The Life of Francis Marion

by William Gilmore Simms

* Moultrie's Memoirs, Vol. 2, 'Correspondence'.—

With those who kept the field the proceedings were more summary, if not more severe. The fall of Charleston seems necessarily to have involved the safety of the country from the Savannah to the Pedee. In a few weeks after the capture of the city, the British were in peaceable possession of the space between these limits, from the seaboard to the mountains. They had few opponents—an isolated body of continentals, a small squad of militia, for the first time drilling for future service, or a little troop of horse—and these were quickly overcome. On these occasions the British were generally led by Lieutenant-Colonel Tarleton. This officer acquired for himself an odious distinction in his progress through the South in the campaigns which followed. He was rather an active than a skilful commander. Rapid in his movements, he gave little heed to the judicious disposition of his troops, and aiming more at impressing the fears of his enemy, than overcoming him by science, his chief successes were the result of the panic which his surprises and his butcheries inspired. He seems never to have been successful against an equal and resolute foe. But, as courage and activity are, perhaps, after all, and before all, the most necessary requisites for a soldier, Tarleton's services were inappreciable to the invading army. In one month after its arrival, his legion was mounted and began its career of slaughter. While yet the city was sustaining the siege, he penetrated the country, in pursuit of those bands of militia horse, which, by direction of the American commander, still kept the open field. On the 18th of March, he surprised a company of militia at Salkehatchie Bridge, killed and wounded several and dispersed the rest. Five days after, another party at Pon-Pon shared the same fortune. He was not so successful at Rantowles on the 23d of the same month, where in a rencounter with Col. Washington, his dragoons were roughly handled, and retreated with loss. He avenged himself, however, on Washington, in less than a month after, by surprising him at Monk's Corner. Col. White soon after took command of the southern cavalry, and obtained some trifling successes, but suffered himself to be surprised at Lenud's ferry on the Santee. These events all took place prior to the surrender of the city. The activity of Tarleton, with the general remissness, and want of ordinary military precautions on the part of the militia which opposed itself to him, made his progress easy, and thus enabled him to cut off every party that was embodied in the field. He was now to succeed in a much more important and much more bloody enterprise. A Continental force from Virginia of four hundred men, under Col. Beaufort,* had been dispatched to the relief of Charleston. Beaufort had reached Camden before he was apprised of the surrender of that city. This event properly determined him to retreat. Earl Cornwallis, meanwhile, had taken the field with a force of twenty-five hundred men, and was then in rapid progress for the Santee. Hearing of the advance of Beaufort, he dispatched Tarleton in quest of him, with a select body of infantry and cavalry, in all, seven hundred men. Beaufort was overtaken near the Waxhaw settlements, and summoned to surrender. This person does not seem to have been designed by nature for military operations. He halted at the summons, hesitated awhile, sent his wagons ahead, consulted with his officers, and did little or nothing farther, either for flight or conflict. While thus halting and hesitating he was attacked by the impetuous Tarleton, offered a feeble resistance, unmarked by conduct or spirit, suffered the enemy to gain his rear, and finally grounded his arms. He either did this too soon or too late. His flag was disregarded in the flush of battle, the bearer of it cut down by the hand of Tarleton, and the British infantry, with fixed bayonets, rushed upon the inactive Americans. Some of Beaufort's men, seeing that their application for quarter was disregarded, resolved to die like men, and resumed their arms. Their renewed fire provoked the massacre of the unresisting. A terrible butchery followed. The British gave no quarter. From that day, "Tarleton's Quarters", implying the merciless cutting down of the suppliant, grew into a proverbial phrase, which, in the hour of victory, seemed to embitter the hostility with which the American strove to avenge his slaughtered comrades.

* Generally given as Buford in other documents. Simms also
states "the Warsaw settlements" in the original text, but
Waxhaw is correct. According to local tradition, the mother
of Andrew Jackson, the future president, was one of those
who aided the survivors. Jackson himself later served, at
the age of 13, in Davie's cavalry, as a messenger, and was
the only member of his family to survive the war.
—A. L., 1996.—

