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.