The Life of Francis Marion

by William Gilmore Simms

The failure of the combined forces of France and America before the walls of Savannah, left the cause of the latter, in the South, in much worse condition than before. The event served to depress the Carolinians, and in the same degree, to elevate and encourage the enemy. The allies withdrew to their ships, and, shortly after, from the coast. General Lincoln, with the American army, retreated to the heights of Ebenezer, and thence to Sheldon. Proceeding from this place to Charleston, he left Marion in command of the army. On the thirty-first of January, 1780, he writes to the latter as follows: "The state of affairs is such as to make it necessary that we order our force to a point as much and as soon as possible. No troops will be kept in the field except two hundred Light Infantry and the Horse (Washington's). You will therefore please to select from the three regiments with you, two hundred of your best men, and those who are best clothed, and organize them into corps, with proper officers. All the remainder, with the baggage of the whole (saving such as is absolutely necessary for light troops), will march immediately for this town. You will please take command of the light infantry until Lieut. Col. Henderson arrives, which I expect will be in a few days. After that, I wish to see you as soon as possible in Charleston."

In the February following, Marion was dispatched to Bacon's Bridge on Ashley river, where Moultrie had established a camp for the reception of the militia of the neighborhood, as well as those which had been summoned from the interior. It was to Marion that Lincoln chiefly looked for the proper drilling of the militia. In his hands they lost the rude and inefficient character, the inexpert and spiritless manner, which, under ordinary commanders, always distinguish them. Feeling sure of their Captain, he, in turn, rendered them confident of themselves. Speaking of Marion's "PATIENCE with the militia"—a phrase of great importance in this connection—Horry, in his own memoirs, which now lie before us, adds, "No officer in the Union was better calculated to command them, and to have done more than he did."* Lincoln knew his value. The admirable training of the Second South Carolina Regiment had already done high honor to his skill as a disciplinarian. He discovered the secret which regularly bred military men are slow to discern, that, without patience, in the training of citizen soldiers for immediate service, they are incorrigible; and patience with them, on the part of a commanding officer, is neither inconsistent with their claims nor with their proper efficiency.

* MS. Memoir of Gen. Horry, p. 55.—

The accumulation of troops at Bacon's Bridge was made with the view to the defence of Charleston, now threatened by the enemy. Many concurring causes led to the leaguer of that city. Its conquest was desirable on many accounts, and circumstances had already shown that this was not a matter of serious difficulty. The invasion of Prevost the year before, which had so nearly proved successful; the little resistance which had been offered to him while traversing more than one hundred miles of country contiguous to the Capital; and the rich spoils which, on his retreat, had been borne off by his army, betrayed at once the wealth and weakness of that region. The possession of Savannah, where British Government had been regularly re-established, and the entire, if not totally undisturbed control of Georgia, necessarily facilitated the invasion of the sister province. South Carolina was now a frontier, equally exposed to the British in Georgia, and the Tories of Florida and North Carolina. The means of defence in her power were now far fewer than when Prevost made his attempt on Charleston. The Southern army was, in fact, totally broken up. The Carolina regiments had seen hard service, guarding the frontier, and contending with the British in Georgia. They were thinned by battle and sickness to a mere handful. The Virginia and North Carolina regiments had melted away, as the term for which they had enlisted, had expired. The Georgia regiment, captured by the British in detail, were perishing in their floating prisons. The weakness of the patriots necessarily increased the audacity, with the strength, of their enemies. The loyalists, encouraged by the progress of Prevost, and the notorious inefficiency of the Whigs, were now gathering in formidable bodies, in various quarters, operating in desultory bands, or crowding to swell the columns of the British army. All things concurred to encourage the attempt of the enemy on Charleston. Its possession, with that of Savannah, would not only enable them to complete their ascendency in the two provinces to which these cities belonged, but would probably give them North Carolina also. Virginia then, becoming the frontier, it would be easy, with the cooperation of an army ascending the Chesapeake, to traverse the entire South with their legions, detaching it wholly from the federal compact. Such was the British hope, and such their policy. There was yet another motive for the siege of Charleston, considered without reference to collateral or contingent events. Esteemed erroneously as a place of great security—an error that arose in all probability from the simple fact of the successful defence of Fort Moultrie—it was crowded with valuable magazines. As a trading city, particularly while the commerce of the North remained interrupted, it had become a place of great business. It was a stronghold for privateers and their prizes, and always contained stores and shipping of immense value.

The temptations to its conquest were sufficiently numerous. Ten thousand choice troops, with a large and heavy train of artillery, were accordingly dispatched from New York for its investment, which was begun in February, 1780, and conducted by the Commander-in-Chief of the British forces, Sir Henry Clinton, in person. He conducted his approaches with a caution highly complimentary to the besieged. The fortifications were only field works, and might have been overrun in less than five days by an audacious enemy. The regular troops within the city were not above two thousand men. The citizen militia increased the number to nearly four thousand. For such an extent of lines as encircled the place, the adequate force should not have been less than that of the enemy. The fortifications, when the British first landed their 'materiel', were in a dilapidated and unfinished state, and, at that time, the defenders, apart from the citizens, scarcely exceeded eight hundred men; while the small pox, making its appearance within the walls, for the first time for twenty years—an enemy much more dreaded than the British,—effectually discouraged the country militia from coming to the assistance of the citizens. Under these circumstances, the conquest would have been easy to an active and energetic foe. But Sir Henry does not seem to have been impatient for his laurels. He was willing that they should mature gradually, and he sat down to a regular and formal investment.

