| | 41 | Author: | Simms
William Gilmore
1806-1870 | Add | | | Title: | The partisan  | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | Our narrative begins in South Carolina, during the
summer of 1780. The arms of the British were at that
time triumphant throughout the colony. Their armies
overran it. Charlestown, the chief city, had stood a
siege, and had fallen, after a protracted and honourable
defence. One-half of the military strength of the lower
country, then the most populous region, had become prisoners
of war by this disaster; and, for the present, were
thus incapacitated from giving any assistance to their
brethren in arms. Scattered, crushed, and disheartened
by repeated failures, the whigs, in numerous instances,
hopeless of any better fortune, had given in their adhesion
to the enemy, and had received a pledge of British
protection. This protection secured them, as it was
thought, in their property and persons, and its conditions
simply called for their neutrality. Many of the
more firm and honourably tenacious, scorning all compromise
with invasion, fled for shelter to the swamps
and mountains; and, through the former, all Europe
could not have traced their footsteps. In the whole
state, at this period, the cause of American liberty had
no head, and almost as little hope: all was gloomy and
unpromising. Marion, afterward styled the “Swamp
Fox,” and Sumter, the “Game Cock”—epithets aptly
descriptive of their several military attributes—had not
yet properly risen in arms, though both of them had
been engaged already in active and successful service.
Their places of retreat were at this time unknown;
and, certainly, they were not then looked to, as at an
after period, with that anxious reliance which their
valour subsequently taught their countrymen to entertain.
Nothing, indeed, could be more deplorably prostrate
than were the energies of the colony. Here and
there, only, did some little partisan squad make a stand,
or offer a show of resistance to the incursive British
or the marauding and malignant tory—disbanding, if
not defeated, most usually after the temporary object
had been obtained, and retreating for security into shelter
and inaction. There was no sort of concert, save
in feeling, among the many who were still not unwilling
for the fight: they doubted or they dreaded one
another; they knew not whom to trust. The next-door
neighbour of the stanch whig was not unfrequently a
furious loyalist—as devoted to George the Third as the
other could have been to the intrinsic beauty of human
liberty. The contest of the Revolution, so far as it had
gone, had confirmed and made tenacious this spirit of
hostility and opposition, until, in the end, patriot and
loyalist had drawn the sword against one another, and
rebel and tory were the degrading epithets by which
they severally distinguished the individual whose throat
they strove to cut. When the metropolis fell into the
hands of the British, and their arms extended through
the state, the tories alone were active and formidable.
They now took satisfaction for their own previous
trials; and crime was never so dreadful a monster as
when they ministered to its appetites. Mingled in with
the regular troops of the British, or forming separate
bodies of their own, and officered from among themselves,
they penetrated the well-known recesses which
gave shelter to the fugitives. If the rebel resisted, they
slew him without quarter; if he submitted, they hung
him without benefit of clergy: they spoiled his children
of their possessions, and not unfrequently slew them
also. But few sections of the low and middle country
escaped their search. It was only in the bald regions
of North Carolina that the fugitives could find repose;
only where the most miserable poverty took from crime
all temptation, that the beaten and maltreated patriots
dared to give themselves a breathing-space from flight.
In the same manner the frontier-colony of Georgia had
already been overrun and ravaged by the conquerors;
and there, as it was less capable of resistance, all show
of opposition had been long since at an end. The invader,
deceived by these appearances, declared in
swelling language to his monarch, that the two colonies
were properly subjugated, and would now return
to their obedience. He knew not that, | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 42 | Author: | Simms
William Gilmore
1806-1870 | Add | | | Title: | The partisan | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | The clouds were gathering fast—the waters were
troubled—and the approaching tumult and disquiet of
all things in Carolina, clearly indicated the coming of
that strife, so soon to overcast the scene—so long to
keep it darkened—so deeply to impurple it with blood.
