Chapter XXVIII…

Chapter XXVIII

HERE are but few remains of Revolutionary localities about Savannah. The city has spread out over all the British works; and where their batteries, redoubts, ramparts, and ditches were constructed, public squares are laid out and adorned with trees, or houses and stores cover the earth. Not so with the works constructed by the French engineers during the siege in the autumn of 1779. Although the regular forms are effaced, yet the mounds and ditches may be traced many rods near the margin of the swamp southeast of the city. These I visited early on the morning of my arrival in Savannah, after an instructive interview with the Honorable J. C. Nicoll, to whom I am indebted for a knowledge of the several historical localities in and near the city. Their present appearance and description are delineated on page 737. After sketching General M'Intosh's house, printed on the preceding page, I procured a saddle-horse and rode out to "Jasper's Spring," a place famous as the scene of a bold exploit, which has been the theme of history and song.*

It is near the Augusta road, two and a half miles westward of the city. The day was very warm. The gardens were garnished with flowers; the orange-trees were blooming; blossoms covered the peach-trees, and insects were sporting in the sunbeams.

Jasper's Spring is just within the edge of a forest of oaks and gums, and is remarkable only on account of its historical associations. It is in the midst of a marshy spot partially covered with underwood, on the northern side of the road, and its area is marked by the circumference of a sunken barrel. Being the only fountain of pure water in the vicinity, it is resorted to daily by travelers upon the road. One

* We have already met Sergeant William Jasper while securing the Carolina flags upon the parapet of the Spring Hill redoubt at Savannah (see page 738), and there sealing his patriotism with his life's blood. Jasper was one of the bravest of the brave. After his exploits at Fort Moultrie, which we shall consider hereafter, his commander, General Moultrie, gave him a sort of roving commission, certain that he would always be usefully employed. Jasper belonged to the second South Carolina regiment, and was privileged to select from his corps such men as he pleased to accompany him in his enterprises. Bravery and humanity were his chief characteristics, and while he was active in the cause of his country, he never injured an enemy unnecessarily. While out upon one of his excursions, when the British had a camp at Ebenezer, all the sympathies of his heart were aroused by the distress of a Mrs. Jones, whose husband, an American by birth, was confined in irons for deserting the royal cause after taking a protection. She felt certain that he would be hanged, for, with others, he was to be taken to Savannah for that purpose the next morning. Jasper and his only companion (Sergeant Newton) resolved to rescue Jones and his fellow-prisoners. Concealing themselves in the thick bushes near the spring (at which they doubted not the guard of eight men would halt), they awaited their approach. As expected, the guard halted to drink. Only two of them remained with the prisoners, while the others, leaning their muskets against a tree, went to the spring. Jasper and his companion then leaped from their concealment, seized two of the guns, shot the two sentinels, and took possession of the remainder of the muskets. The guards, unarmed, were powerless, and surrendered. The irons were knocked off the wrists of the prisoners, muskets were placed in their hands, and the custodians of Jones and his fellow-patriots were taken to the American camp at Purysburg the next morning, themselves prisoners of war. Jones was restored to his wife, child, and country, and for that noble deed posterity blesses the name of Sergeant Jasper. That name is indelibly written on the page of history, and the people of Savannah have perpetuated it by bestowing it upon one of the beautiful squares of their city.

[[[Departure from Savannah.--Night Voyage.--Arrival at Charleston.--Early Settlement.]]]

{743}of them, a wagoner, came, knelt, and quaffed when I opened my port-folio, and, as he arose from the spring I sketched him, as seen in the preceding picture. He knew nothing of the event which makes it famous.

After lingering for half an hour in the cool shade at the spring, I returned to Savannah. A slight haziness began to overspread the sky, which deepened toward evening, and descended in gentle rain when I left the city at eight o'clock in a steam-packet for Charleston. We passed the lights at Fort Pulaski at half past eight, and an hour later glided by the beacons of Tybee and breasted the rising waves of the Atlantic. Like Yellow Plush, I soon discovered the "use of basins," and at an early hour turned into my berth to prevent a turning out of my supper. During the night we passed through Port Royal entrance, touched at Beaufort, stuck in the mud in the channel between Ladies' and St. Helena Islands, and at daylight emerged again into the Atlantic through St. Helena's Sound. The breeze was hourly stiffening, and every "landlubber" on board preferred the berth to breakfast, until we approached Charleston bar, when the wind died away, the sun gleamed through the breaking clouds, and upon the bosom of long, heaving swells, we were wafted into Charleston harbor.

We landed at one o'clock, dined at two, and at three I called upon the Reverend Samuel Smythe, D.D., with a letter of introduction, with whom I passed the remainder of the afternoon in visiting places of interest upon the banks of the Cooper River, above the city. To the kind courtesy of Dr. Smythe I am indebted for much of the interest, pleasure, and profit of my visit at Charleston and vicinity.

Here, upon the spot where the first permanent English settlement in South Carolina was accomplished, let us glance at the record of history.

In the Introduction to this work (page xxxii.), I have referred to the first attempt at permanent settlement on South Carolina soil, and the result. As it was only an attempt, proved unsuccessful, and does not illustrate the growth of popular liberty, except so far as the principles, of the Huguenots (those first emigrants) had influence in the political opinions of the people in after years, we will not stop to consider the details, but pass on to the period of permanent settlements.

For a hundred years after the first attempt at colonization in South Carolina was made, no settlements were undertaken, and no white man walked in her forests, except a few Spaniards, who penetrated the wilderness from St. Augustine in search of a fancied region of gold. At length the English, who had formed settlements on the Cape Fear and vicinity, turned their attention to more southerly regions.

In January, 1670, two ships, with materials fora permanent settlement, sailed from England, under the command of Sir William Sayle, who had previously visited and explored the South Carolina coast. He entered Port Royal, planted his colony upon Beaufort, and soon afterward died there.

The jurisdiction of Sir John Yeamans, of the Northern colony, was then extended over this settlement, and in 1671 he was chosen their governor. The people were easily induced, "for the convenience of pasturage and tillage," to remove to the south bank of the Ashley River, further north, and there they laid the foundation of old Charlestown ** (at present called Old Town, or the Landing); and there was planted the first fruitful seed a gift of the commonwealth of South Carolina. The colony, in honor of Sir George Carteret, one of the proprietors, was called the Carteret County Colony. ** Nine years afterward, the settlers abandoned this spot, and upon Oyster Point, nearer the sea, at the confluence of the

* There were about fifty families who went from the Fort Royal settlement to the Ashley River, and about the same number from the Northern colony accompanied Governor Yeamans thither.

** Governor Yeamans caused a number of African slaves to be brought from Barbadoes, and in the year 1672 the slave system in South Carolina was commenced

[[[Founding of Charleston.--Increase of Settlers.--Their Character.--Difficulties with the Indians.]]]

{744}Ashley and Cooper Rivers * (so called in compliment to Ashley Cooper, the Earl of Shaftesbury), a place more eligible for commercial pursuits, they founded the present city of Charleston,[[1680]] and in the course of the year built thirty houses. *** The city retained its original name of Charles Town until after the Revolution, when it was called Charleston. The general early history of South Carolina we have already considered in its connection with the North State; we have, therefore, only a few particular points to notice in its progress prior to the separation in 1729.

The beauty of the climate and the freedom which then prevailed made South Carolina a chosen refuge for the oppressed and the discontented of all lands. Several Dutch families of New York went to South Carolina when that city passed into the hands of the English, and settled on the southwest side of the Ashley, near the English colony, from whence they spread over the state, and were joined by many from "fader-land." In 1679, Charles the Second sent quite a number of French Protestant refugees (Huguenots) thither; and when, in 1685, the Edict of Nantes (see page 386, volume i.) was revoked, large numbers of the Huguenots crossed the Atlantic, and sought refuge in South Carolina from the fires of persecution about to be relighted in France. Ten years later,[[1696]] a colony of Congregationalists, from Dorchester, in Massachusetts, ascended the Ashley almost to its head, and founded the town of Dorchester, in the present parish of St. George, Dorchester. This was a village of considerable note during the Revolution, but it is now deserted, and little remains of the past but the primitive church and the graves around it.

Under various leaders, men of every creed and of various countries went to South Carolina; "and the Santee, the Congaree, the Wateree, and the Edisto now listened to the strange voices of several nations, who in the Old World had scarcely known each other, except as foes. There, for a while, they mingled harmoniously with the natives. The French Huguenot and the German Palatine smoked their pipes in amity with the Westo and the Serattee; and the tastes and habits of the Seine and the Rhine became familiar to the wandering eyes of the fearless warriors along the Congaree. It was not long before a French violinist had opened a school for dancing among the Indians on the Santee River." ***

For some time the colonists were obliged to depend, in part, upon the bounty of the proprietors for subsistence, and the calls of this dependence being generally answered, idle and improvident habits were begotten, highly inimical to the prosperity of a new state. The proprietors perceived the bad tendency of such indulgence, and in a letter to the colonists declared that they would "no longer continue to feed and clothe them, without expectation or demand of any return." This resolve, so unkind to the apprehension of the Carolinians, was of great benefit to the colonists. Ultimately the people, compelled to work or starve--to be provident or to be beggars--turned to their own resources, and their development began. Independence of action begat independence of thought and feeling, and in this first broken fallow, turned up to the vivifying influence of the sun and shower of free civil, political and religious life, the seed of Republican liberty, which subsequently bore such generous fruit in the Carolinas, was planted and took firm root..

In addition to the diseases incident to the climate, and the privations always attendant upon first settlement, the Carolinians were soon called upon to resist powerful foes--the Indian tribes upon whose hunting-grounds they were settling. These difficulties have been noticed in a preceding chapter. The red men were hardly quieted before internal troubles menaced the colony with a more terrible blow. Food had become scarce, discontents were

* The Indian name for the Ashley was Ke-a-wah; for the Cooper, E-li-uan. The city has a tine sheltered harbor, with the sea six miles distant.

** The city of Charleston was laid out in 1680 by John Culpepper, who had been surveyor general of the Northern colony of the Carolinas, but was then a fugitive, on account of his participation in an insurrectionary movement there. The streets were laid out nearly at right angles, and the town site was completely inclosed with a line of fortifications. A plan of these fortifications, and of the city at that time, is published in Johnson's Traditions and Reminiscences of the Revolution, page 3.

*** Simm's History of South Carolina, page 64.

[[[An Insurrection.--Legislative Assembly.--French and English.--Church Liturgy adopted]]]

{745}heard on every side, and an insurrectionary movement occurred. The rebellion was promptly suppressed, and some supplies just then arriving from England with some new settlers, the people were quieted and became loyal. This difficulty had just passed by, when the Spaniards menaced the English, and ships of war with land troops appeared. Before their arrival, vessels which had been sent to Virginia and Barbadoes for provisions and munitions of war reached the harbor of Charleston. Governor Yeamans at once acted on the offensive, and drove the Spaniards back to St. Augustine.

Yeamans left the colony in 1674, and was succeeded by Joseph West, a man of republican tendencies. He called the freemen of the colony together in convention at Charleston to make laws for their government. This was the first legislative assembly convened in South Carolina. It might have been an auspicious event, had not the jarring interests of classes and creeds, there represented, produced discord and confusion. Cavaliers and Puritans, Churchmen and Dissenters, each strenuous for the prevalence of their respective opinions, presented, in this first attempt at representative legislation, powerful arguments in favor of absolutism. Anarchy prevailed, and in the midst of the dissensions in Charleston, the Stono Indians swept along the frontiers of the settlements, and plundered a great quantity of grain and numerous cattle. The inhabitants armed themselves, defeated the Stonos in several skirmishes, took many of them prisoners, and sent them to the West Indies to be sold as slaves. After other obstinate conflicts, the Stonos were subdued and almost exterminated. They have never had a tribal existence since, and it is believed that they have no living representative upon the earth.

A Legislative Assembly met in Charleston in 1682, and enacted laws for the civil and military operations of the colony. The spirit of freedom had begun to work in the hearts of the people, and when the collection of rents, the great cause of discontent in the Northern colony, was pressed, they rebelled. The public records were seized, and the Assembly, assuming the functions of government, imprisoned the secretary of the province. The governor (Colleton) declared martial law. The exasperated people clamored for his impeachment. The Assembly complied, and he was banished from the province. Turbulence and misrule continued until the scheme of government of Locke and Shaftesbury was abandoned; a better day then dawned. John Archdale, the good Quaker, came, and his policy was like oil poured upon troubled waters. Only one great difficulty remained--the troubles arising from the antipathy of the English to the French. The general excellence of character possessed by the latter soon disarmed prejudices; their political disabilities were removed; they were no longer excluded from participation in governmental affairs, and the last fountain of disquietude was dried up. During the whole of Archdale's administration, and that of Blake, his successor, peace and prosperity prevailed.

James Moore succeeded Blake in 1700. He sent an expedition against the Spaniards at St. Augustine, in 1702, which proved unsuccessful. A subsequent expedition against the Apalachian Indians, undertaken by Moore, has been considered in a previous chapter.

Nathaniel Johnson, a pliant servant of Lord Granville, one of the proprietors, succeeded Moore in 1703, and, pursuant to a plan long cherished by that nobleman and his friends, he proceeded to the establishment of the Church of England in Carolina. This was the first budding of religious intolerance there. The Dissenters were excluded from the Colonial Legislature, and suffered other disabilities. They laid their grievances before the English Parliament. There they received encouragement, and the law of disfranchisement was soon repealed by the Colonial Assembly, but the Liturgy of the Church of England remained the established form of religion in the province until the Revolution.

England was now at war with France and Spain. Her enemies coalesced, and joined in an expedition against South Carolina in 1706. A squadron of five ships came from Havana and appeared before Charleston. The governor called upon the people to repel the invaders, and they cheerfully responded. The invading troops were compelled to fly to their ships, and these, in turn, being attacked by some vessels which had been speedily armed in the harbor, retreated in haste across the bar, and departed. This was the first

[[[Revolution.--Royal Government established.--Separation of the Colonies.--Extension of Settlements.]]]

{746}naval victory of the South Carolinians. Of eight hundred of the enemy, almost three hundred were killed or taken prisoners.

In 1710 a speck of civil war appeared in Charleston, when two claimants to the office of acting governor, on the death of Tynte, the successor of Johnson, disputed for the honor. A compromise was effected, by referring the case to the proprietors for a decision. They wisely discarded both candidates, and appointed Charles Craven, brother of one of the proprietors, governor of the province. Under his administration the colony prospered, settlements extended, and the power of a dangerous Indian confederacy against the Carolinas was effectually broken. *

Craven was succeeded by Robert Johnson, a son of the former governor,[[1717]] and during his administration a revolution occurred in South Carolina which changed the government from a proprietary to a royal one. The remote causes of this change may be found in the desire of the people for a simple and inexpensive government responsible only to the crown, and not to be subjected to the caprices, avarice, and inefficiency of a Board of Control composed of private individuals, intent only upon personal gain. The immediate and ostensible cause was the refusal of the proprietors to pay any portion of the debt incurred by the Indian war so promptly suppressed by Governor Craven; and the severity with which they enforced the collection of rents. The people looked to the crown for relief, aid, and protection. A scheme for a revolution was secretly planned, and on the twenty-eighth of November, 1719, Governor Johnson was deposed. The people proceeded to elect James Moore governor. The militia, on whom Johnson looked for aid, were against him, and finding himself entirely unsupported, he withdrew to his plantation. Moore was proclaimed governor of the province in the king's name, and royal authority was established. During the administration of Francis Nicholson, the successor of Moore, and that of Arthur Middleton, acting governor, little of political importance occurred in relation to the colony, except the legal disputes in England concerning the rights of the proprietors. These were finally settled in 1729, by a royal purchase of both colonies (see page 562) from the proprietors, and during that year North and South Carolina became separate royal provinces.

The colony was now very prosperous, and from the period of the separation until the Revolution, nothing occurred to impede its general progress but the troubles with the Indians, detailed in preceding chapters, and difficulties with the Spaniards. Soon all alarm on account of the latter subsided, for Oglethorpe had established a barrier on the Southern border, by laying the foundation of the commonwealth of Georgia, and preparing means for keeping the Spaniards south of the St. John's. When this barrier was made secure, the treaties with the Indians were accomplished, the war with France ended, and universal peace reigned in the Carolinas. Emigration flowed thither in a broad and rapid stream. Immigrants came from all parts of Europe. Up the Pedee, Santee, Edisto, and Savannah Rivers, settlements spread rapidly, and soon the ax and the plow were plying with mighty energy upon the banks of the Wateree, the Broad, and the Saluda Rivers, and their tributaries. *** At one time six hundred German settlers came in a body; and from the North of Ireland such numbers of the Protestant inhabitants (Scotch-Irish chiefly) departed for Carolina that the depopulation of whole districts was menaced. Immigrants came, too, from the other colonies. Within a single year,[[1764]] more than a thousand families with their effects--their cattle, hogs, and horses--crossed the Alleghanies from the Eastern settlements, and pitched their tents in the bosom of Carolina. Far removed from the po-

* See page 562.

** Previous to this period, some important settlements were made. Between the years 1730 and 1740, an Irish settlement was planted near the Santee, to whieh was given the name of Williamsburg township. At the same time, some Swiss emigrants, under John Pury, settled upon the northeast side of the Savannah, and founded the village of Purysburg. From 1748 to 1755, great numbers of Palatines (Germans) were introduced, and settled Orangeburgh and other places upon the Congaree and Wateree. After the battle of Culloden in 1745, many Scotch Highlanders came over. Some of them settled in South Carolina, but a larger portion located at Cross Creek (Fayetteville), in North Carolina. The greatest influx of settlement was after the treaty of Paris, in 1763.

[[[Discontents.--Disputes with the Governor.--Effects of the Stamp Act.--Boldness of the People.]]]

{747}litical power they had been taught to reverence they soon became alienated. They felt neither the favors nor the oppressions of government, and in the free wilderness their minds and hearts became schooled in that sturdy independence which developed bold and energetic action when the Revolution broke out.

While the people of New England were murmuring because of Writs of Assistance and other grievances, the Carolinians were not indifferent listeners, especially those upon the seaboard; and before the Stamp Act lighted the flame of general indignation in America, leading men in South Carolina were freely discussing the rights and privileges of each colony, and saw in day-dreams a mighty empire stretching along the Atlantic coast from the Penobscot to the St. John's. Already their representatives had quarreled with the governor (William Boone), because he had presumed to touch, with official hands, one of their dearest privileges (the elective franchise), and refused to hold intercourse with him. In these disputes, Christopher Gadsden, Thomas Lynch, Henry Laurens, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the Rutledges, and other stanch patriots in the stormy strife ten years later, were engaged. A spirit of resistance was then aroused, which brought South Carolina early into the arena of conflict when the war began.

