The Life of Francis Marion

e Huguenots in

-to keep alive and bright the sacred fire of his country's liberties, at moments when they seemed to have no other champion. In this toil and watch, taken cheerfully and with spirits that never appeared to lose their tone and elasticity, tradition ascribes to him a series of achievements, which, if they were small in comparison with the great performances of European war, were scarcely less important; and which, if they sometimes transcend belief, must yet always delight the imagination. His adventures have given a rich coloring to fable, and have stimulated its performances. The language of song and story has been employed to do them honor, and our children are taught, in lessons that they love, to lisp the deeds and the patriotism of his band. "Marion"-"Marion's Brigade" and "Marion's men", have passed into household words, which the young utter with an enthusiasm much more confiding than that which they yield to the wondrous performances of Greece and Ilium. They recall, when spoken, a long and delightful series of brilliant exploits, wild adventures, by day and night, in swamp and thicket, sudden and strange manoeuvres, and a generous, unwavering ardor, that never found any peril too hazardous, or any suffering too unendurable. The theme, thus invested, seems to have escaped the ordinary bounds of history. It is no longer within the province of the historian. It has passed into the hands of the poet, and seems to scorn the appeal to authentic chronicles. When we look for the record we find but little authority for a faith so confiding, and seemingly so exaggerated. The story of the Revolution in the southern colonies has been badly kept. Documentary proofs are few, bald and uninteresting. A simple paragraph in the newspapers,-those newspapers issued not unfrequently in cities where the enemy had power, and in the control of Editors, unlike the present, who were seldom able to expatiate upon the achievem

the citizen, almost in the same degree with the Catholic inhabitants, had, under the weak and tyrannous sway of the former monarch, proved totally inadequate to their protection. Long before its formal revocation, the unmeasured and inhuman persecutions to which they were subjected, drove thousands of them into voluntary banishment. The subsequent decree of Louis, by which even the nominal securities of the Huguenots were withdrawn, increased the number of the exiles, and completed the sentence of separation from all those ties which bind the son to the soil. The neighboring Protestant countries received the fugitives, the

ervations faites

a Haye, 1698, p. 36

tory of th

am Shergold]: Histo

and Co. 1840. p. 2

says, "near fifty

Voltaire writes tha

ly peopled with Fren

s uncle to the poe

., 1

es; and assigning ample tracts of land for their occupation, beheld them, without displeasure, settling down in exclusive colonies, in which they sought to maintain, as far as possible, the pious habits and customs of the mother country. One of these communities, comprising from seventy to eighty families, found their way to the banks of the Santee in South Carolina.* From this point they gradually spread themselves out so as to embrace, in partial settlements, the spacious tract of country stretching to the Winyah, on the one hand, and the sources of Cooper River on the other; extending upward into the interior, following the course of the Santee nearly to the point where it loses its identity in receiving the descending streams of the Wateree and Congaree. These settlers were generally poor. They had been despoiled of all their goods by the persecutions which had driven them into exile. This, indeed, had been one of the favorite modes by which this result had been effected. Doubtless, also, it had been, among the subordinates of the crown, one of the chief motives of the persecution. It was a frequen

hurch History, say

d fami

o whom they taught, along with gentler habits and morals, a better taste for music and the dance! To subdue the forest, of itself, to European hands, implied labors not unlike those of Hercules. But the refugees, though a gentle race, were men of soul and strength, capable of great sacrifices, and protracted self-denial. Accommodating themselves with a patient courage to the necessities before them, they cheerfully undertook and accomplished their tasks. We have more than one lively picture among the early chroniclers of the distress and hardship which they were compelled to encounter at the first. But, in this particular, there was nothing peculiar in their situation. It differed in no respect from that which fell to the lot of all the early colonists in America. The toil of felling trees, over whose heavy boughs and knotty arms the winters of centuries had passed; the constant danger from noxious reptiles and beasts of prey, which, coiled in the bush or crouching in the brake, lurked day and night, in waiting for the incautious victim; and, most insidious and fatal enemy of all, the malaria of the swamp, of the rank and affluent soil, for the first time laid open to the sun; these are all only the ordinary evils which encountered in America, at the very threshold, the advances of Europ

