EDITOR’S PREFACE

Although the Historical Manuscripts Commission (England) has dealt with several of the Northumberland Collections, the Commission has not thought fit to print among the papers of the Craven family of Osgodby, the narrative of the fifth baronet’s experiences in South Carolina during the War of American Independence. The reason for this decision may be either a belief that the episode is not of value from a historical standpoint; or a suspicion that the facts owe something to the expansion of a man writing many years later. However this may be, the story seemed to the present Editor to possess a certain poignancy, and, notwithstanding some intimate passages, to be worthy of a public wider than that of the County of its birth. He has, therefore, with such skill as he possesses prepared it for publication.

It will be noticed that Sir Edward Craven nowhere names the regiment in which he served, but it appears from other sources that it was the 33rd Regiment of Foot, now styled the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment.

The Editor has thought proper to retain the fanciful title prefixed by the writer, but has added some Chapter headings.

CHAPTER I SIR EDWARD’S PREFACE

Not Lord Chatham, not Alexander the Great, nor Cæsar has ever conquered so much territory in the course of all their wars as Lord North has lost in one campaign!

Six months ago I went through the old papers in the Strongroom. I noted that neither my father nor my grandfather had added a line, save in the way of leases and the like, to the records which the first and second baronets left of the Siege of Newcastle, and of the Union troubles. It occurred to me that we owed something to posterity; and that, for lack of more important matter, my fortunes en campagne in America were a part of the family history, and proper to be preserved.

For an idle man, however, to will and to do are two things; and I might never have proceeded beyond the former if I had not a day or two later taken up the Gentleman’s Magazine and learned 2that General Washington of the United States of America had passed away at his seat at Mount Vernon on the fourteenth of the preceding month. That gave me the needed fillip. I never knew him; at least I never knew him by that title, since on the few occasions on which I met him, it was beyond my duty as an officer in His Majesty’s service to admit the existence of the States. I believe him, however, to have been a gentleman of good family, kindly and dignified, somewhat of the old school, and of considerable military ability; one, too, whose influence went some way towards checking within his sphere of action the rancour that in the Southern Colonies stained the Continental Cause and did not spare ours. Unfortunately from ’80 onwards my duty led me into the Carolinas; and it was to the sad and unusual nature of the war in those provinces that what was singular in my experiences was due.

Previously, to be brief, I had served for three years in the north, I had suffered the humiliation of surrendering with that gallant and loyal gentleman, General Burgoyne, I had been exchanged. But my experiences in Canada and on the Hudson were those of a hundred others and I pass over them, proposing to begin my relation at the point at which the fortunes of war cast me adrift, and flung me on my own resources.

3From where I write, looking out on the barren, frost-bound hills of the Border, it is a far cry to the rice-fields and tropical lands of the Tidewater of Carolina; and a farther cry to the rolling country of pleasant vale and forest that sweeps upwards to the foothills, and so to the misty distances of the Blue Ridge. In those days it was often a three months’ passage, on salt meat and stale water; a passage of which many a poor fellow never saw the end. To-day I cross in a moment. But before I do so, let me add a word of preface, that all who read this may view the matter from our standpoint in ’80, midway in the fighting, rather than from the point at which we stand to-day, with the end behind us and an American Minister at St. James’s.

I say nothing about the Tea Duty or the claim to tax the Colonies. I believe that we had a right to have money from them; our fleet covered their trade. But whether we should not have left it to them to tax themselves is another matter, and seems more English. What is certain is, that we had through the war the most worthless government that ever held power in England; and so my father said a hundred times—and voted for them steadily till the day they fell!

In the City and at Brooks’s the war was never popular. There were many in both who asked with 4Mr. Walpole what we should gain by triumph itself; would America, laid waste, replace America flourishing, rich and free? And here and there an officer declined to serve against his kinsmen and was allowed to stand aside. But for the most part we ran to it, younger sons and eldest too, from my neighbor Lord Percy downward, as to an adventure. All who could beg or buy a commission mounted the cockade. The thing was fashionable—with two results that I came to think unhappy.

