Think’st thou there dwells no courage but in breasts
That set their mail against the ringing spears,
When helmets are struck down? Thou little knowest
Of nature’s marvels.
Mrs. Hemans.
During the sieges of Augusta and Cambridge, two young men of the name of Martin, belonging to Ninety-Six district, South Carolina, were in the army. Meanwhile their wives, who remained at home with their mother-in-law, displayed as much courage, on a certain occasion, as was exhibited, perhaps, by any female during the struggle for Independence.
Receiving intelligence one evening that a courier, under guard of two British officers, would pass their house that night with important dispatches, Grace and Rachel Martin resolved to surprise the party and obtain the papers. Disguising themselves in their husbands’ outer garments and providing themselves with arms, they waylaid the enemy. Soon after they took their station by the road-side, the courier and his escort made their appearance. At the proper moment, the disguised ladies sprang from their bushy covert, and presenting their pistols, ordered the party to surrender their papers. Surprised and alarmed, they obeyed without hesitation or the least resistance. The brave women having put them on parole, hastened home by the nearest route, which was a by-path through the woods, and dispatched the documents to General Greene by a single messenger, who probably had more courage than the trio that lately bore them.
Strange to say, a few minutes after the ladies reached home, and just as they had doffed their male attire, the officers, retracing their steps, rode up to the house and craved accommodations for the night. The mother of the heroines asked them the cause of their so speedy return after passing her house, when they exhibited their paroles and said that “two rebels ” had taken them prisoners. Here the young ladies, in a rallying mood, asked them if they had no arms, to which query they replied, that, although they had, they were arrested so suddenly that they had no time to use them. We have only to add that they were hospitably entertained, and the next morning took their leave of the women as ignorant of the residence of their captors as when first arrested.
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Excerpted from Noble Deeds of American Women
(Patriotic Series for Boys and Girls)
Edited by J. Clement
——
With an Introduction by Mrs. L. H. Sigourney
Illustrated
BOSTON: Lee and Shepard, Publishers
Entered by Act of Congress, in the year of 1851,
by E. H. Derby and Co., in the Clerk’s Office of the Northern District of New York
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