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The Life of Francis Marion

W >> William Gilmore Simms >> The Life of Francis Marion




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.

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