Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/180

Rh everything who will fight from principle alone; for from what I could learn, these poor creatures had nothing to protect and seldom got their pay; yet with what alacrity will they encounter danger and hardships of every kind."

At another time, two men belonging to the enemy rode up to the house and asked many questions, saying that Colonel McGirth and his soldiers were coming and that the inmates might expect no mercy. The family remained in a state of cruel suspense for many hours. Then, as Mrs. Wilkinson writes to a friend: "The horses of the inhuman Britons were heard coming in such a furious manner that they seemed to tear up the earth, the riders at the same time bellowing out the most horrid curses imaginable—oaths and imprecations chilled my whole frame. 'Where are these women rebels?' That was their first salutation." Nor was the fear of the household unfounded for Mrs. Wilkinson continues: "They plundered the house of everything they thought valuable or worth taking; our trunks were split to pieces and each mean, pitiful wretch crammed his bosom with the contents, which were our apparel." And when Mrs. Wilkinson ventured to beg that just a few articles be left to her, the soldier she addressed, so far from relenting, cast his eyes on her shoes and immediately knelt at her feet but to wrench the buckles from them. "While he was busy doing this," the letter continues, "a brother villain bawled out 'Shares there, I say shares.' So they divided the buckles between them. The other wretches were employed in the same way, taking not only buckles from the other women but ear-rings and rings, and when one protested against surrendering her wedding ring, they presented a pistol at her and swore if she did not deliver it immediately they would fire." But the ready wit of Mrs. Wilkinson appears to have suffered no eclipse even in such dire straits and she closes this letter with a quip: "So they mounted their horses— but such despicable figures! Each wretch's bosom stuffed so full, they appeared to be all afflicted with some dropsical disorder. Had a party of rebels (as they call us) appeared, we should have seen their circumference lessen."

After such unwelcome visitors, it is not surprising that the unprotected women could not sleep or eat. They went to bed without undressing and started up at the least noise, while the days were spent in anxiety. And yet one morning when Mrs. Wilkinson with her eyes fixed on the window—for she was continually on the watch— saw a party of Whigs dragging along seven Royalist prisoners, notwithstanding the injuries she had received from some of these very men, her kind heart relented at the sight of their worn-out condition, and, when the American soldiers had brought one of the Tory officers into her house, she took from her neck the only remaining handkerchief the British marauders had left her and with it bound up a wound in his arm.

The siege and capitulation of Charleston brought the evils under which the land had groaned to their height. Mrs. Wilkinson was in the city at this time and her letters tell of the hardships borne by those in the beleaguered community—the gloomy resignation to inevitable misfortunes and the almost abandonment of hope for relief. Yet with indomitable patriotism, Mrs. Wilkinson's independent spirits would find vent in sarcastic sallies at the enemy's expense. "Once," she writes, "I was asked by a British officer to play the guitar."

"I cannot play, I am very dull," she replied.