The first was that too many of our people—those in particular who had the least right to do so—looked down on the Colonials from a social height as on a set of farmers and clodhoppers; forgetting that many of them were our own cousins once or twice removed, and that some had been bred up beside us at Westminster and Oxford. The second was that those of us who had seen service under the great Frederick, or had learned our drill at Finchley or Hounslow, sneered at the rebel officers as tailors, called them Mohairs—God knows why!—and made light not only of their skill but their courage, treating even the Loyalists who joined us as of a lower grade.

For these two prejudices we were to pay very dearly. They not only brought into the struggle a bitterness which was needless and to be deplored, 5but, as things turned out, they reacted very unpleasantly on ourselves. It was bad enough to be worsted by those whom the meaner and more foolish among us regarded as of lower clay; it was still more mortifying for old soldiers, who had learned their drill in the barrack-yard, to find that it went for little in face of the immensities of that unknown continent; and that among the forests of the Hudson or in the marshes of the Savannah our military art was of far less value than the power to shoot straight, or to lay an ambush after the Indian fashion.

Owing to these two prejudices the lessons we had to learn in the war were the more painful. Not that our poor fellows did not fight. Believe me, they fought with the most dogged courage—sometimes when the only powder they had was the powder on their queues, and the steel or the clubbed musket was their only weapon. But the others fought too and stubbornly—what else could we expect? They were of our blood and bone; they, too, were Britons. And they were in their own forests, on their own rivers,—which seemed to be seas to us—they were fighting for their homes and barns and orchards. Whereas we were twelve weeks from home, ill-fed, ill-found, and ill-supported, scattered over hundreds of leagues, and lost in pathless wilds 6that grew more hostile as outrage on the one side or the other embittered our relations.

The first half of the war was fought in the northern colonies. It ended sadly, as all remember, in our surrender at Saratoga, and in the retreat of General Clinton from Philadelphia to the sea-coast. After that, the fighting was transferred to the south, to Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia. We took Charles Town, we defeated the Continental Army at Camden, we had South Carolina in our hands, we looked hopefully towards the north. And then, in the late summer of ’80, when the south seemed to be in our hands, the country on all sides rose against us as by magic and the war took on a new and more savage character. But enough has been said by way of general preface.

For myself. On the fifth of October of that year ’80, I was sent from Charlotte—whither my Lord Cornwallis had advanced on his way into North Carolina—with important orders to Colonel Ferguson, who at the time was covering the left flank with a strong body of royalists. On the sixth, accompanied by Simms, my orderly, and after a perilous ride, I reached Ferguson’s camp on King’s Mountain. He knew that the enemy were in strength in the neighbourhood, and, after falling back some distance, he had taken up a strong 7position on a ridge, which rose above the forest—a more active and able officer was not in the service. But this time he had either under-valued his opponents, sturdy hunters and settlers from the Backwaters, or he had over-estimated the strength of his position; and the lamentable issue of the fight on the following day is well known. After a fierce struggle Ferguson’s men were out-flanked and surrounded, and he himself fell, striving bravely to the last, while the greater part of his force was captured or cut to pieces. Of the few who had the good

fortune to break through the ring I was one. Nor was I only fortunate for myself, for I carried off poor Simms on my crupper. From this point my relation starts.

CHAPTER II UNDER KING’S MOUNTAIN

But Major Ferguson by endeavoring to intercept the enemy in this retreat unfortunately gave time for fresh bodies of men to pass the mountains and to unite into a corps far superior to that which he commanded. They came up with him and after a sharp action entirely defeated him. Ferguson was killed and all his party either slain or taken.

I was riding my grey, Minden, on that day, and I never wish to ride a better nag. But the weight of two heavy men is much for the staunchest horse, and when it fell, as it did a few yards short of safety, it came to the ground so heavily that the shock drove the breath out of my body. For a moment I did not know what had befallen me. I lay and felt nothing. If I thought at all, I supposed that the horse had stumbled. Then, coming to myself I tried to rise, and sank with the sweat starting from every pore.