The continentals were approaching rapidly, and the
effect was that of magic upon the long prostrated energies
of the South. The people were aroused, awakened,
stimulated, and emboldened. They gathered in
little squads throughout the country. The news was
generally abroad that Gates was to command the expected
army—Gates, the conqueror at Saratoga, whose
very name, at that time, was a host. The successes of
Sumter in the up-country, of Marion on the Peedee, of
Pickens with a troop of mounted riflemen—a new species
of force projected by himself—of Butler, of Horry,
James, and others, were generally whispered about
among the hitherto desponding whigs. These encouraging
prospects were not a little strengthened in
the parishes by rumours of small successes nearer at
hand. The swamps were now believed to be full of
enemies to royal power, only wanting imbodiment and
arms; and truly did Tarleton, dilating upon the condition
of things at this period in the colony, give a
melancholy summary of those influences which were
crowding together, as it was fondly thought by the
patriots, for the overwhelming of foreign domination. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 43 | Author: | Simms
William Gilmore
1806-1870 | Add | | | Title: | The Yemassee | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | There is a small section of country now comprised
within the limits of Beaufort District, in the State of
South Carolina, which, to this day, goes by the name
of Indian Land. The authorities are numerous which
show this district, running along, as it does, and on its
southern side bounded by, the Atlantic Ocean, to have
been the very first in North America, distinguished by
an European settlement. The design is attributed to
the celebrated Coligni, Admiral of France,[1]
[1]Dr. Melligan, one of the historians of South Carolina, says farther,
that a French settlement, under the same auspices, was actually
made at Charleston, and that the country received the name of La
Caroline, in honour of Charles IX. This is not so plausible, however,
for as the settlement was made by Huguenots, and under the auspices
of Coligni, it savours of extravagant courtesy to suppose that they
would pay so high a compliment to one of the most bitter enemies
of that religious toleration, in pursuit of which they deserted their
country. Charleston took its name from Charles IL, the reigning
English monarch at the time. Its earliest designation was Oyster
Point town, from the marine formation of its soil. Dr. Hewatt—
another of the early historians of Carolina, who possessed many advantages
in his work not common to other writers, having been a
careful gatherer of local and miscellaneous history—places the first
settlement of Jasper de Coligni, under the conduct of Jean Ribaud, at
the mouth of a river called Albemarle, which, strangely enough, the
narration finds in Florida. Here Ribaud is said to have built a fort,
and by him the country was called Carolina. May river, another
alleged place of original location for this colony, has been sometimes
identified with the St. John's and other waters of Florida or
Virginia; but opinion in Carolina settles down in favour of a stream
still bearing that name, and in Beaufort District, not far from the subsequent
permanent settlement. Old ruins, evidently French in their
origin, still exist in the neighbourhood.
who, in the
reign of Charles IX., conceived the project with the ulterior
view of securing a sanctuary for the Huguenots,
when they should be compelled, as he foresaw they
soon would, by the anti-religious persecutions of the
time, to fly from their native into foreign regions. This
settlement, however, proved unsuccessful; and the
events which history records of the subsequent efforts
of the French to establish colonies in the same neighbourhood,
while of unquestionable authority, have all
the air and appearance of the most delightful romance. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 44 | Author: | Simms
William Gilmore
1806-1870 | Add | | | Title: | The Yemassee | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | Some men only live for great occasions. They
sleep in the calm—but awake to double life, and unlooked-for
activity, in the tempest. They are the
zephyr in peace, the storm in war. They smile until
you think it impossible they should ever do otherwise,
and you are paralyzed when you behold the change
which an hour brings about in them. Their whole life
in public would seem a splendid deception; and as their
minds and feelings are generally beyond those of the
great mass which gathers about, and in the end depends
upon them, so they continually dazzle the vision and
distract the judgment of those who passingly observe
them. Such men become the tyrants of all the rest,
and, as there are two kinds of tyranny in the world,
they either enslave to cherish or to destroy. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 45 | Author: | Simms
