butary to my own whenever this was possible.

Woodland, S.C., May 25, 1844.

THE LIFE OF FRANCIS MARION

Chapter 1.

Introduction--The Huguenots in South Carolina.

The name of FRANCIS MARION is identified, in the history of South
Carolina, his parent state, with all that is pleasing and exciting in
romance. He is, par excellence, the famous partisan of that region.
While Sumter stands conspicuous for bold daring, fearless intrepidity
and always resolute behavior; while Lee takes eminent rank as a gallant
Captain of Cavalry, the eye and the wing of the southern liberating army
under Greene; Marion is proverbially the great master of strategy--the
wily fox of the swamps--never to be caught, never to be followed,--yet
always at hand, with unconjectured promptness, at the moment when he
is least feared and is least to be expected. His pre-eminence in this
peculiar and most difficult of all kinds of warfare, is not to be
disputed. In his native region he has no competitor, and it is scarcely
possible to compute the vast influence which he possessed and exercised
over the minds and feelings of the people of Carolina, simply through
his own resources, at a period most adverse to their fortunes, and
when the cause of their liberties, everywhere endangered, was almost
everywhere considered hopeless. His name was the great rallying cry
of the yeoman in battle--the word that promised hope--that cheered the
desponding patriot--that startled, and made to pause in his career of
recklessness and blood, the cruel and sanguinary tory. Unprovided with
the means of warfare, no less than of comfort--wanting equally in food
and weapons--we find him supplying the one deficiency with a cheerful
courage that never failed; the other with the resources of a genius
that seemed to wish for nothing from without. With a force
constantly fluctuating and feeble in consequence of the most ordinary
necessities--half naked men, feeding upon unsalted pottage,--forced to
fight the enemy by day, and look after their little families, concealed
in swamp or thicket, by night--he still contrived,--one knows not
well how,--to keep alive and bright the sacred fire of his country's
liberties, at moments when they seemed to have no other champion.
In this toil and watch, taken cheerfully and with spirits that never
appeared to lose their tone and elasticity, tradition ascribes to him a
series of achievements, which, if they were small in