When intelligence of the Stamp Act came over the sea, the Assembly of South Carolina did not wait to consult the opinions of those of other colonies, but immediately passed a series of condemnatory resolves. When, soon afterward, the proposition for a Colonial Congress came from Massachusetts, a member of the Assembly ridiculed it, * others thought the scheme chimerical, yet a majority of them were in favor of it, and delegates were appointed to represent South Carolina in the Congress which was held at New York.[[Oct. 7, 1765]] The iniquitous character of the Stamp Aet was freely discussed by the Carolinians, and as the day approached[[Nov. 1]] when it was to go into operation, the people became more and more determined to resist it. When the stamps arrived in Charleston, no man was found willing to act as distributor, and Governor William Bull (who had succeeded Boone) ordered them to be placed in Fort Johnson, a strong fortress on James's Island, then garrisoned by a very small force. When the place of deposit became known, one hundred and fifty armed men, who had secretly organized, went down to the fort at midnight, in open boats, to destroy the stamps. They surprised and captured the garrison, loaded the cannons, hoisted a flag, and at sunrise proclaimed open defiance of the power of the governor. The captain of the armed ship which brought the stamps opened a parley with the insurgents, and agreed to take away the obnoxious articles, and "not land them elsewhere in America." ** This was agreed to, and the men returned to the city. So universal was the opposition to the Act, that no attempt was made to arrest the men concerned in this overt act of treason.

* "If you agree to the proposition of composing a Congress from the different British colonies," said the member, "what sort of a dish will you make. New England will throw in fish and onions; the Middle States flax-seed and flour; Maryland and Virginia will add tobacco; North Carolina pitch, tar, and turpentine; South Carolina rice and indigo; and Georgia will sprinkle the whole composition with saw-dust. Such an absurd jumble will you make if you attempt to form a union among such discordant materials as the thirteen British provinces." A shrewd country member replied, "I would not choose the gentleman who made the objection for my cook, but, nevertheless, I would venture to assert that if the colonies proceed judiciously in the appointment of deputies to a Continental Congress, they would prepare a dish fit to be presented to any crowned head in Europe."--Ramsay.

** In a letter from Charleston, published in Weyman's New York Gazette, it is stated that on the morning of the nineteenth of October a gallows was discovered in the middle of Broad Street, where Chinch Street intersects (then the central part of the town), on which were suspended an effigy representing a stamp distributor, and another to impersonate the devil. Near by was suspended a boot (Lord Bute), with a head upon it, covered by a blue Scotch bonnet. To these effigies labels were affixed. Upon one was the warning, "Whoever shall dare to pull down these effigies had better been born with a mill-stone about his neck, and cast into the sea." At evening they were taken down, and paraded through the street by about two thousand persons, until they came to the house of George Saxby, in Tradd Street, an appointed stamp distributor, where they made a great noise, and injured his windows and other portions of his house, to "the value of five pounds sterling." No other riotous feelings were manifested. Nine day's afterward, Saxby and Caleb Lloyd made oath at Fort Johnson that they would have nothing more to do with the stamps.

[[[Liberty Tree.--Charleston Sons of Liberty.--Pitt's Statue.--Christopher Gadsden]]]

{748}Under a wide-spreading live oak, a little north of the residence of Christopher Gadsden--the Samuel Adams of South Carolina--the patriots used to assemble during the summer and autumn of 1765, and also the following summer, when the Stamp Act was repealed. There they discussed the political questions of the day. From this circumstance the green oak was called, like the great elm in Boston, Liberty Tree. * There Gadsden assembled some of his political friends after the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, and, while bonfires were blazing, cannons were pealing for joy, and the Legislature of South Carolina was voting a statue in honor of Pitt, ** he warned them not to be deceived by this mere show of justice. *** His keen perception comprehended the Declaratory Act in all its deformity, and while others were loud in their praises of the king and Parliament, he ceased not to proclaim the whole proceeding a deceptive and wicked scheme to lull the Americans into a dangerous inactivity. And more; it is claimed, and generally believed in South Carolina, that under Liberty Tree Christopher Gadsden first spoke of American Independence. How early is not known, but supposed to be as early as 1764. ****

The people of Charleston cheerfully signed non-importation agreements in 1769 and

* This tree stood within the square now bounded by Charlotte, Washington, Boundary, and Alexander Streets. This continued to be the favorite meeting-place until the Revolution was in full progress. Beneath that tree the Declaration of Independence was first read to the assembled people of Charleston. Its history and associations were hateful to the officers of the crown, and when Sir Henry Clinton took possession of the eity in 1780, he ordered it to be cut down, and a fire lighted over the stump by piling its branches around it. Many cane heads were made from the remains of the stump in after years. A part of it was sawed into thin boards and made into a neat ballot-box, and presented to the "'76 Association." This box was destroyed by fire, at the rooms of the association, during the great conflagration in 1838.

** This statue was of marble, and stood at the intersection of Broad and Meeting Streets. During the siege of Charleston, in April, 1780, a British cannon-ball from James's Island passed up Meeting Street, struck this statue, and broke off its left arm. Several years after the war, the statue, being considered an obstruction, was rudely pulled down by some workmen employed for the purpose, when the head was broken off, and it was otherwise mutilated. Good taste would have restored the arm, and kept the statue in its place until this day.

*** The following are the names of the Sons of Liberty of Charleston, who met with Gadsden, under Liberty Tree, in 1766, and with linked hands pledged themselves to resist when the hour for resistance should arrive. They are published by Johnson from the original record of George Flagg, one of the party: General Christopher Gadsden, William Johnson, Joseph Verre, John Fullerton, James Brown, Nathaniel Libby, George Flagg, Thomas Coleman, John Hall, William Field, Robert Jones, John Lawton, Uzziah Rogers, John Calvert, Henry Bookless, J. Barlow, Tunis Tebout, Peter Munclear, William Trusler, Robert Howard, Alexander Alexander, Edward Weyman, Thomas Searl, William Laughton, Daniel Cannon, and Benjamin Hawes. The last survivor, George Flagg, died in 1824.

**** Christopher Gadsden was born in Charleston in 1724. He was educated in England, where he became accomplished in the learned languages. He returned to Ameriea at the age of sixteen, and entered the counting-house of a merchant in Philadelphia, where he remained until he was twenty-one years of age. He then went to England, and on his return engaged in mercantile pursuits in Charleston. He was successful, and was soon able to purchase all of the properly known as Ansonborough, which his father lost in play with Lord Anson. His house was upon the lot now (1848) owned by Mrs. Isaac Ball, and the kitchen is yet standing on the lot at the northeast corner of East Bay and Vernon Streets. Mr. Gadsden was one of the earliest opponents of Great Britain in South Carolina, and, as the Revolution advanced, was one of its firmest supporters. He was a delegate in the first Continental Congress in 1774, and his name is attached to the American Association agreed to by that body. In 1775, he was elected senior colonel and commandant of three South Carolina regiments, and was subsequently made a brigadier. He was in the engagement at the siege of Charleston in 1776. He was one of the framers of the Constitution of South Carolina, adopted in 1778. He resigned his commission in 1779, and when Charleston was taken by Clinton, in 1780, he was lieutenant governor; as sueh, he signed the capitulation. Three months afterward, he was taken, with others, and cast into the loathsome prison at St. Augustine (an act in open violation of the terms of capitulation), because he would not submit to indignity at the hands of Governor Tonyn. There he suffered for eleven months, until exchanged in June, 1781, when he sailed to Philadelphia with other prisoners. He returned to Charleston, and was a member of the Assembly convened at Jacksonburg in the winter of 1782. He opposed the confiscation of the property of the Loyalists, and thereby won their esteem. He was elected governor of the state in 1782, but declined the honor, and went into the retirement of private life. He died on the twenty-eighth of August, 1805, at the age of eighty-one years.

[[[Tea repudiated.--Sympathy for Bostonians.--Provincial Convention and Congress.--Seizure of Dispatches.]]]

{749}1770, and faithfully adhered thereto; and when the Continental Congress of 1774 adopted the American Association, its recommendations were very generally complied with in South Carolina. When tea was sent to America, under the provisions of a new act of 1773 (see page 495, volume i.), the South Carolinians were as firm in their opposition to the landing of the cargoes for sale, as were the people of Boston. It was stored in the warehouses, and there rotted, for not a pound was allowed to be sold.

The closing of the port of Boston, by act of Parliament, on the first of January, 1774, aroused the indignation and sympathy of the South Carolinians, and substantial aid was freely sent to the suffering inhabitants of that city. When the proposition for a General Congress went forth, the affirmative voice of South Carolina was among the first heard in response. In an assembly of the people, held in Charleston, on the sixth, seventh, and eighth of July, 1774, it was declared that the Boston Port Bill was "most cruel and oppressive," and plainly showed that "if the inhabitants of that town are intimidated into a mean submission of said acts, that the like are designed for all the colonies; when not even the shadow of liberty to his person, or of security to his property, will be left to any of his majesty's subjects residing on the American continent." The same convention approved of the proposition for a General Congress, chose delegates to represent them in Federal Council, * and closed their proceedings by the appointment of a committee of ninety-nine, "to act as a general committee, to correspond with the committees of other colonies, and to do all matters and things necessary to carry the resolutions of the convention into execution." Henry Laurens was appointed chairman of this large committee, and it was agreed that twenty-one should constitute a business quorum. **

In defiance of the remonstrances and menaces of Lieutenant-governor Bull, a Provincial Congress of delegates, chosen by the people, met at Charleston on the eleventh of January, 1775. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was chosen president. That Assembly approved of the proceedings of the General Congress, and appointed a committee of inspection and observation to see that its recommendations were complied with. *** Now began those coercive measures of the Whigs which were often wrong and oppressive, but frequently necessary and salutary. The non-importation measures were rigorously enforced, and royal power was boldly defied. The people of Charleston formed themselves into volunteer companies to practice the use of fire-arms, and the boys, catching the spirit of the hour, banded together, and with mimic weapons imitated the discipline of their seniors.

On the nineteenth of April, 1775, the day when the first blow was struck for liberty at Lexington, the packet ship Swallow arrived at Charleston, bringing dispatches for the governors of the Southern colonies. Among others was a dispatch for the acting governor of South Carolina, William Bull. His disputes with the Committee of Safety and the Provincial Congress had risen to a high pitch of acrimony, and the public mind was greatly excited. Yet all hoped for reconciliation, and few could believe that civil war would actually ensue. The arrival of the Swallow extinguished these hopes, for a secret committee who had been appointed to seize the next mail that should arrive from England, performed their duty well. **** On opening the dispatches to the governor, it was found that the British

* Henry Middleton, John Rutledge, Christopher Gadsden, Thomas Lynch, and Edward Rutledge, were appointed delegates.

** Ramsay's History of South Carolina, i., 18; Moultrie's Memoirs, i., 10. The place of meeting was at a large tavern on the northeast corner of Broad and Church Streets, commonly called, at that day, "The Corner."

*** The following gentlemen composed the Charleston committee: Christopher Gadsden, Isaac Huger, William Gibbes, William Parker, Aaron Locock, Roger Smith, Maurice Simons, John Poang, Thomas Legarc, Sen., Edward Simons, Edward Blake, Samuel Prioleau, Jr., Hugh Swinton, John Champneys, William Host, John Brewton, Alexander Chisholme, Alexander Chovin, William Livingston, and John Baddeley.

**** This committee consisted of William Henry Drayton, John Neufville, and Thomas Corbett. After the mail was carried to the post-office, and before it could be opened, this committee went thither, and demanded it from Stevens, the postmaster, in the name of the Provincial Congress. Stevens allowed them to take it, under protest. It was then carried to the State House and opened. The packages for the governors were retained and opened; the private letters, with seals unbroken, were returned to the post-office.

[[[Intentions of the Ministry.--Condition of the People.--Seizure of Arms and Powder.--Civil Government organized.]]]

{750}ministry had resolved to coerce the colonies into submission. The royal governors were ordered to seize the arms and ammunition belonging to the several provinces, raise provincial troops, if possible, and prepare to receive an army of British regulars to aid them. Gage and Dunmore, we have seen, acted upon these instructions, but the patriots of Lexington, Concord, and Williamsburg thwarted them; and the Charleston Committee of Correspondence, giving those of North Carolina and Georgia timely warning, enabled them to assume an attitude of defense before it was too late. A messenger, with these dispatches, was sent to the Continental Congress, and this was the first intelligence which that body had of the real intentions of the British ministry.

A few days after the discovery of this scheme, intelligence of the battle at Lexington arrived. Suspicion now yielded to demonstration; there was no longer any uncertainty; the mother was arming against her children; war was inevitable. While patriotism, gushing in full fountain from the hearts of the people, made them proclaim boldly, We are ready! sober reason saw the disparity in the strength of the oppressor and the oppressed. England was then among the first powers of the earth; the colonies were weak in material defenses. The savage tribes on their whole western frontier might be brought, like thirsty blood-hounds, upon them; they possessed not a single ship of war; they had very little money; at the South, the slaves, by offers of freedom, might become enemies in their midst; a large number of wealthy, influential, and conscientious men were loyal to the king; the governors, being commanders-in-chief, had control of the provincial military forces, and, if their thoughts had for a moment turned to the Continental powers of Europe for aid, they were pressed back by the reflection that republican principles were at variance with the dominant sentiments of the Old World. And yet they did not hesitate. Pleading the justice of their cause, they leaned for support upon the strong arm of the God of Battles.

Having resolved on rebellion, the people of Charleston were not afraid to commit acts of legal treason. They justly considered that "all statutes of allegiance were repealed on the plains of Lexington, and the laws of self-preservation left to operate in full force." * They accordingly concerted a plan, like their brethren in Savannah (see page 726), to secure the arms and ammunition in the city, and on the night of the twentieth of April they seized upon all the munitions of war they could find. This was the first overt act of resistance, and at that hour began the Revolution, in earnest, in South Carolina.

A second session of the Provincial Congress commenced on the first of June. An association, drawn up by Henry Laurens, was adopted; ** a permanent Committee of Safety was appointed; an issue of six hundred thousand dollars in paper money was ordered, and two regiments of infantry, of five hundred men each, and a battalion of cavalry or rangers, was directed to be raised. Some gentlemen were sent to the West Indies in a fast-sailing vessel to procure powder, and were fortunate enough to return with about ten thousand pounds.

After arranging military affairs, the attention of the Assembly was next turned to the organization of civil government. A Council of Safety was appointed to act during the recess of the Provincial Congress, to whom all the powers of that body were delegated. *** They had the entire control of the army; were clothed with power to contract debts for the public service, and to issue coin and bills of credit. With this organization, civil government, upon a republican basis, was begun.

During the session of the Congress, Lord William Campbell, **** who had been appointed

* Ramsay, i., 30.

** The core of this document consisted in the declaration of those who signed it, that they were "ready to sacrifice life and fortune to secure the freedom and safety of South Carolina: holding all persons inimical to the liberties of the colonies who shall refuse to subscribe to the association."

*** This council consisted of Henry Laurens, Charles Pinckney, Rawlins Lowndes, Thomas Ferguson, Miles Brewlon, Arthur Middleton, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Bee, John Huger, James Parsons, William Henry Drayton, Benjamin Elliott, and William Williams

**** Lord Campbell was the third brother of the Duke of Argyle. He had married Sarah Izard, the sister of Ralph Izard, who belonged to the richest family in the province. The residence of Lord Campbell was on Meeting Street, now (1851) owned and occupied by Judge D. E. Huger. Soon finding his residence in Charleston unsafe, he escaped to a British vessel in the harbor, leaving his family behind. Lady Campbell was treated with great respect, but finally she too went on board the vessel, and was landed at Jamaica. The next year (1776), Campbell was on board the Bristol in the attack upon Charleston, and, while fighting on the quarter-deck, he was wounded. He died from the effects of his wounds, two years afterward.

[[[Seizure of Powder at St. Augustine.--Expulsion of Lord Campbell and the Garrison.--City Defenses.]]]

{751}governor, arrived at Charleston,[[July, 1775]] and was very courteously received. He professed great love for the people of the province, and assured them that he would use his best endeavors to promote the welfare of the inhabitants.

Taught by experience to suspect the promises of royalty or its representatives, the people took measures to test his sincerity. The hollowness of his professions was proven, and turning their backs upon him, the patriots proceeded in their preparations for armed resistance. A vessel was fitted out by the Committee of Safety to attempt the capture of an English sloop laden with powder, then lying at St. Augustine. The expedition was successful, and fifteen thousand pounds of powder were brought safely into Charleston, though chased by cruisers sent out by Campbell. Part of this powder, which was sent to the Continental Congress for the use of the grand army, was used by Arnold and his men in the siege of Quebec at the close of 1775.

Early in September,[[1775]] Colonel Moultriel proceeded to take possession of the fort on Sullivan's Island, in Charleston harbor.

The small garrison made no resistance, but fled to the British sloops of war Tamar and Cherokee, then lying in Rebellion Roads, in front of Fort Sullivan. Lord Campbell, perceiving the storm of popular indignation against him daily increasing, particularly when it became known that he was endeavoring to incite the Indians on the frontier to lift the hatchet for the king, and was tampering with the Tories in the interior, also fled to these vessels for shelter, and thus "abdicated" royal power.[[Sept. 14]]

The Provincial Council now increased the defenses of the city, and organized a company of artillery. They also took measures for fortifying the harbor. Lieutenant-colonel Motte, accompanied by Captains Charles Cotes worth Pinckney, Bernard Elliot, and Francis Marion, took possession of Fort Johnson,-on James Island, and on the same evening, Captain Heyward, with thirty-five of the Charleston artillery, went down and mounted three guns in the place of those spiked by the garrison when they fled.

Three days afterward, the first Republican flag displayed at the South was floating over the main bastion of the fortress. **

* William Moultrie was a native of South Carolina. He was born in 1730. We find him first in public-service as an officer, in the expedition against the Cherokees in 1760. He was also in subsequent expeditions against that unhappy people. When the Revolution broke out, he was among the earliest in South Carolina to take the field on the Republican side. His defense of the fort on Sullivan's Island in 1776. gave him great eclat, and he was promoted to brigadier. He gained a battle over the British near Beaufort in 1779, and in May, 1780, was second in command when Charleston was besieged. He went to Philadelphia while a prisoner of war, and did not return to South Carolina until 1782. He was several times chosen governor of the state, and retired from public life only when the infirmities of age demanded repose. He published his Memoirs of the Revolution, relating to the war in the South, in two volumes, in 1802, printed by David Longworth, of New York. Governor Moultrie died at Charleston on the twenty-seventh of September, 1805, at the age of seventy-five years.

