MADAM CONSTANTIA
[Illustration: ‘A fourth time I tried and, failing, gave over ... and
laid my face against the saddle.’ _p. 273_]
Madam Constantia
THE ROMANCE OF A PRISONER OF WAR IN THE REVOLUTION (SOUTH CAROLINA)
EDITED BY
JEFFERSON CARTER
_Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur_
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1919
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. SIR EDWARD’S PREFACE 1
II. UNDER KING’S MOUNTAIN 8
III. MADAM CONSTANTIA 26
IV. AT THE SMITHY 48
V. THE SWAMP FOX 72
VI. ON PAROLE 94
VII. HICKORY KNOB 116
VIII. THE MAN WITH TWO FACES 141
IX. THE COURT IS CLOSED 165
X. THE WOMAN’S PART 188
XI. THE MAN’S PART 211
XII. THE MILL ON THE WATEREE 235
XIII. CONSTANTIA AT SARATOGA 260
EDITOR’S PREFACE
Although the Historical Manuscripts Commission (England) has dealt with
several of the Northumberland Collections, the Commission has not
thought fit to print among the papers of the Craven family of Osgodby,
the narrative of the fifth baronet’s experiences in South Carolina
during the War of American Independence. The reason for this decision
may be either a belief that the episode is not of value from a
historical standpoint; or a suspicion that the facts owe something to
the expansion of a man writing many years later. However this may be,
the story seemed to the present Editor to possess a certain poignancy,
and, notwithstanding some intimate passages, to be worthy of a public
wider than that of the County of its birth. He has, therefore, with such
skill as he possesses prepared it for publication.
It will be noticed that Sir Edward Craven nowhere names the regiment in
which he served, but it appears from other sources that it was the 33rd
Regiment of Foot, now styled the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment.
The Editor has thought proper to retain the fanciful title prefixed by
the writer, but has added some Chapter headings.
MADAM CONSTANTIA
CHAPTER I
SIR EDWARD’S PREFACE
_So here is this fatal war commenced!
‘The Child that is unborn shall rue
The hunting of that day!’_
H. WALPOLE.
_Not Lord Chatham, not Alexander the Great, nor Cæsar has ever
conquered so much territory in the course of all their wars as Lord
North has lost in one campaign!_
C. J. FOX.
Six months ago I went through the old papers in the Strongroom. I noted
that neither my father nor my grandfather had added a line, save in the
way of leases and the like, to the records which the first and second
baronets left of the Siege of Newcastle, and of the Union troubles. It
occurred to me that we owed something to posterity; and that, for lack
of more important matter, my fortunes _en campagne_ in America were a
part of the family history, and proper to be preserved.
For an idle man, however, to will and to do are two things; and I might
never have proceeded beyond the former if I had not a day or two later
taken up the Gentleman’s Magazine and learned that General Washington of
the United States of America had passed away at his seat at Mount Vernon
on the fourteenth of the preceding month. That gave me the needed
fillip. I never knew him; at least I never knew him by that title, since
on the few occasions on which I met him, it was beyond my duty as an
officer in His Majesty’s service to admit the existence of the States. I
believe him, however, to have been a gentleman of good family, kindly
and dignified, somewhat of the old school, and of considerable military
ability; one, too, whose influence went some way towards checking within
his sphere of action the rancour that in the Southern Colonies stained
the Continental Cause and did not spare ours. Unfortunately from ’80
onwards my duty led me into the Carolinas; and it was to the sad and
unusual nature of the war in those provinces that what was singular in
my experiences was due.
Previously, to be brief, I had served for three years in the north, I
had suffered the humiliation of surrendering with that gallant and loyal
gentleman, General Burgoyne, I had been exchanged. But my experiences in
Canada and on the Hudson were those of a hundred others and I pass over
them, proposing to begin my relation at the point at which the fortunes
of war cast me adrift, and flung me on my own resources.
From where I write, looking out on the barren, frost-bound hills of the
Border, it is a far cry to the rice-fields and tropical lands of the
Tidewater of Carolina; and a farther cry to the rolling country of
pleasant vale and forest that sweeps upwards to the foothills, and so to
the misty distances of the Blue Ridge. In those days it was often a
three months’ passage, on salt meat and stale water; a passage of which
many a poor fellow never saw the end. To-day I cross in a moment. But
before I do so, let me add a word of preface, that all who read this may
view the matter from our standpoint in ’80, midway in the fighting,
rather than from the point at which we stand to-day, with the end behind
us and an American Minister at St. James’s.
