The Life of Francis Marion
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William Gilmore Simms >> The Life of Francis Marion
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25 Entered twice and compared by Alan Light, alight@mercury.interpath.net
[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases are capitalized.
Some obvious errors have been corrected.]
[William Gilmore Simms, American (South Carolinian) Writer. 1806-1870.]
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.
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.
--
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