** Moultrie, in his Memoirs, says, "As there was no national flag at the time, I was desired by the Council of Safety to have one made, upon which, as the state troops were clothed in blue, and the fort was garrisoned by the first and second regiments, who wore a silver crescent on the front of their caps, I had a large blue flag made, with a crescent in the dexter corner, to be in uniform with the troops. This was the first American flag displayed in the South."--Vol. i., p. 90.

[[[Fortifications around Charleston.--Fort Moultrie.--Organization of Civil Government.--John Rutledge.]]]

{752}Colonel Moultrie soon afterward mounted some heavy cannons upon Haddrell's Point, and the troops in and around Charleston were ordered[[Sept. 16, 1775]] to hold themselves in readiness, for it was expected that the Tamar and Cherokee would, pursuant to Lord Campbell's menaces, open a fire upon the town or the forts. A magazine was built at Dorchester, and ten thousand pounds of powder were sent thither. A small fort was also erected upon the Cheraw Hills, on the Great Pedee, to give confidence to the Whigs in that region where Campbell's emissaries had been. In December, Moultrie, with a considerable force, took possession of Sullivan's Island and commenced the erection of a fascine battery.

This advantage, and a few long shots from Haddrell's Point (where a battery had been erected), caused the Tamar and Cherokee to leave the harbor. Lord Campbell, despairing of maintaining his power, sailed to Jamaica. It was during these events upon the sea-board in the course of the autumn of 1775 that the organization of the Tories in Ninety-Six and other portions of the upper country, already noticed, occurred.

Colonel Gadsden assumed command of all the troops in Charleston early in 1776, and the Council of Safety commissioned him a brigadier. Colonel Moultrie was ordered[[March, 1776]] to build a strong fort upon Sullivan's Island, large enough to accommodate one thousand men, and to take the command there. * This measure was considered necessary, for certain intelligence had arrived that a fleet and army were preparing to assail Charleston, and a fort at the point designated would be a key to the harbor, with the aid of Fort Johnson. The civil government was revised; a temporary Constitution was formed ** (the first in the colonies); and the Legislature was called the General Assembly of South Carolina. It possessed all powers of supreme local government. John Rutledge *** was chosen president, with the actual powers of governor; and other executive officers, with a privy and a legislative council, were elected by the new Assembly. ****

* This fort was constructed of palmetto logs, in sections, and filled in with sand. The merlons were sixteen feet thick, and sufficiently high to cover the men from the fire that might be directed upon them from the tops of the British vessels. It was first called Fort Sullivan, being upon the island of that name, but was named Fort Moultrie, after its gallant defense by its commander, in June, 1776. When I visited its site (a portion of which is covered by the modern strong works of Fort Moultrie) in 1849, some of the palmetto logs were visible, imbedded in the sand. The annexed engraving shows the plan of the fort when attacked in June, 1776, before it was completed. The drawing of the fort in the text is from a large plan by an English engineer, who was attached to the British fleet.

** This Constitution was to remain in force until October of the same year.

*** John Rutledge was the son of Doctor John Rutledge, who came to America, from Ireland, in 1735. He studied law at the Temple in London, and returned to Charleston in 1761. He espoused the republican cause at an early period of the dispute, and was a member of the first Continental Congress m 1774. When the temporary Constitution of South Carolina was adopted in the spring of 1776, he was appointed president and commander-in-chicf of the colony. When the new and permanent Constitution was established two years later, he refused his assent, because he thought it too democratic. His prejudices yielded, however, and in 1779 he was chosen governor under it, with the temporary power of a dictator. He took the field at the head of the militia, and with great skill and energy managed the affairs of the state until the fall of Charleston in May, 1780. After the war, he was made judge of the Court of Chancery, and in 1789 a judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was appointed chief justice of South Carolina in 1791, and in 1796 was elevated to the seat of chief justice of the United States. He died in July, 1800.

**** Henry Laurens was elected vice-president, William Henry Drayton, chief justice; * Alexander Moultrie, attorney general; John Huger, secretary; Hugh Rutledge, judge of the admiralty; and James Parsons, William H. Drayton, John Edwards, Charles Pinckney, Thomas Ferguson, and Rawlins Lowndes, members of the Privy Council.

* In April, about a month after his appointment, Chief-justice Drayton delivered an able charge to the Grand Jury on the subject of independence. Its effects were powerful, salutary, and extensive. In South Carolina its arguments convinced the dubious, and its boldness, both of reason and expression, strengthened the feeble and upheld the wavering. It was published in all of the Whig papers of the Northern colonies; was commented upon by the London press, and received the warmest expressions of approbation from the friends of the colonists every where.

[[[Defenses of Charleston Harbor.--Arrival of Generals Armstrong and Lee.--Arrival of the British.]]]

{753}After passing a few necessary laws, the Assembly adjourned,[[April 11, 1776]]the Council of Safety and General Committee were dissolved, and a constitutional government began.

The president and privy council were vested with executive power to administer the government during the recess of the Legislature.

Under the efficient direction of President Rutledge, Charleston and vicinity were well prepared for defense in the spring of 1776.

About one hundred pieces of cannon were mounted at various points around the harbor, and a strong battery was erected at Georgetown. Brigadier-general John Armstrong, of Pennsylvania, arrived in April, and took the general command; and early in June,[[June 4]] Major-general Charles Lee reached Charleston. He had been sent by General Washington, after the expulsion of the British from Boston, to watch the movements of General Sir Henry Clinton, and to command the troops for the defense of the Southern sea-board. Lee's known experience, skill, and bravery gave the people great confidence, and the alarm which had prevailed since the appearance of a British squadron off Dewees Island, five days before, soon subsided. Lee was indefatigable in his preparations for the defense of Charleston, and was generally satisfied with all the arrangements of the local authorities. The garrison at Fort Sullivan worked day and night to complete it, and when the British fleet appeared, about thirty heavy pieces of cannon were mounted upon it. *

The British fleet bearing a land force, and both designed to act against the Southern colonies in the campaign of 1776, was commanded by Admiral Sir Peter Parker (portrayed on the next page). Its approach was providentially discovered in time ** to allow the Carolinians to prepare for defense, and for Washington to dispatch Lee and Armstrong, officers of experience, to aid them. Parker reached the Cape Fear early in May, where he was joined by Sir Henry Clinton, from New York, who assumed the chief command of all the land troops. On the fourth of June, the day when General Lee arrived, the fleet appeared off Charleston bar, and several hundred land troops took possession of Long Island, which lies eastward of Sullivan's Island, and is separated from it only by a narrow creek.

All was now activity among the patriots. The militia of the surrounding country obeyed the summons of Governor Rutledge with great alacrity, and flocked to the town. These, with the regular troops of South Carolina, and those of the Northern colonies who had come with Armstrong and Lee, made an available force of between five and six thousand men. Gadsden commanded the first regiment of South Carolina regulars at Fort Johnson, on James's Island, three miles from Charleston; Colonel Moultrie those at Fort

* General Moultrie says that Lee ordered a bridge of boats to be constructed for a retreat. There were not boats enough, and empty hogsheads, with planks across, were tried, but without success. Lee was very anxious on this point, and felt that in case of attack, the garrison must be sacrificed. "For my part, says Moultrie, "I never was uneasy on not having a retreat, because I never imagined that the enemy could force me to that necessity."

** Early in April, Lord Dunmore sent a boat to Annapolis, with dispatches for Governor Eden, from Lord Dartmouth. James Barron, then cruising in the Chesapeake, captured this boat and conveyed the papers to Williamsburg. Dartmouth's communication revealed the whole plan of operations. It was dated December 23, 1775.

[[[Rutledge's rigorous Measures.--Clinton's Preparations for Attack.--Commencement of the Action.]]]

{754}Sullivan; and Colonel Thomson, the advanced post on the east end of Sullivan's Island. Thomson's troops were chiefly riflemen. There was also a strong force at Haddrell's Point, under the immediate command of General Lee. In the city, governor Rutledge, impelled by the necessities of the hour, and under the belief that an attempt would be made to pass the forts and land the troops in the city, pursued the rigorous course of martial law.

Valuable stores on the wharves were torn down, and a line of defenses was made in their places. The streets near the water were barricaded, and, on account of the scarceness of lead, many window-sashes of that material were melted into bullets. He pressed into service seven hundred negroes with tools, who belonged to Loyalists; and seized, for the moment, the money and papers of the lukewarm. By these energetic measures the city was made strong in moral and physical material, and when the British fleet crossed the bar, all were ready to receive them.

While these preparations were in progress by the Republicans, Sir Henry Clinton was busy in arranging for a combined attack with the land and naval forces. He constructed two batteries upon Long Island, to confront those of Thomson upon Sullivan's Island, and to cover the passage of his troops in boats and in fording from the former to the latter, for Fort Sullivan, the main work in the harbor, was the devoted mark for the first blow.

Its garrison consisted of only three hundred and forty-four regulars and a few volunteer militia, and its only aid was an armed sloop, with powder, which was anchored off Haddrell's Point, now Point Pleasant.

At half past ten o'clock on the morning of the twenty-eighth of June, Sir Peter Parker, on board his flag-ship, the Bristol, made the signal for attack. His fleet immediately advanced, and, with springs on their cables, anchored in front of Fort Sullivan. * The Active, Bristol, Experiment, and Solebay led to the attack, and anchored nearest the fort. At the moment of anchoring, the fort poured a heavy fire upon them, and each vessel returned the compliment by delivering a broadside upon the little fortress, but with almost harmless effect upon the spongy palmetto logs. ** It was a little before eleven o'clock when the action began, and terrible to the people of Charleston, who looked upon the contest from balconies, roofs, and steeples, was the roar of three hundred cannons.

To the little garrison the peril seemed great, yet they maintained their fire with precision and coolness. Perceiving the unfinished state of the fort on the western side, toward

* The British vessels brought into action were the Bristol and Experiment, of fifty guns each; the frigates Active, Solebay, Actseon, Syren, and Sphynx, of twenty-eight guns each; the Thunder-bomb, and Ranger, sloop, each of twenty-eight guns; and the Friendship, an armed vessel of twenty-two guns.

** The palmetto is peculiar to the low sandy shores of the Southern States. It grows from twenty to forty feet in height, without branches, terminating in a large tuft of very long leaves. The wood is very porous, and a bullet or cannon-ball, on entering it, makes no extended fracture. It becomes buried, without injuring adjacent parts.

[[[Clinton Repulsed.--Cannonade of Fort Sullivan.--Fate of the British Fleet.]]]

{755}Charleston, Parker ordered the Sphynx, Actæon, and Syren to take a position in the channel on that side, so as to enfilade the garrison. Had they succeeded, surrender or certain destruction must have been the alternative for the Americans. The three vessels advanced to execute the orders, when they all struck upon a shoal called the Middle Ground, and while thus entangled a very destructive fire was poured upon them from the fort. The Sphynx got off with the loss of her bowsprit, and the Syren without much injury, and withdrew to another part of the harbor; but the Actæon was too thoroughly grounded to be moved. Simultaneously with the advance of the ships to the attack of Fort Sullivan, Clinton's batteries upon Long Island, and some floating batteries in the creek, opened upon those of Thomson; and a portion of the British land forces embarked in boats under cover of their artillery, to force their way to assail the fort on the west, where it was unfinished, or at least to prevent Lee from sending re-enforcements or ammunition from Haddrell's Point, across the bridge of boats which had now been constructed. Clinton's whole regular force on Long Island was about two thousand troops, and between five and six hundred seamen. Colonel Thomson had only two cannons, but his riflemen were among the best marksmen in the state. He allowed Clinton's flotilla to approach within musket shot, when he opened a destructive fire upon them from his battery and small arms. Several attempts to advance were made, and every time the sure marksmen of Carolina swept many from the boats, and Clinton was obliged to abandon his design. Lee, who had perceived the weakness of the fort on its western side, and penetrated the design of Clinton, observed this retrograde movement with joy; and when at about two o'clock, the garrison ceased firing, on account of the exhaustion of ammunition, he sent a sufficient supply from Haddrell's Point and a schooner, and the defensive cannonade was resumed.

The fire from the ships was almost incessant, and yet the patriots in the fort were firm. * Their shots were dreadfully effective, and the ships were severely battered and maimed. Anxiously the seamen and marines turned their eyes toward the East, expecting aid from Clinton, but it did not appear. For ten long hours, while the iron storm from the fort was beating their ships in pieces, and sweeping whole ranks from the decks, scarcely a ray of hope appeared for the seamen; and when the sun went down, its last gleams were upon the scarlet coats and burnished arms of the British, yet upon Long Island, and kept at bay by Thomson's batteries and sure-aimed riflemen. The contest continued without intermission until sunset, when it slackened, and at half past nine in the evening it entirely ceased. At eleven o'clock the shattered vessels slipped their cables and withdrew to Five Fathom Hole, about two miles northeastward of Fort Johnson, except the Actæon, which remained aground. Early the next morning the garrison fired a few shots at her, which were returned. At the same time, Clinton made another effort to cross from Long Island to Sullivan's Island, but Thomson confronted him with such hot volleys, that he was obliged to retreat behind his batteries. Perceiving further efforts to reduce the fort, especially in his

* Burke, in his Annual Register, gave the following graphic account of the naval engagement and the fort: "While the continued thunder from the ships seemed sufficient to shake the firmness of the bravest enemy, and daunt the courage of the most veteran soldier, the return made by the fort could not fail of calling for the respect, as well as of highly incommoding the brave seamen of Britain. In the midst of that dreadful war of artillery, they stuck with the greatest firmness and constancy to their guns, fired deliberately and slowly, and took a cool and effective aim. The ships suffered accordingly; they were torn to pieces, and the slaughter was dreadful. Never did British valor shine more conspicuous, and never did our marines, in an engagement of the same nature with any foreign enemy, experience as rude an encounter. The springs of the Bristol's cable being cut by the shot, she lay for some time exposed in such a manner to the enemy's fire as to be most dreadfully raked. The brave Captain Morris, after receiving a number of wounds, which would have sufficiently justified a gallant man in retiring from his station, still with a noble obstinacy disdained to quit his duty, until his arm being at length shot off, he was carried away in a condition which did not afford a possibility of recovery. It is said that the quarter-deck of the Bristol was at one time cleared of every person but the commodore, who stood alone, a spectacle of intrepidity and firmness which have seldom been equaled, never exceeded. The others on that deck were either killed or carried down to have their wounds dressed. Nor did Captain Scott, of the Experiment, miss his share of the danger or glory, who, besides the loss of an arm, received so many other wounds, that his life was at first despaired of."

[[[Burning of the Actseon.--Effect of the Battle.--The Loss.--Bravery of Sergeant Jasper.]]]

{756}crippled condition, to be futile, Parker ordered the crew of the Actæon to set fire to and abandon her. They did so, leaving the colors flying and guns loaded. When they had left, the Americans boarded her, secured her colors as a trophy, carried off the ship's bell, fired her guns at the Bristol, loaded three boats with stores, and set her on fire. Within half an hour after they left her, she blew up.

This battle was one of the severest during the whole war, and while it redounded to the military glory of the Americans, and greatly increased the patriot strength at the South, it was regarded by the British as peculiarly disastrous, aside from the actual loss of life and property in the action. * This discomfiture occurred at a time when the British were desirous of making the most favorable impression here and in Europe, for Lord Howe was then on his way as a commissioner to settle all disputes, or as a commander to prosecute the war. His course was to be determined by circumstances. This was the first time that the Americans had encountered a regular British fleet. The fact that it had been terribly shattered and driven to sea was very humiliating to the vanquished, and, at the same time, encouraging to the victors, at a moment when a brilliant act like this was of immense moment to the Republican cause.

On the morning after the battle, the British fleet left Charleston harbor, and proceeded to Long Island to recruit. Almost every vessel was obliged to remain for that purpose. On the thirty-first, General Clinton, with Cornwallis and the troops, escorted by the Solebay frigate, with Sir Peter Parker on board, sailed for New York with a heavy heart.

The joy of the Americans on account of this victory was unbounded, and the praises of the actors were upon all lips. On the day when Clinton sailed,[[June 31]] the lady of Bernard Elliot ** presented Colonel Moultrie's regiment with a pair of elegant colors.

* The loss on board of the ships was frightful. Every man stationed on the quarter-decks of the vessels, at the beginning of the action, was either killed or wounded. The commodore suffered a slight contusion. Captain Morris soon afterward died of his wounds. Forty men were killed and seventy-one wounded, on board the Bristol. The Experiment had twenty-three killed and seventy-six wounded. Her commander, Captain Scott, lost an arm. Lord William Campbell, the last royal governor of the province, who served as a volunteer, was badly wounded at the beginning of the action. The whole loss of the British, in killed and wounded, was two hundred and twenty-five. The Bristol had not less than seventy balls put through her. When the spring of her cable was cut, she swung round with her stern toward the fort, and instantly every gun that could be brought to bear upon her hurled its iron balls upon her. At the beginning of the action, Moultrie gave the word, "Mind the commodore and the fifty gun ships!" These were the principal sufferers. Although the Thunder-bomb cast more than fifty shells into the fort, not one of them did serious damage. There was a large moat, filled with water, in the center of the fort, which received nearly all of the shells, and extinguished the fusees before the fire reached the powder. Others were buried in the sand, and did no harm. Only ten of the garrison were killed and twenty-two wounded. Most of these were injured by shots which passed through the embrasures. Moultrie says that, after the battle, they picked up, in and around the fort, twelve hundred shot of different calibre that were fired at them, and a great number of thirteen inch shells.

* During the action, Sergeant William Jasper, whom we have already met at the Spring, near Savannah, and witnessed his death while planting the Carolina flag upon the parapet of the British works, at the siege of that town, performed a daring feat. At the commencement of the action, the flag-staff was cut away by a ball from a British ship, and the Crescent flag of South Carolina, that waved opposite the Union flag upon the western bastion, fell outside, upon the beach. Jasper leaped the parapet, walked the length of the fort, picked up the flag, fastened it upon a sponge staff, and in the midst of the iron hail pouring upon the fortress, and in sight of the whole fleet, he fixed the flag firmly upon the bastion. Three cheers greeted him as he ascended to the parapet and leaped, unhurt, within the fort. On the day after the battle, Governor Rutledge visited the fort, and rewarded Jasper for his valor by presenting him with his own handsome small sword which hung at his side, and thanked him in the name of his country. He offered him a lieutenant's commission, but the young hero, who could neither read nor write, modestly refused it, saying, "I am not fit to keep officer's company; I am but a sergeant."

