Accompanied by Mrs. Barkley's three daughters, and a young planter from "over the river,"
I visited the battleground before sunset, examined the particular localities indicated by the finger of tradition, and sketched the accompanying view of the principal place of conflict. Here, in the porch, sitting with this interesting household in the golden gleams of the declining sun, let us open the clasped volume of history, and read a brief but brilliant page.
Almost simultaneously, three distinguished partisans of the South appeared conspicuous, after the fall of Charleston;May 12, 1780 Marion, between the Pedee and Santee; Sumter, upon the Catawba and Broad Rivers; and Pickens, in the vicinity of the Saluda and Savannah Rivers. With the surrender of Charleston, the hopes of the South Carolina patriots withered; and so complete was the subjugation of the state by the royal arms, that on the fourth of June, Sir Henry Clinton wrote to the ministry, "I may venture to assert that there are few men in South Carolina who are not either our prisoners or in arms with us." Many unsubdued patriots sought shelter in North Carolina, and others went up toward the mountains and gathered the cowed Whigs into bands to avenge the insults of their Tory oppressors. Early in July, Sumter (who had taken refuge in Mecklenburg), with a few chosen patriots who gathered around him, returned to South Carolina.
"Catawba's waters.smiled again
To see her Sumter's soul in arms;
And issuing from each glade and glen,
Rekindled by war's fierce alarms,
Thronged hundreds through the solitude
Of the wild forest, to the call