Tales, Traditions and Romance of Border and Revolutionary TimesEllis, Edward Sylvester
History
Tales, Traditions and Romance of Border and Revolutionary Times
Ellis, Edward Sylvester
Frontier and pioneer life -- United States -- Anecdotes; United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Anecdotes
A certain share of infamy attaches to Howe, on account of the
barbarities of Hale's execution. He could and should have known that
Cunningham was a devil, unfit for any earthly trust. He should, too,
have observed the due formality of a court-martial, and he certainly
should have taken care to have had the sentence executed with decency.
Howe is deeply blameworthy for his lack of humanity, and for his
unrestrained indulgence of such monsters as the Provost-Marshal. He
stands convicted of a tolerance of demoniac cruelty, not only in this
case, but in the prison-ships, and his general administration. There is
something even more damning in being an ungenerous enemy, than an
ungenerous friend. Let the disgrace which it fairly won, rest forever on
the name of Howe.
As for that sweet Alice Adams, to whom Nathan Hale was engaged, the
events of a long life, the transformation of four score and eight years,
passed over her head. In life's extremity, when shadows came and went,
and earth was receding dimly, the first loved name was the last word on
her lips. Truth and love came back to her in old age and death; perhaps
she saw him standing on the eternal shores awaiting to help her
over—love, life and youth are immortal there—and calling to him, she
passed away.
MRS. SLOCUMB AT MOORE'S CREEK.
Mary Slocumb was the noble-hearted wife of one of the bravest soldiers
of the Southern army, and was a fair specimen of the heroic women whose
influence was so sensibly felt in the Carolinas at the period when the
Revolutionary storm was deluging that section with all the horrors of
civil war. Lieutenant Slocumb, her husband, like many others whose
patriotism would not allow them to remain at home in the enjoyment of
ease and comfort, while their country called for the exertion of her
sons to free her from the thraldom of a foreign tyrant, had attached
himself to the regiment of Colonel Caswell, who, at the period of which
we write, had collected his friends and the yeomen of the surrounding
country, to give battle to Donald McDonald, and his Highlanders and
Tories, then on their way to join Sir Henry Clinton on Cape Fear, after
having escaped from Colonel Moore at Cross Creeks. In the battle of
Moore's Creek, which followed, Lieutenant Slocumb and his detachment, by
turning the flank of the enemy, secured the victory to the patriots, and
captured a large portion of the loyal Highlanders, among whom was the
brave McDonald himself. It was a hard fought and bloody battle, and
Slocumb, in after years, delighted to relate the incidents of the
obstinately contested field, among which none was so interesting as his
meeting with his wife on his return from the pursuit of the defeated
Tories. It seems that on the night after the departure of her husband
and his detachment, Mrs. Slocumb had dreamed of seeing her husband's
body, wrapped in his military cloak, lying upon the battle-field,
surrounded with the dead and dying.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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