The defeat of Beaufort, with the only regular force remaining in the State, following so close upon the fall of Charleston, paralyzed the hopes of the patriots. The country seemed everywhere subdued. An unnatural and painful apathy dispirited opposition. The presence of a British force, sufficient to overawe the neighborhood, at conspicuous points, and the awakened activity of the Tories in all quarters, no longer restrained by the presence in arms of their more patriotic countrymen, seemed to settle the question of supremacy. There was not only no head against the enemy, but the State, on a sudden, appeared to have been deprived of all her distinguished men. Moultrie and others who might have led, were prisoners of war. Governor Rutledge, a noble spirit and famous orator—the Patrick Henry of Carolina,—had withdrawn to the North State, to stimulate the energies of the people in that quarter and gain recruits. His example was followed by Sumter, Horry and others,—by all, in fact, who, escaping captivity, were in condition to fly. The progress of Cornwallis and Tarleton left mere distinction, unsupported by men, with few places of security. Marion, meanwhile, incapable of present flight, was compelled to take refuge in the swamp and forest. He was too conspicuous a person, had made too great a figure in previous campaigns, and his military talents were too well known and too highly esteemed, not to render him an object of some anxiety as well to friends as foes. Still suffering from the hurts received in Charleston, with bloody and malignant enemies all around him, his safety depended on his secrecy and obscurity alone. Fortunately he had "won golden opinions from all sorts of people." He had friends among all classes, who did not permit themselves to sleep while he was in danger. Their activity supplied the loss of his own. They watched while he slept. They assisted his feebleness. In the moment of alarm, he was sped from house to house, from tree to thicket, from the thicket to the swamp. His "hair-breadth 'scapes" under these frequent exigencies, were, no doubt, among the most interesting adventures of his life, furnishing rare material, could they be procured, for the poet and romancer. Unhappily, while the chronicles show the frequent emergency which attended his painful condition, they furnish nothing more. We are without details. The melancholy baldness and coldness with which they narrate events upon which one would like to linger is absolutely humbling to the imagination; which, kindled by the simple historical outline, looks in vain for the satisfaction of those doubts and inquiries, those hopes and fears, which the provoking narrative inspires only to defraud. How would some old inquisitive Froissart have dragged by frequent inquiry from contemporaneous lips, the particular fact, the whole adventure, step by step, item by item,—the close pursuit, the narrow escape,—and all the long train of little, but efficient circumstances, by which the story would have been made unique, with all its rich and numerous details! These, the reader must supply from his own resources of imagination. He must conjecture for himself the casual warning brought to the silent thicket, by the devoted friend, the constant woman, or the humble slave; the midnight bay of the watch dog or the whistle of the scout; or the sudden shot, from friend or foe, by which the fugitive is counselled to hurry to his den. A thousand events arise to the imagination as likely to have occurred to our partisan, in his hours of feebleness and danger, from the rapid cavalry of Tarleton, or the close and keen pursuit of the revengeful Tories. To what slight circumstances has he been indebted for his frequent escape! What humble agents have been commissioned by Providence to save a life, that was destined to be so precious to his country's liberties!

How long he remained in this situation is not exactly known,—probably several months. As soon as he was able to mount his horse, he collected a few friends, and set out for North Carolina. A Continental force was on its way from Virginia under Baron De Kalb. His purpose was to join it. It was while on this route, and with this object, that he encountered his old friend and long tried associate in arms, Col. P. Horry.*

* There were two Horrys, brothers, both of whom were very
brave and distinguished adherents of our partisan. Peter
Horry held a captain's commission in the same regiment with
Marion, at the battle of Fort Moultrie. Hugh Horry was the
particular favorite of his General. A life of Marion,
purporting to be in part by the former, but really composed
entirely by the Rev. M. L. Weems, from facts furnished by
Horry, is already well known to the public. A MS. life of
Peter Horry is now before me, and has furnished me with
several illustrations of the war, during this narrative.
Both of these brothers served under Marion, to the close of
the war, with equal courage and fidelity.—

