Returning to his home and parents, young Marion sunk once more into the humble condition of the farmer. His health and strength had continued to improve. His adventures by sea had served, seemingly, to complete that change for the better, in his physical man, which had been so happily begun on land; and, subduing his roving inclinations, we hear of him only, in a period of ten years, as a tiller of the earth. In this vocation he betrayed that diligent attention to his duties, that patient hardihood, and calm, equable temper, which distinguished his deportment in every part of his career. He is represented as equally industrious and successful as a farmer. The resources of his family seem to have been very moderate. There were several children, and before Francis was yet twenty-five years of age, he lost his father. In 1758 he was planting with his mother and brother Gabriel, near Friersons Lock on the Santee Canal. In 1759 they separated. Gabriel removed to Belle Isle—the place where the mortal remains of Francis Marion now repose—while the latter settled at a place called Pond Bluff in the Parish of St. John.* This place he continued to hold during life. It is still pointed out to the traveller as Marion's plantation, and is the more remarkable, as it lies within cannon shot of the battle ground of Eutaw, which his valor and conduct contributed to render so justly famous in the history of his native state. During this long period of repose—the interval between his shipwreck, and removal to Pond Bluff,—we are only left to conjecture his employments. Beyond his agricultural labors, we may suppose that his chief tasks were the cultivation of his mind, by close application to those studies which, in the condition of the country, sparsely settled, and without teachers, were usually very inadequately urged. It does not appear that his acquisitions in this respect were more valuable than could be afforded at the present day by the simplest grammar-school of the country. Here again we may trace the resemblance between his career and that of Washington. Equally denied the advantages of education, they equally drew from the great mother-sources of nature. Thrown upon their own thoughts, taught by observation and experience—the same results of character,—firmness, temperance, good sense, sagacious foresight, and deliberate prudence—became conspicuous in the conduct and career of both. In the fortunes of neither—in the several tasks allotted to them,—in their various situations,—did their deficiencies of education appear to qualify their successes, or diminish the respect and admiration of those around them,—a singular fact, as indicative equally of the modesty, the good sense, and the superior intrinsic worth of both of these distinguished persons. In the case of Marion, his want of education neither lessened his energies, his confidence in himself, nor baffled any of his natural endowments. On the contrary, it left his talents free to their natural direction. These, it is probable, were never of a kind to derive, or to need, many advantages from a very superior or scientific education. His mind was rather practical than subtile—his genius prompted him to action, rather than to study,—and the condition and necessities of the country, calling for the former rather than the latter character, readily reconciled him to a deficiency the importance of which he did not feel.
* Pond Bluff now lies at the bottom of Lake Marion.
—A.L., 1996.
Chapter 3.
Marion a Farmer—Volunteers in the Cherokee Campaign.
From the readiness with which young Marion yielded himself to the entreaties of his mother, and resumed the occupations of agriculture, and from the quiet and persevering industry with which he pursued them for a period of nearly or quite ten years, it might be supposed that the impatience and restlessness of mood, which had formerly led him to revolt at the staid drudgery of rural life, had been entirely extinguished in his bosom. But such was not the case. It was only subdued, and slumbering for a season, ready to awaken at the first opportunity, with all the vigor and freshness of a favorite passion. That opportunity was at hand. Events were in progress which were to bring into the field, and prepare by the very best sort of training, for the most noble trials, the great military genius of the Partisan. At the opening of the year 1759, the colony of South Carolina was on the eve of an Indian war. The whole frontier of the Southern Provinces, from Pennsylvania to Georgia, was threatened by the savages, and the scalping-knife had already begun its bloody work upon the weak and unsuspecting borderers. The French had been conquered upon the Ohio. Forts Frontenac and Duquesne had fallen. British and Provincial valor, aided by strong bodies of Cherokee warriors, had everywhere placed the flag of Britain above the fortresses of France. With its elevation, the Indian allies of the French sent in their adhesion to the conquerors; and, their work at an end, the Cherokee auxiliaries of Britain prepared to return to their homes, covered with their savage trophies, and adequately rewarded for their services. It happened, unfortunately, that, while passing along the frontiers of Virginia, the Cherokees, many of whom had lost their horses during the campaign, supplied themselves rather unscrupulously from the pastures of the colonists. With inconsiderate anger, the Virginians, forgetting the late valuable services of the savages, rose upon their footsteps, slew twelve or fourteen of their warriors, and made prisoners of as many more. This rash and ill-advised severity aroused the nation. The young warriors flew to arms, and pouring their active hordes upon the frontier settlements, proceeded to the work of slaughter, without pausing to discriminate between the offending and the innocent. The emergency was pressing, and Governor Lyttleton, of South Carolina, called out the militia of the province. They were required to rendezvous at the Congarees, about one hundred and forty miles from Charleston. To this rendezvous Francis Marion repaired, in a troop of provincial cavalry commanded by one of his brothers.