It does not detract from Jasper's fame to say that he has had many noble imitators. In the siege of Charleston in 1863-1864, during the War between the States, more than twenty cases like his occurred; but his, being the first, is greatest forever.

Among the heroines of Southern history is Nancy Hart, whom the Indians called the "War Woman." Various stories are told of her nerve and daring. On one occasion, a party of five armed Tories came to her house and ordered her to prepare them a meal. While she was carrying out the order, they stacked their arms within easy reach of the table. She shrewdly pulled the table into the middle of the room, so as to pass frequently between the men and their muskets. When the Tories asked for water, she sent her daughter to the well, with private instructions to blow the conch shell which summoned the men from the fields, and which soon brought her husband and neighbors to the house. Meanwhile, she had pulled a board from the house and slyly slipped two of the muskets through the hole. As she reached for the third, one of the soldiers saw her and gave the alarm. She raised a gun to her shoulder, threatening to shoot the first man that dared to come towards her. One took the risk, and fell dead; then a second; and the other three were captured, and, by Nancy's orders, hanged.

On another occasion, she went to the British camp disguised as a man, and gained valuable information, which she conveyed to Colonel Elijah Clarke, the famous soldier of Georgia.

Again, the Savannah river being high and all boats swept

away, she crossed from Georgia into Carolina on a raft improvised of logs.

The State of Georgia has honored Nancy Hart by giving her name to a county.

(f) HEROES OF THE FRONTIER

Among the famous sons of the South, we should never forget the heroes of the frontier. While the patriots in the old states fought a few vandals like Prevost and Tarleton, these brave frontiersmen contended with the relentless savage, who, when crazed with King George's whiskey, spared neither sex, age, nor condition.

Preeminent among frontiersmen stands Daniel Boone, the father of Kentucky. Though born in Pennsylvania, he is more intimately allied with Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky. In the same connection, we think of Isaac Shelby, a native of Maryland, but known to history as one of the founders of Kentucky. With several other Southern colonels, he won distinction at King's Mountain.

Of James Robertson, the "father of Tennessee," we have already spoken. With him we associate John Sevier, the first governor of Tennessee, and one of the heroes of King's Mountain. These two conquered the Cherokees at the Watauga in 1776, and thus helped to secure the ground won two years before by General Andrew Lewis and his men of West Augusta.

The fame of these men is assured: sectionalism has never attempted to belittle them. In the most recent volumes of Fiske and Roosevelt, their figures are thrown upon the can

vas in proportions well-nigh colossal. Says the lamented Curry, one of Alabama's greatest sons: "These backwoodsmen were ardent patriots, and deserve to be classed with their fathers and brothers on the Atlantic coast." If Andrew Lewis "blazed" the way for Sevier and Robertson; if these in turn opened the way for George Rogers Clark, and if he added five great states to the republic, these five men, sons of the South, should assuredly be ranked among our national heroes.

John Fiske supports this claim most heartily.* He specifies "four cardinal events in the history of our, western frontier during the Revolution." Three of these were the events ramed in the foregoing paragraph. So that Fiske clearly shows that the South deserves three-fourths of the credit for the fact that in 1783, when peace was declared with England, "the domain of the independent United States was bounded on the west by the Mississippi river."

(2) TROOPS AND BATTLES

The number of troops in the Revolutionary War can never be known accurately. The statements made in some books are totally unreliable. The chief basis of our knowledge is the official report of General Henry Knox, secretary of war in Washington's cabinet; but he says himself that the reports from the South were very incomplete; and we know now that many men were counted over again whenever their short terms ran out and they reënlisted. All statements as

*All this is ably brought out by Roosevelt in his Winning of the West, (I. pp. 240, 306) and by Fiske in his American Revolution.

to numbers in the Revolution made in this volume are therefore only provisional.

Pennsylvania, as said before, was rather lukewarm. If Knox's figures be taken as a guide, that state did little over half as well as Virginia; New Hampshire less than half as well as South Carolina; South Carolina did three times as well as Pennsylvania, and excelled even Massachusetts and Connecticut. Out of every 100 men capable of bearing arms, Massachusetts sent 76; Connecticut, 71; New Hampshire, 43; South Carolina, 88.

Neither section as a whole can claim to have done its full duty. According to Knox's report, the North sent about 44 per cent of its able-bodied men to the field; the South, 48 per cent. Of the rest, thousands fought bitterly for England. At King's Mountain, for instance, Americans slew each other; and it is likely that Ferguson, the Tory leader, was the only British soldier on the battlefield.

There were probably 500,000 men of military age in the country; Washington says he never commanded over 26,000 at one time. Contrast this with the 600,000 or more men furnished, between 1861 and 1865, by a white population of about six million. In 1861, parties and factions were wiped out in both North and South; in 1775, local jealousies, interstate feuds, differences in creed, and sectional feeling, wellnigh wrecked the cause of independence.

With good cause has it been claimed that providence, not man, freed America.

The South gallantly aided in defending her Northern sisters. At Long Island, "The highest honors," says Fiske, "were won by the brigade of Maryland men commanded by

Smallwood." At Trenton, Mercer, of Virginia, and Howard, of Maryland, with their "flying camps," led the column of attack; and, again at Princeton, Mercer led the advancing column. At Saratoga, as seen already, Morgan's Virginians turned the tide of battle, and this led to Burgoyne's surrender.

Besides taking an active part in the greatest victories won on Northern soil, Southern men were driving the invader from their own. The English were hurled back for two years by the victory of Fort Moultrie. King's Mountain, won by men of the South, is regarded by historians as one of the decisive battles of the Revolution. A little later, the Carolinians defeated Tarleton at Blackstock. A few months after that, Southern troops almost annihilated Tarleton at Cowpens, and thus deprived Cornwallis of his cavalry. At Yorktown, later in the year (1781), the matchless skill of Washington, the Virginian, closed the war of independ

ence.

(3) MISCELLANEOUS

The Revolution was by no means a great popular uprising. Very few of the colonies were out and out in favor of fighting England. In 1771, for instance, when the battle of Alamance was fought, Richard Caswell, Francis Nash, and other great sons of North Carolina fought on the side of the royal governor Tryon against the "Regulators;” and that colony was not ready to rise as a whole till four years later (1775), when she heard of the battle of Lexington.

As late as July, 1776, a good many were very reluctant to separate from England. The Declaration of Independence