The Life of Francis Marion.
by William Gilmore Simms.
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 a.s.signed 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Numerous volumes, some private ma.n.u.scripts, and much unpublished correspondence, to which reference has been more particularly made in the appendix, have been consulted in the preparation of this narrative.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 cla.s.s 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 compet.i.tor, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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. Doc.u.mentary 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, spa.r.s.ely settled, and frequently overrun by the barbarous enemy, was incapable of that patient industry and persevering care, which could chronicle the pa.s.sing 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 n.o.bility 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 pa.s.sed 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 const.i.tuted the ma.s.s of European emigrants. The very desperation of their circ.u.mstances 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 dest.i.tute condition of the fugitives, forgot, for a season, their usual national animosities; and a.s.signing 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 s.p.a.cious 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 ident.i.ty 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 pa.s.sions 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 a.s.sisted 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 pa.s.sed; 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 s.e.x 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.blest 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 pa.s.sages 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 a.s.sISTANCE 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 G.o.d"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 pa.s.sed 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, l.u.s.ty 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 a.s.sISTING US WITH THEIR SMALL DORIES TO Pa.s.s 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 a.s.sISTANT 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]
pet.i.tioned the a.s.sembly, 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 a.s.sembly pa.s.sed 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 ill.u.s.tration; 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 compa.s.sionate, 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 n.o.blest 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 circ.u.mstances--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, const.i.tuted 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 a.s.similate 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 pa.s.sion for h.o.m.ogeneousness 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, p.r.o.nounced 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 a.s.sembly, 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, pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ce 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 circ.u.mspect, 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 circ.u.mstance, 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, a.s.serted 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 ill.u.s.tration, 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 Mitch.e.l.ls, 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 const.i.tution 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 pa.s.sion of Washington; a pa.s.sion 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.