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The colonies of North America, united in resistance to
the mother country, had now closed the fifth year of their
war of independence. The scene of conflict was now
almost wholly transferred from the northern to the southern
colonies. The former were permitted a partial repose,
while the latter, as if to compensate for a three years' respite,
were subjected to the worst aspects and usages of
war. Georgia and South Carolina were supposed by
the British commanders to be entirely recovered to the
sway of their master. They suffered, in consequence, the
usual fortune of the vanquished. But the very suffering
proved that they lived, and the struggle for freedom was
continued. Her battles,

“Once begun,
Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,
Though often lost,”

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in a conflict with thrice their number, which, for fierce
encounter and determined resolution, has never been surpassed;—
while he, himself, a fugitive, covered with shame
and disappointment, vainly hung out his tattered banner in
the wilds of North Carolina—a colony sunk into an apathy
which as effectually paralysed her exertions, as did the
presence of superior power paralyse those of her more
suffering sisters. Conscious of indiscretion and a most
fatal presumption—the punishment of which had been as
sudden as it was severe—the defeated general suffered far
less from apprehension of his foes, than of his country.
He had madly risked her strength, at a perilous moment,
in a pitched battle, for which he had made no preparation—
in which he had shown neither resolution nor ability.
The laurels of his old renown withered in an instant—his
reputation was stained with doubt, if not with dishonour.
He stood, anxious and desponding, awaiting, with whatever
moral strength he could command, the summons to that
tribunal of his peers, upon which depended all the remaining
honours of his venerable head.

General Greene succeeded to the command of the miserable
remnant of the southern army. Cool, prudent and
resolute, this able soldier came to his task with a noble
determination to rescue South Carolina from the grasp of
the invader, or to perish in the attempt. Bold as was the
resolution which he entertained and expressed, it was yet
unaccompanied by any rashness of movement or design.
Greene was very soon made conscious that, with the mere
fragments of an army—and such an army!—naked men,
undrilled militia, few in number, disheartened by defeat,
unprovided with arms—he could hope for nothing but disaster,
unless through the exercise of that ever watchful
thought, and rigorous prudence, by which, almost wholly,
the great captain is distinguished. His wariness formed an
essential part of his resolution, and quite as much as his
valour, contributed to effect his object. If he did not always
beat, he at length succeeded in finally baffling, his opponents.
He avoided the conflict which the more presumptuous
Gates had too rashly invited. To baffle the invader,
he well knew, was the best policy by which to conquer
him. The fatigue of forced marches and frequent alarms
to the soldier, in an unknown and hostile country, is more

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discouraging than the actual fight with a superior foe.
Every hour of delay added to the army of Greene while it
diminished that of the British. The militia recovered
breath and courage, and once more rallied around the
continental standard. Small but select bodies of troops
came to her aid from the neighbouring states. North
Carolina began to arouse and shake herself free from her
slumbers. Her yeomen began to feel the shame of previous
flight and inaction. Virginia, though scarcely so active as
her own safety and sense of duty should have made her,
was not altogether indifferent to the earnest entreaties for
assistance of the general of the south;—and from Maryland
and Delaware came a band, few but fearless, and surpassed
by none of all the troops that were ever raised in
America. The tried and tough natives of the mountains
and the swamps emerged once more from their hiding
places under their ancient leaders; more resolute in the
cause of liberty, and more vigorous in their labours for its
attainment, from the shame and the sorrow which followed
their previous and frequent disappointments.

The countenance of the British commander became
troubled as he surveyed the gathering aspects of evil
in that horizon, from which he fondly fancied that he had
banished every cloud. His troops were summoned to
arms and to renewed activity; and Greene was no longer
in a condition to elude the arms of his adversary. Nor
did he now so much desire it. The accessions of force
which his army had received, and which drew upon him
the regards of Lord Cornwallis, had necessarily encouraged
the American general, and inspirited his purposes. His
policy, though still properly cautious, lost something of its
seeming timidity; and he boldly penetrated, in the face of
the foe, into the state which he came to deliver. A series
of small and indecisive, but briliant adventures, which followed
the dispersion of his light troops over the country,
contributed equally to enliven the hopes of the commander
and the courage of his men. The battle of King's Mountain
had been fought, in which the British force under
Ferguson was annihilated. Tarleton, hitherto invincible,
was beaten by Morgan at the Cowpens, with a vastly inferior
army; while Marion, smiting the tories, hip and
thigh, in the swamps below;—and Sumter, in a