** Mrs. Elliot is represented as one of "the most busy among the Revolutionary women, and always active among soldiers." She was a niece of Mrs. Rebecca Motte, the patriot widow of Orangeburg, mentioned on page 683, and during the whole war was a useful co-worker with her republican husband. The wife of Charles Elliot, brother of Bernard Elliot, was also a glorious Whig. Her wit and repartee often scathed the proud feelings of the British officers, when the royal army occupied Charleston. On one occasion, Colonel Balfour was walking with her in her garden, when, pointing to a chamomile flower, he asked its name. "The rebel flower," she replied. "And why is it ealled the rebel flower?" asked the officer. "Because," replied Mrs. Elliot, "it always flourishes most when trampled upon."

[[[Presentation of Standards.--Patriotism not sectional.--Declaration of Independence.--Fort Sullivan.]]]

{757}These were the standards which were afterward planted on the walls of Savannah by Bush, Hume, and Jasper. * They were afterward captured when Charleston fell, and were seen years after the war, among other British trophies, in the Tower of London. *** The Legislature of South Carolina changed the name of the fort from Sullivan to Moultrie, in honor of its brave defender; and on the twentieth of July,[[1776]] the Continental Congress passed a resolution of thanks to General Lee, Colonels Moultrie and Thomson, and the officers and men under their command. ***

For three years after the repulse of the British from Charleston, South Carolina enjoyed comparative quiet while the war was raging at the North.

Yet her sons were not idle listeners to the roar of cannons in New England, New York, and Pennsylvania, but flocked thither in hundreds, under brave leaders, to do battle for their common country. The patriots of that war were not divided by sectional interests. There was no line of demarkation over which men hesitated to pass. A desire for the happiness of the New England people was a twin sentiment with love for his own fireside, in the heart of the Carolinian and Georgian; and the bosom of the "Green Mountain Boy" heaved as strongly with emotions of joy when a blow for freedom was successfully dealt among the rice lands of the South, as when the shout of victory went up from the heights of Saratoga.

Upon the western frontiers of the South, the Indians, stirred up by Tory emissaries, gave the people some trouble; but from the day when the Declaration of Independence was read at Liberty Tree, **** until the opening of the campaign of 1779, the people of Charleston continued in quiet pursuit of lucrative commerce. Yet prosperity did not stifle aspirations for freedom, nor the accumulation of riches cause hesitation when danger drew nigh and demanded sacrifices. The spirit of liberty burned with a light as steady and eternal as the polar star, even amid the clouds and darkness of intensest sufferings which ensued.

I visited Sullivan's Island on the day of my departure from Charleston,[[Jan. 29, 1849]] and sauntered for an hour upon the beach where the old Palmetto Fort once stood.

Nothing of it now remains but a few of the logs imbedded in the drifting sand. The modern Fort Moultrie is not a large, but a well-constructed fortification. The island is sandy, and bears no shrub or tree spontaneously except the Palmetto, and these are not seen in profusion. On the northwestern

* See page 738.

** Moultrie, i., 182. One of them was of fine blue silk, and the other of fine red silk, richly embroidered.

*** Journals, ii., 260.

**** Johnson (page 189) relates that on that occasion (fifth of August, 1776) the people of Charleston, young and old, of both sexes, assembled around Liberty Tree (see page 748) with all the military of the city and vicinity, drums beating and flags flying. The ceremonies were opened with prayer. The Declaration was then read by Major Bernard Elliot (whose lady presented the flags, mentioned on page 756), and were closed by an eloquent address by the Reverend William Percy, of the Protestant Episcopal Church It was a hot day, and Mr. Percy's black servant held an umbrella over his head and fanned him during the delivering of his address. Alluding to this, a British wag wrote: "Good Mr. Parson, it is not quite civil To be preaching rebellion, thus fanned by the devil."

* (v) This view is from the southwestern angle of Fort Sullivan, looking toward James's Island. That angle, with cannons, a portion of the barracks, and the flag-staff, are seen on the right. The small building toward the left marks the center of the old Palmetto Fort. In the distance is seen Fort Sumter, and in the extreme distance, close by the angle of the fort, is seen the village upon the site of old Fort Johnson. Charleston bar, at the entrance of the harbor, is about six miles from the city. The width of the inner harbor, at its mouth, is about a mile wide. This is guarded by Forts Moultrie, Sumter, and Johnson, and by Castle Pinckney, a handsome work in front of the city, within the inner harbor.

[[[The British Lazaretto--Formation of an Army under Lincoln.--Major Thomas Pinckney.]]]

{785}side of the island are the remains of an old causeway or bridge, extending to the main, nearly upon the site of a bridge of boats, which was used during the battle in 1776. It was constructed after that conflict, at the cost of Christopher Gadsden, and was called Gadsden's Bridge. The British, when they afterward possessed Charleston, used it to pass over to their lazaretto, which they erected on Sullivan's Island. This lazaretto was upon the site of the present Episcopal church in Moultrieville. A part of the old brick wall was yet standing when I visited the spot in 1849.

We have already considered the demonstration made by the British at the South, in the capture of Savannah at the close of 1778, and also the events in Georgia after the arrival of General Lincoln as commander-in-chief of the Southern army.

Lincoln reached Charleston on the fourth of December,[[1778]]and proceeded immediately to re-enforce the scattered army of Howe, after the fall of Savannah.[[Dec. 29, 1778]] On the first intimation of the designs of the British upon the South, North Carolina raised about two thousand men, and placed them under Generals Ashe and Rutherford. They did not arrive in time to aid Howe at Savannah, but helped to augment the small force of Lincoln. These had entered the state; and to the concentration of these troops, and the raising of South Carolina militia, Lincoln bent all his energies. He chose Major Thomas Pinckney * as his chief aid, and on the twenty-sixth of December, he marched from Charleston with about three hundred levies of that vicinity, and about nine hundred and fifty levies and militia of North Carolina, for the Georgia frontier. On the way, they met the flying Americans from the disastrous battle at the capital of Georgia, and on the third of January Lincoln established his head-quarters at Purysburg, on the north side of the Savannah River. He had been promised seven thousand men; he had only about fourteen hundred. He had been promised supplies, instead of which the new levies, and militia conscripts who were brought to head-quarters, were destitute of tents, camp utensils, or lead, and had very little powder, and no field-pieces. The South Carolina militia, under Richardson, were insubordinate, and rapidly melted away by desertion, or became useless by actual refusal to be controled by any but their immediate commanders. Happily, their places were supplied by the arrival of General Ashe with eleven hundred North Carolinians at the close of January.[[Jan. 31, 1779]]

* Thomas Pinekney was born at Charleston on the twenty-third of October, 1750. His early years were passed in England. At the close of his studies there, he returned to Charleston, and, with his brother, Charles Cotesworth Pinekney, was among the earliest and most efficient military patriots in the provincial regiment raised there. Assured of his talents and worth, Lincoln appointed him his aid, and in that capacity he served at the siege of Savannah by the Americans and French in October, 1779. He distinguished himself in the battle at Stono Ferry. He was aid-de-camp to General Gates in the battle near Camden, where he was wounded and made a prisoner. When sufficiently recovered, he was sent to Philadelphia. In 1787, Major Pinckney succeeded General Moultrie as governor of South Carolina; and in 1792, was appointed by Washington, Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James. In November, 1794, he was appointed Envoy Extraordinary to the Spanish court, and repaired to Madrid the following summer. He effected a treaty by which the free navigation of the Mississippi was secured to the United States. He returned to Charleston in 1796. At the beginning of the war of 1812, President Madison appointed him to the command of the Southern division of the army, and it was under General Pinckney that General Andrew Jackson distinguished himself. After the war, General Pinekney retired into private life. He died on the 2d of November, 1828, aged seventy-eight years. He married the daughter of Rebecca Motte.

[[[Battle on Port Royal Island.--Prevost's March toward Charleston.--Preparations to receive him.]]]

{759}While Lincoln was recruiting and organizing an army near Purysburg, General Prevost joined Campbell at Savannah, with seven hundred regular troops from St. Augustine. Hoping to follow up Campbell's success by striking Charleston, he sent forward Major Gardiner with two hundred men, to take post on Port Royal Island, within about sixty miles of the capital of South Carolina. General Moultrie, with about an equal number of Charleston militia, and two field-pieces, attacked and defeated Gardiner on the morning of the third of February.[[1779]] The British lost almost all of their officers, and several privates were made prisoners. The loss of the Americans was trifling. Gardiner, with the remnant of his force, escaped in boats and fled to Savannah, while Moultrie, crossing to the main, pressed forward and joined Lincoln at Purysburg.

Strengthened by a party of Creeks and Cherokees, for whom a communication with Savannah was opened by the defeat of General Ashe on Brier Creek (see page 713), and informed that Lincoln, with his main army, was far up the river, near Augusta, Prevost determined to attempt the capture of Charleston. With about two thousand chosen troops, and a considerable body of Loyalists and Indians, he crossed the Savannah at Purysburg,[[April 25]] and pushed forward by the road nearest the coast, toward Charleston.

When Lincoln was informed of this movement of Prevost, he considered it a feint to draw him from Georgia. With that view he crossed the Savannah, and for three days marched down its southern side, directly toward the capital of that state, hoping either to bring Prevost back or to capture Savannah. In the mean while, he detached Colonel Harris, with three hundred of his best light troops, to re-enforce Moultrie, who was retreating before Prevost, toward Charleston. Governor Rutledge, who had gone up to Orangeburg to embody the militia, advanced at the same time with six hundred men of that district, and when Lincoln recrossed the Savannah in pursuit of Prevost, the interesting spectacle was presented of four armies pressing toward Charleston. *

When Prevost commenced his invading march, Charleston was quite unprepared for an attack by land. The ferries of the Ashley were not fortified, and only some weak defenses guarded the Neck. Intelligence of the invasion aroused all the energies of the civil and military authorities in the city, and night and day the people labored in casting up intrenchments across the Neck from the Ashley to the Cooper, under the general direction of the Chevalier De Cambray, an accomplished French engineer. The Assembly, then in session, gave Rutledge power only a little less than was conferred upon him a few months afterward, when he was made dictator for the time, and the utmost energy was every where displayed. Lieutenant-governor Bee, with the council, aided the efforts to fortify the town by necessary legal orders. All the houses in the suburbs were burned, and within a few days a complete line of fortifications with abatis was raised across the Neck, on which several cannons were mounted. Colonel Marion, who commanded the garrison at Fort Moultrie, was re-enforced, and the battery on Haddrell's Point was well manned. These arrangements were effected before the arrival of Prevost, who halted, in hesitation, for three days at Pocataligo, on account of conflicting intelligence. This delay was fatal to his success, for it allowed the people of Charleston time to prepare for an attack.

Lincoln's distance from Charleston with the main army, the retreat of Moultrie, and the terror inspired by the torch of the invader, who went on plundering and burning, caused great numbers to remain on their plantations, and to take protection from Prevost. On the evening of the ninth of May,[[1779]] he encamped on the south side of the Ashley Rivcr. On that and the following day, Moultrie, Rutledge, and Harris arrived with their respective forces. That of Moultrie had dwindled from one thousand men to about six hundred. He immediately took command of all the Continental troops, while Rutledge claimed the control of the militia. This produced some confusion, but no serious misunderstanding.

On the morning of the eleventh of May, Prevost, with nine hundred regulars, crossed the

* Rutledge, with the men of Orangeburg; Moultrie pursued by Prevost; Prevost pursued by Lincoln; and Colonel Harris with his corps of light troops.

[[[Prevost before Charleston.--Pulaski's Attack and Defeat.--Proposition for Surrender refused.--Expected Attack.]]]

{760}Ashley and appeared before the works on Charleston Neck. He left his main army and heavy baggage on the south side of the river, and approaching within cannon shot of the lines, summoned the garrison to surrender. During the forenoon, Count Pulaski, who was stationed at Haddrell's Point with his legion, crossed the Cooper Priver and entered the town, and at noon he led his infantry to attack the British advanced guard. He was repulsed with great loss.

A large portion of his infantry were killed, wounded, or made prisoners. The commander himself escaped with difficulty to the American lines, under cover of some discharges of cannon.

Prevost now advanced to within a mile of the American works, when his progress was checked by a sharp cannonade. He renewed his demand for a surrender, and the remainder of the day was spent in the passage of flags. Aware of the approach of Lincoln, the Americans desired procrastination, and asked time to deliberate. Prevost refused it, and the city was filled with consternation in expectation of an assault. The civil authorities, trembling in view of the horrors of a cannonade, sent a proposition to Prevost to guarantee the neutrality of South Carolina until the close of the war, and then allow it to follow the fate of its neighbors, on condition that the royal army should withdraw. Prevost rejected the proposition, and insisted that, as the garrison were in arms, they should surrender prisoners of war. To this Moultrie and the military objected, and every moment until past midnight a cannonade was expected. * Not an eye closed in slumber, and at three o'clock

* During the evening, an unfortunate accident deprived the state of the life and services of a brave officer. Having discovered a breach in the abatis, Governor Rutledge, without the knowledge of the garrison, sent out Major Benjamin Huger * and a small parly to repair it. The garrison had lighted tar barrels in front of their lines to prevent a surprise, and by their light Huger and his men were discovered, and believed to be a party of the enemy. Immediately a fire of cannons, muskets, and rifles ran along almost the whole line, and poor Huger and twelve of his men were slain. The folly of having two commanders was perceived, and all military authority was immediately given to Moultrie. The cannonade alarmed the town, it being regarded as a prelude! to something more dreadful.

* Benjamin was one of the five patriot brothers, who were active in revolutionary scenes. He was the gentleman who first received La Fayette on his arrival at Georgetown in 1777. His brother Isaac was a brigadier in the army under Greene; John was Secretary of the Stale of South Carolina; Daniel was a member of the Continental Congress; and Franeis K. was quartermaster general of the Southern Department Major Huger's son, Franeis K., married a daughter of General Thomas Pinekney, and was that officer's adjutant general during the war of 1812.

[[[Death of Huger.--Withdrawal of the British Army.--Battle at Stone Ferry.--Retreat of the British.]]]

{761}in the morning, at the solicitation of the civil authorities, Moultrie sent a message to Prevost, renewing the proposition of the previous day. It was rejected, and all anxiously awaited the dawn, expecting a terrible assault. The morning broke clear and serene, but the eyes of the sentinels upon the batteries, and of anxious watchers upon the house tops, could perceive no traces of a beleaguing army. For a moment it appeared as if all had been disturbed by a terrible dream, but as the sun arose, the scarlet uniforms and burnished arms of the invaders were seen south of the Ashley. The British host was crossing to James's Island. The mystery was soon solved. During the night, Prevost was informed that Lincoln, with four thousand men, was pressing on toward Charleston, and he feared that his force, hardly sufficient to attack the town with hopes of success, would be annihilated if placed between two fires. * He prudently withdrew, and, perceiving his pathway of approach intercepted by Lincoln, he essayed to escape back to Savannah, by way of the islands along the coast.

Lincoln soon approached, and both armies encamped within thirty miles of Charleston, the Americans upon the main, and the British upon John's Island. ** There they continued for a month, Prevost fearing to move forward, and Lincoln not feeling quite strong enough to pass over and attack him. Finally, an attempt to dislodge the British was made. They had cast up works at Stono Ferry, and garrisoned them with eight hundred men, under Colonel Maitland, the brave officer who died at. Savannah a few months later. These were attacked on the morning of the twentieth of June by about twelve hundred of Lincoln's troops. The contest was severe, and for an hour and twenty minutes the battle was waged with skill and valor. A re-enforcement for Maitland appeared, and the Americans perceived it to be necessary to retreat. When they fell back, the whole garrison sallied out, but the American light troops covered the retreat so successfully, that all of the wounded patriots were brought off. The Americans lost in killed and wounded, one hundred and forty-six, besides one hundred and fifty-five missing. Of the killed and wounded twenty-four were officers. The British loss was somewhat less. Three days afterward, the British evacuated the post at Stono Ferry, and retreated from island to island, until they reached Beaufort, on Port Royal. After establishing a post on Ladies' Island, between Port Royal and St. Helena, they returned in boats to Savannah and St. Augustine. *** The heat was now becoming intense, and Lincoln's army dispersed, with the exception of about eight hundred men, with whom he retired to Sheldon to prepare for the opening of another campaign in October. Thus closed, ingloriously to the invaders, the second attempt of the British to possess themselves of the capital of South Carolina.

* According to an imperfect estimate, the number of American troops in the city was three thousand one hundred and eighty; the British force numbered about three thousand three hundred and sixty.

** This island is separated from the main land by a narrow inlet, which is called Stono River. Over this, at a narrow place, there was then (and is still) a ferry, where the British cast up defensive works.

*** On their retreat across the fertile inlands, on the Carolina coast, the British committed the most cruel depredations. The people hid their treasures, but the negroes, who had been promised freedom, repaired in great numbers to the British camp, and informed the soldiers where their master's property was concealed. It is believed that in this incursion three thousand negroes were carried out of the state, many of whom were shipped to the West Indies and sold. Hundreds died of camp fever upon Otter Island, and for years afterward their bleaching bones strewed the ground thereon. The whole loss was more than four thousand, valued at two hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Houses were stripped of plate, jewelry, clothing, money, and every thing of value that could be carried away. Live-stock was wantonly slaughtered, and in a few cases females were violated bv the brutal soldiery.

[[[Charleston after the Invasion.--Condition of South Carolina.--Arrival of a British Armament.]]]

{762}

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Chapter XXIX

HE season of repose enjoyed by Charleston after the invasion of Prevost was brief. When the hot summer months had passed away, both parties commenced preparations for a vigorous autumn campaign--the British to maintain their position and extend their conquests, if possible; the Americans to drive the invaders from the Southern States, or, at least, to confine them to the sea-ports of Savannah and St. Augustine. The fall of Savannah was a disastrous event. It was the initial step in those strides of power which the royal army made a few months later, when Charleston fell, when the patriot army of the South was crushed, and when the civil institutions of South Carolina and Georgia, established by the Republicans, were prostrated at the feet of the conquerors.

During the winter preceding the siege of Charleston, Lincoln's army had dwindled to a handful, chiefly on account of the termination of the enlistments, and the hesitation of the militia when, called to service, because of the defeat at Savannah and the apparent hopelessness of further resistance.

The prison-ships at Savannah were crowded with the captives of the Georgia regiments, and the heel of British power, planted firmly upon the patriots of that state, made the Loyalists bold and active. All along the Southern frontier of South Carolina the voice of rebellion was subdued to a whisper, and a fearful cloud of hostile savages, gathered by the emissaries of the crown, frowned sullenly and threatening upon her western borders; while within her bosom, bands of unprincipled Tories, encouraged by others more respectable but passive, were endeavoring, by menaces and promises, to sap the foundation of Republican strength. Such was the condition of South Carolina when a British fleet, under Admiral Arbuthnot, bearing five thousand land troops, commanded by Sir Henry Clinton,1 appeared off Edisto Inlet, within thirty miles of Charleston, toward the close of the winter of 1780.[[Feb. 10, 1780]]

They came to subjugate the whole South, the chief feature in the programme of operations for that year.

