第83章 Chapter (3)

When we consider the active malignity by which the civil war in Carolina was marked; the wild forests in which it took place; the peculiar ferocity which it stimulated, and the various characteristics of the local modes of warfare, the chase and the surprise, we shall have no occasion for wonder at the strange and sometimes terrible events by which it was distinguished. One of these, which occurred to Captain, afterwards Colonel Snipes, of Marion's brigade, is a remarkable instance;and, as it has been told elsewhere, in connection with the life of Marion, it may well claim a place in this narrative.

Snipes was a Carolinian, of remarkable strength and courage.

He was equally distinguished for his vindictive hatred of the Tories.

He had suffered some domestic injuries at their hands, and he was one who never permitted himself to forgive. His temper was sanguinary in the extreme, and led him, in his treatment of the loyalists, to such ferocities as subjected him, on more than one occasion, to the harshest rebuke of his commander. It is not certain at what period in the war the following occurrence took place, but it was on one of those occasions when the partisan militia claimed a sort of periodical privilege of abandoning their general to look after their families and domestic interests. Availing himself of this privilege, Snipes pursued his way to his plantation. His route was a circuitous one, but it is probable that he pursued it with little caution.

He was more distinguished for audacity than prudence. The Tories fell upon his trail, which they followed with the keen avidity of the sleuth-hound.

Snipes reached his plantation in safety, unconscious of pursuit.

Having examined the homestead and received an account of all things done in his absence, from a faithful driver, and lulled into security by the seeming quiet and silence of the neighborhood, he retired to rest, and, after the fatigues of the day, soon fell into a profound sleep.

From this he was awakened by the abrupt entrance and cries of his driver.

The faithful negro apprised him, in terror, of the approach of the Tories.

They were already on the plantation. His vigilance alone prevented them from taking his master in bed. Snipes, starting up, proposed to take shelter in the barn, but the driver pointed to the flames already bursting from that building. He had barely time to leave the house, covered only by his night shirt, and, by the counsel of the negro, to fly to the cover of a thick copse of briars and brambles, within fifty yards of the dwelling, when the Tories surrounded it.

The very task of penetrating this copse, so as to screen himself from sight, effectually removed the thin garment which concealed his nakedness.

The shirt was torn from his back by the briars, and the skin shared in its injuries. But, once there, he lay effectually concealed from sight.

Ordinary conjecture would scarcely have supposed that any animal larger than a rabbit would have sought or found shelter in such a region.

The Tories immediately seized upon the negro and demanded his master, at the peril of his life. Knowing and fearing the courage and the arm of Snipes, they did not enter the dwelling, but adopted the less valorous mode of setting it on fire, and, with pointed muskets, surrounded it, in waiting for the moment when their victim should emerge.

He, within a few steps of them, heard their threats and expectations, and beheld all their proceedings. The house was consumed, and the intense heat of the fire subjected our partisan, in his place of retreat, to such torture, as none but the most dogged hardihood could have endured without complaint. The skin was peeled from his body in many places, and the blisters were shown long after, to persons who are still living.*But Snipes too well knew his enemies, and what he had to expect at their hands, to make any confession. He bore patiently the torture, which was terribly increased, when, finding themselves at fault, the Tories brought forward the faithful negro who had thus far saved his master, and determined to extort from him, in the halter, the secret of his hiding-place. But the courage and fidelity of the negro proved superior to the terrors of death. Thrice was he run up the tree, and choked nearly to strangulation, but in vain. His capability to endure proved superior to the will of the Tories to inflict, and he was at length let down, half dead, -- as, in truth, ignorant of the secret which they desired to extort. What were the terrors of Snipes in all this trial?

What his feelings of equal gratitude and apprehension? How noble was the fidelity of the slave -- based upon what gentle and affectionate relationship between himself and master -- probably from boyhood!

Yet this is but one of a thousand such attachments, all equally pure and elevated, and maintained through not dissimilar perils.

* See a biographical sketch of Tarlton Brown, of Barnwell, S.C., a soldier in the revolutionary army. Charleston, 1844, p. 8.

While Marion was operating against Forts Watson and Motte, Sumter, with like success, had besieged the British posts at Orangeburg and Granby.

It was the loss of these posts, and the dread of the subsequent concentration of the whole American force against Camden, that had prompted the destruction and abandonment of that place by Lord Rawdon.

This was the plan and object of Greene. The precipitate movements of Rawdon, who anticipated the purpose of the former, necessarily defeated it.