The Life of Francis Marion (Chapter 1)

Table of Contents

Preface -- Chapter 2

Chapter 1.

     Introduction—The Huguenots in South Carolina.

The name of FRANCIS MARION is identified, in the history of South Carolina, his parent state, with all that is pleasing and exciting in romance. He is, par excellence, the famous partisan of that region. While Sumter stands conspicuous for bold daring, fearless intrepidity and always resolute behavior; while Lee takes eminent rank as a gallant Captain of Cavalry, the eye and the wing of the southern liberating army under Greene; Marion is proverbially the great master of strategy—the wily fox of the swamps—never to be caught, never to be followed,—yet always at hand, with unconjectured promptness, at the moment when he is least feared and is least to be expected. His pre-eminence in this peculiar and most difficult of all kinds of warfare, is not to be disputed. In his native region he has no competitor, and it is scarcely possible to compute the vast influence which he possessed and exercised over the minds and feelings of the people of Carolina, simply through his own resources, at a period most adverse to their fortunes, and when the cause of their liberties, everywhere endangered, was almost everywhere considered hopeless. His name was the great rallying cry of the yeoman in battle—the word that promised hope—that cheered the desponding patriot—that startled, and made to pause in his career of recklessness and blood, the cruel and sanguinary tory. Unprovided with the means of warfare, no less than of comfort—wanting equally in food and weapons—we find him supplying the one deficiency with a cheerful courage that never failed; the other with the resources of a genius that seemed to wish for nothing from without. With a force constantly fluctuating and feeble in consequence of the most ordinary necessities—half naked men, feeding upon unsalted pottage,—forced to fight the enemy by day, and look after their little families, concealed in swamp or thicket, by night—he still contrived,—one knows not well how,—to keep alive and bright the sacred fire of his country's liberties, at moments when they seemed to have no other champion. In this toil and watch, taken cheerfully and with spirits that never appeared to lose their tone and elasticity, tradition ascribes to him a series of achievements, which, if they were small in comparison with the great performances of European war, were scarcely less important; and which, if they sometimes transcend belief, must yet always delight the imagination. His adventures have given a rich coloring to fable, and have stimulated its performances. The language of song and story has been employed to do them honor, and our children are taught, in lessons that they love, to lisp the deeds and the patriotism of his band. "Marion"—"Marion's Brigade" and "Marion's men", have passed into household words, which the young utter with an enthusiasm much more confiding than that which they yield to the wondrous performances of Greece and Ilium. They recall, when spoken, a long and delightful series of brilliant exploits, wild adventures, by day and night, in swamp and thicket, sudden and strange manoeuvres, and a generous, unwavering ardor, that never found any peril too hazardous, or any suffering too unendurable. The theme, thus invested, seems to have escaped the ordinary bounds of history. It is no longer within the province of the historian. It has passed into the hands of the poet, and seems to scorn the appeal to authentic chronicles. When we look for the record we find but little authority for a faith so confiding, and seemingly so exaggerated. The story of the Revolution in the southern colonies has been badly kept. Documentary proofs are few, bald and uninteresting. A simple paragraph in the newspapers,—those newspapers issued not unfrequently in cities where the enemy had power, and in the control of Editors, unlike the present, who were seldom able to expatiate upon the achievement which they recorded;—or the brief dispatches of the Captain himself, whose modesty would naturally recoil from stating more than the simple result of his performances;—these are usually the sum total of our authorities. The country, sparsely settled, and frequently overrun by the barbarous enemy, was incapable of that patient industry and persevering care, which could chronicle the passing event, give place and date to the brilliant sortie, the gallant struggle, the individual deed of audacity, which, by a stroke, and at a moment, secures an undying remembrance in the bosoms of a people. The fame of Marion rests very much upon tradition. There is little in the books to justify the strong and exciting relish with which the name is spoken and remembered throughout the country. He was not a bloody warrior. His battle fields were never sanguinary. His ardor was never of a kind to make him imprudent. He was not distinguished for great strength of arm, or great skill in his weapon. We have no proofs that he was ever engaged in single combat: yet the concurrent testimony of all who have written, declare, in general terms, his great services: and the very exaggeration of the popular estimate is a partial proof of the renown for which it speaks. In this respect, his reputation is like that of all other heroes of romantic history. It is a people's history, written in their hearts, rather than in their books; which their books could not write—which would lose all its golden glow, if subjected to the cold details of the phlegmatic chronicles. The tradition, however swelling, still testifies to that large merit which must have been its basis, by reason of which the name of the hero was selected from all others for such peculiar honors; and though these exaggerations suggest a thousand difficulties in the way of sober history, they yet serve to increase the desire, as well as the necessity, for some such performance.