The Assembly of South Carolina was in session when the enemy appeared. Governor Rutledge was immediately clothed with the powers of supreme dictator, and with judgment

* Henry Clinton, K. B., was a son of George Clinton, governor of New York in 1743, and grandson of the Earl of Lincoln. He served in the British army on the Continent, during the Seven Years' War, and came to America with General Howe in the spring of 1775, bearing the commission of a major general. He was distinguished at the battle of Bunker Hill; commanded in New York, and operated against the forts among the Hudson Highlands in 1777; and in 1778, succeeded Sir William Howe in the supreme command. After he evacuated Philadelphia, he went to New York, where he continued his head-quarters until he left the country, in 1782. He was appointed governor of Gibraltar in 1795, and died there on the twenty-seeond of December, the same year. His signature is printed on page 350.

[[[Tardiness of ihe Militia.--Clinton's Mistake.--Charleston Strengthened.--Spaniards in Florida.]]]

{763}and vigor he exercised them for the defense of the capital. Yet he did not accomplish much, for the militia were tardy in obeying his call to hasten to the city. If Clinton had marched directly upon Charleston when he landed his troops upon John's Island, he might have conquered it within a week after his debarkation. * More cautious than wise, he formed a depot at Wappoo, on James's Island, and tarried more than a month in preparations for a siege.

General Lincoln was in Charleston with about fourteen hundred troops, a large portion of them North Carolina levies, whose term of service was almost expired. The finances of the state were in a wretched condition.

The paper money was so rapidly diminishing, that it required seven hundred dollars to purchase a pair of shoes; and in every department, civil and military, the patriots were exceedingly weak. Lincoln's first impulse was to evacuate the city, retire to the upper country, collect a sufficient army, and then return and drive the invaders from it. The tardy plans of Clinton changed Lincoln's views. Hoping for re-enforcements, then daily expected, and also aid from the Spanish West Indies, ** he resolved to maintain a siege. His first care was to strengthen the works upon Charleston Neck, cast up the previous year when Prevost menaced the town. Rutledge ordered three hundred negroes to be brought from the neighboring plantations to work upon the fortifications, and within a few days cannons and mortars were mounted; a trench, filled with water, stretched across the Neck from the Ashley to the Cooper, and two rows of abatis protected the whole. Fort Moultrie, the redoubts at Haddrell's Point and Hobcaw, the works at South Bay, Hospital Point, and all along the city front, were strengthened and manned. *** Charles Cotesworth Pinckney **** was placed in command of the garrison at Fort Moultrie. Captain Daniel Horry was sent to Ashley Ferry to watch the approach of the enemy, and General Moultrie went southward to gather the militia, direct the movements ffi the cavalry, and annoy the enemy on his approach.

* On the voyage from New York, one vessel, carrying heavy ordnance for the siege, foundered and was lost, and nearly all the horses belonging to the artillery and cavalry perished at sea. Immediately after landing, Lieutenant-colonel Tarleton was ordered to obtain a fresh supply of horses. This service he soon performed, bv seizing all that fell in his way on the plantations upon the islands and the main, some of which were paid for, and Some were not. The Whigs were not considered entitled to any pay. Having mounted his cavalry, Tarleton joined a body of one thousand men, under General Patterson, whom Clinton had ordered from Savannah to re-enforce him.

** Spain was now at war with Great Britain, and willingly became a party in our quarrel, with the hope, like France, of crippling English power. When the approach of the British fleet was made known, Lincoln dispatched a messenger to Havana to solicit material aid from the Spanish governor. Direct assistance was refused, but the Spaniards indirectly aided the Americans. When Clinton was preparing to march upon Charleston, Don Bernardo de Galvez sailed from New Orleans to reduce Fort Charlotte, an English post at Mobile. It surrendered to the Spaniards on the fourteenth of March, 1781, and on the ninth of May, Pensacola also bowed to Spanish domination. These successes placed the two Floridas in possession of the Spaniards, except the strong fortress of St. Augustine.

*** The lines of intrenchments were on the ridge of land whereon St. Paul's Church, the Orphan House, the "Citadel" (a part of the old works), and the Presbyterian church now stand.

**** Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was born in Charleston on the twenty-fifth of February, 1746. At the age of seven years, he was taken to England with his brother, Thomas, by their father (Chief-justice Pinckney), where he was educated, and also studied law. In 1769 he returned to Charleston, after visiting the Continent. In England he took part against the Stamp Act with its opposers there, and, on reaching his native country, he eagerly espoused the cause of the patriots. He commenced the practice of law in 1770, and soon became eminent. When a regiment was formed in Charleston in 1775, of which Gadsden was colonel, Pinekney was appointed a captain, and was at Newborn for a while on recruiting service. He was active in the defense of Charleston in 1776. In 1778, he accompanied General Howe in his expedition to Florida. He assisted in the repulse of Prevost in 1779. and in the defense of Charleston in 1780. When the city fell, he became a prisoner, and suffered much from sickness and cruel treatment. He was exchanged in February, 1782, when the war was almost ended. He was soon afterward raised to the brevet rank of brigadier. On the return of peace, he resumed the practice of his profession. He was a member of the convention which formed the Constitution of the United States. Washington offered him a seat in his cabinet, which he declined, and in 1796 he accepted the appointment of minister to the French Republic. There he had a delicate duty to perform, and while in the midst of personal peril in the French capital he uttered that noble sentiment. "Millions fur defense, not one cent for tribute.'" In 1797, Mr. Pinckney was appointed the second major general in the army under Washington, and for many years he was an active politician. For about twenty-five years he lived in elegant retirement, in the enjoyment of books and the pleasures of domestic happiness. He died on the sixteenth of August, 1825, in the eightieth year of his age.

[[[Whipple's Flotilla.--Passage of the Ashley by the British.--British Fleet in the Harbor.--Advance of Clinton]]]

{764}The little flotilla of Commodore Whipple, then in the harbor, was ordered to oppose the passage of the British fleet over the bar, but his vessels were small and thinly manned, and little reliance was placed upon them. The inhabitants viewed the gathering dangers with increasing alarm. Knowing the weakness of Lincoln's army, and desirous of saving it, as their only hope for the future, the citizens advised an evacuation before it should be too late. Lincoln, hourly expecting re-enforcements, was hopeful, and expressing a belief that he might maintain a siege, or leave at a future time, if necessary, he resolved to remain, at the same time taking measures for keeping open a communication with the country toward the Santee.

On the twenty-eighth of March the royal army crossed the Stono, marched to the Ashley, at Old Town (the site of ancient Charleston), and there crossed that stream toward evening. They had strengthened Fort Johnson, cast up intrenchments along the Ashley to confront those of the Americans upon the opposite shore, and galleys were in motion to enter the harbor and anchor in the Ashley. The army moved slowly down the Neck, and on Sunday morning, the first of April, broke ground within eleven hundred yards of the American works, then defended by about eighty cannons and mortars. They were annoyed all the way by a parly of light horsemen under Lieutenant-colonel John Laurens, and lost between twenty and thirty men in the skirmishes.

Admiral Arbuthnot entered the harbor on the twentieth of March with his smaller vessels and transports, drove Whipple with his little fleet from Five Fathom Hole, and while exposed to an enfilading fire from Fort Moultrie, * sailed near to James s Island and anchored under the guns of Fort Johnson, within cannon shot of the town. Pinckney hoped that Whipple would retard the British vessels, and allow him to batter them, as Moultrie did four years before; but the commodore, with prudent caution, retreated to the mouth of the Cooper River, and sunk most of his own and some merchant vessels between the town and Shute's Folly (marked boom on the opposite map), and thus formed an effectual bar to the passage of British vessels up the channel to rake the American works upon the Neck. Clinton advanced to Hamstead Hill on the fifth,[[April,1780]] and in the face of a sharp fire, erected a battery and mounted twelve cannons upon it. He and

Arbuthnot now demanded an immediate surrender of the town and garrison. Brigadier Woodford had just arrived with seven hundred Virginians, and reported others on their way. The citizens urged Lincoln to maintain a siege, for rumors had come that large numbers were pressing forward from the North to the relief of the city. Thus strengthened by fresh troops *** and public opinion, Lincoln assured the besiegers that he should continue his defense until the last extremity. Forty-eight hours elapsed, when Clinton opened his bat-

* In this passage the British lost twenty-seven seamen killed, and a transport which ran aground and was burned by its crew.

* Woodford had marched five hundred miles within twenty-eight days. On the day of his arrival the terms of enlistment of about seven hundred North Carolinians expired, and they all went home at an hour when they were most needed.

[[[Attack upon Charleston--Surprise of Huger.--Arrival of Cornwallis.--Proposed Surrender rejected.]]]

{765}teries upon the town and fortifications, and a terrible cannonade from both parties was kept up from that time until the twentieth.

When the British were about to open their batteries, Governor Rutledge, leaving the civil power in the hands of his lieutenant Gadsden, went into the country, between the Cooper and Santee Rivers, to arouse the militia and keep a communication open with the town in that direction.

[9775]

Lincoln sent his cavalry (about three hundred men), with General Isaac Huger in command, to watch the country in the vicinity of the head waters of the Cooper River. Led through the woods by a negro, Tarleton, with his legion cavalry, fell upon Huger at Biggin Bridge, near Monk's Coiner, at dawn on the fourteenth of April, and scattered his troops, who were unsuspicious of danger. Twenty-five Americans were killed; the remainder fled to the swamps. Tarleton secured almost three hundred horses, and then scouring the country between the Cooper and Wando, returned in triumph to the British camp.

Four days after the surprise of Huger,[[April 18]] Cornwallis arrived at Charleston with three thousand troops from New York. Thus strengthened, Clinton enlarged the area of his operations. Detachments were sent into the country, and drove the Americans back. Governor Rutledge was compelled to flee higher up the Santee; Haddrell's Point was taken possession of and fortified; supplies from the surrounding country were cut off, and every avenue for escape seemed closed. Lincoln called a council of war,[[April 21]] and an attempted retreat to the open country was proposed. The inhabitants objected, because they feared the invading army was too exasperated by the obstinate defense already made, to spare them in person and property. With rapine and pillage before them, they implored Lincoln to remain. Terms of capitulation, which allowed the army to withdraw to the interior, and the property of the citizens to be undisturbed, were agreed upon and proposed to Clinton. Clinton would not acquiesce, and the terrible work of siege went on. The Americans made but one sortie, and that did not seriously damage the British or impede their progress, * and on the sixth of May ** the besiegers completed

* At daybreak on the twenty-fourth of April, a party under Lieutenant-colonel Henderson made a sortie, surprised a British picket, and with the bayonet killed about twenty of them. Twelve were made prisoners. Captain Moultrie, a brother of the general, was killed, and two other Americans were wounded.

** This day was marked by disasters to the Americans. On that morning, Colonel Anthony Walton White, of New Jersey, with the collected remnant of Huger's cavalry, had crossed the Santee and captured a small party of British. While waiting at Lanneau's Ferry for boats to recross the river with his prisoners, a Tory informed Cornwallis of his situation. Tarleton was detached with a party of horse to surprise White, and was successful. A general rout of the Americans ensued. About thirty of them were killed, wounded, or captured, and the prisoners were retaken. Lieutenant-colonel Washington, with Major Jamieson and a few privates, escaped by swimming the Santee. Major Call and seven others fought their way through the British cavalry, and escaped. At noon on the same day, the British flag was seen waving over Fort Moultrie, the little garrison, under Lieutenant-colonel Scott, having been obliged to surrender to Captain Charles Hudson, of the British Navy.

[[[Continuance of the Siege.--Perils in the City]]]

{766}their third parallel, and in the face of a heavy fire raised redoubts nearer and nearer the American lines. *

Now fully prepared to storm the town by sea and land, Clinton and Arbuthnot again demanded a surrender. The situation of the Americans was deplorable. The garrison consisted of less than three thousand men, a large portion of them raw militia; provisions of all kinds were becoming scarce, and the Loyalists in the city were fomenting disaffection among the distressed inhabitants. The engineers asserted that the lines could not be defended ten days longer, and that they might be carried by assault in ten minutes. Bombs and carcasses were falling in every part of the city with destructive effect, killing women and children, and setting houses on fire; and the town militia, in utter despair, had thrown down their arms.

Further resistance seemed foolish and inhuman, for success was hardly possible, and lives and property were hourly sacrificed. The citizens, appalled by the destructive agencies at work around them, worn out by want of sleep and anxiety, and coveting any condition other than the one they were enduring, now expressed their willingness to treat for a surrender. A flag was sent out, and Clinton's ultimatum was received. He demanded the surrender of the garrison and the citizens as prisoners of war, with all the forts and other works, and their appliances, together with the shipping that remained in the harbor. He would promise nothing except that the town property of those within the lines should remain unmolested, and that all prisoners should be paroled. A truce until the next day[[May 9, 1780]] was asked by the besieged, and was allowed, when Lincoln again refused compliance with Clinton's demands. At eight o'clock in the evening the firing commenced again. It was a fearful night in Charleston. The thunder of two hundred cannons shook the city like the power of an earthquake, and the moon, then near its full, with the bright stars, were hidden by the lurid smoke. Shells were seen coursing in all directions, some bursting in mid air, others falling upon houses and in the streets, and in five different places the flames of burning buildings simultaneously shot up from the depths of the city. "It appeared," says Moultrie, alluding to the bomb-shells, "as if the stars were tumbling down. The fire was incessant almost the whole night; cannon-balls whizzing and shells hissing continually among us; ammunition chests and temporary magazines blowing up; great guns bursting, and wounded men groaning along the lines; it was a dreadful night!" The cannonade was continued all the next day and part of the night, and many Americans were killed by the passage of balls through the embrasures of their batteries. Sand-bags were freely used for protection, but these were swept away, until at several points the besieged were obliged to abandon their works and withdraw. Arbuthnot now prepared to bombard the town from the water, and the batteries at Fort Johnson and at Wappoo hurled round shot into the streets. **

At two o'clock on the morning of the eleventh,[[May 1780]] Lieutenant-governor Gadsden, the council, and many leading citizens, requested Lincoln to signify his agreement to Clinton's proposed terms of surrender, if better could not be obtained. A signal

* Clinton's nearest battery in making this approach was on the lot in Mary Street, formerly used as the lower rail-way depot, and long known, according to Johnson, as the Fresh-water Pond. This redoubt was several times demolished by the American cannons, and rebuilt during the siege.--Johnson's Traditions, &o., 248.

** One of these shots demolished an arm of Pitt's statue, as mentioned on page 748.

[[[Cessation of Hostilities.--Capitulation and Surrender.--_Cruel Proclamation.--_The French Fleet]]]

{767}was given, the firing ceased, and before dawn all the guns were quiet. Articles of capitulation were agreed to, and signed by the respective commanders, and by Christopher Gadsden in behalf of the citizens. * Between eleven and twelve o'clock on the twelfth of May, the Continental troops marched out with the Turk's march, and laid down their arms, after a gallant and desperate defense of about forty days. General Leslie immediately marched in and took possession of the town.

Great skill and courage were brought to bear upon the patriots during the siege, and never was a defense more obstinate and heroic, and yet it was not a bloody one. The loss on both sides in killed and wounded was nearly equal; that of the Americans, exclusive of the inhabitants of the town not bearing arms, was ninety-two killed, and one hundred and forty-eight wounded. The British lost seventy-six killed, and one hundred and eighty nine wounded. The number of prisoners, including the inhabitants of the town, was between five and six thousand. About four hundred cannons were a part of the spoils of victory. Thirty houses were destroyed during the siege.

The fall of Charleston, and loss of Lincoln's army, paralyzed the Republican strength at the South, and the British commanders confidently believed that the finishing-stroke of the war had been given. Lincoln suffered the infliction of unsparing censure, because he allowed himself to be thus shut up in a town; but had he repulsed the enemy, or the siege been raised, as at one time contemplated, *** the skill and wisdom of his course would have exceeded all praise.

Sir Henry Clinton now proceeded to re-establish the civil power of Great Britain in South Carolina. In proclamations, he made many promises of benefits to the obedient, and menaced the refractory with the miseries of confiscation of property and personal punishments. Finally, he offered pardon[[June 1, 1780]] to all who should submit and crave it, and promised political franchises such as the people had never enjoyed. Lured by these promises, the timid and lukewarm flocked to Charleston, took protection, and many entered the military service of the king. Two hundred and ten influential citizens in Charleston agreed to an address of congratulation on the restoration of order and the ancient bond of union between the province and Great Britain. This movement, with the hasty retreat northward of troops marching to the relief of Charleston, and the destruction of Buford s command (see page 664) on the Waxhaw, almost effaced every lineament of resistance in the South. As we have seen, garrison's were posted in the interior, and the voice of rebellion was hushed.

Clinton and Arbuthnot sailed for New York on the fifth of June, leaving Cornwallis in chief command of the British troops at the South. Before his departure, Clinton issued a proclamation, declaring all persons not in the military service, who were made prisoners at Charleston, released from their paroles, provided they returned to their allegiance as subjects of Great Britain. So far, well; but not the sequel. All persons refusing to comply with this requisition were declared to be enemies and rebels, and were to be treated accordingly.

* The terms of the capitulation were partly honorable and partly humiliating. The town, fortifications and shipping, artillery and stores, were to be given up; the Continental troops and sailors were to be conducted to some place to be agreed upon, there to remain prisoners of war until exchanged; the militia to be permitted to return home, as prisoners of war, on parole, and to be secured from molestation as long as they did not violate these paroles; the arms and baggage of the officers and their servants were to be retained by them; the garrison were to march out, and lay down their arms between the works and the canal (at I, on the map, page 765), the drums not to beat a British march, nor the colors to be uncased; the French consul, and French and Spanish residents should be unmolested, but considered prisoners of war; and that a vessel should convey a messenger to New York, that he might carry dispatches to General Washington.

* Gordon, Ramsay, Moultrie, Marshall, Stedman, Lee, Tarleton.

** During the siege, Arbuthnot was informed that Admiral De Ternay was approaching with a French fleet, direct from Newport, to aid Lincoln; and on the very day when terms of surrender were agreed upon, the fear of being blockaded in the harbor of Charleston made Arbuthnot resolve to put to sea immediately. Ternay was certified of the surrender of Lincoln while on his way, by the capture of a pilot-boat, bearing Clinton's dispatches to Knyphausen, then in command at New York. These dispatches informed Knyphausen of the fall of Charleston. Had Lincoln held out another day, his army might have been saved, but he was not aware of the approach of Ternay.