Simms, three or four yards from me, lay still. The horse lay as still, but on my right shoulder, pinning me down and it needed no more to tell me that my sword-arm was broken, and that I was 9helpless. The next thing that I remember, a man was standing some paces from me and covering me with one of their Deckhard rifles.

Instinct speaks before reason. “Don’t shoot!” I cried.

“Why not?” he answered. “D—n you, your time is out! It was your turn at the Waxhaws and it’s little quarter you gave us there! It’s our turn to-day!”

Instinct prevailed once more. I knew that I could not rise, but I tried to rise. Then I fainted.

When I opened my eyes again—to the circle of blue sky and the feathery tree-tops waving about the little clearing—the man was standing over me, a dark figure leaning on his gun. He was looking down at me. As soon as I could direct my mind to him, “You have the advantage of me, stranger,” he said dryly. “A redcoat’s no more to me than a quail. But shooting a man who shams to be dead is not in my way. It’s you, that will pay the price, however.”

“You’d not shoot a wounded man,” I muttered—not that for the moment I seemed to care greatly.

“Who shot them at the Waxhaws?” he retorted savagely. “And hung them at Augusta? And gave them to the Indians to do worse things with? By G—d!” and with that he stopped speaking, and 10with an ugly look, he handled his rifle as if he were going to knock out my brains with the stock.

But I was past fear and I was in pain. “Do your worst!” I said recklessly, “And God save the King!”

He lowered his gun and seemed to think better of it. He even smiled in an acrid sort of fashion, as he looked down at me. “Well, Britisher,” he said, “you have the advantage of me! But if you can tell me what I am going to do with you—”

“Hospital,” I murmured.

“Hospital!” he repeated. “Jerusalem! He says Hospital! Man, do you know that there are nine here who lost their folks at the Waxhaws, and thirty who are akin to them, and who’ve sworn, every man of them, to give no quarter to a Tory or an Englishman! And I’ll not deny,” he continued in a lower tone, “that I’ve sworn the same, and am perjured this moment. And he says—Hospital!”

“But the laws of war!” I protested weakly.

“Ay, you score them plainly enough on your poor devils’ backs!”

“You make a mistake,” I said. I was becoming a little clearer in my mind. “Those are the Articles of war.”

“Indeed!” he replied. And he stared at me as if 11he had never seen a King’s officer before. Then “Why did you stop to pick up that fellow?” he asked, indicating poor Simms by a gesture. “If you’d ridden straight away, I should have been too late. It was your pause that gave me time to level at your horse and bring it down.”

I raised myself on my elbow and found that the man had released me from Minden and had lifted me to the edge of the clearing. Simms still sprawled where he had fallen, with his arms cast wide and his neck awry. The horse lay half in and half out of the stagnant pool that lapped the roots of the trees on the farther side of the clearing.

“Is he dead?” I asked, staring at Simms.

“Neck broken,” the man replied, “Who was he?”

“My orderly.”

“Rank and file?”

“What else?” I said.

He grunted. “Is that in the Articles of War, too?” he said. “But any way, you did him little good, and wrecked yourself by it!” Then, in a different tone, “See here,” he said, “you’ve tricked me, shamming to be dead and playing ’possum. I can’t leave you to the buzzards, nor yet carry you to the camp, for they’ll be for shooting you—shooting you, my friend, for certain! You’ll have to ride if I can get you a horse. That is your only 12chance. I shall be away some time and if you wish to live you will lie close. It’s not healthy anywhere this side of the Catawba for that uniform!”

I was in pain, but I was sufficiently myself to be anxious when he had left me; painfully anxious as time went on and he did not return. I lay staring at poor Simms; the flies were clustering on his face. I thought of the light heart with which I had ridden into Ferguson’s camp and joined him and his volunteers the day before. I thought of the gay dinner we had eaten, and the toasts we had drunk, and the “Confusion to the Rebels” which we had planned—campaigning, a man learns to enjoy life as it comes. And then I thought of the day that had gone against us, miserably and unaccountably; of poor Ferguson, dragged and dead, with his foot in the stirrup and enough wounds in him to let out the lives of five men; of Husbands and Plummer and Martin—I had seen them all go down,—those, who had escaped in the fight, shot like rabbits in the last rush for the horses. By the laws of war, or of anything but this blind partisan fighting we should have won the battle against an equal number of undrilled farmers and backwoodsmen. We must have won. But we

had lost; and I lay there under the sumach bushes that blended with the red of the old uniform; and if the man who had shot poor Minden at that last 13unlucky moment did not return, the buzzards would presently spy me out and Simms would not be the less fortunate of the two.

