citizens of distinction, who, by their counsel or presence,
opposed their influence over the prisoners, or proved themselves
superior to their temptations, were torn from their homes without
warning, and incarcerated in their floating dungeons. Nothing was
forborne, in the shape of pitiless and pitiful persecution, to break the
spirits, subdue the strength, and mock and mortify the hopes, alike, of
citizen and captive.
* Moultrie's Memoirs, Vol. 2, 'Correspondence'.--
With those who kept the field the proceedings were more summary, if not
more severe. The fall of Charleston seems necessarily to have involved
the safety of the country from the Savannah to the Pedee. In a few weeks
after the capture of the city, the British were in peaceable possession
of the space between these limits, from the seaboard to the mountains.
They had few opponents--an isolated body of continentals, a small squad
of militia, for the first time drilling for future service, or a little
troop of horse--and these were quickly overcome. On these occasions the
British were generally led by Lieutenant-Colonel Tarleton. This officer
acquired for himself an odious distinction in his progress through the
South in the campaigns which followed. He was rather an active than a
skilful commander. Rapid in his movements, he gave little heed to the
judicious disposition of his troops, and aiming more at impressing the
fears of his enemy, than overcoming him by science, his chief successes
were the result of the panic which his surprises and his butcheries
inspired. He seems never to have been successful against an equal and
resolute foe. But, as courage and activity are, perhaps, after all,
and before all, the most necessary requisites for a soldier, Tarleton's
services were inappreciable to the invading army. In one month after its
arrival, his legion was mounted and began its career of slaughter. While
yet the city was sustaining the siege, he penetrated the country, in
pursuit of those bands of militia horse, which, by direction of the
American commander, still kept the open field. On the 18th of March,
he surprised a company of militia at Salkehatchie Bridge, killed and
wounded several and dispersed the rest. Five days after, another
party at Pon-Pon shared the same fortune. He was not so successful at
Rantowles on the 23d of the same month, where in a rencounter with Col.
Washington, his dragoons were roughly handled, and retreated with loss.
He avenged himself, however, on Washington, in less than a month after,
by surprising him at Monk's Corner. Col. White soon after took command
of the southern cavalry, and obtained some trifling successes, but
suffered himself to be surprised at Lenud's ferry on the Santee. These
events all took place prior to the surrender of the city. The activity
of Tarleton, with the general remissness, and want of ordinary military
precautions on the part of the militia which opposed itself to him, made
his progress easy, and thus enabled him to cut off every party that was
embodied in the field. He was now to succeed in a much more important
and much more bloody enterprise. A Continental force from Virginia
of four hundred men, under Col. Beaufort,* had been dispatched to the
relief of Charleston. Beaufort had reached Camden before he was apprised
of the surrender of that city. This event properly determined him to
retreat. Earl Cornwallis, meanwhile, had taken the field with a force of
twenty-five hundred men, and was then in rapid progress for the Santee.
Hearing of the advance of Beaufort, he dispatched Tarleton in quest of
him, with a select body of infantry and cavalry, in all, seven hundred
men. Beaufort was overtaken near the Waxhaw settlements, and summoned to
surrender. This person does not seem to have been designed by nature for
military operations. He halted at the summons, hesitated awhile, sent
his wagons ahead, consulted with his officers, and did little or
nothing farther, either for flight or conflict. While thus halting and
hesitating he was attacked by the impetuous Tarleton, offered a feeble
resistance, unmarked by conduct or spirit, suffered the enemy to gain
his rear, and finally grounded his arms. He either did this too soon or
too late. His flag was disregarded in the flush of battle, the bearer
of it cut down by the hand of Tarleton, and the British infantry, with
fixed bayonets, rushed upon the inactive Americans. Some of Beaufort's
men, seeing that their application for quarter was disregarded, resolved
to die like men, and resumed their arms. Their renewed fire provoked the
massacre of the unresisting. A terrible butchery followed. The British
gave no quarter. From that day, "Tarleton's Quarters", implying the
merciless cutting down of the suppliant, grew into a proverbial phrase,
which, in the hour of victory, seemed to embitter the hostility with
which the American strove to avenge his slaughtered comrades.
* Generally given as Buford in other documents. Simms also
states "the Warsaw settlements" in the original text, but
Waxhaw is correct. According to local tradition, the mother
of Andrew Jackson, the future president, was one of those
who aided the survivors. Jackson himself later served, at
the age of 13, in Davie's cavalry, as a messenger, and was
the only member of his family to survive the war.