* But he was not yet to flesh his maiden valor upon the enemy. The prompt preparation of the Carolinians had somewhat lessened the appetite of the savages for war. Perhaps their own preparations were not yet sufficiently complete to make them hopeful of its issue. The young warriors were recalled from the frontiers, and a deputation of thirty-two chiefs set out for Charleston, in order to propitiate the anger of the whites, and arrest the threatened invasion of their country. Whether they were sincere in their professions, or simply came for the purpose of deluding and disarming the Carolinians, is a question with the historians. It is certain that Governor Lyttleton doubted their sincerity, refused to listen to their explanations, and, carrying them along with him, rather as hostages than as commissioners in sacred trust, he proceeded to meet the main body of his army, already assembled at the Congarees. The treatment to which they were thus subjected, filled the Cherokee deputies with indignation, which, with the usual artifice of the Indian, they yet contrived to suppress. But another indiscreet proceeding of the Governor added to the passion which they felt, and soon baffled all their powers of concealment. In resuming the march for the nation, he put them into formal custody, placed a captain's guard over them, and in this manner hurried them to the frontiers. Whatever may have been the merits of this movement as a mere military precaution, it was of very bad policy in a civil point of view. It not only degraded the Indian chiefs in their own, but in the eyes of their people. His captives deeply and openly resented this indignity and breach of faith; and, brooding in sullen ferocity over the disgrace which they suffered, meditated in silence those schemes of vengeance which they subsequently brought to a fearful maturity. But though thus impetuous and imprudent, and though pressing forward as if with the most determined purposes, Lyttleton was in no mood for war. His policy seems to have contemplated nothing further than the alarm of the Indians. Neither party was exactly ripe for the final issue. The Cherokees needed time for preparation, and the Governor, with an army ill disciplined and imperfectly armed, found it politic, when on the very confines of the enemy's country, to do that which he might very well have done in Charleston—listen to terms of accommodation. Having sent for Attakullakullah, the wise man of the nation, who had always been the staunch friend of the whites, he made his complaints, and declared his readiness for peace;—demanding, however, as the only condition on which it could be granted, that twenty-four men of the nation should be delivered to him, to be disposed of as he should think proper, by death or otherwise, as an atonement for that number of Carolinians, massacred in the late foray of the savages. A treaty was effected, but with some difficulty, on these terms. Compliance with this requisition was not so easy, however, on the part of the Cherokee chiefs. The moment it was understood, the great body of their people fled to the mountains, and the number of hostages could be secured only by the detention of twenty-two of those chiefs already in the Governor's custody. The captives were placed, for safe keeping, at the frontier fort of Prince George.
* Judge James' Life of Marion, p. 17.—
But the natural sense of the savage is not inferior to that by which the laws of the civilized are prescribed, in their dealings with one another. The treaty thus extorted from their leaders, while in a state of duress, was disregarded by the great body of the nation. They watched their opportunity, and, scarcely had the Governor disbanded his forces, when the war-whoop resounded from the frontiers.
Fort Prince George was one of the most remote of a chain of military posts by which the intercourse was maintained between the several white settlements of the seaboard and the interior. It stood on the banks of the Isundiga River, about three hundred miles from Charleston, within gunshot of the Indian town of Keowee. This post, to which the Cherokee hostages were carried, was defended by cannon, and maintained by a small force under Colonel Cotymore. It was in this neighborhood, and, as it were in defiance of this force, that the war was begun. Fourteen whites were massacred at a blow, within a mile of this station. This was followed up by a stratagem, by which Occonostota, one of the principal warriors, aimed to obtain possession of the fort. Pretending to have something of importance to communicate to the commander, he dispatched a woman who had usually obtained access to the station, to solicit an interview with him. This was to take place on the banks of the river. Meanwhile the savage prepared his ambush. Cotymore imprudently assented to the meeting, and, attended by Lieutenants Bell and Foster, walked down towards the river, from the opposite side of which Occonostota addressed him. While they spoke, the Indian was seen to wave a bridle over his head. This was the signal agreed upon with the ambushed warriors. At this signal they rose and poured in their fire. Cotymore was slain on the spot, and his companions wounded. But the savages failed to get possession of the fort. Suspecting a concerted movement among the hostages, by which they would cooperate with the assailing foe without, the officer in command of the fort gave orders to secure them with irons. The attempt to obey these orders ended in a bloody tragedy. The Indians resisted with arms, and, stabbing three of the soldiers, so exasperated the rest, already excited by the murder of their captain, that they fell upon the miserable wretches and butchered them to a man.
This unhappy event, completing what the indiscreet severities of Governor Lyttleton had begun, united the whole nation of Cherokees in war. There had been a strong party favorable to peace, and friendly to the whites. This unfortunate proceeding involved the loss of this party. The hostages were among their chief men, and scarcely a family in the nation but lost a relative or friend in their massacre. They were now unanimous for battle; and, numerous parties rushing simultaneously down upon the frontiers, baffled the courage and prevented the flight of the fugitives. They fell without distinction upon men, women and children. "Such as fled to the woods and escaped the scalping-knife, perished of hunger.... Every day brought fresh accounts to the capital of their ravages, murders and desolations. But while the back settlers looked to their governor for relief, the small-pox raged to such a degree in town that few of the militia could be prevailed upon to leave their distressed families to serve the public."* Lyttleton, meanwhile, by whom all the mischief was occasioned, was made Governor of Jamaica, and the charge of the colony devolved on William Bull, a native—"a man of great integrity and erudition." In the almost hopeless condition of the province, her sisters, North Carolina and Virginia, raised seven troops of rangers for the frontiers; and Colonel Montgomery, afterwards Earl of Eglintoun, was dispatched from Canada, with a battalion of Highlanders and four companies of Royal Scots. Before the end of April, 1760, the camp of rendezvous for a new invasion of the Cherokee territories was established at Monk's Corner. Meanwhile, the health of Carolina had undergone some improvement, and the gentlemen of the country were not idle. They turned out in force as volunteers, and under the spirited direction of Governor Bull, the whole disposable force of the province was put in requisition. Among these, it is not so sure, but is believed, that Francis Marion once more made his appearance as a volunteer. From what we know of his character, his temperament, and that unsatisfied craving which he seems to have shown from the beginning for such excitements, it is reasonable to infer his presence in the field. But, though asserted by tradition, we confess that the records are silent on the subject. Unsatisfactory as at that period they generally are, on this point they are particularly so; and but that his share in this war, before its final conclusion, was not only unquestionable but conspicuous, we should pass over the campaign of Montgomery, with a simple reference to its results.