Horry describes his ankle, at this meeting, as still "very crazy"—so much so that it required his help and that of Marion's servant to lift him from his horse. But his spirits were good. He was still cheerful, and possessed that rare elasticity of character which never loses its tone under privations and disappointments. Weems, who, we are compelled to admit, very frequently exercised the privilege of the ancient historian, of putting fine speeches into the mouth of his hero, tells us that he jeered at the doleful expressions of his companion, Horry, who, discussing the condition of the country, lamented that their "happy days were all gone." "Our happy days all gone, indeed!" answered Marion—"on the contrary, they are yet to come. The victory is still sure. The enemy, it is true, have all the trumps, and if they had but the spirit to play a generous game, they would certainly ruin us. But they have no idea of that game. They will treat the people cruelly, and that one thing will ruin them and save the country." Weems, speaking for Horry, describes in ludicrous terms, their journey through North Carolina,—through a region swarming with Tories, but, fortunately for our travellers, who were venomous without being active. Our fugitives were without money and without credit, and "but for carrying a knife, or a horse fleam, or a gun-flint, had no more use for a pocket than a Highlander has for a knee-buckle. As to hard money we had not seen a dollar for years." In this resourceless condition—a condition, which, it may be well to say in this place, continued throughout the war, they made their way with difficulty until they joined the Continental army. Gates had superseded De Kalb in its command, and was pressing forward, with the ambition, seemingly, of writing a dispatch like Caesar's, announcing, in the same breath, the sight and conquest of his enemy. Marion and his little troop of twenty men, made but a sorry figure in the presence of the Continental General. Gates was a man of moderate abilities, a vain man, of a swelling and ostentatious habit, whose judgment was very apt to be affected by parade, and the external show of things. Some of his leading opinions were calculated to show that he was unfit for a commander in the South. For example, he thought little of cavalry, which, in a plain country, sparsely settled, was among the first essentials of success, as well in securing intelligence, as in procuring supplies. It was not calculated therefore to raise the troop of our partisan in his esteem, to discover that they were all good riders and well mounted. Marion, himself, was a man equally modest in approach and unimposing in person. His followers may have provoked the sneer of the General, as it certainly moved the scorn and laughter of his well-equipped Continentals. We have a description of them from the pen of an excellent officer, the Adjutant General of Gates' army. He says, "Col. Marion, a gentleman of South Carolina, had been with the army a few days, 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 Col. Marion, at his own instance, towards the interior of South Carolina, with orders to watch the motions of the enemy and furnish intelligence."*

* Narrative of the Campaign of 1780, by Col. Otho Williams.—

From such small and insignificant beginnings flow greatness and great performances. We, who are in possession of all the subsequent events—who see this proud, vain Commander, hurrying on with the rapidity of madness to his own ruin—can but smile in the perusal of such a narrative, not at the rags of Marion's men, but at the undiscerning character of those who could see, in the mean equipment, the imperfect clothing, the mixture of man and boy, and white and black, anything but a noble patriotism, which, in such condition, was still content to carry on a war against a powerful enemy. The very rags and poverty of this little band, which was afterwards to become so famous, were so many proofs of their integrity and virtue, and should have inspired respect rather than ridicule. They were so many guarantees of good service which they were able and prepared to render. It was in defiance of the temptations and the power of the foe, that these men had taken the field against him, and had Gates been a wise commander, he would have seen even through their rags and destitution, the small but steady light of patriotism; which, enkindled throughout the State by the example of Marion, Sumter, and a few others, was to blaze out finally into that perfect brightness before which the invader was to shrink confounded.

Gates was wise enough to take counsel of Marion, if nothing more; and even this might not have been done, but for the suggestions of Governor Rutledge, who, at that time in the camp of the Continentals, might very well have informed him of the value of the man whose followers inspired only ridicule. It was with Marion that the plan was concerted, and not improbably at his suggestion, for moving into the very heart of the State. This, subsequently, was the policy of Greene, and had Gates adopted the deliberate caution of that commander, his successes would unquestionably have been the same. The object of such a movement was to give an opportunity to the native patriots to rally—to compel the British to concentrate their scattered forces, call in their detached parties, and thus circumscribe their influence, within the State, to the places where they still remained in force. To effect these objects, the Fabian maxims of warfare should have been those of the American General. Few of his militia had ever seen an enemy. He had but recently joined his troops, knew nothing of them, and they as little of him. Their march had been a fatiguing one. Time and training were necessary pre-requisites for their improvement and his success. Unhappily, these were the very agents with which the vanity of the unfortunate commander made him most willing to dispense. The victory at Saratoga had spoiled him for ever, and thinking too much of himself, he committed the next great error of a military man, of thinking too lightly of his foe. It would be idle and perhaps impertinent, to suggest that if Marion had been suffered to remain with him, the issue of this march might have been more fortunate. Gates was quite too vain-glorious to listen and Marion quite too moderate to obtrude his opinions; and yet Marion was a man of equal prudence and adroitness. He could insinuate advice, so that it would appear to self-conceit the very creature of its own conceptions. Had Marion remained, could Gates have listened, we are very sure there would have been no such final, fatal disaster as suddenly stopped the misdirected progress of the Continental army. There would have been some redeeming circumstances to qualify the catastrophe. All would not have been lost. At all events, with Marion at their head, the militia would have fought awhile,—would have discharged their pieces, once, twice, thrice, before they fled. They would have done for the born-leader of militia, what they refused to do for a commander who neither knew how to esteem, nor how to conduct them.