--A. L., 1996.--
The defeat of Beaufort, with the only regular force remaining in the
State, following so close upon the fall of Charleston, paralyzed
the hopes of the patriots. The country seemed everywhere subdued. An
unnatural and painful apathy dispirited opposition. The presence of a
British force, sufficient to overawe the neighborhood, at conspicuous
points, and the awakened activity of the Tories in all quarters, no
longer restrained by the presence in arms of their more patriotic
countrymen, seemed to settle the question of supremacy. There was not
only no head against the enemy, but the State, on a sudden, appeared to
have been deprived of all her distinguished men. Moultrie and others who
might have led, were prisoners of war. Governor Rutledge, a noble spirit
and famous orator--the Patrick Henry of Carolina,--had withdrawn to the
North State, to stimulate the energies of the people in that quarter and
gain recruits. His example was followed by Sumter, Horry and others,--by
all, in fact, who, escaping captivity, were in condition to fly. The
progress of Cornwallis and Tarleton left mere distinction, unsupported
by men, with few places of security. Marion, meanwhile, incapable of
present flight, was compelled to take refuge in the swamp and forest.
He was too conspicuous a person, had made too great a figure in previous
campaigns, and his military talents were too well known and too highly
esteemed, not to render him an object of some anxiety as well to friends
as foes. Still suffering from the hurts received in Charleston, with
bloody and malignant enemies all around him, his safety depended on his
secrecy and obscurity alone. Fortunately he had "won golden opinions
from all sorts of people." He had friends among all classes, who did
not permit themselves to sleep while he was in danger. Their activity
supplied the loss of his own. They watched while he slept. They assisted
his feebleness. In the moment of alarm, he was sped from house to house,
from tree to thicket, from the thicket to the swamp. His "hair-breadth
'scapes" under these frequent exigencies, were, no doubt, among the most
interesting adventures of his life, furnishing rare material, could they
be procured, for the poet and romancer. Unhappily, while the chronicles
show the frequent emergency which attended his painful condition, they
furnish nothing more. We are without details. The melancholy baldness
and coldness with which they narrate events upon which one would like to
linger is absolutely humbling to the imagination; which, kindled by the
simple historical outline, looks in vain for the satisfaction of
those doubts and inquiries, those hopes and fears, which the provoking
narrative inspires only to defraud. How would some old inquisitive
Froissart have dragged by frequent inquiry from contemporaneous
lips, the particular fact, the whole adventure, step by step, item by
item,--the close pursuit, the narrow escape,--and all the long train of
little, but efficient circumstances, by which the story would have been
made unique, with all its rich and numerous details! These, the reader
must supply from his own resources of imagination. He must conjecture
for himself the casual warning brought to the silent thicket, by the
devoted friend, the constant woman, or the humble slave; the midnight
bay of the watch dog or the whistle of the scout; or the sudden shot,
from friend or foe, by which the fugitive is counselled to hurry to
his den. A thousand events arise to the imagination as likely to have
occurred to our partisan, in his hours of feebleness and danger, from
the rapid cavalry of Tarleton, or the close and keen pursuit of the
revengeful Tories. To what slight circumstances has he been indebted
for his frequent escape! What humble agents have been commissioned by
Providence to save a life, that was destined to be so precious to his
country's liberties!
How long he remained in this situation is not exactly known,--probably
several months. As soon as he was able to mount his horse, he collected
a few friends, and set out for North Carolina. A Continental force was
on its way from Virginia under Baron De Kalb. His purpose was to
join it. It was while on this route, and with this object, that he
encountered his old friend and long tried associate in arms, Col. P.
Horry.*
* There were two Horrys, brothers, both of whom were very
brave and distinguished adherents of our partisan. Peter
Horry held a captain's commission in the same regiment with
Marion, at the battle of Fort Moultrie. Hugh Horry was the
particular favorite of his General. A life of Marion,
purporting to be in part by the former, but really composed
entirely by the Rev. M. L. Weems, from facts furnished by
Horry, is already well known to the public. A MS. life of
Peter Horry is now before me, and has furnished me with
several illustrations of the war, during this narrative.