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succession of brilliant and rapid actions, in the middle country;
had paralysed the activity and impaired seriously the
strength of those smaller parties of the British, which
were employed to overawe the inhabitants and secure the
conquests which had been already made. In an inconceivably
short space of time, the aspect of things in South
Carolina underwent a change. The panic which followed
the defeat of Gates, had worn off. Disaffection so effectually
showed itself in every section of the state, that the
British power was found active and operative only in those
portions where they held strong garrisons. Greene, however,
while these events were passing, was kept sufficiently
employed by the able captains who opposed him. Brought
to action at Guilford, he was forced, rather than beaten,
from the field; and a few days enabled him to turn upon
his pursuer, and to dog his flight from the state which he
could not keep, to that in which he became a captive.

But, in leaving Carolina, Cornwallis left the interests of
his master in the custody of no inferior representative.
Lord Rawdon, afterwards the Earl of Moira, succeeded
him in the command. He was unquestionably one of the
ablest general officers of the British army; and through a
protracted trial of strength with his opponent, he sustained
the duties of his trust with equal skill, vigilance and valour.
The descent of Greene into South Carolina, brought him
into that same neighbourhood which had proved so fatal to
Gates. His appearance was followed by the sharp action
of Hobkirk's Hill, in which Rawdon displayed many of
those essential qualities of conduct which entitle him to the
name of an able soldier. The field remained with the
British, but it yielded them none but barren fruits. It gave
them the triumph, but not the success. The victory was
only not with Greene. It must have been, but for a misapprehension
of his orders, on the part of one of his best
officers, having command of a favourite regiment.

Our story opens at this period. The battle of Hobkirk's
Hill was productive of effects upon both of the contending
parties, which brought about an equal crisis in their fortunes.
The losses of the two armies, on that occasion,
were nearly the same. But, in the case of Rawdon, the
country offered but few resources against any external
pressure, and immediate and utter ruin must have followed

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his defeat. He had exhausted the means, ravaged the
fields, trampled upon the feelings, and mocked the entreaties
of the surrounding inhabitants. Despair had taught
them a spirit of defiance, and the appearance of an American
army which was able to maintain its ground even
after defeat, encouraged them to give to that feeling its proper
utterance. Cornwallis had long before complained to
the British ministry that he was “surrounded by timid
friends and inveterate foes;” and the diminution of British
strength and courage which necessarily followed the flight
of that commander into Virginia, together with the defeats
sustained at Cowpens and King's Mountain, naturally
enough increased the timidity of the one, and the inveteracy
of the other party. That atrocious and reckless warfare
between the whigs and tories, which had deluged the
fair plains of Carolina with native blood, was now at its
height. The parties, in the language of General Greene,
pursued each other like wild beasts. Pity seemed utterly banished
from their bosoms. Neither sex nor age was secure.
Murder lurked upon the threshold, and conflagration lighted
up, with the blazing fires of ruin, the still, dark hours of
midnight. The reckless brutality of the invader furnished
a sufficient example and provocation to these atrocities:
and the experience of ages has shown that hate never yet
takes a form so hellish, as when it displays itself in the
strifes of kindred. It does not need that we should inquire,
at this late day, what were the causes that led to this division
among a people, in that hour so unseasonably chosen
for civil strife—the hour of foreign invasion. It is sufficient
for our present purpose that the fact, however lamentable,
is equally unquestionable and well known. Our narrative
seeks to illustrate some of the events which grew out of,
and characterized, this warfare. We shall be compelled to
display, along with its virtues of courage, patriotism and
endurance, some of its crimes and horrors! Yet vainly,
as unwisely, would we desire to depict, in human language,
its measureless atrocities. The heart would sicken, the
mind revolt with loathing, at those hideous details, in which
the actors seem to have studiously set themselves free from
all the restraints of humanity. To burn and slay were not
the simple performances of this reckless period and ravaged
country. To burn in wantonness, and to murder in cold

