** During the siege, Arbuthnot was informed that Admiral De Ternay was approaching with a French fleet, direct from Newport, to aid Lincoln; and on the very day when terms of surrender were agreed upon, the fear of being blockaded in the harbor of Charleston made Arbuthnot resolve to put to sea immediately. Ternay was certified of the surrender of Lincoln while on his way, by the capture of a pilot-boat, bearing Clinton's dispatches to Knyphausen, then in command at New York. These dispatches informed Knyphausen of the fall of Charleston. Had Lincoln held out another day, his army might have been saved, but he was not aware of the approach of Ternay.
Effect of Clinton's Proclamation.—Patriots sent to St. Augustine.—Sufferings at Haddrell's Point.—Approach of Gates.
And more; they were required to enroll themselves as militia under the king's standard. This flagrant violation of the terms of capitulation aroused a spirit of indignant defiance, which proved a powerful lever in overturning the royal power in the South. Many considered themselves released from all the obligations of their paroles, and immediately armed themselves in defense of their homes and country, while others refused to exchange their paroles for any new conditions. The silent influence of eminent citizens who took this course was now perceived by Cornwallis, and, in further violation of the conditions of capitulation, he sent many leading men of Charleston as close prisoners to St. Augustine, Aug. 27, 1780while a large number of the Continental soldiers were cast into the loathsome prison-ships, and other vessels in the harbor. There they suffered all the horrors of confined air, bad food, filth, and disease. It was to these that the mother of President Jackson came, as an angel of mercy, with materials of alleviation for the sufferers. But the camp and typhoid fevers, and dysentery, swept off hundreds before the cruel hand of the oppressor relinquished its grasp. Maddened by torture, and almost heart-broken on account of the sufferings of their families, more than five hundred of the soldiers who capitulated at Charleston agreed to enroll themselves as royal militia, as the least of two present evils, and were sent to do service in the British army in Jamaica. Of nineteen hundred prisoners surrendered at Charleston, and several hundreds more taken at Camden and Fishing Creek, only seven hundred and forty were restored to the service of their country. **
A brief lull in the storm of parly strife and warring legions in South Carolina succeeded the blow which smote down Republicanism; but when the trumpet-blasts of the conqueror of Burgoyne were heard upon the Roanoke, and the brave hearts of Virginia and North Carolina were gathering around the standard of Gates, the patriots of the South lifted up their heads, and many of them, like Samson rising in strength, broke the feeble cords of "paroles" and "protections," and smote the Philistines of the crown with mighty energy. Sumter sounded the bugle among the hills on the Catawba and Broad Rivers; Marion's shrill whistle rang amid the swamps on the Pedee; and Pickens and Clarke called forth the brave sons of liberty upon the banks of the Saluda, the Savannah, the Ogeechee, and the
* Lieutenant-governor Gadsden and seventy-seven other public and influential men were taken from their beds by armed parties, before dawn on the moraine of the twenty-seventh of August, hurried on board the Sandwich prison-ship, without being allowed to bid adieu to their families, and were conveyed to St. Augustine. The pretense for this measure, by which the British authorities attempted to justify it, was the false accusation that these men were concerting a scheme for burning the town and massacring the loyal inhabitants! Nobody believed the tale, and the act was made more flagrant by this wicked calumny. Arrived at St. Augustine, the prisoners were offered paroles to enjoy liberty within the precincts of the town. Gadsden, the sturdy patriot, refused acquiescence, for he disdained making further terms with a power that did not regard the sanctity of a solemn treaty. He was determined not to be deceived a second time. "Had the British commanders," he said, "regarded the terms of capitulation at Charleston, I might now, although a prisoner, enjoy the smiles and consolations of my family under my own roof; but even without a shadow of accusation preferred against me, for any act inconsistent with my plighted faith, I am torn from them, and here, in a distant land, invited to enter into new engagements. I will give no parole." "Think better of it," said Governor Tonyn, who was in command; "a second refusal of it will fix your destiny—a dungeon will be your future habitation." "Prepare it, then," replied the inflexible patriot. "I will give no parole, so help me God!" And the petty tyrant did "prepare it;" and for forty-two weeks that patriot of almost threescore years of age, never saw the light of the blessed sun, but lay incarcerated in the dungeon of the Castle of St. Augustine. All the other prisoners accepted paroles, but they were exposed to indignities more harrowing to the sensitive soul than close confinement. When, in June, 1781, they were exchanged, they were not allowed to even touch at Charleston, but were sent to Philadelphia, whither their families had been expelled when the prisoners were taken to the Sandwich. More than a thousand persons were thus exiled, and husbands and wives, fathers and children, first met in a distant state, after a separation of ten months.
* The Continental prisoners kept at Haddrell's Point suffered terribly. Many of them had been nurtured in affluence; now, far from friends and destitute of hard money, they were reduced to the greatest straits. During thirteen months' captivity, they received no more than nine days' pay. They were not allowed to fish for their support, but were obliged to perform the most menial services. Cornwallis finally ordered Balfour, the commandant of Charleston, to send them to one of the West India islands. The general exchange of prisoners which soon afterward took place alone prevented the execution of this cruel order.
** Gordon, iii., 226.
Marion at Charleston.—Formation of his Brigade.—His first Expeditions.
Alatamaha. The noble deeds of these partisans; the efforts and defeat of Gates; the successes of Greene and Morgan; and the brilliant achievements of "Legion Harry Lee," the strong right arm of the Southern army in the campaigns of 1781, we have considered in former chapters. Let us here, from this commanding point of view, note those daring exploits of Marion and his men not already considered, and also of their brave compatriots in their warfare in the vicinity of the sea-coast.
Marion was elected a captain in Moultrie's second South Carolina regiment, and, with his friend Peter Horry, received his commission on the twentieth of June, 1775. These young officers, in new uniforms and helmet-shaped leather caps, decorated with silver crescents inscribed "Liberty or Death!" went out immediately upon the recruiting service on the Black River and the Pedee, and every where excited the enthusiasm of the people. Brave young patriots flocked around them, and in Fort Sullivan, when its cannons shattered the fleet of Sir Peter Parker in 1776, these stout hearts and hands received their first practical lessons in defensive warfare. Already, as we have seen (page 751), they had been efficient in capturing Fort Johnson, on James's Island,Sept. 14, 1775 but here they participated in the severer duties of vigorous conflict.