The family of Marion came from France. They emigrated to South Carolina somewhere about the year 1685, within twenty years after the first British settlement of the province. They belonged, in the parent country, to that sect of religious dissenters which bore the name of Huguenots; and were among those who fled from the cruel persecutions which, in the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV., followed close upon the re-admission of the Jesuits into France. The edict of Nantz, which had been issued under the auspices of Henri IV., and by which the Huguenots had been guaranteed, with some slight qualifications, the securities of the citizen, almost in the same degree with the Catholic inhabitants, had, under the weak and tyrannous sway of the former monarch, proved totally inadequate to their protection. Long before its formal revocation, the unmeasured and inhuman persecutions to which they were subjected, drove thousands of them into voluntary banishment. The subsequent decree of Louis, by which even the nominal securities of the Huguenots were withdrawn, increased the number of the exiles, and completed the sentence of separation from all those ties which bind the son to the soil. The neighboring Protestant countries received the fugitives, the number and condition of whom may be estimated by the simple fact, not commonly known, that England alone possessed "eleven regiments composed entirely of these unhappy refugees, besides others enrolled among the troops of the line. There were in London twenty French churches supported by Government; about three thousand refugees were maintained by public subscription; many received grants from the crown; and a great number lived by their own industry. Some of the nobility were naturalized and obtained high rank; among others, Ruvigny, son of the Marquis, was made Earl of Galway, and Schomberg received the dignity of Duke."

America, the new world, was naturally a land of refuge, and soon received her share of these unhappy fugitives. The transition was easy from England to her colonies. Every facility was afforded them for transportation, and the wise policy which encouraged their settlement in the new countries was amply rewarded by the results. Altogether, the Huguenots were a much better sort of people than those who usually constituted the mass of European emigrants. The very desperation of their circumstances was a proof of their virtues. They were a people of principle, for they had suffered everything for conscience sake. They were a people of pure habits, for it was because of their religion that they suffered banishment. In little patriarchal groups of sixty, seventy, or eighty families, they made their way to different parts of America; and with the conscious poverty of their own members, were generally received with open arms by those whom they found in possession of the soil. The English, as they beheld the dependent and destitute condition of the fugitives, forgot, for a season, their usual national animosities; and assigning ample tracts of land for their occupation, beheld them, without displeasure, settling down in exclusive colonies, in which they sought to maintain, as far as possible, the pious habits and customs of the mother country. One of these communities, comprising from seventy to eighty families, found their way to the banks of the Santee in South Carolina. From this point they gradually spread themselves out so as to embrace, in partial settlements, the spacious tract of country stretching to the Winyah, on the one hand, and the sources of Cooper River on the other; extending upward into the interior, following the course of the Santee nearly to the point where it loses its identity in receiving the descending streams of the Wateree and Congaree. These settlers were generally poor. They had been despoiled of all their goods by the persecutions which had driven them into exile. This, indeed, had been one of the favorite modes by which this result had been effected. Doubtless, also, it had been, among the subordinates of the crown, one of the chief motives of the persecution. It was a frequent promise of his Jesuit advisers, to the vain and bigoted Louis, that the heretics should be brought into the fold of the Church without a drop of bloodshed; and, until the formal revocation of the edict of Nantz, by which the Huguenots were put without the pale and protection of the laws, spoliation was one of the means, with others, by which to avoid this necessity. These alternatives, however, were of a kind not greatly to lessen the cruelties of the persecutor or the sufferings of the victim. It does not fall within our province to detail them. It is enough that one of the first and most obvious measures by which to keep their promise to the king, was to dispossess the proscribed subjects of their worldly goods and chattels. By this measure a two-fold object was secured. While the heretic was made to suffer, the faithful were sure of their reward. It was a principle faithfully kept in view; and the refugees brought with them into exile, little beyond the liberties and the virtues for which they had endured so much. But these were possessions, as their subsequent history has shown, beyond all price.

