(1732-1795)
[Illustration: Francis Marion. [TN]]
Francis Marion, the partisan general of South Carolina, was of
Huguenot descent, the first American settlers of the name being
Benjamin Marion and Judith Balnet, his wife, who came from France in
1690, and established themselves in a plantation on one of the
tributaries of the Cooper River, near Charleston. Gabriel, the son of
Benjamin, married Esther Cordes. These were the parents of Francis
Marion. He was born, it would appear, in St. John's Parish, Berkeley
County, probably in 1732. His early life was passed, till his
twenty-seventh year, in agricultural pursuits, when we first hear of
him in connection with military matters in the period of the old
French war. He took the field with Moultrie, and fought gallantly by
the side of that officer in the Cherokee country against the savages
at the battle of Etchoee. He then returned to his farm, near Eutaw
Springs, ripening for the work of the Revolution, which found him at
the height of manhood, at the age of forty-three. The people of his
district relied upon his understanding, for we find them sending him
as their delegate to the Provincial Congress of 1775, when he was
appointed captain in the regiment of his former superior officer,
Colonel Moultrie. His first duty was to gather a company, which he
speedily effected in the Eastern region, where he was well known. He
was then employed in the neighborhood of Charleston; being engaged in
the occupation of Fort Johnson and the command of Dorchester.
He was with Moultrie, at Sullivan's Island in May, 1776, during that
fierce day of battle when the British were driven from the southern
colonies, and particularly distinguished himself in the gallant
defence.
At the ill-managed attack upon Savannah, by the combined forces of
D'Estaing and Lincoln, which ended so disastrously for the Americans,
Marion was present with his regiment, which did much by its gallantry
to redeem the honor, if not the fortunes, of the day. Next came, in
the winter of 1780, the siege of Charleston, by Sir Henry Clinton. It
was evident from the beginning that the city must fall, and it has
been a point much discussed whether Lincoln should have attempted to
defend it, whether it would not have been better for the cause that he
should withdraw his troops, and besiege the British from the open
country. This was what afterward took place when the conquerors were
reduced almost to starvation. An accident which happened to Marion has
been esteemed a piece of singular good fortune to the cause, in saving
him from surrender. He was in command of the small body of light
troops, outside of the city, when he was called to aid in the defence.
During the first days of the very deliberate investment, he was dining
with some friends in the town, when, according to a custom not unusual
in those hard-drinking times, the door was locked that no one should
avoid his share of the conviviality. Determined to escape the
infliction, he threw himself from the window into the street. The fall
fractured his ankle and incapacitated him from service. In obedience
to an order of Lincoln, commanding all officers unfit for duty to
retire from the city, he left while the country was still open, and
took refuge in his native region of St. John. His freedom was thus
preserved for the service of his country.
Now came the incursions of Tarleton and the devastating warfare of
Cornwallis--a policy of savage extermination which would have driven a
people with less capability of exertion to despair. But it happened,
as it has before, that the very means employed to crush, excited the
spirit of resistance, and deliverers were raised up for the oppressed.
It was a peculiar species of warfare which was now entered upon,
requiring novel resources both for attack and defence. A thinly
inhabited country was the scene of operations, cut up in all
directions by rivers and their branches, and innumerable swamps. Large
bodies of troops could move only with difficulty; it was a service for
small parties of cavalry always in movement, making up by rapidity for
want of numbers. On the side of the British, Lieutenant-Colonel
Tarleton, an officer of spirit, whose fiery youth has been vividly
handed down to us in the portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, was the
leading representative of this method of warfare, harrying the land
with his mounted troops, and overcoming by his activity and
unscrupulousness. Success added terror to his name, as he gained
victory after victory, and seemed destined to sweep the land of its
patriot defenders. He was the right arm of Cornwallis, in his
movements in the interior, and began to be deemed invincible, when his
course was arrested by Morgan, the Virginian, and his resolute
companies of native defenders of the State, at the battle of Cowpens.