Mrs. Judith Manig

ed by Ramsay.-Hist

detail of the usu

he escape of the Hu

gration, see the fi

tt

uguenot colony which lay immediately along the Santee. The passages which describe his approach to the country which they occupied, the hospitable reception which they gave him, the comforts they enjoyed, the gentleness of their habits, the simplicity of their lives, and their solicitude in behalf of strangers, are necessary to furnish the moral of those fortunes, the beginning of which was so severe and perilous. "There are," says he, "about seventy families seated on this river, WHO LIVE AS DECENTLY AND HAPPILY AS ANY PLANTERS IN THESE SOUTHWARD PARTS OF AMERICA. THE FRENCH BEING A TEMPERATE, INDUSTRIOUS PEOPLE, some of them bringing very little of effects, YET, BY THEIR ENDEAVORS AND MUTUAL ASSISTANCE AMONG THEMSELVES (which is highly to be commended), HAVE OUTSTRIPT OUR ENGLISH, WHO BROUGHT WITH THEM LARGER FORTUNES, though (as it seems) less endeavor to manage their talent to the best advantage. 'Tis admirable to see what time and industry will (with God's blessing) effect," &c.... ... "We lay all that night at Mons. EUGEE'S (Huger), and the next morning set out farther, to go the remainder of our voyage by land. At ten o'clock we passed over a narrow, deep swamp, having left the three Indian men and one woman, that had piloted the canoe from Ashley river, having hired a Sewee Indian, a ta

of a Thousand Mile

to North Carolina"

g. This unfortunate

He was confounded,

he represented, and

ge of depriving them

as made captive

tter escaped, but L

fire-

[of St. James, oth

mbly, in 1706, to h

at the same time, ex

the Church of Engla

ey professed high

act, April 9, 1706,

e into a parish."-'

, ch. 9,

age to Carolina, c

ural history of tha

and miles, travell

By John Lawson, Ge

rolina. Lon

nd watch, patient endurance of sickness and suffering, sustained only by sympathy with one another and a humble reliance upon divine mercy, should not produce many perfect characters-men like Francis Marion, the beautiful symmetry of whose moral structure leaves us nothing to regret in the analysis of his life. Uncompromising in the cause of truth, stern in the prosecution of his duties, hardy and fearless as the soldier, he was yet, in peace, equally gentle and compassionate, pleased to be merciful, glad and ready to forgive, sweetly patient of mood, and distinguished througho

qualifications of t

hile engaged in t

which frequently r

icles, to find hims

y some of those ru

njustice disfigure s

he beauty of its po

s connection. Our H

t long suffered to

y. The very fact t

age of Mr. Lawson,

ed in like circumst

and dependent, and

, in the smiles of

n in the bosoms of

rudge upon which t

ces and hostilities

en their respective

the moral stock w

into the wildernes

at least maintaine

had contrived to

World; and, while F

ts of the colony, st

stility, it was per

hose frontiers were

ld find it easy to c

, with those, their

language. It is not

he Huguenot settle

too tenacious of t

age. They did not

r neighbors; but, ma

lonized in a body, h

themselves as a si

spect they were no

nd their descendant

s always been thou

to their self-este

colonists, whether

sults of being, or

re soon perceptible

l and social disabi

o their British n

e proprietors, a ma

historian, prono

eloved by all partie

n Governor of the

tation in the colo

invalid all his

his humiliating dis

for a considerable

lives, the purity o

ed fidelity in the c

y to be just. An a

THEN inhabitants, f

claim the same a

ce to all Christian

gees on a footing o

bitants, and put

ies betw

rolina, his first forward step was into a howling wilderness. The Santee settlement, though but forty miles distant

eptiles of

gly beau

three fat turkeys in the space of half an hour. "When we were all asleep," says our traveller, "in the beginning of the night, we were awakened with the dismallest and most hideous noise that ever pierced my ears. This sudden surprisal incapacitated us of guessing what this threatening noise might proceed from; but our Indian pilot (who knew these parts very wel

f our young Huguenots. In this school, without question, the swamp and forest partisans of a future day took some of their first and most valuable lessons in war. Here they learned to be watchful and circumspect, cool in danger, steady in advance, heedful of every movement of the foe, and-which is of the very last importance in such a country and in such a warfare as it indicates-happily dextrous in emergencies to seize upon the momentary casualty, the sudden chance-to conve