Both of these brothers served under Marion, to the close of
the war, with equal courage and fidelity.--
Horry describes his ankle, at this meeting, as still "very crazy"--so
much so that it required his help and that of Marion's servant to lift
him from his horse. But his spirits were good. He was still cheerful,
and possessed that rare elasticity of character which never loses its
tone under privations and disappointments. Weems, who, we are compelled
to admit, very frequently exercised the privilege of the ancient
historian, of putting fine speeches into the mouth of his hero, tells us
that he jeered at the doleful expressions of his companion, Horry, who,
discussing the condition of the country, lamented that their "happy days
were all gone." "Our happy days all gone, indeed!" answered Marion--"on
the contrary, they are yet to come. The victory is still sure. The
enemy, it is true, have all the trumps, and if they had but the spirit
to play a generous game, they would certainly ruin us. But they have
no idea of that game. They will treat the people cruelly, and that one
thing will ruin them and save the country." Weems, speaking for
Horry, describes in ludicrous terms, their journey through North
Carolina,--through a region swarming with Tories, but, fortunately for
our travellers, who were venomous without being active. Our fugitives
were without money and without credit, and "but for carrying a knife,
or a horse fleam, or a gun-flint, had no more use for a pocket than a
Highlander has for a knee-buckle. As to hard money we had not seen a
dollar for years." In this resourceless condition--a condition, which,
it may be well to say in this place, continued throughout the war, they
made their way with difficulty until they joined the Continental army.
Gates had superseded De Kalb in its command, and was pressing forward,
with the ambition, seemingly, of writing a dispatch like Caesar's,
announcing, in the same breath, the sight and conquest of his enemy.
Marion and his little troop of twenty men, made but a sorry figure in
the presence of the Continental General. Gates was a man of moderate
abilities, a vain man, of a swelling and ostentatious habit, whose
judgment was very apt to be affected by parade, and the external show of
things. Some of his leading opinions were calculated to show that he was
unfit for a commander in the South. For example, he thought little of
cavalry, which, in a plain country, sparsely settled, was among the
first essentials of success, as well in securing intelligence, as in
procuring supplies. It was not calculated therefore to raise the troop
of our partisan in his esteem, to discover that they were all good
riders and well mounted. Marion, himself, was a man equally modest in
approach and unimposing in person. His followers may have provoked the
sneer of the General, as it certainly moved the scorn and laughter of
his well-equipped Continentals. We have a description of them from the
pen of an excellent officer, the Adjutant General of Gates' army. He
says, "Col. Marion, a gentleman of South Carolina, had been with the
army a few days, attended by a very few followers, distinguished by
small leather caps, and the wretchedness of their attire; their number
did not exceed twenty men and boys, some white, some black, and all
mounted, but most of them miserably equipped; their appearance was in
fact so burlesque, that it was with much difficulty the diversion of the
regular soldiery was restrained by the officers; and the General
himself was glad of an opportunity of detaching Col. Marion, at his own
instance, towards the interior of South Carolina, with orders to watch
the motions of the enemy and furnish intelligence."*
* Narrative of the Campaign of 1780, by Col. Otho Williams.--
From such small and insignificant beginnings flow greatness and
great performances. We, who are in possession of all the subsequent
events--who see this proud, vain Commander, hurrying on with the
rapidity of madness to his own ruin--can but smile in the perusal
of such a narrative, not at the rags of Marion's men, but at the
undiscerning character of those who could see, in the mean equipment,
the imperfect clothing, the mixture of man and boy, and white and black,
anything but a noble patriotism, which, in such condition, was still
content to carry on a war against a powerful enemy. The very rags and
poverty of this little band, which was afterwards to become so famous,
were so many proofs of their integrity and virtue, and should have
inspired respect rather than ridicule. They were so many guarantees
of good service which they were able and prepared to render. It was in
defiance of the temptations and the power of the foe, that these men
had taken the field against him, and had Gates been a wise commander, he
would have seen even through their rags and destitution, the small but
steady light of patriotism; which, enkindled throughout the State by the
example of Marion, Sumter, and a few others, was to blaze out finally
into that perfect brightness before which the invader was to shrink
confounded.
Gates was wise enough to take counsel of Marion, if nothing more; and
even this might not have been done, but for the suggestions of Governor
Rutledge, who, at that time in the camp of the Continentals, might very
well have informed him of the value of the man whose followers inspired
only ridicule. It was with Marion that the plan was concerted, and not
improbably at his suggestion, for moving into the very heart of the
State. This, subsequently, was the policy of Greene, and had Gates
adopted the deliberate caution of that commander, his successes would
unquestionably have been the same. The object of such a movement was
to give an opportunity to the native patriots to rally--to compel the
British to concentrate their scattered forces, call in their detached
parties, and thus circumscribe their influence, within the State, to the
places where they still remained in force. To effect these objects, the
Fabian maxims of warfare should have been those of the American General.
