Marion was conducted with great caution.
The operations of the partisan, meanwhile, were continued without
interruption. About the middle of February, he was apprised of the march
of Major McIlraith from Nelson's Ferry, at the head of a force fully
equal to his own. This British officer seems to have been singularly
unlike his brethren in some remarkable particulars. He took no pleasure
in burning houses, the hospitality of which he had enjoyed; he destroyed
no cattle wantonly, and hung no unhappy prisoner. The story goes that
while Marion was pressing upon the steps of the enemy, he paused at the
house of a venerable lady who had been always a friend to the Whigs, and
who now declared her unhappiness at seeing him. Her reason being asked,
she declared that she conjectured his purpose--that he was pursuing
McIlraith, and that so honorable and gentle had been the conduct of
that officer, on his march, that she was really quite unwilling that
he should suffer harm, though an enemy. What he heard did not impair
Marion's activity, but it tended somewhat to subdue those fiercer
feelings which ordinarily governed the partisans in that sanguinary
warfare. He encountered and assailed McIlraith on the road near Half-way
Swamp, first cutting off two picquets in his rear in succession, then
wheeling round his main body, attacked him at the same moment in flank
and front. McIlraith was without cavalry, and his situation was perilous
in the extreme. But he was a brave fellow, and Marion had few bayonets.
By forced marches and constant skirmishing, the British major gained an
open field upon the road. He posted himself within the enclosure upon
the west of the road. Marion pitched his camp on the edge of a large
cypress pond, which lay on the east, and closely skirted the highway.
Here McIlraith sent him a flag, reproaching him with shooting his
picquets, contrary, as he alleged, to all the laws of civilized
warfare, and concluded with defying him to combat in the open field.
The arguments of military men, on the subject of the laws of civilized
warfare, are sometimes equally absurd and impertinent. Warfare itself is
against all the laws of civilisation, and there is something ludicrous
in the stronger reproaching the feebler power, that it should resort to
such means as are in its possession, for reconciling the inequalities of
force between them. Marion's reply to McIlraith was sufficiently to
the purpose. He said that the practice