It was an error of the Carolinians, under such circumstances, to risk the fortunes of the State, and the greater part of its regular military strength, in a besieged town; a still greater to do so in defiance of such difficulties as attended the defence. The policy which determined the resolution was a concession to the citizens, in spite of all military opinion. The city might have been yielded to the enemy, and the State preserved, or, which was the same thing, the troops. The loss of four thousand men from the ranks of active warfare, was the great and substantial loss, the true source, in fact, of most of the miseries and crimes by which the very bowels of the country were subsequently torn and distracted.

It was the great good fortune of the State that Francis Marion was not among those who fell into captivity in the fall of Charleston. He had marched into the city from Dorchester, when his active services were needed for its defence; but while the investment was in progress, and before it had been fully completed, an event occurred to him, an accident which was, no doubt, very much deplored at the time, by which his services, lost for the present, were subsequently secured for the country. Dining with a party of friends at a house in Tradd-street, the host, with that mistaken hospitality which has too frequently changed a virtue to a vice, turned the key upon his guests, to prevent escape, till each individual should be gorged with wine. Though an amiable man, Marion was a strictly temperate one. He was not disposed to submit to this too common form of social tyranny; yet not willing to resent the breach of propriety by converting the assembly into a bull-ring, he adopted a middle course, which displayed equally the gentleness and firmness of his temper. Opening a window, he coolly threw himself into the street. He was unfortunate in the attempt; the apartment was on the second story, the height considerable, and the adventure cost him a broken ankle. The injury was a severe and shocking one, and, for the time, totally unfitted him for service. He left the city in a litter, while the passage to the country still remained open for retreat, in obedience to an order of General Lincoln for the departure of all idle mouths, "all supernumerary officers, and all officers unfit for duty." Marion retired to his residence in St. John's parish. Here, suffering in mind and body, he awaited with impatience the progress of events, with which, however much he might sympathize, he could not share. His humiliation at this unavoidable but melancholy inaction, may be imagined from what we know of his habits and his patriotism.

The siege of Charleston, in consequence of the firm bearing of the besieged, and the cautious policy of the British Government, was protracted long after the works had been pronounced untenable. It was yielded unwillingly to the conqueror, only after all resistance had proved in vain. It fell by famine, rather than by the arms of the enemy. The defence was highly honorable to the besieged. It lasted six weeks, in which they had displayed equal courage and endurance. The consequences of this misfortune leave it somewhat doubtful, whether the determination to defend the city to the last extremity, was not the result of a correct policy; considering less its own loss, and that of the army, than the effect of the former upon the rustic population. Certainly, the capture of the army was a vital misfortune to the southern States; yet the loss of the city itself was of prodigious effect upon the scattered settlements of the country. The character and resolve of the capital cities, in those days, were very much the sources of the moral strength of the interior. Sparsely settled, with unfrequent opportunities of communion with one another, the minds of the forest population turned naturally for their tone and direction to the capital city. The active attrition of rival and conflicting minds, gives, in all countries, to the population of a dense community, an intellectual superiority over those who live remote, and feel none of the constant moral strifes to which the citizen is subject. In South Carolina, Charleston had been the seat of the original 'movement', had incurred the first dangers, achieved the first victories, and, in all public proceedings where action was desirable, had always led off in the van. To preserve intact, and from overthrow, the seat of ancient authority and opinion, was surely a policy neither selfish nor unwise. Perhaps, after all, the grand error was, in not making the preparations for defence adequate to the object. The resources of the State were small, and these had been diminished wofully in succoring her neighbors, and in small border strifes, which the borderers might have been taught to manage for themselves. The military force of the State, under any circumstances, could not have contended on equal terms with the ten thousand well-appointed regulars of Sir Henry Clinton. The assistance derived from Virginia and North Carolina was little more than nominal, calculated rather to swell the triumph of the victor than to retard his successes.

If the movements of the British were slow, and deficient in military enterprise, where Sir Henry Clinton commanded in person, such could not be said of them, after the conquest of Charleston was effected. The commander-in-chief was succeeded by Earl Cornwallis, and his career was certainly obnoxious to no such reproaches. We shall have more serious charges to bring against him. Of the gross abuse of power, wanton tyrannies, cruel murders, and most reckless disregard of decency and right, by which the course of the British was subsequently distinguished, we shall say no more than will suffice to show, in what dangers, through what difficulties, and under what stimulating causes, Francis Marion rose in arms, when everything appeared to be lost.

Charleston in possession of the enemy, they proceeded with wonderful activity to use all means in their power, for exhausting the resources, and breaking down the spirit of the country. Their maxim was that of habitual tyranny—"might is right". They seemed to recognize no other standard. The articles of capitulation, the laws of nations, private treaty, the dictates of humanity and religion, were all equally set at naught. The wealth of private families,—slaves by thousands,—were hurried into the waists of British ships, as the legitimate spoils of war. The latter found a market in the West India islands; the prisoners made by the fall of Charleston were, in defiance of the articles of capitulation, crowded into prison-ships, from whence they were only released by death, or by yielding to those arguments of their keepers which persuaded them to enlist in British regiments, to serve in other countries. Many yielded to these arguments, with the simple hope of escape from the horrors by which they were surrounded. When arts and arguments failed to overcome the inflexibility of these wretched prisoners, compulsion was resorted to, and hundreds were forced from their country, shipped to Jamaica, and there made to serve in British regiments.* Citizens of distinction, who, by their counsel or presence, opposed their influence over the prisoners, or proved themselves superior to their temptations, were torn from their homes without warning, and incarcerated in their floating dungeons. Nothing was forborne, in the shape of pitiless and pitiful persecution, to break the spirits, subdue the strength, and mock and mortify the hopes, alike, of citizen and captive.