ed, the dishonored major of
Continentals--for he was such--disappeared from sight, followed by his
associate. His farther punishment was of a kind somewhat differing from
those which are common to armies, by which the profession of arms is
sometimes quite as much dishonored as the criminal. Marion endeavored,
by his punishments, to elevate the sense of character in the spectators.
He had some of the notions of Napoleon on this subject. He was averse
to those brutal punishments which, in the creature, degrade the glorious
image of the Creator. In the case of the two offenders, thus dismissed
from his presence, the penalty was, of all others, the most terrible to
persons, in whose minds there remained the sparks even of a conventional
honor. These men had been guilty of numerous offences against humanity.
Marion expelled them from his brigade. Subsequently, their actions
became such, that he proclaimed their outlawry through the country.** By
one of these men he was challenged to single combat, but he treated the
summons with deserved contempt. His composure remained unruffled by the
circumstance.

* Horry's MS., from which the several extracts preceding
have been made.--pp. 100-103.

** He set up on trees and houses, in public places,
proclamations in substance thus, that Major----and Capt.
----
did not belong to his brigade, that they were banditti,
robbers and thieves,--were hereby deemed out of the laws,
and might be killed wherever found.--Horry's MS. pp. 104,
105.--

In this affair, as in numerous others, Marion's great knowledge of the
militia service, and of the peculiar people with whom he sometimes had
to deal, enabled him to relieve himself with little difficulty from
troublesome companions. Of these he necessarily had many; for the
exigencies of the country were such that patriotism was not permitted
to be too nice in the material which it was compelled to employ. The
refugees were from various quarters--were sometimes, as we have seen,
adopted into his ranks from those of the defeated Tories, and were
frequently grossly ignorant, not only of what was due to the community
in which they found themselves, but still more ignorant of the
obligations of that military law to which they voluntarily put
themselves in subjection. Marion's modes of punishment happily reached
all such cases without making the unhappy offender pay too dearly for
the sin of ignorance. On one oc