I say nothing about the Tea Duty or the claim to tax the Colonies. I
believe that we had a right to have money from them; our fleet covered
their trade. But whether we should not have left it to them to tax
themselves is another matter, and seems more English. What is certain
is, that we had through the war the most worthless government that ever
held power in England; and so my father said a hundred times—and voted
for them steadily till the day they fell!
In the City and at Brooks’s the war was never popular. There were many
in both who asked with Mr. Walpole what we should gain by triumph
itself; would America, laid waste, replace America flourishing, rich and
free? And here and there an officer declined to serve against his
kinsmen and was allowed to stand aside. But for the most part we ran to
it, younger sons and eldest too, from my neighbor Lord Percy downward,
as to an adventure. All who could beg or buy a commission mounted the
cockade. The thing was fashionable—with two results that I came to think
unhappy.
The first was that too many of our people—those in particular who had
the least right to do so—looked down on the Colonials from a social
height as on a set of farmers and clodhoppers; forgetting that many of
them were our own cousins once or twice removed, and that some had been
bred up beside us at Westminster and Oxford. The second was that those
of us who had seen service under the great Frederick, or had learned our
drill at Finchley or Hounslow, sneered at the rebel officers as tailors,
called them Mohairs—God knows why!—and made light not only of their
skill but their courage, treating even the Loyalists who joined us as of
a lower grade.
For these two prejudices we were to pay very dearly. They not only
brought into the struggle a bitterness which was needless and to be
deplored, but, as things turned out, they reacted very unpleasantly on
ourselves. It was bad enough to be worsted by those whom the meaner and
more foolish among us regarded as of lower clay; it was still more
mortifying for old soldiers, who had learned their drill in the
barrack-yard, to find that it went for little in face of the immensities
of that unknown continent; and that among the forests of the Hudson or
in the marshes of the Savannah our military art was of far less value
than the power to shoot straight, or to lay an ambush after the Indian
fashion.
Owing to these two prejudices the lessons we had to learn in the war
were the more painful. Not that our poor fellows did not fight. Believe
me, they fought with the most dogged courage—sometimes when the only
powder they had was the powder on their queues, and the steel or the
clubbed musket was their only weapon. But the others fought too and
stubbornly—what else could we expect? They were of our blood and bone;
they, too, were Britons. And they were in their own forests, on their
own rivers,—which seemed to be seas to us—they were fighting for their
homes and barns and orchards. Whereas we were twelve weeks from home,
ill-fed, ill-found, and ill-supported, scattered over hundreds of
leagues, and lost in pathless wilds that grew more hostile as outrage on
the one side or the other embittered our relations.
The first half of the war was fought in the northern colonies. It ended
sadly, as all remember, in our surrender at Saratoga, and in the retreat
of General Clinton from Philadelphia to the sea-coast. After that, the
fighting was transferred to the south, to Georgia, the Carolinas and
Virginia. We took Charles Town, we defeated the Continental Army at
Camden, we had South Carolina in our hands, we looked hopefully towards
the north. And then, in the late summer of ’80, when the south seemed to
be in our hands, the country on all sides rose against us as by magic
and the war took on a new and more savage character. But enough has been
said by way of general preface.
For myself. On the fifth of October of that year ’80, I was sent from
Charlotte—whither my Lord Cornwallis had advanced on his way into North
Carolina—with important orders to Colonel Ferguson, who at the time was
covering the left flank with a strong body of royalists. On the sixth,
accompanied by Simms, my orderly, and after a perilous ride, I reached
Ferguson’s camp on King’s Mountain. He knew that the enemy were in
strength in the neighbourhood, and, after falling back some distance, he
had taken up a strong position on a ridge, which rose above the forest—a
more active and able officer was not in the service. But this time he
had either under-valued his opponents, sturdy hunters and settlers from
the Backwaters, or he had over-estimated the strength of his position;
and the lamentable issue of the fight on the following day is well
known. After a fierce struggle Ferguson’s men were out-flanked and
surrounded, and he himself fell, striving bravely to the last, while the
greater part of his force was captured or cut to pieces. Of the few who
had the good fortune to break through the ring I was one. Nor was I only
fortunate for myself, for I carried off poor Simms on my crupper. From
this point my relation starts.