erran the
country, destroyed homes, seized food, cattle, and horses, and left
devastation to mark the trail. In 1779 Mrs. Pinckney's son wrote her
that Provost, the British leader, had destroyed the plantation home
where the family treasure had been stored, and that everything had been
burned or stolen; but her reply had no wail of despair in it: "My Dear
Tomm: I have just received your letter with the account of my losses,
and your almost ruined fortunes by the enemy. A severe blow! but I feel
not for myself, but for you.... Your Brother's timely generous offer, to
divide what little remains to him among us, is worthy of him...."[307]

The financial distress of Mrs. Pinckney might be cited as typical of the
fate of many aristocratic and wealthy families of Virginia and South
Carolina. Owner of many thousands of acres and a multitude of slaves,
she was reduced to such straits that she could not meet ordinary debts.
Shortly after the Revolution she wrote in reply to a request for payment
of such a bill: "I am sorry I am under a necessity to send this
unaccompanied with the amount of my account due to you. It may seem
strange that a single woman, accused of no crime, who had a fortune to
live genteely in any part of the world, that fortune too in different
kinds of property, and in four or five different parts of the country,
should be in so short a time so entirely deprived of it as not to be
able to pay a debt under 60 pound sterling, but such is my singular
case. After the many losses I have met with for the last three or four
desolating years from fire and plunder, both in country and town, I
still had some thing to subsist upon, but alas the hand of power has
deprived me of the greatest part of that, and accident of the
rest."[308]

It was indeed a day that called for the strongest type of courage, and
nobly did the women face the crisis. In the South the wives and
daughters of patriots were forced to appear at balls given by the
invading forces, to entertain British officers, to act as hostesses to
unbidden guests, and to act the part pleasantly, lest the unscrupulous
enemy wreak vengeance upon them and their possessions. The constant
search on the part of the British for refugees brought these women
moments when fear or even a second's hesitation would have proved
disastrous. One evening Marion, the famous "Swamp-Fox," came worn out to
the home of Mrs. Horry, daughter of Eliza Pinckney, and so completely
exhauste