Colonel Mcintosh, who commanded the fort, saw at once the condition of
Captain Rory, and forbade the men to fire. Then he threw open the gate,
and said,--
"Walk in, Mr. Mcintosh, and take possession."
"No," cried Rory, "I'll not trust myself among such vermin. I order you
to surrender!"
At that moment a rifle was fired by some one in the fort, and the ball
passed through Captain Rory's face from side to side under the eyes.
He fell backwards, but immediately recovered, and stood on his feet
flourishing his claymore. Then he began to walk backward, his face to
the fort. Several shots were fired at him, and Jim called out,--
"Run, massa, run! dey kill you!"
"Run!" cried Rory scornfully. "You may run, but I belong to a race that
never runs!"
It was at the siege of Sunbury that Colonel Mcintosh, when summoned by
Colonel Prevost to surrender the fort, sent back the reply, "Come and
take it!"
AUNT NANCY HART.
There lived in Georgia, during the Revolutionary struggle, the most
remarkable woman in some respects that the country has produced. To find
her match, we shall have to go to the fables that are told about the
Amazons. The Liberty Boys called her Aunt Nancy Hart. The Indians,
struck by her wonderful feats in behalf of her country, called her "The
War Woman;" and there is a creek in Elbert County, where she lived, that
was named by the Indians "War Woman's Creek."
There are other heroines to whom history has paid more attention, and
whose deeds have been celebrated in song and story; but not one of them
was more devoted to the high cause of freedom, or more courageous, or
depended less on aid from others, than Aunt Nancy Hart. In this last
respect, the War Woman of Georgia stands alone in history, just as she
stood alone when the Tories were waging a war of extermination, 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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