immediate objects by no means
justified the risk. They felt that "rapture of the strife", in which
the Goth exulted. In addition to these natural endowments for a brave
soldiery, they were good riders and famous marksmen--hunters, that
knew the woods almost as well by night as by day--could wind about
and through the camp of an enemy, as free from suspicion as the
velvet-footed squirrel, who, from the lateral branches of the pine,
looks over their encampment. They possessed resources of knowledge and
ingenuity, while in swamp and thicket, not merely to avoid the danger,
but, in not unfrequent instances, to convert it to their own advantage.
Nothing but the training and direction of such a mind as Marion's
was needed to make, of these men, the most efficient of all partisan
soldiery. The formation of the brigade of which he now prepared to take
command, has a history of its own which is worth telling. The fame which
it subsequently acquired in connection with its leader's name, and which
the local traditions will not willingly let die, will justify us in the
narration. Some few preliminary facts are necessary.

The fall of Charleston, and the dispersion or butchery of those parties
which had kept the field after that event, necessarily depressed the
spirits and discouraged the attempt of the scattered patriots who still
yearned to oppose the invaders. The captivity of many of the leaders
to whom they were accustomed to look for counsel and direction, and
the flight of others, served still further to dissipate any hopes or
purposes which they might have had of concentration. Thousands fled to
the North, and embodied themselves under Washington and other American
Generals, despairing of the cause at home. Everything appeared to be
lost, and a timely proclamation of Sir Henry Clinton, a few days after
the surrender of Charleston, tended yet more to subdue the spirit of
resistance. The proclamation proffered "pardon to the inhabitants"
with some few exceptions, "for their past treasonable offences, and a
reinstatement in their rights and immunities heretofore enjoyed, exempt
from taxation, except by their own legislature." This specious
offer, made at a moment when his power was at its height, everywhere
unquestioned and unopposed, indicated a degree of magnanimity, which
in the case of those thousands in every such contest, who love repose
better than virtue, was everywhere calculated to disarm the inhabitants.
To many ind