tical servitude; they knew their rights, and knowing, dared to
maintain them. Their movement was voluntary, as they gathered their
small but resolute force of picked men, and called Marion to its
command. He had already assumed it, and caused the Tories to feel his
new authority when the defeat of Gates took place. It roused him at
once to a new effort to redeem the fortunes of war. He was already in
the neighborhood of the field, and hearing that a British guard was on
its way with a considerable body of prisoners, he determined to arrest
the party on its march. Two days after the battle, he concerted an
attack, and with the loss of but one man, killed and took 22 regulars
and 2 Tories prisoners, and retook 150 continentals of the Maryland
line. He was now a recognized leader in the field, and the British
commander-in-chief directed his efforts to his overthrow. "I most
sincerely hope," wrote Cornwallis to Tarleton, "that you will get at
Mr. Marion." But Mr. Marion was not so easily to be caught. On the
appearance of a superior force, under the command of Tarleton, which
it would have been vain to resist, the skilful partisan turned his
forces in another direction, to the borders of North Carolina, where
he overawed the Scotch Tories in that disaffected region. The ruthless
conduct of the British whom he had left behind, now raised the South
Carolinians to fresh resistance, when Marion, ever mindful of his
opportunity, returned to the State with speed, accomplishing sixty
miles in one day, and in a bold night attack, defeated a large body of
Tories on the Black Mingo. Following this up with some smaller
successes of the kind, he again attracted the attention of Tarleton,
who issued out of Charleston in force for his capture, and when he was
fairly on his heels, wearied out and perplexed by the windings of his
foe, gave up the chase, it is said, with the exclamation, "Come, my
boys! let us go back. We will soon find the Game Cock [Marion's
brother partisan, Sumter], but as for this damned Swamp-fox, the devil
himself could not catch him."

The tide was now turning, as the people felt their strength. King's
Mountain, in the autumn of this memorable 1780, brought a vast
accession of strength to the popular cause, in the proof that the best
British troops were not invincible before an aroused yeomanry; but
there was much yet to be done before the day of final deliverance was
secured. It was a slow, weary, harassing policy