[[[Effect of Clinton's Proclamation.--Patriots sent to St. Augustine.--Sufferings at Haddrell's Point.--Approach of Gates.]]]

{768}And more; they were required to enroll themselves as militia under the king's standard. This flagrant violation of the terms of capitulation aroused a spirit of indignant defiance, which proved a powerful lever in overturning the royal power in the South. Many considered themselves released from all the obligations of their paroles, and immediately armed themselves in defense of their homes and country, while others refused to exchange their paroles for any new conditions. The silent influence of eminent citizens who took this course was now perceived by Cornwallis, and, in further violation of the conditions of capitulation, he sent many leading men of Charleston as close prisoners to St. Augustine, [[Aug. 27, 1780]]while a large number of the Continental soldiers were cast into the loathsome prison-ships, and other vessels in the harbor. There they suffered all the horrors of confined air, bad food, filth, and disease. It was to these that the mother of President Jackson came, as an angel of mercy, with materials of alleviation for the sufferers. But the camp and typhoid fevers, and dysentery, swept off hundreds before the cruel hand of the oppressor relinquished its grasp. Maddened by torture, and almost heart-broken on account of the sufferings of their families, more than five hundred of the soldiers who capitulated at Charleston agreed to enroll themselves as royal militia, as the least of two present evils, and were sent to do service in the British army in Jamaica. Of nineteen hundred prisoners surrendered at Charleston, and several hundreds more taken at Camden and Fishing Creek, only seven hundred and forty were restored to the service of their country. **

A brief lull in the storm of parly strife and warring legions in South Carolina succeeded the blow which smote down Republicanism; but when the trumpet-blasts of the conqueror of Burgoyne were heard upon the Roanoke, and the brave hearts of Virginia and North Carolina were gathering around the standard of Gates, the patriots of the South lifted up their heads, and many of them, like Samson rising in strength, broke the feeble cords of "paroles" and "protections," and smote the Philistines of the crown with mighty energy. Sumter sounded the bugle among the hills on the Catawba and Broad Rivers; Marion's shrill whistle rang amid the swamps on the Pedee; and Pickens and Clarke called forth the brave sons of liberty upon the banks of the Saluda, the Savannah, the Ogeechee, and the

* Lieutenant-governor Gadsden and seventy-seven other public and influential men were taken from their beds by armed parties, before dawn on the moraine of the twenty-seventh of August, hurried on board the Sandwich prison-ship, without being allowed to bid adieu to their families, and were conveyed to St. Augustine. The pretense for this measure, by which the British authorities attempted to justify it, was the false accusation that these men were concerting a scheme for burning the town and massacring the loyal inhabitants! Nobody believed the tale, and the act was made more flagrant by this wicked calumny. Arrived at St. Augustine, the prisoners were offered paroles to enjoy liberty within the precincts of the town. Gadsden, the sturdy patriot, refused acquiescence, for he disdained making further terms with a power that did not regard the sanctity of a solemn treaty. He was determined not to be deceived a second time. "Had the British commanders," he said, "regarded the terms of capitulation at Charleston, I might now, although a prisoner, enjoy the smiles and consolations of my family under my own roof; but even without a shadow of accusation preferred against me, for any act inconsistent with my plighted faith, I am torn from them, and here, in a distant land, invited to enter into new engagements. I will give no parole." "Think better of it," said Governor Tonyn, who was in command; "a second refusal of it will fix your destiny--a dungeon will be your future habitation." "Prepare it, then," replied the inflexible patriot. "I will give no parole, so help me God!" And the petty tyrant did "prepare it;" and for forty-two weeks that patriot of almost threescore years of age, never saw the light of the blessed sun, but lay incarcerated in the dungeon of the Castle of St. Augustine. All the other prisoners accepted paroles, but they were exposed to indignities more harrowing to the sensitive soul than close confinement. When, in June, 1781, they were exchanged, they were not allowed to even touch at Charleston, but were sent to Philadelphia, whither their families had been expelled when the prisoners were taken to the Sandwich. More than a thousand persons were thus exiled, and husbands and wives, fathers and children, first met in a distant state, after a separation of ten months.

* The Continental prisoners kept at Haddrell's Point suffered terribly. Many of them had been nurtured in affluence; now, far from friends and destitute of hard money, they were reduced to the greatest straits. During thirteen months' captivity, they received no more than nine days' pay. They were not allowed to fish for their support, but were obliged to perform the most menial services. Cornwallis finally ordered Balfour, the commandant of Charleston, to send them to one of the West India islands. The general exchange of prisoners which soon afterward took place alone prevented the execution of this cruel order.

** Gordon, iii., 226.

[[[Marion at Charleston.--Formation of his Brigade.--His first Expeditions.]]]

{769}Alatamaha. The noble deeds of these partisans; the efforts and defeat of Gates; the successes of Greene and Morgan; and the brilliant achievements of "Legion Harry Lee," the strong right arm of the Southern army in the campaigns of 1781, we have considered in former chapters. Let us here, from this commanding point of view, note those daring exploits of Marion and his men not already considered, and also of their brave compatriots in their warfare in the vicinity of the sea-coast.

Marion was elected a captain in Moultrie's second South Carolina regiment, and, with his friend Peter Horry, received his commission on the twentieth of June, 1775. These young officers, in new uniforms and helmet-shaped leather caps, decorated with silver crescents inscribed "Liberty or Death!" went out immediately upon the recruiting service on the Black River and the Pedee, and every where excited the enthusiasm of the people. Brave young patriots flocked around them, and in Fort Sullivan, when its cannons shattered the fleet of Sir Peter Parker in 1776, these stout hearts and hands received their first practical lessons in defensive warfare. Already, as we have seen (page 751), they had been efficient in capturing Fort Johnson, on James's Island,[[Sept. 14, 1775]] but here they participated in the severer duties of vigorous conflict.

Fortunately for the Republican cause, an accident * prevented Marion being among the prisoners when Charleston fell, and he was yet at liberty, having no parole to violate, to arouse his countrymen to make further efforts against the invaders. While yet unable to be active, he took refuge in the swamps upon the Black River, while Governor Rutledge, Colonel Horry, and others, who had escaped the disasters at Charleston, were in North Carolina arousing the people of that state to meet the danger which stood menacing upon its southern border. Marion's military genius and great bravery were known to friends and foes, and while the latter sought to entrap him, the former held over him the shield of their vigilance. "In the moment of alarm he was sped from house to house, from tree to thicket, from the thicket to the swamp." ** As soon as he was able, he collected a few friends and started for North Carolina to join the Baron De Kalb, then marching southward with a small Continental army. On the way, he was joined by his old friend Horry and a few of his neighbors, and these formed the "ragged regiment" who appeared before General Gates, the successor of De Kalb, mentioned on page 685. It was while in the camp of Gates that Governor Rutledge, who also was there, commissioned Marion a brigadier, and he sped to the district of Williamsburg, between the Santee and Pedee, to lead its rising patriots to the field of active military duties. They had accepted the protection of British power after Charleston was surrendered, in common with their subdued brethren of the low country; but when Clinton's proclamation was promulgated, making active service for the crown or the penalty for rebellion an alternative, they eagerly chose the latter, and lifted the strong arm of resistance to tyranny. They called Marion to be their leader, and of these men he formed his efficient brigade, the terror of British scouts and outposts. Near the mouth of Lynch's Creek he assumed the command, and among the interminable swamps upon Snow's Island, near the junction of that stream with the Great Pedee, he made his chief rendezvous during a greater portion of his independent partisan warfare.

Marion's first expedition after taking command was against a large body of Tories, under Major Gainey, an active British officer, who were encamped upon Britton's Neck, between the Great and Little Pedee. He dispersed the whole party without losing a man.[[August 1780]] Flushed with victory, Marion was again in motion within twenty-four hours. Informed that Captain Barfield and some Tories were encamped a few miles distant, he sped thither, fell upon and scattered them to the winds. These two victories inspired his fol-

* At the beginning of the siege, Marion was at a house in Trade! Street, and the host, determined that all of his guests should drink his wine freely, locked the door to prevent their departure. Marion would not submit to this act of social tyranny, and leaped from a second story window to the ground. His ankle was broken, and before the communication with the country toward the Santee was closed he was carried to his residence, in St. John's parish, on a litter. He was yet confined by the accident when the capitulation was signed. See Simm's Life of Marion, page 96.

* Simms.

[[[Marion and Wemyss.--Retreat of the latter.--Defeat of Colonel Tyne.--Skirmish near Georgetown]]]

{770}lowers with the greatest confidence in their commander and reliance upon themselves. These sentiments, acted upon with faithfulness, formed a prime element of that success which distinguished Marion's brigade.

Marion now sent Colonel Peter Horry, with a part of his brigade, to scour the country between the Santee and Pedee, while with the remainder of his command he proceeded to attack the British post near Nelson's Perry, an event which we have considered on page 705. Striking his blows in quick succession, and at remote points, Marion excited the alarm of the British commander-in-chief, and he ordered Tarleton to endeavor to entrap and crush the "Swamp Pox." Colonel Wemyss, whom Sumter afterward defeated on the Broad River, was first sent after him with a strong force. With untiring industry he followed Marion in the direction of the Black River, and often fell upon his trail. But the wary patriot never suffered himself to be surprised, nor allowed his men to fight when almost certain destruction appeared inevitable. Wemyss was too strong for Marion, so the latter fled before him, and with sixty trusty followers he thridded his way through interminable swamps and across deep streams into North Carolina. It was a grievous necessity, for it left Williamsburg District, the hot-bed of rebellion, exposed to the fury of the pursuers, Marion first hailed on Drowning Creek;[[August 30, 1780]] then pushing further on, he encamped near Lake Waccamaw, whence he sent back scouts to procure intelligence. Soon he was swiftly retracing his steps, for Wemyss had relinquished pursuit, and had retired to Georgetown, leaving the sad marks of his desolating march over a space of seventy miles in length and fifteen in breadth. The injured inhabitants hailed Marion's return with joy, and his little army, seldom exceeding sixty men, soon had the appearance of a brigade. They were desperate men. Cruel wrongs gave strength to their arms, fleetness to their feet, power to their wills, and with joy they followed Marion toward, the Black Mingo, fifteen miles below Georgetown, where a body of Tories were encamped. They fell upon them, in two divisions, at midnight. An obstinate resistance was made, but the patriots were victorious. Marion lost but one man killed; the enemy were almost annihilated. This victory dispirited the Tories throughout the low country, and for some time Marion's brigade enjoyed needful repose upon the banks of the Santee, except during a brief period when Tarleton, who succeeded Wemyss in attempts to smite Marion, came in pursuit. He scoured the country southward from Camden, between the Santee and the Black Ravers, in search of the partisan, and, like Wemyss, spread desolation in his path. Tarleton exerted his utmost skill and energy, but could never overtake the vigilant Marion. Sometimes he would be within a few miles of him, and feel sure of securing him before to-morrow's sun, when at the same moment Marion would be watching the movements of the Briton from some dark nook of a morass, and at midnight would strike his rear or flank with a keen and terrible blow.

In October, Marion proceeded toward Lynch's Creek to chastise Harrison, the lieutenant of Wemyss, who was encamped there with a considerable body of Tories. On his way toward Williamsburg, he fell upon Colonel Tyne, who, with two hundred Tories, was encamped at Tarcote Swamp, on the forks of Black River, in fancied security. It was midnight when he struck the blow.[[Oct. 25, 1780]] While some slept, others were eating and drinking; a few were playing cards; but none were watching. The surprise was complete. Some were slain, twenty-three were made prisoners, but a large portion escaped to Tarcote Swamp, from which some soon appeared and joined the ranks of the victor, upon the High Hills of the Santee, where he encamped a short time after the action. Marion did not lose a man.

Informed that Harrison had moved from Lynch's Creek, Marion collected some new recruits, and with his bold followers pushed forward to assail the British post at Georgetown, where only he could procure what he now most needed, namely, salt, clothing, and powder. He knew a surprise would be difficult, and an open assault dangerous. He chose the former method, but when he approached, the garrison was on the alert. A severe skirmish ensued within a short distance of the town, and Marion, discomfited, retired to Snow's Island, where he fixed his camp and secured it by such works of art as the absence of natural defenses

[[[Marion and Lee's Expedition against Georgetown.--Its Failure.--Snow's Island.--Harden's Exploits.]]]

{771}required. In this skirmish, Gabriel Marion, a nephew of the general, was made a prisoner, and murdered on the spot. Alter that, "No quarter for Tories!" was the battle cry of Marion's men.

From Snow's Island * Marion sent out his scouts in every direction, and there he planned some of his boldest expeditions. Re-enforcements came, and at the close of 1780, Marion felt strong enough to confront any British detachment then abroad from head-quarters.

While Greene's army was approaching the Pedee early in 1781, Marion was very active abroad from his camp, at which he always left a sufficient garrison for its defense. Here and there he was smiting detachments of the British army; and when Lee, who had been sent by Greene to join him with a part of his legion, sought for Marion, it was with great difficulty that he could be found, for his rapid marches were in the midst of vast swamps. As soon as the junction was consummated,[[April 14, 1781]] these brave partisans planned an expedition against the British post at Georgetown, then garrisoned by two hundred men. Although the British works were strong, and our partisans had no cannons, they felt confident of the success of their plan, which was to attack the town and fortifications at two separate points. One division went down the Pedee In boats, the other proceeded eautiously by land. The attack was made at midnight, but nothing was effected beyond the capture of Campbell (the commandant) and a few privates, and slaying some stragglers from the garrison, who could not eseape to the stockade. Yet the enterprise was not fruitless of good to the patriot cause. The audacity of the attempt had a powerful effect upon the minds of the British officers at the South, and the contemplated movement of a large portion of their forces from the sea-board to the interior, was abandoned. Thus was begun a series of movements to keep Cornwallis from Virginia until a sufficient force could be collected in Carolina to oppose him, which was the object of earnest efforts on the part of Greene.

After resting a few hours, Marion and Lee moved rapidly up the north bank of the Santee, toward Nelson's Ferry, to surprise Colonel Watson, who had taken post there. That officer, informed of his approach, placed a small garrison in Fort Watson, five miles above, and with the remainder of his force hastened on toward Camden. At this time Greene was commencing his famous retreat, and summoned Huger and his troops at Cheraw, and Lee with his whole legion, to meet him at Guilford. The events whieh ensued in that quarter have been detailed in preceding chapters. **

The departure of Lee, with his legion, greatly weakened Marion's force. Yet he was

* This island is at the confluence of Lynch's Creek and the Pedee. It is chiefly high river swamp, dry, and covered with a heavy forest filled with game. The lower portions are cane-brakes, and a few spots are now devoted to the cultivation of Indian corn. Here was the scene of the interview between Marion and a young British officer from Georgetown, so well remembered by tradition, and so well delineated by the pen of Simms and the pencil of White. The officer who came to treat respecting prisoners was led blind-folded to the camp of Marion. There he first saw the diminutive form of the great partisan leader, and around him in groups were his followers, lounging beneath magnificent trees draped with moss. When their business was concluded, Marion invited the young Briton to dine with him. He remained, and to his utter astonishment he saw some roasted potatoes brought forward on a piece of bark, of which the general partook freely, and invited his guest to do the same. "Surely, general," said the officer, "this can not be your ordinary fare!" "Indeed it is," replied Marion, "and we are fortunate, on this occasion, entertaining company, to have more than our usual allowance." It is related that the young officer gave up his commission on his return, declaring that such a people could not be, and ought not to be subdued.

** At about this time, Colonel Harden, a gentleman of Beaufort, who, with a large number of the Whigs of his district, had taken refuge in Williamsburg, marched with seventy of the most resolute of his comrades to visit their homes. A few others from Georgia, under Colonel Baker, accompanied them, and in the face of the foe, then in possession of the country upon the Lower Santee and Edisto, they ravaged the region from Monk's Corner to the Savannah River. Like Marion, Harden made rapid and excentric marches, and always baffled pursuit. He crossed and recrossed the Savannah as often as circumstances required, and soon his force amounted to two hundred men. The name of Harden became as terrible to the Tories of Beaufort. Barnwell, and Colleton, as that of Marion beyond the Santee. He had several skirmishes with British detachments, and finally, on the twelfth of April, 1781, he surprised and captured a redoubt and garrison called Fort Balfour, at ancient Pocataligo, below the Combahee. Having awed the Tories in that section of the state, Colonel Harden and his detachment joined the forces under General Pickens, higher up on the Savannah.

[[[The Postelles. Marion's Cavalry.--Conflicts with Watson.--'Destruction of Marion's Camp.]]]

{772}not less active than before, and his enterprises were generally more important and successful. He sent out small detachments to beat up Tory camps and recruiting stations, wherever they might be found. His subordinates caught his spirit and imitated his example, and were generally successful. The brothers Captain and Major Postelle greatly annoyed the British and Tories beyond the Santee, in the direction of Charleston, early in 1781. Like Marion, his subordinates never lingered upon the arena of victory to be surprised, but, when a blow was struck, they hastened away to other fields of conflict. The great partisan never encumbered himself with prisoners--he always paroled them.

Toward the last of January,[[1781]] we find the blacksmiths of Kingstree forging saws into rough broadswords for a corps of cavalry which Marion placed in command of Colonel Peter Horry. In February, Horry is observed eastward of the Pedee battling with Tories and British regulars. Soon afterward he is engaged in a bloody conflict of eight hours, near Georgetown, slaying almost one half of his adversaries, and winning the victory. Every where the name of Marion was feared, and the presence of his men was dreaded by the opponents of the patriot cause.

In the spring of 1781, Colonel Watson was sent with a select corps of five hundred men to attempt the destruction of Marion's brigade. He moved with caution, evidently afraid of the partisan, for he was then striking successful blows at different points, in rapid succession, and appeared to be possessed of ubiquitous powers. * Marion observed him, and concentrated his force on Snow's Island, whence he sallied forth as occasion required. He sped with rapid foot to the path of Watson's approach, and at Wiboo Swamp, nearly opposite the present Santee Canal, he confronted him. The advanced guards of Marion and Watson (the former under Horry, the latter under Riehboo, a Tory colonel) met unexpectedly, and a severe skirmish ensued. Other portions of the two armies engaged in the fight. The field-pieces of Watson gave him great advantage, and Marion was obliged to fall back in the direction of Williamsburg. At a bridge over the Black River, below Kingstree, he checked his pursuers by well-aimed rifle-balls and the destruction of the bridge by fire. Down the stream, upon opposite sides, the belligerents marched nearly ten miles, skirmishing all the way. Darkness terminated the conflict, and both parties arranged their flying camps for rest, near eaeh other. For ten days Watson remained stationary, continually annoyed by Marion, until he was obliged to choose between certain destruction in detail there, or attempt boldly to fight his way to Georgetown. He decided upon the latter course, and at midnight he fled. Marion pursued, fell upon him at Sampit Bridge, near Georgetown, and smote down many of his wearied soldiers. Watson escaped to Georgetown with the remnant of his army, complaining that Marion would not "fight like a gentleman or a Christian!"