William Gilmore
1806-1870 | Add | | | Title: | Mellichampe | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | The battle of Dorchester was over; the victorious
Partisans, successful in their object, and bearing away
with them the prisoner whom they had rescued from the
felon's death, were already beyond the reach of their
enemies, when Colonel Proctor, the commander of the
British post, sallied forth from his station in the hope to
retrieve, if possible, the fortunes of the day. A feeling
of delicacy, and a genuine sense of pain, had prompted
him to depute to a subordinate officer the duty of attending
Colonel Walton to the place of execution. The rescue
of the prisoner had the effect of inducing in his mind
a feeling of bitter self-reproach. The mortified pride
of the soldier, tenacious of his honour, and scrupulous
on the subject of his trust, succeeded to every feeling
of mere human forbearance; and, burning with shame
and indignation, the moment he heard a vague account
of the defeat of the guard and the rescue of Walton, he
led forth the entire force at his command, resolute to recover
the fugitive or redeem his forfeited credit by his
blood. He had not been prepared for such an event as
that which has been already narrated in the last pages of
“The Partisan,” and was scarcely less surprised, though
more resolute and ready, than the astounded soldiers
under his command. How should he have looked for
the presence of any force of the rebels at such a moment,
when the defeat and destruction of Gates's army,
so complete as it had been, had paralyzed, in the minds
of all, the last hope of the Americans? With an audacity
that seemed little less than madness, and was desperation,
a feeble but sleepless enemy had darted in between
the fowler and his prey—had wrested the victim of
the conqueror from his talons, even in the moment of
his fierce repast; and, with a wild courage and planned
impetuosity, had rushed into the very jaws of danger,
without shrinking, and with the most complete impunity. “`Dare Gin'ral—There's a power of red-coats jist
guine down by the back lane into your parts, and they do
tell that it's arter you they're guine. They're dressed
mighty fine, and has a heap of guns and horses, and as
much provisions as the wagons can tote. I makes bold
to tell you this, gin'ral, that you may smite them, hip and
thigh, even as the Israelites smote the bloody Philistians
in the blessed book. And so, no more, dare gin'ral,
from your sarvant to command, | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 46 | Author: | Simms
William Gilmore
1806-1870 | Add | | | Title: | Mellichampe | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | Let us retrace our steps—let us go back in our
narrative, and review the feelings and the fortunes of
other parties to our story, not less important to its details,
and quite as dear in our regards. Let us seek
the temporary dwelling of the Berkeley family, and contemplate
the condition and the employment of its inmates
during the progress of the severe strife of which
we have given a partial history. Its terrors were not
less imposing to them than they were to those who had
been actors in the conflict. To the young maidens,
indeed, it certainly was far more terrible than to the
brave men, warmed with the provocation and reckless
from the impulses of strife. And yet, how differently
did the events of the day affect the two maidens—how
forcibly did they bring out and illustrate their very different
characters. To the casual observer there was
very little change in the demeanour of Janet Berkeley.
She seemed the same subdued, sad, yet enduring and
uncomplaining creature, looking for affliction because
she had been so often subjected to its pressure; yet,
from that very cause, looking for it without apprehension,
and in all the strength of religious resignation. “You must convey the prisoner, Mellichampe,” so
ran that portion of it which concerned the maiden, “so
soon as his wounds will permit, under a strong guard, to
the city, where a court of officers will be designated for
his trial as a spy upon your encampment. You will
spare no effort to secure all the evidence necessary to
his conviction, and will yourself attend to the preferment
of the charges.” And there, after the details of other
matters and duties to be attended to and executed, was
the signature of the bloody dragoon, which she more
than once had seen before— | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 48 | Author: | Whittier
John Greenleaf
1807-1892 | Add | | | Title: | Legends of New-England | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | One hundred years ago!—How has New-England
changed with the passing by of a single century! At
first view, it would seem like the mysterious transformations
of a dream, or like the strange mutations of
sunset-clouds upon the face of the Summer Heavens.