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blood, and by the cruellest tortures, were the familiar
achievements of the time;—and the criminal was too frequently
found to exult over his evil deeds, with the sanguinary
enthusiasm of the Mohawk warrior, even though
the avenging retribution stood beside him with warning
finger and uplifted knife. The face of the country was
overrun by outlaws. Detached bands of ruffians, formed
upon the frontiers of Georgia, and in the wilds of Florida,
availed themselves of the absence of civil authority, to
effect a lodgment in the swamps, the forests and the
mountains. These, mounted on fleet horses, traversed
the state with the wind; now here, now there; one moment
operating on the Savannah, the next on the Peedee.
Sometimes descending within sight of the smokes of the
metropolis; and anon, building their own fires on the lofty
summits of Apalachia and the Ridge. Harassed by the
predatory inroads of these outlawed squadrons, stung by
their insults, and maddened by their enormities, the more
civil and suffering inhabitants, gathered in little bands for
their overthrow; and South Carolina, at the period of our
narrative, presented the terrible spectacle of an entire people
in arms, and hourly engaging in the most sanguinary
conflicts. The district of country called “Ninety-Six,” in
the neighbourhood of which our story will chiefly lie, is estimated
to have had within its borders, at the close of the revolution,
no less than fifteen hundred widows and orphans,
made so during its progress. Despair seems to have
blinded the one party as effectually to the atrocity of their
deeds, as that drunkenness of heart, which follows upon
long continued success, had made insensible the other;—
and as that hour is said to be the darkest which more
immediately precedes the dawn, so was that the bloodiest
in the fortunes of Carolina which ushered in the bright
day of her deliverance. We now proceed with our narrative.

The dusky shadows of evening were approaching fast.
Clouds, black with storm, that threatened momently to discharge
their torrents, depended gloomily above the bosom
of the Wateree. A deathlike stillness overhung the scene.
The very breezes that had swayed the tops of the tall
cypresses, and sported capriciously with the purple berries
of the green vines that decorated them, had at length folded

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themselves up to slumber on the dark surface of the sluggish
swamps below. No voice of bird or beast, no word of
man, denoted, in that ghostlike region, the presence of any
form of life. Nothing in its aspects, certainly, could persuade
the casual wayfarer to suspect that a single human
heart beat within those wild and dark recesses. Gloomy, and
dense, and dim, at all seasons, the very tribute of the spring
in this—the generous gifts of flowers and fruitage—only
served to increase the depth of its shadow in the rank exuberance
of its vegetable life. The vines, and shrubs, and
briars, massed themselves together in an almost solid wall
upon its edge, and forbade to penetrate; and even where,
through temporary vistas, the eye obtained a passage beyond
this formidable barrier, the dismal lakes which it encountered—
still and black—filled with the decayed trunks
of past centuries, and surmounted by towering ranks yet
in the vigour of their growth, defied the examination of the
curious, and seemed to rebuke, with frowning and threatening
shadows, even the presumption of a search.

But in the perilous times of our history, these seeming
discouragements served the kindly purposes of security
and shelter. The swamps of Carolina furnished a place
of refuge to the patriot and fugitive, when the dwelling and
the temple yielded none. The more dense the wall of
briars upon the edge of the swamp, the more dismal the
avenues within, the more acceptable to those who, preferring
liberty over all things, could there build her altars and
tend her sacred fires, without being betrayed by their
smokes. The scene to which our eyes have been addressed,
still and deathlike as it appears, was full of life,—
of hearts that beat with hope, and spirits that burned with
animation; and sudden, even as we gaze, the sluggish
waters of the lake are rippling into tiny waves that betray
the onward motion of some unwonted burden. In the
moment of its deepest silence, a rustling is heard among
the green vines and crowding foliage. A gentle strife takes
place between the broken waters and the rude trunks of
the cypresses; and the prow of an Indian bark shoots
suddenly through the tangled masses, toward the unsuspicious
shore. A single person stands upright in the centre
of the little vessel and guides it in its forward progress
through the still lagunes. Yet no dip of oar, no stroke of

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paddle betrays his efforts, and impairs the solemn silence
of the scene. It speeds along as noiselessly and with as
little effort, as did that fairy bark of Phædria which carried
Sir Guyon over the Idle Lake to the Enchanted Island:—