Sad intelligence now reached Marion. The Tory colonel, Doyle, had penetrated to his camp on Snow's Island, dispersed the little garrison, destroyed his provisions and stores, and then marched up Lynch's Creek. He pursued the marauder until he was informed that Doyle had destroyed all his heavy baggage, and had the advantage of a day's march on the road to Camden. Marion wheeled, and hastened, through the overflowed swamps, to confront Watson, who was again in motion with fresh troops, and had encamped upon Catfish Creek, near the present Marion Court House. Our partisan encamped within five miles of him, and there he was joined by Lee on the fourteenth of April.[[1781]] This junction alarmed Watson. He destroyed his heavy baggage, wheeled his field-pieces into Cat-fish Creek, and fled precipitately by a circuitous route back to Georgetown. Soon after this, we find Marion[[May 1781]] hanging upon the rear of Lord Rawdon on his

* At this time, Major M'Hraith, with a force about equal to that of Marion's, was met by the latter in swamp near Nelson's Ferry. They prepared for battle, when M'Hraith, who was a humane man, made the chivalric proposition that twenty picked men of each army should meet and fight for victory. It was agreed to; the forty men were drawn up in line and approached each other, when those of M'Hraiths party fell back. The sun went down, and yet they lingered; and at midnight, M'Hraith doubtless considering prudence the better part of valor, decamped, leaving his heavy baggage behind. He was pursued by Colonel Horry early in the morning, but without effect.

[[[Capture of Georgetown.--Attack on British Posts near Charleston.--Battle at Quimby's Creek Bridge]]]

{773}retreat from Nelson's Ferry toward Charleston; and from that time until the siege of Ninety-Six, he was often with Sumter and Colonel Washington, watching the enemy's movements near the Santee and Edisto, and cutting off intelligence and supplies from Cruger.

In June[[1781]] Marion took possession of Georgetown, the garrison fleeing down Winyaw Bay after a slight resistance. He could not garrison it, so he moved the stores up the Pedee to his old encampment on Snow's Island, and demolished the military works. Informed that the Loyalists of Charleston had organized, and under Colonel Ball were about to ravage the country south of the Santee, he anticipated them. He drove off the cattle, removed the provisions to a place of safety, laid waste the country, and left nothing but barrenness and desolation in the district menaced by the enemy.

We have observed (page 695) that soon after Greene abandoned his design of attacking Rawdon at Orangeburg, and retired to the High Hills of Santee, he detached Sumter, with Marion, Lee, and other active partisans, to beat up the British posts in the direction of Charleston, drive these hostile detachments to the gates of the city, and cut off all convoys of supplies for the British troops on the Edisto. The chief object to be gained was to cause Rawdon to abandon Orangeburg and hasten to the relief of Charleston. Sumter was the commander-in-chief of this expedition. As he approached Monk's Corner, he divided his little army into separate detachments. Among the subordinate commanders of these were Horry, Mayham, Taylor, the Hamptons, and James. The garrison at Dorchester, first attacked, made no resistance to Colonel Lee, who also captured, at about the same time, all the wagons and wagon horses belonging to a convoy of provisions; while Colonel Wade Hampton pressed forward to the very lines at Charleston, captured the patrol and guard at the Quarter-house, five miles from the city, and spread terror through the town. He also took fifty prisoners (mounted refugees) at Strawberry Ferry, and burned four vessels laden with valuable stores for the British army.

At Biggin, near Monk's Corner, where Huger's cavalry were surprised more than a year before, was a strong force of about five hundred infantry, one hundred and fifty horse, and a piece of artillery, under Colonel Coates of the British army. Biggin Church, and a redoubt at Monk's Corner, about a quarter of a mile distant, composed the defenses of the garrison. Against these Sumter, Marion, and Lee proceeded. They halted at sunset within a short distance of Coates's camp, with the intention of attacking him early In the morning. Coates, alarmed by the intelligence brought by his patrols, that one half of Greene's army, with all the partisan officers of the South, were upon him, decamped during the night, set fire to Biggin Church, so as to destroy stores which he could not carry away, and crossing the head waters of the Cooper River on the eastern side, retreated rapidly toward Charleston. When the blaze of the church was perceived in the American camp, Sumter called his troops to arms and hotly pursued the fugitives. Within a short distance of Quimby's Creek Bridge, eighteen miles from Monk's Corner, the cavalry of Lee and Marion overtook the rear-guard of the flying troops. Dismayed at the near approach of horsemen, they east down their arms without firing a gun, and begged for quarter. Coates had crossed the bridge with his main body, and was waiting for the passage of his rearguard, with the baggage, to destroy the bridge. The planks were already loosened, and every thing was in readiness for its demolition when the American cavalry approached. The brave Armstrong, with a section of Lee's horsemen, dashed across the bridge and fell upon the British guard with a howitzer stationed there for its defense, and drove the artillerists from the gun. The place of contest was a narrow causeway and lane leading to the bridge, and for a short time a close and deadly conflict ensued. Many of the British fled, and Coates and some of his officers were left to fight alone, defended only by a wagon. Another section of the eavalry, under Carrington, followed close upon Armstrong, and leaping the chasm formed by the casting down of some loose planks by the hoofs of Armstrong's horses, joined in the close combat with the enemy. Lee had now gained the bridge, where Captain O'Neil, with the third section, had halted. Captain Mayham, of Marion's cavalry, dashed by them, when his horse was shot under him. The chasm had been widened by

[[[Severe Battle above Quimby's Creek Bridge.--Public Services and Execution of Colonel Hayne]]]

{774}the passage of Carrington's troops, and all Lee's efforts to repair the breach were ineffectual. The stream was too deep to ford, and the shores too muddy to land if the horses had swam it, and, consequently, a victory so nearly secured had to be abandoned. Coates, with his recaptured howitzer, retreated to a strong two-story house and other buildings a little further up the stream, into which many of his soldiers had fled at the first attack. There he was assailed by Sumter and Marion, between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, and a severe battle was waged for three hours. Darkness, and the failure of the powder of the patriots, terminated the contest. Fifty of Marion's brigade were killed or wounded, and seventy of the British fell. Coates held his position, and Sumter, informed of the approach of Rawdon, collected his own immediate forces, crossed the Santee, and joined Greene upon the High Hills, while Marion remained lower down upon the river to watch the movements of the enemy.

It was at about this time, while the army of General Greene was in repose near the Wateree, that the execution of Colonel Isaac Hayne, a leading Whig of South Carolina, took place at Charleston; an event which, in the opinion of the Americans, and of just men in Europe, marked the character of the British officer in command at Charleston with the foul stain of dishonor and savage cruelty. * The patriots were greatly exasperated by it, and

* Isaac Hayne was a highly respected and well-beloved citizen of South Carolina. He was among the early patriots of that state who took the field, and at the siege of Charleston, in 1780, he served in a company of mounted militia, and at the same time was a member of the State Legislature. His corps was not in the city, but operated in the open country, in the rear of the besiegers, consequently it was not included in the capitulation. After that event his command was dispersed, and be returned to his family and estate, near the Edisto. Believing that the wisest policy for him to pursue was to go to Charleston, surrender himself a prisoner, and take his parole like others, he repaired thither. He was too confiding in the honor of the conquerors, for, knowing him to be a man of influence, the commandant refused the privilege, and told him that he must either become a British subject or submit to close confinement. He would gladly have endured imprisonment, but he could not bear the thought of leaving his family exposed to the insults of marauders, and the pestilence of small-pox, then spreading over the lower country. He consulted his friend, Dr. Ramsay, the historian, who was himself a prisoner in Charleston, and, influenced by family affection, he accepted a British protection upon the humiliating terms proposed by Clinton in his second and cruel proclamation, and took the oath of allegiance. He was assured by Patterson, the deputy British commandant in Charleston, that he would not be called upon to take up arms for the king, "For," he said, "when the regular forces of his majesty need the aid of the inhabitants for the defense of the province, it will be high time for them to leave it."

* Colonel Hayne was often called upon by subordinate officers to take up arms for the king, but steadily refused. When, in 1781, Greene approached with a Continental army, and the partisan troops had swept royal power from almost every place where it had planted its heel of military subjugation, Colonel Hayne felt released from his oath of allegiance, because its conditions were such that its obligations ceased when royal rule should be suppressed. When again summoned (as he was peremptorily, while his wife was upon her dying bed) to repair, with arms, to the British camp at Charleston, he again refused. He did more; he buckled on his armor, repaired to the American camp, and, forswearing his forced allegiance to the British erown, he pledged his life to the defense of his country. With a troop of horse, accompanied by Colonel Harden, he scoured the country toward Charleston, and captured General Andrew Williamson, a former efficient patriot, but now aetive in the British service. When intelligence of the event reached the city, a troop of cavalry was sent in pursuit of Hayne. A battle ensued, and the patriot was made a prisoner and conveyed to Charleston. Colonel Nesbit Balfour, a proud, vain, and ambitious man, was then the commandant. He knew that the surest road to distinction was rigor toward the rebels. He chose to consider Hayne a traitor, because he had signed an oath of allegiance, and then took up arms against the king. Here was an opportunity for Balfour to distinguish himself, and Hayne was east into the provost prison, and kept there until Rawdon arrived from Orangeburg. He was then taken before a court of inquiry, where neither the members nor the witnesses were sworn. The whole proceeding was a mockery, for Rawdon and Balfour had prejudged him worthy of death. Without even the form of a trial, he was condemned to be hung. No one, not even the prisoner, supposed that such cruelty was contemplated, until the sentence was made public, and he had but two days to live! The men of the city pleaded for him; the women signed petitions, and went in troops and upon their knees implored a remission of his sentence. His sister, Mrs. Peronneau, with his orphan children (for his wife was in her grave), clad in deep mourning, knelt in supplication before his judges, but in vain. Rawdon and Balfour were inexorable, and on the thirty-first of July, 1781, one of the purest patriots and most amiable of men was hung upon a gibbet. Like Andre, he asked to be shot as a soldier, but this boon was denied him. Thirty-two years afterward, Lord Rawdon, in a letter to General Henry Lee (see his Memoirs, page 459), attempted to excuse his want of humanity, by pleading the justice of the sentence. But the denunciations of the Duke of Richmond at the time, in the House of Lords, and the truth of history, have given the whole transaction the stamp of barbarism.

[[[Skirmish at Parker's Ferry.--Retreat of the British from Eutaw.--Attack on British Posts near Charleston.]]]

{775}General Greene gave the British commander notice that he would retaliate when opportunity should offer, not by the sacrifice of misguided Tories, but of British officers. He soon had power to exhibit terrible retribution, but happily, actuated by a more humane policy, Greene hesitated; the beams of peace soon appeared in the horizon, and bloody human sacrifices were prevented.

Here let us resume the general narrative of events in the South not already related, from the time of the encampment of Greene upon the High Hills of Santee, in 1781, until the evacuation of Charleston by the British the following year.

We have noticed on page 705, that Greene's camp upon the Hills was broken up on the eighteenth of November, and the remnants of his diminished army were put in motion toward Charleston. Already intelligence of the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown had reached him, and the day of its arrival[[Oct. 30]] was made jubilant by the army. In the mean while, Marion was operating with vigor. He suddenly disappeared from the Santee upon one of his secret expeditions, and as suddenly was seen sweeping across the country in the direction of the Edisto, on his way to relieve Colonel Harden, who was closely pressed near Parker's Ferry, a few miles above Jacksonborough, in Colleton District, by a British force of five hundred men, under Major Fraser. That officer's camp was at the ferry. Marion prepared an ambuscade, and then sent out some of his swiftest horses with experienced riders to decoy his enemy into the snare. Fraser, with his cavalry, fell into the ambuscade in a narrow place, and was terribly handled.[[Aug. 30, 1781]] The sure rifles of Marion's men thinned his ranks, and had not their ammunition failed them, they would have accomplished a complete victory. For the want of powder, they were obliged to retire at the moment when the palm was offered to them. The loss of the British was severe, while Marion was not bereft of a man. He had succeeded in rescuing Harden, and as we have seen (page 699), obedient to the call of Greene, hastened toward the Santee and joined the American army at Laurens's plantation,[[Sept. 7, 1781]] when pressing on toward Eutaw.

After the great battle at that place, and his pursuit of Stewart, Marion encamped in the deep recesses of a cane-brake on Santee River Swamp, and awaited an occasion again to go forth to action.

The British commander, ignorant of the weakened condition of Marion's brigade, * and the great diminution of Greene's army, was alarmed when he was informed that the latter had crossed the Congaree, and was again pressing on toward Eutaw. He struck his tents and hastened toward Charleston. Perceiving this movement, Greene left his army while on its march from the Santee Hills, and at the head of two hundred cavalry and as many infantry moved rapidly toward Charleston. The garrison at Dorchester, more than six hundred strong, advised of his approach, went out to meet him. But so sudden and vigorous was the charge of Colonel Hampton, of the advance, that the enemy wheeled and fled in great confusion to their camp. Believing the whole army of Greene to be near, they destroyed all the public property, cast their cannons into the Ashley, and then fled toward Charleston, closely pursued. At the Quarter-house they were joined by Stewart's forces, retreating by another road, and all hastened to the city gates. Terror spread through the town. The bells were rung, alarm guns were fired, and every friend of the crown was called to the defense of the city. Greene's object was accomplished; the British outposts, were driven in, and he hastened to join his army, now encamped at Round O, not far from the Four Holes' Creek, forty or fifty miles from the city. Marion and his men lingered around the head waters of the Cooper to watch the enemy, and prevent his incursions beyond Charleston Neck. St. Clair had driven the British from Wilmington, and only Charles-

* After the battle at Eutaw, Marion was re-enforced by detachments of mountain men, under Colonels Shelby and Sevier, the heroes of King's Mountain, and with them he confidently took the field. He attacked the British outpost at Fairlawn, while the main body, under Stewart, were encamped behind redoubts at Wappetaw and Wantoot. The attack upon Fairlawn was successful. The garrison, and three hundred stand of arms, with provisions and stores, were the spoils of victory. Encouraged by this success, Marion prepared for other enterprises, when the Mountaineers, after about three weeks' service, suddenly left him and returned to the upper country. No satisfactory reason for this movement has ever been given.

[[[Re establishment of Civil Government.--Change in public Sentiment.--Waning of British power.--Mutiny. ]]]

{776}ton and Savannah, with their respective dependencies, now remained in undisputed possession of the Royalists.

Governor Rutledge, with his accustomed energy, now prepared to re-establish civil government. He first offered conditional pardon to Tories and others who should join the American army. Hundreds came from the British lines and eagerly accepted the governor's clemency. Writs for an election of representatives were issued, and in January, 1782, a Republican Legislature convened at Jacksonborough, on the Edisto, thirty-five miles below Charleston.

Hope dawned upon the future of the South, and the bowed head of Republicanism was lifted up. General Leslie, the chief-commandant in Charleston, perceived the change in the aspeet of affairs, with alarm, and sent out proclamations, filled with promises and menaces, to counteract the movements of the patriots. It was too late. The people perceived the waning of British power as the area of its action was diminished, and promises and threats were alike unheeded. The army of Greene drew near to Jacksonborough, and encamped upon the Charleston road, six miles below the town. Thus protected, the Legislature acted freely and judiciously, and from that time the civil power met with no obstructions.

John's Island was yet occupied by the enemy, under the command of Major Craig, who had been driven from Wilmington. Greene resolved to expel them. An expedition for the purpose was intrusted to Lieutenant-colonel Laurens, a son of Henry Laurens, who had lately come from the field of victory at Yorktown. Lee was his second in command. An attempt was made, on the night of the thirteenth of January,[[1782]] to surprise and capture the garrison of five hundred men, but the miscarriage of a part of their plan deprived them of their anticipated victory. Yet the design was not abandoned. A large body of Greene's army moved forward, and Craig, taking counsel of his fears, abandoned the island, and fled, with his troops, to Charleston. A few prisoners, and provisions and stores of the camp, were the spoils of victory. Still further secure, the Legislature now labored industriously and without fear. Confiscation laws were enacted; the currency was regulated; general laws for the future government of the state were adopted; and a bill was originated for presenting to General Greene, in consideration of his services, the sum of ten thousand guineas. * They closed their labors by electing John Matthews governor.

From this time until the evacuation of Charleston, military operations were confined to attempts on the part of the British to procure supplies from the country, and opposition thereto by the patriots. In these operations, Marion's brigade was conspicuous. Elected to a seat in the Assembly at Jacksonborough, he left it in command of Colonel Hurry. Previous to his departure, he had a severe skirmish, near Monk's Corner, with three hundred regulars and Loyalists, who came up from Charleston to surprise him. He repulsed them, but soon afterward, while he was absent, a larger force, under Colonel Thompson (the celebrated Count Rumford subsequently), attacked his brigade near the Santee. Fortunately, he arrived during the engagement, but not in time to prevent the defeat and partial dispersion of his beloved troops. The remnant of his brigade rallied around him, and he retired beyond the Santee to reorganize and recruit.

The main armies continued quiet. Each felt too weak to attempt to disturb the other. Leslie's condition was far worse than Greene's. Confined within the city, provisions soon became scarce, while the flight of Tories to the town increased the demand. Greene had ample provisions, and moving forward, encamped near the head of the Ashley, within twenty miles of the enemy's lines. Unable to damage the Americans in warfare, the British employed stratagem and bribery to weaken their power. Emissaries came into camp, and a mutinous spirit was engendered. A scheme was planned to abduct Greene, and convey him to Charleston. It was discovered twenty-four hours before it ripened, and was crushed. The conspirators were of the Pennsylvania line. Gornell, the leader, was executed, and

* This example was imitated by the Legislatures of North Carolina and Georgia. The former voted him five thousand guineas, and the latter twenty-four thousand acres of land.

[[[Operations of a Spy.--War declared ended by Parliament--Abduction of Governor Burke.]]]

{777}four of his known companions in crime were sent, guarded, up to Orangeburg. The demon of discord was seen no more, and the British made no further attempts to arouse it.