One hundred years ago!—The Oak struck its roots
deeply in the Earth, and tossed its branches loftily in
the sunshine, where now the voice of industry and
enterprise rises in one perpetual murmur. The shadows
of the forest lay brown and heavily, where now
the village church-spire overtops the dwellings clustered
about it. Instead of the poor, dependent and feeble
colonists of Britain, we are now a nation of ourselves—a
people, great and prosperous and happy. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 50 | Author: | Flint
Timothy
1780-1840 | Add | | | Title: | Francis Berrian, or, The Mexican patriot | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | In the autumn of this year I set out from Massachusetts
for the remote regions of the southwest on the
Spanish frontier, where I reside. When I entered the
steam-boat from Philadelphia to Baltimore, having taken
a general survey of the motley group, which is usually
seen in such places, my eye finally rested on a young
gentleman, apparently between twenty-five and thirty,
remarkable for his beauty of face, the symmetry of his
fine form, and for that uncommon union of interest,
benevolence, modesty, and manly thought, which are
so seldom seen united in a male countenance of great
beauty. The idea of animal magnetism, I know, is
exploded. I, however, retain my secret belief in the
invisible communication between minds, of something
like animal magnetism and repulsion. I admit that this
electric attraction of kindred minds at first sight, and
antecedent to acquaintance, is inexplicable. The world
may laugh at the impression, if it pleases. I have,
through life, found myself attracted, or repelled at first
sight, and oftentimes without being able to find in the
objects of these feelings any assignable reason, either
for the one or the other. I have experienced, too,
that, on after acquaintance, I have very seldom had
occasion to find these first impressions deceptive. It is
of no use to inquire, if these likes and dislikes be the
result of blind and unreasonable prejudice. I feel that
they are like to follow me through my course. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 51 | Author: | Flint
Timothy
1780-1840 | Add | | | Title: | The Shoshonee Valley | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | At Length the south breeze began once more to
whisper along the valley, bringing bland airs, spring
birds, sea fowls, the deep trembling roar of unchained
mountain streams, a clear blue sky, magpies and orioles,
cutting the ethereal space, as they sped with
their peculiar business note, on the great instinct errand
of their Creator to the budding groves. The
snipe whistled. The pheasant drummed on the fallen
trunks in the deep forest. The thrasher and the
robin sang; and every thing, wild and tame, that had
life, felt the renovating power, and rejoiced in the retraced
footsteps of the great Parent of nature. The
inmates of William Weldon's dwelling once more
walked forth, in the brightness of a spring morning,
choosing their path where the returning warmth had
already dried the ground on the south slopes of the
hills. The blue and the white violet had already
raised their fair faces under the shelter of the fallen
tree, or beneath the covert of rocks. The red bud
and the cornel decked the wilderness in blossoms; and
in the meadows, from which the ice had scarcely disappeared,
the cowslips threw up their yellow cups
from the water. As they remarked upon the beauty
of the day, the cheering notes of the birds, the deep
hum of a hundred mountain water-falls, and the exhilarating
influence of the renovation of spring, William
Weldon observed in a voice, that showed awakened
remembrances—`dear friends, you have, perhaps,
none of you such associations with this season,
as now press upon my thoughts, in remembrances
partly of joy and sadness. Hear you those million
mingled sounds of the undescribed dwellers in the
spring-formed waters? How keenly they call up the
fresh recollections of the spring of my youth, and my
own country! The winter there, too, is long and severe.
What a train of remembrances press upon me!
I have walked abroad in the first days of spring.—
When yet a child, I was sent to gather the earliest
cowslips. I remember my thoughts, when I first dipped
my feet in the water, and heard these numberless
peeps, croaks, and cries; and thought of the countless
millions of living things in the water, which seemed
to have been germinated by spring; and which appeared
to be emulating each other in the chatter of
their ceaseless song. How ye return upon my
thoughts, ye bright morning visions! What a fairy
creation was life, in such a spring prospect! How
changed is the picture, and the hue of the dark brown
years, as my eye now traces them in retrospect.—
These mingled sounds, this beautiful morning, these
starting cowslips, the whole present scene brings back
1*
the entire past. Ah! there must be happier worlds
beyond the grave, where it is always spring, or the
thoughts, that now spring in my bosom, had not been
planted there.' Minister of Jesus—A wretch in agony implores you
by Him, who suffered for mankind, to have mercy
upon him. He extenuates nothing. The vilest outrage
and abandonment were his purpose. He confesses,
that he deserves the worst. His only plea is,
that he was ruined by the doting indulgence of his
parents. Luxury and pleasure have enervated him,
and he has not the courage to bear pain. Death is
horror to him, and Oh, God! Oh, God!—the terrible
death of a slow fire. Christ pitied his tormentors.