For the sounds of the fight had died away. The pursuit had taken another line, the silence of the forest was no longer torn by shot or scream. Even the excited chatter of the birds had ceased. The little clearing lay lonely, with the short twilight not far off—was that a buzzard already, that tiny speck in the sky?

What if the man did not come back?

But, thank God, even as I thought of this, I heard him. He came into view among the boles of the trees on the farther side of the clearing, riding one horse and leading another. He dismounted beside me and hooked the reins over a bough, and for the first time I took in what he was like. He appeared to be middle-aged, a tallish lean man, with hair that was turning gray. He wore a hunter’s shirt and buckskin leggings, and with this, some show of uniform; a blue sash and a wide-brimmed hat with a white cockade were pretty well the sum of it. He had steely eyes—they showed light in the brown of his thin hard-bitten face. He stepped to the dead man and took from him a strap or two. Then he came to me.

“Now!” he said curtly. “Harden your heart, 14King George! You’ll wince once or twice before you are in that saddle. But when you are there you’ll have a chance, and there’s no other way you will have one! Now!”

To tell the truth, I winced already, having a horror of pain. But knowing that if I cried out, here was this rebel Yankee—who had no more nerves than a plantation Sambo—to hear me, I set my teeth while, with a splint made of two pieces of wood, he secured my arm in its due position, and eased as far as he could the crushed shoulder. He did it not untenderly, and when he rose to his feet, “You look pretty sick,” he said, “as if you’d be the better for a sup of Kentucky whisky. But there’s none here, and there’s worse to come. So pull yourself together, and think of old England!”

He spoke in a tone of derision, to which the gentleness of his touch gave the lie. I rose to my feet and eyed the saddle. “It’s that or the buzzards,” he said, seeing that I hesitated; and he shoved me up. I did what I could myself and with an effort I climbed into the saddle. “That’s good!” he exclaimed. “For a beginning.”

I cried out once—I could not refrain; but I was mounted now if I could stay where I was. I suppose that he saw that I was on the verge of collapse, for “See here!” he cried roughly. “I can shoot you, 15I can leave you, or I can take you. There is no other way. What do you say?”

“Go on,” I said. And then, “Wait!”

“What now?” he growled, suspicious, I think, of my firmness.

“His address is on him,” I said, nodding towards Simms. “He wanted his wife to know, if he did not come off. It’s in his hat. I must take it.”

He stared at me. For a moment I thought that he was going to refuse to do what I asked. Then he went and picked up Simms’ hat and from a slit in the looped side he drew a thin packet of letters. “Are you satisfied now?” he said, as he handed the packet to me.

“That’s it,” I said. “Thank you.”

“I thought you held that lot were only food for the triangles,” he muttered. “Well, live and learn, and the last knows most! Now, forward it is, sir, and within five miles I’ll have you under cover. All the same there’s a plaguy bottom to cross that will give us trouble, or I am no prophet!”

I was soon to learn what he meant. For a certain distance, riding where it was level through open park-like land, that closed here and there into forest, the going was good and the pain was bearable, though the thought that at any moment the horse might stumble chilled me with apprehension. But 16after a while we sank into a shallow valley, where the air was darkened by cypress trees and poisoned by their yew-like odor. And presently, threading the swamp that filled the bottom, there appeared a rivulet. It crossed our path, and my heart sank into my boots.

“Stay here,” the man said shortly; and he left me and rode up and down, hunting for a crossing, while I followed him with scared eyes. At length he found what he wanted and he signed to me to join him. “Give me your rein,” he said, “and hold on with all the strength you have! It’s neck or nothing!”