Few of his militia had ever seen an enemy. He had but recently joined
his troops, knew nothing of them, and they as little of him. Their
march had been a fatiguing one. Time and training were necessary
pre-requisites for their improvement and his success. Unhappily, these
were the very agents with which the vanity of the unfortunate commander
made him most willing to dispense. The victory at Saratoga had spoiled
him for ever, and thinking too much of himself, he committed the next
great error of a military man, of thinking too lightly of his foe. It
would be idle and perhaps impertinent, to suggest that if Marion had
been suffered to remain with him, the issue of this march might have
been more fortunate. Gates was quite too vain-glorious to listen and
Marion quite too moderate to obtrude his opinions; and yet Marion was a
man of equal prudence and adroitness. He could insinuate advice, so
that it would appear to self-conceit the very creature of its own
conceptions. Had Marion remained, could Gates have listened, we are very
sure there would have been no such final, fatal disaster as suddenly
stopped the misdirected progress of the Continental army. There would
have been some redeeming circumstances to qualify the catastrophe. All
would not have been lost. At all events, with Marion at their head, the
militia would have fought awhile,--would have discharged their pieces,
once, twice, thrice, before they fled. They would have done for the
born-leader of militia, what they refused to do for a commander who
neither knew how to esteem, nor how to conduct them.
It was while Marion was in the camp of Gates, that a messenger from
the Whigs of Williamsburg, then newly risen in arms, summoned him to be
their leader. It was in consequence of this invitation, and not
because of the awkwardness of his position there, that he determined to
penetrate into South Carolina, in advance of the American army. Such an
invitation was not to be neglected. Marion well knew its importance, and
at once accepted the commission conferred upon him by Governor Rutledge.
He took leave of Gates accordingly, having received, as is reported,
certain instructions from that unhappy commander, to employ his men in
the destruction of all the scows, boats, ferry-flats and barges on
the route, by which the enemy might make his escape. The fancy of the
American General already beheld the army of Lord Cornwallis in full
flight. His great solicitude seems to have been how to secure his
captives. He had, strangely enough for a military man, never taken
counsel of the farm-yard proverb, which we need not here repeat for the
benefit of the reader.* With the departure of Marion, his better genius
left him,--the only man, who, in command of the militia, might have
saved him from destruction. Leaving our partisan, with his little squad,
to make his way cautiously through a country infested with Tories, we
follow for the present the progress of the Continental army. On the
night of the fifteenth of August, 1780, the Americans moved from
Rugely's Mills. At midnight, without dreaming of an enemy, they
encountered him. The first intelligence communicated to either army of
the presence of the other, was from the fire of the British advance upon
the Americans. The two armies recoiled and lay upon their arms the
rest of the night. So far the affair was indecisive. The Americans had
sustained themselves in the face of some disadvantages, chiefly the
result of their leader's imprudence. A night march of raw militia in
the face of a foe, and in column of battle, was itself an error which a
sagacious commander would never have made. It is not to be denied, that
the Americans were not satisfied with their situation. Some of their
officers openly declared their discontent. But it was too late for a
retrograde movement, nor is it likely, feeling as he did and sanguine as
he was, that Gates would have believed any such movement necessary. The
ground was equally unknown to both commanders; but Cornwallis had one
advantage: he was in the command of veterans, who are generally cool
enough in such situations to look about them, and make the most of their
exigencies. The American line was soon formed and in waiting for the
dawn and the enemy. The first Maryland division, including the Delawares
under De Kalb, was posted on the right; the Virginia militia under
Stevens on the left; the North Carolinians, led by Caswell in the
centre; and the artillery, in battery, upon the road. Both wings rested
on morasses, and the second Maryland brigade was posted as a reserve, a
few hundred yards in the rear of the first. The British formed a single
line, with each wing covered and supported by a body in reserve. They
were much less numerous than the Americans, but they were picked men,
the choice of the regiments in Charleston and Camden. The American
militia, of which the greater part of Gates' army consisted, had
never felt an enemy's fire. The Maryland and Delaware troops were good
soldiers, well trained and in confidence of their leaders. With the
break of day, and the advance of the American left,
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/843