Early in April, Marion, with a considerable force, was sent to "keep watch and ward" over the country between the Cooper and Santee Rivers. A Scotchman, pretending to be a deserter, came out from the city, visited Marion, and passed on unsuspected toward the Scotch settlements on the Pedee. Soon an insurrection appeared in that quarter, and Marion was informed that Major Gainey, for the third time, was gathering the Tories. The pretended deserter was a spy, and, by false representations of the power of the British and weakness of the Americans, he called the Highlanders to arms. The spy was caught and hanged while returning to Charleston, and before Gainey could organize his recruits, Marion fell upon him. More than five hundred Loyalists laid down their arms, and Gainey, thoroughly humbled, joined the ranks of Marion. *

While the theater of war was thus narrowing, British statesmen of all parties, considering the capture of Cornwallis and his army as the death-blow to all hope for future conquests, turned their attention to measures for an honorable termination of the unnatural war. General Conway, the firm and long-tried friend of the Americans, offered a resolution in Parliament in February,[[1782]] which was preliminary to the enactment of a decree for commanding the cessation of hostilities. It was lost by only one vote. Thus encouraged, the opposition pressed the subject warmly upon the attention of the House of Commons and the nation, and on the fourth of March, Conway moved "That the House would consider as enemies to his majesty and the country all those who should advise, or by any means attempt, the further prosecution of offensive war on the Continent of North America." The resolution was carried without a division, and the next day the attorney general introduced a plan for a truce with the Americans. Lord North, after an administration of affairs, as prime minister, for twelve years, finding himself in the minority, resigned the seals of office.[[March 20, 1782]] Orders for a cessation of hostilities speedily went forth to the British commanders in America, and preparations were soon made for evacuating the cities of Savannah and Charleston.

When General Leslie was apprised of these proceedings in Parliament, he proposed to General Greene a cessation of hostilities in the South. That officer, like a true soldier, refused to meddle in civil affairs, and referred the matter to the Continental Congress, the only competent tribunal to decide. Of course there must be a delay of several weeks, and while no important military movement was made by the main army of either party, each was as vigilant as if an active campaign was in progress.

On the thirteenth of August, Leslie, in general orders, declared his intention of evacuating Charleston, and sent a flag to Greene with a request that he might be allowed to receive and purchase supplies from the planters. ** Greene refused his acquiescence, for it

* Among the insurgents was the notorious David Fanning, a Loyalist of North Carolina. He was one, of the most desperate and brutal of the Tory leaders, and at one time had command of almost a thousand marauders like himself. He became a terror to the people of central North Carolina. He captured many leading Whigs, and took them to Craig, at Wilmington. On the thirteenth of September, 1781, he and his associate, Hector M'Neil, with their followers, entered Hillsborough, carried off the governor, Thomas Burke,* and other prominent Whigs, and hastened with them toward Wilmington. They were intercepted by a party under General Butler, and a severe skirmish ensued at Lindley's Mill, on Cane Creek. Fanning was wounded, but successfully retreated with his prisoners to Wilmington. After the defeat here mentioned, on the Pedee, Fanning went to Charleston, and accompanied the Tories who fled to Nova Scotia, where he died in 1825.

* Greene's army now covered a fertile district, where wealth abounded, and prevented foraging and plundering where the enemy had generally found the best supplies. Perceiving their homes thus secured, many of the families returned from exile, and every where the board of hospitality was wide spread to their deliverers. The rugged features of war were soon changed by the refinements of social life, and the soldiers, who had been battling for years among desolated homes or the dark wilderness, felt that a paradise was gained. The wife of General Greene reached his camp at the close of March, and was every where caressed. The officers were greeted at numerous social gatherings, and the charms of many a fair daughter of the sunny South subdued hearts which never quailed before an enemy. In the district occupied by the army, were many wealthy, beautiful, and accomplished women, and "many," says Johnson, in his Life of Greene, "were the matrimonial connections to which this period gave rise between the officers of the army and the heiresses of Carolina and Georgia."

* Thomas Burke was one of the purest patriots of the South. He was a native of Ireland; came in early life to Virginia, and in 1774 settled as practicing lawyer, in Hillsborough, North Carolina. He was one of the earliest Republican legislators in the state. He was a member of the Provincial Congress at Halifax in 1776, and of the Continental Congress, from 1777 till 1781, when he was chosen governor of his state. After his capture by Fanning, he was sent to Charleston, and kept closely guarded, upon John's Island, when Craig commanded there. He escaped, and in 1782 resumed his official duties. He died at Hillsborough in 1783.

[[[British attempts to collect Provisions.--Vigilance of Greene.--Skirmishes on the Combahee.--Death of Laurens.]]]

{778}would tend to nourish a viper, perhaps yet disposed to sting. Leslie replied that he should obtain supplies by force, for it was necessary to have them before putting to sea. This menace gave activity to the camp of Greene, for he resolved to oppose with spirit every attempt of the enemy to penetrate the country. General Gist, with a strong force, was advanced to the Stono, and spread defensive corps, under good officers, southward to the Combahee, while Marion was instructed to keep watch over the region of the Lower Santee. Rapidly, and in wide circuits, that partisan, with his cavalry, scoured the region between the Sampit and the Santee, and sometimes he would sweep down the country, all the way to Cainboy and Haddrell's Point. Some warm skirmishes occurred, but he effectually kept the enemy at bay in that quarter.

Anxious to leave Charleston, where famine stood menacing the army and civilians, Leslie resolved to make a bold effort to penetrate the country by the Combahee, for little could be effected in the region guarded by Marion. He accordingly sent a large party thither in armed boats and schooners, where they arrived on the 25th of August, and passed up directly toward the head of the stream. Gist, with about three hundred cavalry and infantry, hastened to oppose the invaders, leaving Colonel Laurens with a guard near Wappoo, to watch the movements of the enemy in Charleston. Laurens, burning with a desire for active service, left a sick-bed and followed Gist. He overtook him upon the north bank of the Combahee, near the ferry, and at his earnest solicitation he was detached to the extreme end of Chehaw Neck, to garrison a small redoubt cast up there for the purpose of annoying the British when they should return down the river. With fifty light infantry, some matrosses, and a howitzer, Laurens moved down the river,[[August 26, 1782]] and halted at the house of Mrs. Stock, within a short distance of the point. At three o'clock in the morning he resumed his march. He had proceeded but a short distance, when a picket of the enemy was perceived, and at the same moment a large detachment, which lay concealed in the high fennel grass, arose and delivered a murderous fire. They had been informed of the march of Laurens, and landing on the north shore of the Combahee, concealed themselves in ambush by the road side. Laurens saw the danger of a retreat, and had no alternative but to surrender or fight. His brave spirit could not brook the former, and leading the way, he made an energetic charge upon the foe. The step was fatal to the young commander; he fell at the first fire. Captain Smith of the artillery was also slain, the howitzer was seized by the enemy, and the whole American force turned and fled in confusion. The fugitives were pursued a short distance, when Gist, with a considerable force, confronted the victors. They recoiled for a moment, but soon recovered, and a severe combat ensued. The British fell back to their boats, and the field of strife was the field of victory for the Americans; yet it was dearly won. Many unnamed patriots fell, and in the death of Laurens the country lost one of its most promising men. * The

* John Laurens was a son of Henry Laurens, president of the Continental Congress in 1777. He joined the army early in 1777, and was wounded in the battle at Germantown. He continued in the army (with the exception of a few months), under the immediate command of Washington, until after the surrender of Cornwallis, in which event he was a conspicuous participant as one of the commissioners appointed to arrange the terms. Early in 1781, he was sent on a special mission to France, to solicit a loan of money and to procure arms. He was successful, and on his return received the thanks of Congress. Within three days after his arrival in Philadelphia, he had settled all matters with Congress, and departed for the army in the South, under Greene. There he did good service, and was killed on the Combahee, on the twenty-seventh of August, 1781, when he was but twenty-nine years of age. Washington, who made him his aid, loved him as a child. He declared that he could discover no fault in him, unless it was intrepidity, bordering on rashness. "Poor Laurens," wrote Greene, "has fallen in a paltry little skirmish. You knew his temper, and I predicted his fate. The love of military glory made him seek it upon occasions unworthy his rank. The state will feel his loss." He was buried upon the plantation of Mrs. Stock, in whose family he spent the evening previous to his death in cheerful conversation. A small inclosure, without a stone, marks his grave.

[[[Last Blood shed in the Revolution.--Evacuation of Charleston.--Revolutionary Localities near.]]]

{779}British succeeded in carrying off a large quantity of provisions and plunder from the Combahee, and from Beaufort and the neighboring islands. They made no other attempt to procure supplies, but applied themselves diligently to preparations for leaving Charleston. Kosciuszko, who was placed in command of Laurens's corps, watched Charleston Neck, and detachments guarded the passes of the Stono. In this latter service the last blood of the Revolution was shed. *

The evacuation of Charleston took place on the fourteenth of December.[[1782]] Leslie had leveled the walls of Charleston and demolished Fort Johnson, and on the morning of the thirteenth, the American army crossed the Ashley, and slowly approached the city, according to previous arrangements with Leslie. At daylight the next morning the British marched to Gadsden's Wharf, and embarked. At eleven o'clock an American detachment took formal possession of the town, and at three in the afternoon General Greene escorted Governor Mathews and other civil officers to the Town Hall. From windows, balconies, even housetops, the troops were greeted with cheers, waving of handkerchiefs, and cries, "God bless you, gentlemen! Welcome! welcome!" Before night the British squadron (about three hundred sail) crossed the bar, and the last speck of canvas of that hostile array glittered far out upon the ocean in the parting beams of the sun that evening. The cool starry night which succeeded was one of great joy to the people, and the dawn of the morrow was that of a long and bright day for the emancipated state. Generosity succeeded revengeful feelings; confiscation acts were repealed; Loyalists were forgiven, on repentance, and those who had adhered to royal rule as the least of two evils, rejoiced in the glories of the happy days of freedom and prosperity which succeeded.

Here let us close the chronicles of the war in the Southern States, and depart for the North.

On the morning of the day when I departed from Charleston,[[Jan. 29, 1849]] the sun came up from the sea bright and unclouded, and I could not have wished for a lovelier day to visit places of note in Charleston and vicinity. I had already been out to the Lines, and the old ship-yard and magazines on Cooper Raver, with Reverend Dr. Smythe. The scars of the former are yet visible in several places upon the Neck, and a portion of the citadel, a remnant of the "horn work," survives the general wreck of the military works about Charleston. It was just at sunset when we passed through a beautiful avenue of live oaks, draped with moss, to view the ruins of the magazines and officers' quarters, among thick shrubbery and tangled vines near the banks of the river, about four miles above the city. A little to the northwest of these ruins is an ancient burial-ground, on the verge of a deep morass. The tall trees, pendent moss, silent ruins, and deep shadows of night fast hovering over the scene, gave the place a tinge of romance, thrilling and sad. On our way to this interesting spot we turned aside, about a mile and a half nearer the town, to view a venerable and lordly magnolia, under whose spreading branches tradition avers General Lincoln held a council of officers during the siege in 1780. Incredible as it may ap-

* Captain Wilmot, a brave young officer, who commanded a company detailed for the purpose of covering John's Island, impatient of inaction, often crossed the river to harass British foraging parties on the island. While engaged in one of these excursions, in company with Kosciuszko, he fell into an ambuscade and was killed. This occurred in September, 1782, and was, it is believed, the last life sacrificed in battle.

** Preparatory to the evacuation, commissioners were appointed to make arrangements to prevent the carrying away of slaves on the departure of the British. All was made satisfactory; but the promises of the enemy were shamefully violated. Moultrie says that more than eight hundred slaves, employed on the works in the city, were sent to the West Indies and sold. It has been estimated that between the years 1775 and 1783 the state of South Carolina was robbed of twenty-five thousand negroes, valued at about twelve million five hundred thousand dollars.

[[[Destruction of the "Council Tree."--Departure from Charleston.--Wilmington.--British Occupation there.]]]

{780}pear, the owner of the land, and of the house shaded by the tree wherein he and his mother were born, had just felled it for fire-wood.

Instead of being its destroyer, who, in like circumstances, would not have been its defender? and when rude hands were laid upon it,

````"Woodman, spare that tree!

`````Touch not a single bough!

````In youth it sheltered me,

`````And I'll protect it now.

```'Twas my forefather's hand

`````That placed it near his cot;

````There, woodman, let it stand,

`````Thy ax shall harm it not! "--Morris.=

I sketched the venerable house near by, the property of Colonel William Cummington during the Revolution, and marking the position of the stump of the magnolia, preserved for posterity a sketch of what tradition calls the Council Tree, with its surroundings.

It was on the bright and balmy day of my departure that I visited Sullivan's Island, and made the sketch printed on page 757. From thence I crossed over to Haddrell's Point (now Point Pleasant), and after passing an hour there, where so many of the brave patriots of South Carolina suffered a long imprisonment, I returned by steam-boat to the city. There are no remains of revolutionary fortifications at Point Pleasant, and it is now famous in the minds of the citizens of Charleston only as a delightful summer resort.

At three o'clock in the afternoon I left Charleston for home, in a steam-packet bound to Wilmington, bearing with me many mementoes of the war for independence at the South, and filled with pleasing recollections of a journey of several weeks among the inhabitants of that sunny land where I had enjoyed the hospitality and kindness of true Republicans, keenly alive to the reflected glory of their patriot fathers, and devotedly attached to the free institutions of our common country, the fruits of a happy union.

The waters of the harbor were unruffled by a breeze, and I anticipated a delightful voyage to the Capo Fear; but as the city and fortifications receded, and we crossed the bar to the broad bosom of the Atlantic, we found it heaving with long, silent undulations, the effects of the subsiding anger of a storm. Sea-sickness came upon me, and I went supperless to my berth, where I remained until we were fairly within the mouth of the Cape Fear, at Smith's Island, on the following morning. The low wooded shores of Carolina approached nearer and nearer, and at eight o'clock we landed at the ancient town of Wilmington, on the eastern side of the Cape Fear.

I contemplated spending a day at Wilmington, but circumstances requiring me to hasten homeward, I was there only during the hour while waiting for the starting of the rail-way cars for the North. I had but little opportunity to view the town, where Republicanism was most rife on the sea-board of North Carolina before and during the Revolution; but by the kindness of friends there, especially of Edward Kidder, Esq., I am enabled to give, traditionally and pictorially all that I could have possibly obtained by a protracted visit.

Already I have noticed many stirring events here during the earlier years of the war; it now remains for me to notice only the British occupation.

When, toward the close of 1780, Cornwallis prepared to move from his encampment at Winnsborough, toward North Carolina, he directed Colonel Balfour, at Charleston, to dispatch a sufficient force to take possession of Wilmington, that he might have a sea-port for supplies, while in that state. Major James H. Craig (who was governor general of Canada in 1807) was sent with four hundred regulars to perform

[[[Craig at Wilmington.--His Flight.--Journey Homeward.--Arrival in New York.]]]

{781}that service. He took possession of the town without much resistance, toward the close of January, 1781. He immediately fortified himself, using the Episcopal church, a strong brick edifice (of the front of which the engraving is a correct view), for a citadel.

Craig held undisturbed possession of Wilmington until the arrival of Cornwallis, on the seventh of April, after his battle with Greene, at Guilford. He remained in Wilmington, with his shattered army, eighteen days, to recruit and to determine upon his future course. His residence was on the corner of Market and Third Streets, now (1852) the dwelling of Doctor T. H. Wright. Apprised of Greene's march toward Camden, and hoping to draw him away from Rawdon, then encamped there, Cornwallis marched into Virginia, and joined the forces of Arnold and Phillips at Petersburg.

The subsequent movements of the earl, until his surrender at Yorktown, have been detailed in former chapters.

Major Craig held possession of Wilmington until the autumn of 1781, when, informed of the surrender of Cornwallis, and the approach of St. Clair on his way to join Greene, he abandoned Wilmington and fled to Charleston.

This was the only post in North Carolina held by the British, and with the flight of Craig all military operations ceased within its borders. ***

The rail-way from Wilmington to Weldon, on the Roanoke, a distance of one hundred and sixty-two miles, passes through a level pine region, where little business is done, except gathering of turpentine and the manufacture of tar. It was a dreary day's ride, for on every side were interminable pine forests, dotted with swamps and traversed by numerous streams, all running coastward. We crossed the Neuse at Goldsborough, eighty-five miles north of Wilmington, and the Tar at Rocky Mount, forty miles further. At sunset we passed Halifax, **** near the falls of the Roanoke, and arrived at Weldon at dark. The morning was uncomfortably warm; the evening was damp and chilly; and when we arrived at Richmond the next morning, two hundred and forty miles north of Wilmington, a cold rain was falling, and every thing was incrusted with ice. I tarried a day at Richmond, another at Washington City, and on the fourth of February[[1849]] I sat by my own fireside in the city of New York, after an absence of about eleven weeks, and a journey of almost three thousand miles. There my long and interesting tour ended, except an occasional "journey of a day" to some hallowed spot in its vicinity. God, in his providence, dealt kindly with me, in all that long and devious travel, for I did not suffer sickness for an hour, and no accident befell me on the way.

* This church was demolished in 1841, and upon its site a new Protestant Episcopal church now stands.

** This is from a pencil sketch, by Mr. Charles Burr, of Wilmington.

*** At Elizabeth, higher up on the Cape Fear, in Bladen county, quite a severe battle was fought in July, 1781, between a few refugee Whigs, under Colonel Thomas Brown, and a body of Tories. The Whigs forded the Cape Fear after dark, and before midnight were in deadly conflict with the Tories. The surprise was complete, and the victory quite easy. This bold act crushed Tory ascendency in that section of the state. I received from the venerable Dr. De Rosset, of Wilmington, an interesting account of a gallant affair on the part of the Americans at a place called "The Oaks," near Wilmington, in which he, though a lad, participated. I regret the want of space that precludes the possibility of giving the narrative here. Like many other similar details, the local historian must make the record. Dr. De Rosset is a son, I believe, of the mayor of that name mentioned on page 568. I have also received (too late for insertion), from the venerable A. M. Hooper, of Crawford, Alabama, an interesting sketch of the public life of William Hill, an active patriot of Cape Fear, of whom Josiah Quincy in his journal (1773), said "though a crown officer, a man replete with sentiments of general liberty, and warmly attached to the cause of American freedom."

**** Here the Provincial Congress of North Carolina met on the fourth of April, 1776, and took precedence of all similar assemblies in action favorable to independence. It was at Halifax that Cornwallis crossed the Roanoke (see page 547), while on his march to Virginia, in May, 1781.

[[[New York and its Associations.--First Settlement on Manhattan Island.--Dutch West India Company.]]]

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