Our humble community along the Santee had suffered the worst privations of their times and people. But, beyond the necessity of hard labor, they had little to deplore, at the outset, in their new condition. They had been schooled sufficiently by misfortune to have acquired humility. They observed, accordingly, in their new relations, a policy equally prudent and sagacious. More flexible in their habits than the English, they conciliated the latter by deference; and, soothing the unruly passions of the Indians—the Santee and Sewee tribes, who were still in considerable numbers in their immediate neighborhood—they won them to alliance by kindness and forbearance. From the latter, indeed, they learned their best lessons for the cultivation of the soil. That, upon which they found themselves, lay in the unbroken forest. The high lands which they first undertook to clear, as less stubborn, were most sterile; and, by a very natural mistake, our Frenchmen adopted the modes and objects of European culture; the grains, the fruits and the vegetables, as well as the implements, to which they had been accustomed. The Indians came to their succor, taught them the cultivation of maize, and assisted them in the preparation of their lands; in return for lessons thought equally valuable by the savages, to whom they taught, along with gentler habits and morals, a better taste for music and the dance! To subdue the forest, of itself, to European hands, implied labors not unlike those of Hercules. But the refugees, though a gentle race, were men of soul and strength, capable of great sacrifices, and protracted self-denial. Accommodating themselves with a patient courage to the necessities before them, they cheerfully undertook and accomplished their tasks. We have more than one lively picture among the early chroniclers of the distress and hardship which they were compelled to encounter at the first. But, in this particular, there was nothing peculiar in their situation. It differed in no respect from that which fell to the lot of all the early colonists in America. The toil of felling trees, over whose heavy boughs and knotty arms the winters of centuries had passed; the constant danger from noxious reptiles and beasts of prey, which, coiled in the bush or crouching in the brake, lurked day and night, in waiting for the incautious victim; and, most insidious and fatal enemy of all, the malaria of the swamp, of the rank and affluent soil, for the first time laid open to the sun; these are all only the ordinary evils which encountered in America, at the very threshold, the advances of European civilisation. That the Huguenots should meet these toils and dangers with the sinews and the hearts of men, was to be expected from their past experience and history. They had endured too many and too superior evils in the old world, to be discouraged by, or to shrink from, any of those which hung upon their progress in the new. Like the hardy Briton, whom, under the circumstances, we may readily suppose them to have emulated, they addressed themselves, with little murmuring, to the tasks before them. We have, at the hands of one of their number,—a lady born and raised in affluence at home,—a lively and touching picture of the sufferings and duties, which, in Carolina, at that period, neither sex nor age was permitted to escape. "After our arrival," she writes, "we suffered every kind of evil. In about eighteen months our elder brother, unaccustomed to the hard labor we were obliged to undergo, died of a fever. Since leaving France, we had experienced every kind of affliction, disease, pestilence, famine, poverty and hard labor! I have been for six months together without tasting bread, working the ground like a slave; and I have even passed three or four years without always having it when I wanted it. I should never have done were I to attempt to detail to you all our adventures."

We may safely conclude that there was no exaggeration in this picture. The lot of all the refugees seems to have been very equally severe. Men and women, old and young, strove together in the most menial and laborious occupations. But, as courage and virtue usually go hand in hand with industry, the three are apt to triumph together. Such was the history in the case of the Carolina Huguenots. If the labor and the suffering were great, the fruits were prosperity. They were more. Honors, distinction, a goodly name, and the love of those around them, have blessed their posterity, many of whom rank with the noblest citizens that were ever reared in America. In a few years after their first settlement, their forest homes were crowned with a degree of comfort, which is described as very far superior to that in the usual enjoyment of the British colonists. They were a more docile and tractable race; not so restless, nor—though this may seem difficult to understand to those who consider their past history—so impatient of foreign control. Of their condition in Carolina, we have a brief but pleasing picture from the hands of John Lawson, then surveyor-general of the province of North Carolina. This gentleman, in 1701, just fifteen years after its settlement, made a progress through that portion of the Huguenot colony which lay immediately along the Santee. The passages which describe his approach to the country which they occupied, the hospitable reception which they gave him, the comforts they enjoyed, the gentleness of their habits, the simplicity of their lives, and their solicitude in behalf of strangers, are necessary to furnish the moral of those fortunes, the beginning of which was so severe and perilous. "There are," says he, "about seventy families seated on this river, WHO LIVE AS DECENTLY AND HAPPILY AS ANY PLANTERS IN THESE SOUTHWARD PARTS OF AMERICA. THE FRENCH BEING A TEMPERATE, INDUSTRIOUS PEOPLE, some of them bringing very little of effects, YET, BY THEIR ENDEAVORS AND MUTUAL ASSISTANCE AMONG THEMSELVES (which is highly to be commended), HAVE OUTSTRIPT OUR ENGLISH, WHO BROUGHT WITH THEM LARGER FORTUNES, though (as it seems) less endeavor to manage their talent to the best advantage. 'Tis admirable to see what time and industry will (with God's blessing) effect," &c.... ... "We lay all that night at Mons. EUGEE'S (Huger), and the next morning set out farther, to go the remainder of our voyage by land. At ten o'clock we passed over a narrow, deep swamp, having left the three Indian men and one woman, that had piloted the canoe from Ashley river, having hired a Sewee Indian, a tall, lusty fellow, who carried a pack of our clothes, of great weight. Notwithstanding his burden, we had much ado to keep pace with him. At noon we came up with several French plantations. Meeting with several creeks by the way, THE FRENCH WERE VERY OFFICIOUS IN ASSISTING US WITH THEIR SMALL DORIES TO PASS OVER THESE WATERS: whom we met coming from their church, BEING ALL OF THEM VERY CLEAN AND DECENT IN THEIR APPAREL; their HOUSES AND PLANTATIONS SUITABLE IN NEATNESS AND CONTRIVANCE. They are all of the same opinion with the church of Geneva, there being no difference among them concerning the punctilios of their Christian faith; WHICH UNION HATH PROPAGATED A HAPPY AND DELIGHTFUL CONCORD IN ALL OTHER MATTERS THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE NEIGHBORHOOD; LIVING AMONGST THEMSELVES AS ONE TRIBE OR KINDRED, EVERY ONE MAKING IT HIS BUSINESS TO BE ASSISTANT TO THE WANTS OF HIS COUNTRYMEN, PRESERVING HIS ESTATE AND REPUTATION WITH THE SAME EXACTNESS AND CONCERN AS HE DOES HIS OWN: ALL SEEMING TO SHARE IN THE MISFORTUNES, AND REJOICE AT THE ADVANCE AND RISE OF THEIR BRETHREN." Lawson fitly concludes his account of the settlers upon the Santee, by describing them as "a very kind, loving, and affable people"—a character which it has been the happy solicitude of their descendants to maintain to the present day.