Oh! let Jessy pity me. The agony is greater, than
human nature can bear. Oh! Elder Wood, come,
and pray with, and for `They have unbound my hands, and furnished me
with the means of writing this. They are dancing
round the pile, on which I am to suffer by fire. My
oath, that I would possess thee, at the expense of
death and hell, rings in my ears, as a knell, that would
awaken the dead. Oh God! have mercy. Every
thing whirls before my eyes, and I can only pray, that
you may forget, if you cannot forgive | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 60 | Author: | Ingraham
J. H.
(Joseph Holt)
1809-1860 | Add | | | Title: | The American lounger, or, Tales, sketches, and legends, gathered in sundry journeyings | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | I am a bachelor, dear reader! This I deem necessary
to premise, lest, peradventure, regarding me as
one of that class whose fate is sealed,
— “As if the genius of their stars had writ it,”
you should deem me traitor to my sworn alliance.
For what has a Benedict to do with things out of the
window, when his gentle wife—(what sweet phraseology
this last! How prettily it looks printed!) his
“gentle wife” with her quiet eye, her sewing and
rocking chair on one side, and his duplicates or triplicates,
in the shape of a round chunk of a baby, fat as
a butter-ball; two or three roguish urchins with tops
and wooden horses, and a fawn-like, pretty daughter
of some nine years, with her tresses adown her neck,
and a volume of Miss Edgworth's “Harry and Lucy”
in her hand, which she is reading by the fading
twilight—demand and invite his attention on the
other. “How I yearn to be once more folded in your sisterly
embrace, to lean my aching head upon your bosom,
and pour my heart into yours. It is near midnight.
Edward has gone out to seek some means of earning
the pittance which is now our daily support. Poor
Edward! How he exists under such an accumulation
of misery, I know not. His trials have nearly broken
his proud and sensitive spirit. Since his cruel arrest,
his heart is crushed. He will never hold up his head
again. He sits with me all day long, gloomy and desponding,
and never speaks. Oh how thankful I feel
that he has never yet been tempted to embrace the
dreadful alternative to which young men in his circumstances
too often fly! May he never fly to the
oblivious wine cup to fly from himself. In this, dear
Isabel, God has been, indeed, merciful to me. Last
night Edward came home, after offering himself even
as a day laborer, and yet no man would hire him, and
threw himself upon the floor and wept long and bitterly.
When he became calmer, he spoke of my sufferings
and his own, in the most hopeless manner, and
prayed that he might be taken from the world, for Pa
would then forgive me. But this will never be. One
grave will hold us both. I have not a great while to
live, Isabel! But I do not fear to die! Edward! 'tis
for Edward my heart is wrung. Alas his heart is hardened
to every religious impression—the Bible he
never opens, family prayers are neglected, and affliction
has so changed him altogether, that you can no
longer recognise the handsome, agreeable and fascinating
Edward you once knew. Oh, if pa would relent,
how happy we might all be again. If dear Edward's
debts were paid, and they do not amount to
nine hundred dollars altogether, accumulated during
the three years of our marriage, he might become an
ornament to society, which none are better fitted to
adorn. Do, dearest Isabel, use your influence with pa,
for we are really very wretched, and Edward has been
so often defeated in the most mortifying efforts to obtain
employment—for no one would assist him because
he is in debt—(the very reason why they should) that
he has not the resolution to subject himself again to
refusals, not unfrequently accompanied with insult,
and always with contempt. My situation at this time,
dearest sister, is one also of peculiar delicacy, and I
need your sisterly support and sympathy. Come and
see me, if only for one day. Do not refuse me this,
perhaps the last request I shall ever make of you.
Plead eloquently with pa, perhaps he will not persevere
longer in his cruel system of severity. Edward
is not guilty—he is unfortunate. But alas, in this
world, there is little distinction between guilt and misery!
Come, dearest Isabel—I cannot be said “No.”
I hear Edward's footstep on the stair. God bless and
make you happier than your wretched sister, “I have learned the extremity of your anger against
Edward. Your vindictive cruelty has cast him friendless
upon the world, and I fly to share his fortune. I
must ask your forgiveness for the step I am about to
take. I am betrothed to Edward by vows that are
registered in Heaven.—Alas! it is his poverty alone that
renders him so hateful to you—for once you thought
there was no one like Edward. God bless you, my
dear father, and make you happy here and hereafter. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
|