“Withouten oare or pilot it to guide,
Or winged canvass with the wind to fly.”
The navigator of our little canoe is indebted for her progress
to no magical “pin,” such as impelled the vessel of
Phædria and obeyed the least touch of that laughing enchantress.
Still, the instrument which he employed, if less
magical in its origin, was quite as simple in its use. It
called for almost as little exertion of his arm. His wand
of power was an ordinary cane, nearly twenty feet in
length, the vigorous growth of the swamp around him, to
the slender extremity of which, a crotchet, cut from the
forked branches of some stubborn hickory, was tightly
fastened; one prong of the fork being left free, and presenting
the appearance of a curved finger. Grasping this
instrument at the base, he employed the hook at its extremity,
with equal dexterity and ease, to the overhanging
limbs of the trees, or the scattered links of the thousand
vines which swung above him in the air; and by this process
impelled his vessel in any direction. The yellow
waters of the swamp parted before his prow at the slightest
touch of this simple agent; and the obedient fabric which
it impelled with a corresponding flexibility, yielding itself
readily, shot from side to side, through the sinuous avenues
of the swamp;—as if endued with a consciousness and
impulse of its own, pressing along in silence and in shadow;
now darting freely forward where the stream widened into
little lakelets; now buried in masses of the thicket, so
dense and low, that the steersman was scarcely suffered
time to sink upon his knee, in seeking to pass beneath the
green umbrageous arches. In such a progress the scene
was not without its romance. Picturesque as was this
mode of journeying, it had its concomitants by which it
was rendered yet more so. The instrument which impelled
the vessel, drew down to the hand of the steersman the
massy vines of the thousand varieties of wild grape with
which the middle country of Carolina is literally covered.
These fling themselves with the wind in which they swing

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and sport, arching themselves from tree to tree, and interlacing
their green tresses until the earth below becomes a
stranger to the sun. Their blue clusters droop to the hand,
and hang around the brows of the fainting and feeble partisan,
returning from the conflict. He forgets the cruelties
of his fellow man, in solacing himself with the grateful
tributes which are yielded him by the bounteous nature.
Their fruits relieve his hunger and quench his thirst—their
green leaves refresh his eye—their shadows protect him
from the burning sun-beams, and conceal him from the
pursuit of the foe. Dark, wild, and unlovely as the entrance
of the swamp might seem, still, to the musing heart
and contemplative spirit it had its aspects of beauty, if not
of brightness; and, regarded through the moral medium as
a place of refuge to the virtuous and the good, when lovelier
spots afforded none, it rises at once before the mind,
into an object of sacred and serene delight. Its mysterious
outlets, its Druid-like nooks, its little islands of repose, its
solemn groves, and their adorning parasites, which clamber
up and cling to its slender columns an hundred feet in air,
flinging abroad their tendrils, laden with flaunting blossoms,
and purple berries; presented a picture of strange but harmonious
combination, to which the youthful steersman
who guides our little bark was evidently not insensible.
He paused at moments in favourite spots, and his large
blue eye seemed to dilate, as, looking upward, he caught,
at moments, far, foreign glimpses of the heavens through
the ragged tops of the forest. Were the features of the
face sure indices of the human character, his might well be
assumed to be one in which the passion for the picturesque
entered largely, without conflicting, however, with the
more necessary qualities of decision of mind, and directness
of aim and performance. It would not, indeed, be
altogether safe to say, that, when he paused in his progress
through the swamp, it was not because of some more
serious purpose than belonged to a desire to contemplate
the picturesque in its aspects. A just caution, the result of
that severe experience which the Carolinians had suffered
in the beginning of their conflict with the mother country,
may have prompted him to wait, and watch, and listen,
long before he approached the land. His movements were
all marked by the vigilance of one who was fully conscious

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of the near neighbourhood of danger. Before his vessel
could emerge from the covert, and when a single moment
would have thrust her against the shore, he grasped with
his hook a swinging vine which he had already left behind
him, and arrested her motion. His boat swung lightly upon
her centre, and remained stationary for a brief instant, while,
drawing from his vest a small instrument of cane, he uttered
a clear merry sound, which went, waking up an hundred
echoes, through the still recesses of the swamp. His
whistle, thrice repeated, brought him as many faint responses
from the foot of the hills to which he was approaching;
and with a single farther effort our steersman
threw himself flat in the bottom of his little vessel, which
passed under a mass of foliage that drooped down upon the
water, and in another moment her shallow prow darted upward
upon the shore. The youth, having fastened her
securely amidst the umbrage that grew upon the banks,
now made his way toward the hills, where stood one who
seemed to have been for some time, but not impatiently,
awaiting his approach.

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