A more delightful picture than this of Mr. Lawson, could not well be drawn by the social perfectionist. The rational beauty of the voluntary system could not find a happier illustration; and, duly impressed with its loveliness, we shall cease to wonder at the instances of excellence, equally frequent and admirable, which rose up among this little group of exiles, to the good fortune of the country which gave them shelter, and in attestation of their own virtues. But this happy result was due entirely to their training. It would be wonderful, indeed, if such an education, toil and watch, patient endurance of sickness and suffering, sustained only by sympathy with one another and a humble reliance upon divine mercy, should not produce many perfect characters—men like Francis Marion, the beautiful symmetry of whose moral structure leaves us nothing to regret in the analysis of his life. Uncompromising in the cause of truth, stern in the prosecution of his duties, hardy and fearless as the soldier, he was yet, in peace, equally gentle and compassionate, pleased to be merciful, glad and ready to forgive, sweetly patient of mood, and distinguished throughout by such prominent virtues, that, while always sure of the affections of followers and comrades, he was not less secure in the unforced confidence of his enemies, among whom his integrity and mercy were proverbial. By their fruits, indeed, shall we know this community, the history of which furnishes as fine a commentary upon the benefit of good social training for the young—example and precept happily keeping concert with the ordinary necessities and performances of life, the one supported by the manliest courage, the other guided by the noblest principle—as any upon record.

When our traveller turned his back upon this "kind, loving, and affable people," to pursue his journey into North Carolina, his first forward step was into a howling wilderness. The Santee settlement, though but forty miles distant from Charleston, was a frontier—all beyond was waste, thicket and forest, filled with unknown and fearful animals, and

"sliding reptiles of the ground, Startlingly beautiful,"—

which the footstep of man dreaded to disturb. Of the wild beasts by which it was tenanted, a single further extract from the journal of Mr. Lawson will give us a sufficient and striking idea. He has left the Santee settlements but a single day—probably not more than fifteen miles. His Indian companion has made for his supper a bountiful provision, having killed three fat turkeys in the space of half an hour. "When we were all asleep," says our traveller, "in the beginning of the night, we were awakened with the dismallest and most hideous noise that ever pierced my ears. This sudden surprisal incapacitated us of guessing what this threatening noise might proceed from; but our Indian pilot (who knew these parts very well) acquainted us that it was customary to hear such musick along that swamp-side, there being endless numbers of panthers, tygers, wolves, and other beasts of prey, which take this swamp for their abode in the day, coming in whole droves to hunt the deer in the night, making this frightful ditty till day appears, then all is still as in other places." (Page 26.)

Less noisy, except in battle, but even more fearful, were the half-human possessors of the same regions, the savages, who, at that period, in almost countless tribes or families, hovered around the habitations of the European. Always restless, commonly treacherous, warring or preparing for war, the red men required of the white borderer the vigilance of an instinct which was never to be allowed repose. This furnished an additional school for the moral and physical training of our young Huguenots. In this school, without question, the swamp and forest partisans of a future day took some of their first and most valuable lessons in war. Here they learned to be watchful and circumspect, cool in danger, steady in advance, heedful of every movement of the foe, and—which is of the very last importance in such a country and in such a warfare as it indicates—happily dextrous in emergencies to seize upon the momentary casualty, the sudden chance—to convert the most trivial circumstance, the most ordinary agent, into a means of extrication or offence. It was in this last respect particularly, in being quick to see, and prompt to avail themselves of the happy chance or instrument, that the partisans of the revolution in the southern colonies, under Marion and others, asserted their vast superiority over the invader, and maintained their ground, and obtained their final triumph, in spite of every inequality of arms and numbers.

Table of Contents

Preface -- Chapter 2