But it was in Marion that the chief spirit of resistance was
incorporated. On the arrival of Gates from the North, in command of
the Southern army, having partially recovered from his lameness, he
presented himself before the hero of Saratoga, on his march toward the
fatal field of Camden. American commanders were accustomed to odd
sights of dress and equipment in the patriot soldiery who enlisted
under their banners, and Gates must have been used to appearances with
which the eye of Washington himself was but too familiar. The little
band of Marion, however, seems to have astonished even their American
brethren-in-arms. As for the well-equipped British, they always held
the ragged American regiments in contempt, till they were soundly
flogged by them. An intelligent looker-on at the camp, Colonel Otho
Williams, in his narrative of the campaign, speaks of Colonel Marion's
arrival, "attended by a very few followers, distinguished by small
leather caps and the wretchedness of their attire; their number did
not exceed twenty men and boys, some white, some black, and all
mounted, but most of them miserably equipped. Their appearance was, in
fact, so burlesque, that it was with much difficulty the diversion of
the regular soldiery was restrained by the officers; and the general
himself was glad of an opportunity of detaching Colonel Marion, at his
own instance, toward the interior of South Carolina, with orders to
watch the motions of the enemy, and furnish intelligence."
It was while Marion was engaged on this service, that the battle of
Camden was fought; but luckily, he had no share in the misadventure.
He was employed, in fact, in quite an independent career of his own,
organizing his own forces and acting at his own discretion. He was at
the head of that system of partisan warfare, which, in its
developments, was to rid the State of the foreign foe. His present
command, "Marion's Brigade," was formed from the hardy spirited
population of Irish descent, settled between the Santee and the Pedee,
in the territory of Williamsburg. They were convinced of the
intentions of the British rulers at Charleston to reduce them to
political servitude; they knew their rights, and knowing, dared to
maintain them. Their movement was voluntary, as they gathered their
small but resolute force of picked men, and called Marion to its
command. He had already assumed it, and caused the Tories to feel his
new authority when the defeat of Gates took place. It roused him at
once to a new effort to redeem the fortunes of war. He was already in
the neighborhood of the field, and hearing that a British guard was on
its way with a considerable body of prisoners, he determined to arrest
the party on its march. Two days after the battle, he concerted an
attack, and with the loss of but one man, killed and took 22 regulars
and 2 Tories prisoners, and retook 150 continentals of the Maryland
line. He was now a recognized leader in the field, and the British
commander-in-chief directed his efforts to his overthrow. "I most
sincerely hope," wrote Cornwallis to Tarleton, "that you will get at
Mr. Marion." But Mr. Marion was not so easily to be caught. On the
appearance of a superior force, under the command of Tarleton, which
it would have been vain to resist, the skilful partisan turned his
forces in another direction, to the borders of North Carolina, where
he overawed the Scotch Tories in that disaffected region. The ruthless
conduct of the British whom he had left behind, now raised the South
Carolinians to fresh resistance, when Marion, ever mindful of his
opportunity, returned to the State with speed, accomplishing sixty
miles in one day, and in a bold night attack, defeated a large body of
Tories on the Black Mingo. Following this up with some smaller
successes of the kind, he again attracted the attention of Tarleton,
who issued out of Charleston in force for his capture, and when he was
fairly on his heels, wearied out and perplexed by the windings of his
foe, gave up the chase, it is said, with the exclamation, "Come, my
boys! let us go back. We will soon find the Game Cock [Marion's
brother partisan, Sumter], but as for this damned Swamp-fox, the devil
himself could not catch him."
The tide was now turning, as the people felt their strength. King's
Mountain, in the autumn of this memorable 1780, brought a vast
accession of strength to the popular cause, in the proof that the best
British troops were not invincible before an aroused yeomanry; but
there was much yet to be done before the day of final deliverance was
secured. It was a slow, weary, harassing policy which was to be
pursued, of surprises and escapes, of self-denial and endurance, of
the watchful, unyielding virtue of Marion and his men. They took post
in an island fortress of wooded swamp land, at the junction of the
Pedee and Lynch's Creek, known as the "camp of Marion," where he
recruited his forces, husbanded his strength, and sallied forth on his
raids against the foe. This is the spot where the popular admiration
of Marion finds its home and centre. "His career as a partisan," says
his faithful biographer, the novelist Simms, "in the thickets and
swamps of Carolina, is abundantly distinguished by the picturesque;
but it was while he held his camp at Snow's Island that it received
its highest colors of romance. In this snug and impenetrable fortress,
he reminds us very much of the ancient feudal baron of France and
Germany, who, perched on a castled eminence, looked down with the
complacency of an eagle from his eyrie, and marked all below him for
his own. The resemblance is good in all respects but one. The plea and
justification of Marion are complete. His warfare was legitimate." It
is in this place the scene is laid of an interview with the British
officer, so familiar to the public in popular narratives and pictorial
illustration. A flag from the enemy, at the neighboring post of
Georgetown, is received with the design of an exchange of prisoners.
