The return of the various scouting parties which Marion sent out, soon set his little brigade in motion. The intelligence which they brought was well calculated to sting his soldiers, as well as himself, into immediate activity. The medicine which the British had administered to the country they abandoned, had not been suffered to lose any of its bitterness. As had been feared, the Tories had laid waste the farms and plantations. The region through which Major Wemyss had passed, for seventy miles in length and fifteen in breadth, displayed one broad face of desolation. It had been swept by sword and fire.
Havoc had exercised its most ingenious powers of destruction.
On most of the plantations the houses were given to the flames, the inhabitants plundered of all their possessions, and the stock, especially the sheep, wantonly shot or bayoneted. Wemyss seems to have been particularly hostile to looms and sheep, simply because they supplied the inhabitants with clothing. He seldom suffered the furniture to be withdrawn from a dwelling which he had doomed to be destroyed:
Presbyterian churches he burnt religiously, as so many "sedition-shops".
It was fortunate for the wretched country, thus ravaged, that the corn was not generally housed; it was only in part destroyed.
Had the Tories played the same game in the cornfields of the patriots, that Grant's men had done in those of the Cherokees, as recorded in an early page of this volume,* the devastation would have been complete.
They had not limited their proceedings to these minor crimes. They had added human butchery and hanging to those other offences for which vengeance was in store. The wife and children of one Adam Cusack, threw themselves across the path of Wemyss to obtain the pardon of the husband and the father.
The crime of Cusack was in having taken arms against the enemy.
Their prayers were in vain. But for the interference of his own officers, the ruthless Briton would have ridden over the kneeling innocents.
This was not the only savage murder of the same description which this wretched people had to endure. But such atrocities were sharp medicines, benefits in disguise, good against cowardice, selfishness, double-dealing, and deficient patriotism.
They worked famously upon the natives, while they proved the invader to be as little capable of good policy, as of ordinary humanity. They roused the spirit of the militia, whet their anger and their swords together, and, by the time that Marion reappeared, they were ready for their General.
He asked for nothing more. He re-entered South Carolina by a forced march.
Travelling night and day, he hurried through the Tory settlements on Little Pedee, a space of sixty miles, on the second day of his journey.
At Lynch's Creek he was joined by Captains James and Mouzon, with a considerable body of men. He was prepared to give them instant employment. Major Wemyss had retired to Georgetown, but Marion was advised of a large body of Tories at Black Mingo, fifteen miles below, under the command of Capt. John Coming Ball.
Marion was in expectation, every moment, of additional troops, but he determined not to wait for them. He found his men in the proper mood for fight, and at such times small inequalities of force are not to be regarded. He resolved to give the humor vent, and at once commenced his march for the enemy's encampment.
He found the Tories strongly posted at Shepherd's Ferry, on the south side of the Black Mingo, on a deep navigable stream, the passage of which they commanded. There was but one other approach to them, about a mile above their position, through a boggy causeway, and over a bridge of planks. It was nearly midnight when Marion's troops reached this pass. While the horses were crossing the bridge, an alarm-gun was heard from the Tory camp. Celerity now became as necessary to success as caution, and Marion ordered his men to follow him at full gallop. When they reached the main road, about three hundred yards from the enemy, the whole force, with the exception of a small body acting as cavalry, dismounted.
A body of picked men, under Captain Waties, was ordered down the road to attack Dollard's house, where the Tories had been posted.
Two companies, under Col. Hugh Horry, were sent to the right, and the cavalry to the left, to support the attack, Marion himself bringing up the reserve. It so happened, however, that the Tories had taken the alarm, and having withdrawn from the house, had chosen a strong position in an old field near it. Here they encountered Horry's command, on the advance, with a fire equally severe and unexpected.
The effect was that of a surprise upon the assailants.
Horry's troops fell back in confusion, but were promptly rallied and brought to the charge. The battle was obstinate and bloody, but the appearance of the corps under Waties, suddenly, in the rear of the Tories, soon brought it to a close.
Finding themselves between two fires, the enemy gave way in all directions, and fled for refuge to the neighboring swamp of Black Mingo.
So warmly contested was this affair, that, though soon over, fully one third of the men brought into the field were put `hors de combat'.
The loss of Marion was proportionably very considerable.
Captain Logan was among his slain; and Captain Mouzon and Lieut. Scott so severely wounded as to be unfit for future service.
The force of the Tories was almost twice as great as that of the Whigs.
They lost their commander, and left nearly half their number, killed and wounded, on the ground. But for the alarm given by the tread of Marion's horses, while crossing the neighboring bridge, the Tories would most probably have been surprised. At any rate, the affair would have been settled without subjecting the brigade to the severe loss which it sustained. After this event Marion adopted the precaution, whenever about to cross a bridge by night, with an enemy near, to cover the planks with the blankets of his men.
