sparing
neither women nor children, in the region in which she lived. Invention
and fable have kindly come to the aid of the most famous of the world's
heroines, but neither fable nor invention has touched the character or
the deeds of this heroine of the Revolution. She stands out on the
pages of history rough, uncouth, hot-tempered, unmanageable, uneducated,
impolite, ugly, and sharp-tongued; but, as her friends said of her,
"What a honey of a patriot she was!" She loved the Liberty Boys as well
as she loved her own children. It has been said that she was cruel; but
this charge may as well be put out of sight. Before passing upon it,
we should have to know what the War Woman's eyes had seen, and
what terrible revelations her ears had heard. Standing for American
independence in a region that swarmed with Tories, whose murderous deeds
never have been and never will be fully set forth, Aunt Nancy Hart had
to defend her own hearthstone and her own children.

The maiden name of this remarkable woman was Morgan, and she was born in
North Carolina. She married Benjamin Hart, a brother of Colonel Thomas
Hart of Kentucky. Thomas Hart was the father of the wife of Henry Clay,
and the uncle of the celebrated Thomas Hart Benton. Aunt Nancy and her
husband moved to Georgia with the North Carolina emigrants, and settled
on Broad River, in what is now Elbert County. She was nearly six feet
high, and very muscular,--the result of hard work. She had red hair,
and it is said that she was cross-eyed, but this has been denied on
good authority. It matters little. Her eyes were keen enough to pierce
through all Tory disguises, and that was enough for her. It is certain
that her courage and her confidence kept alive the spark of liberty
in hearts that would otherwise have smothered it, and was largely
responsible for kindling it into the flame that finally swept the
British out of that section, and subdued the Tories. When the Whigs and
patriots who had been her neighbors were compelled to flee before the
murderous Tories, she refused to go with them, but stood her ground and
never ceased to speak her sentiments boldly. Nothing but the wholesome
dread with which she had inspired them prevented the Tories from
murdering her and her children. When General Elijah Clarke moved the
women and children of the Broad River region to an asylum in Kentucky,
and the Liberty Boys had taken refuge in South Carolina, Aunt Nancy Hart
remained at home, an