The officer is admitted blindfold into the encampment, and on the
bandage being taken from his eyes, is surprised equally at the
diminutive size of the General and the simplicity of his quarters. He
had expected, it is said, to see some formidable personage of the sons
of Anak of the standard military figure, which, as Mr. Simms remarks,
averaged, in the opposing generals during the war, more than two
hundred pounds. On the contrary, he saw "a swarthy, smoke-dried
little man, with scarcely enough of threadbare homespun to cover his
nakedness, and instead of tall ranks of gay-dressed soldiers, a
handful of sunburnt, yellow-legged militiamen, some roasting potatoes,
and some asleep, with their black firelocks and powder-horns lying by
them on the logs." This is Weems's narrative, a little colored with
his full brush, but true enough as to detail. The improvement which he
works up from the plain potato presented as a dinner to the officer,
is equally sound as a moral, though we will not vouch for the exact
expression of the sentiment. As a specimen of Weems, it is
characteristic; but certainly Marion never talked in the fashion of
this zealous biographer.
The Briton, however, entrenched at Charleston, and with his double line
of forts encompassing the interior, was not all at once driven out. When
he was compelled to leave, it was by the slow process of an exhaustion,
to which even victory contributed; for every British conquest in that
region was as costly as a defeat. Greene came with his Fabian policy,
acquired in the school of Washington, to repair the errors of Gates. It
was a course with which the policy of Marion was quite in agreement,
attacking the enemy when they were vulnerable; at other moments
retreating before them. Both officers knew well how to drain the
vitality of the British army. Greene appreciated Marion. "I like your
plan," he wrote to him, "of frequently shifting your ground. We must
endeavor to keep up a partisan war." He sent Lieutenant-Colonel Lee to
his aid, and together they attempted the capture of Georgetown in a
night attack, which was but partially successful, in consequence of a
loss of time and the want of artillery. Though not fully carried out, it
served as a diversion and alarm in the rear of Cornwallis, who now,
after the defeat of an important portion of his force under Tarleton,
was advancing rapidly through North Carolina at the heels of Greene. Lee
was recalled to join his commander, and Marion continued his partisan
warfare in South Carolina. He was after a while reinforced by Greene on
his return to the State, and assisted that general greatly in the
movements which resulted in imprisoning the enemy in Charleston. After a
brilliant affair with the British, in conjunction with Lee and Sumter,
and other bold spirits, he hastened to Greene in time for the battle of
Eutaw, in which engagement he commanded the right of the South Carolina
militia, and gallantly sustained the fierce attack of the enemy. Toward
the close of the war, he took his seat in the Legislative Assembly which
met at Jacksonborough, as the representative of St. John, Berkeley. He
was engaged in one or two further conflicts with the enemy, and the
struggle which he had so manfully sustained was at an end.
He now retired to his plantation, to find it broken up by the
incursions of the British. While engaged in its restoration, he was
sent as representative of the district to the Senate of the State. It
is recorded to his credit that he displayed in this situation a ready
magnanimity toward Tory offenders in preserving their lands from
confiscation.
[Illustration: Marion crossing the Pedee.]
"It was war, then," said he; "it is peace now. God has given us the
victory. Let us show our gratitude to heaven, which we shall not do by
cruelty to man." In the same lofty spirit, he refused to receive
any advantages from a bill exempting the soldiers of the militia from
prosecution for acts committed in the service. He felt that his
conduct needed no shelter. The Legislature rewarded him with thanks,
and the more substantial appointment of Commandant of the Port of
Charleston, a nominal office, with the salary of L500, which were cut
down to dollars. A timely marriage, however, with a wealthy lady of
Huguenot descent, Miss Mary Videau, a spinster of fifty, who was
attracted by the hero, relieved him of pecuniary anxieties, leaving
him an old age of ease in agricultural pursuits. He still represented
his parish in the State Senate, and sat in 1790 in the Convention for
forming the Constitution. In 1794 he resigned his military commission
given to him by Rutledge, and the following year, yielding to a
gradual decline, expired on February 27th, at the age of sixty-three.
Marion was a true, unflinching patriot--a man of deeds, and not of
words; a prudent, sagacious soldier, not sudden or quick in quarrel,
but resolute to the end; a good disciplinarian, and beloved by his
men, who came at his call.
There was no power of coercion, such as restrains the hired soldier,
in his little band; it was held together only by the cohesive force of
patriotism and attachment to the leader. We hear of no acts of cruelty
to stain the glory of his victories, but much of his magnanimity.