FRANCIS MARION.

reduced almost to starvation. An swamps. Large bodies of troops could accident which happened to Marion move only with difficulty; it was a has been esteemed a piece of singular service for small parties of cavalry good fortune to the cause, in saving him always in movement, making up by from the surrender. He was in com- rapidity for want of numbers. On the mand of the small body of light troops side of the British, Lieutenant-Colonel outside of the city, when he was called Tarleton, an officer of spirit, whose to aid in the defence. During the first fiery youth has been vividly handed days of the very deliberate investment, down to us in the portrait by Sir he was dining with some friends in the Joshua Reynolds, was the leading town, when, according to a custom not representative of this method of warunusual in those hard-drinking times, fare; harrying the land with his mountthe door was locked that no one should ed troops, and overcoming by his actavoid his share of the conviviality. ivity and unscrupulousness. Success Determined to escape the infliction, he added terror to his name, as he gained threw himself from the window into victory after victory, and seemed des the street. The fall fractured his tined to sweep the land of its patriot ankle and incapacitated him from ser- defenders. He was the right arm of vice. In obedience to an order of Cornwallis, in his movements in the Lincoln, commanding all officers unfit interior, and began to be deemed invin. for duty to retire from the city, he cible, when his course was arrested by left while the country was still open, Morgan, the Virginian, and his resolute and took refuge in his native region companies of native defenders of the of St. Johns. His freedom was State, at the battle of Cowpens. But thus preserved for the service of his it was in Marion that the chief spirit country. of resistance was incorporated. Now came the incursions of Tarleton the arrival of Gates from the north, in and the devastating warfare of Corn- command of the southern army, having wallis-a policy of savage extermina- partially recovered from his lameness, tion which would have driven a people he presented himself before the hero with less capability of exertion to des- of Saratoga, on his march toward the pair. But it happened, as it has before, fatal field of Camden. American comthat the very means employed to crush, manders were accustomed to odd sights excited the spirit of resistance, and of dress and equipment in the patriot deliverers were raised up for the op- soldiery who enlisted under their ban pressed. It was a peculiar species of ners, and Gates must have been used warfare which was now entered upon, to appearances with which the eye of requiring novel resources both for at- Washington himself was but too famitack and defence. A thinly inhabited liar. The little band of Marion, howcountry was the scene of operations, ever, seems to have astonished even cut up in all directions by rivers their American brethren in arms. As and their branches, and innumerable for the well-equipped British, they

On

and knowing, dared to maintain them. Their movement was voluntary, as they gathered their small but resolute force of picked mer., and called Marion to its command. He had already assumed it, and caused the Tories to feel his

always held the ragged American regi- at Charleston to reduce them to politi ments in contempt, till they were cal servitude; they knew their rights, soundly flogged by them. An intelligent looker-on at the camp, Col. Otho Williams, in his narrative of the campaign, speaks of Colonel Marion's arrival, "attended by a very few followers, distinguished by small leather caps, and the wretchedness of their attire; new authority when the defeat of 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 Colonel Marion, at his own instance, towards the interior of South Carolina, with orders to watch the motions of the enemy, and furnish intelligence." 1

Gates took place. It roused him at once to a new effort to redeem the fortunes of war. He was already in the neighborhood of the field, and hearing that a British guard was on its way with a considerable body of prisoners, he determined to arrest the party on its march. Two days after the battle, he concerted an attack, and with the loss of but one man, killed and took twenty-two regulars and two Tories prisoners, and retook one hundred and fifty continentals of the Maryland line. He was now a recognized It was while Marion was engaged on leader in the field, and the British this service, that the battle of Camden commander-in-chief directed his efforts was fought; but luckily, he had no to his overthrow. "I most sincerely share in the misadventure. He was employed, in fact, in quite an independent career of his own, organizing his own forces and acting at his own discretion. He was at the head of that system of partisan warfare, which, in its development, was to rid the State of the foreign foe. His present command, "Marion's Brigade," was formed from the hardy spirited population of Irish descent, settled between the Santee and the Pedee, in the territory of Williamsburg. They were convinced of the intentions of the British rulers

'Simms' Life of Marion, p. 106.

hope," wrote Cornwallis to Tarleton, "that you will get at Mr. Marion." But Mr. Marion was not so easily to be caught. On the appearance of a superior force, under the command of Tarleton, which it would have been vain to resist, the skilful partisan turned his forces in another direction, to the borders of North Carolina, where he overawed the Scotch Tories in that disaffected region. The ruthless conduct of the British whom he had left behind, now raised the South Carolinians to fresh resistance, when Marion, ever mindful of his opportunity, returned to the State with speed, accom