ance, the most ordinary agent, into
a means of extrication or offence. It was in this last respect
particularly, in being quick to see, and prompt to avail themselves of
the happy chance or instrument, that the partisans of the revolution
in the southern colonies, under Marion and others, asserted their vast
superiority over the invader, and maintained their ground, and obtained
their final triumph, in spite of every inequality of arms and numbers.

Chapter 2.

The Marion Family--Birth of Francis Marion--His Youth--
Shipwreck.

We have dwelt upon the Huguenot Settlement in Carolina, somewhat more
largely than our immediate subject would seem to require. Our apology
must be found in the obvious importance and beauty of the fact, could
this be shown, that the character of Francis Marion was in truth a
remarkable illustration, in all its parts, of the moral nature which
prevailed in this little colony of exiles: that, from the harmony
existing among them, their purity of conduct, propriety of sentiment,
the modesty of their deportment and the firmness of their virtues,
he most naturally drew all the components of his own. His hardihood,
elasticity, great courage and admirable dexterity in war, were also the
natural results of their frontier position. We do not pretend that his
acquisitions were at all peculiar to himself. On the contrary, we take
for granted, that every distinguished person will, in some considerable
degree, betray in his own mind and conduct, the most striking of those
characteristics, which mark the community in which he has had his early
training; that his actions will, in great measure, declare what sort
of moral qualities have been set before his eyes, not so much by his
immediate family, as by the society at large in which he lives; that he
will represent that society rather than his immediate family, as it
is the nature of superior minds to rush out of the narrow circles of
domestic life; and that his whole after-performances, even where he may
appear in the garb and guise of the reformer, will indicate in
numerous vital respects, the tastes and temper of the very people whose
alteration and improvement he seeks. The memoir upon which we are about
to enter, will, we apprehend, justify the preliminary chapter which
has been given to the history of the Huguenots upon the Santee. Gabriel
Marion, the grandfather of our subject, was one of those who left France
in 1685. His son, name