Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1876 — FERGUSON’S AVENGERS. [ARTICLE]

FERGUSON’S AVENGERS.

“ This for the gallant Ferguson.” The foregoing five words had instituted reign of terror in One of the loveliest districts of the Palmetto State —a district watered by the Catawalba and Pacolet Rivers and their gentle tributaries. In the month of September, 1778, Cornwallis detached the notorious Col. Ferguson to the frontiers of North Carolina, for the ostensible purpose of encouraging the tories of that region to take up arms for the King. Ferguson’s force consisted in part ot the most profligate and abandoned characters of the partisan days, and his inarch was marked by atrocities of the most shocking description. The hardy men of the Carolinas, Kentucky and Virginia, rose against the maurauders, and, fed by Boone and other backwoods worthies, gave them a decisive defeat at King’s Mountain. Ferguson was slain in the battle, and his fellow-foragers, numbering about 1,000, were nearly all captured or killed. The conflict revived the hopes of the Southern patriots, and forced Cornwallis to return to Charleston discomfited and cast down. “ We shall have rest now,” the patriots said, after the battle. “ Ferguson, the dreaded, is dead, and the few tories who escaped with their wretched lives are not strong enough to do us harm.” Everywhere in the vicinity of the battlefield the Americans breathed freer, and the loyalists in whose interests Ferguson had marched to his death, curbed their loyalty, and in secrecy swore revenge But the settlements were soon to learn that the victory at King’s Mountain had nerved the arm of a foe more terrible than any which they had hitherto known. The existence of the new terror was discovered by a boy one morning about a fortnight after the battle. He found the family of Archibald Mettson murdered in their Own house, and to the corpses had been pinned a?>aper bearing these words: “ This for the gallant Ferguson!” This terrible atrocity aroused the country, and tlie excitement was heightened by the finding of the body of another murdered patriot. On the cold breast, which had been pierced by pistol balls, was the pallid paper and its words of terrible import, and the country knew that a fearful vengeance would be taken for King’s Mountain. During the week that followed the discoveries I have mentioned, the work of the Avengers was terrible. They fell upon patriot houses at the dead of night, and left on the bosom of their victims the five words which had already terrorized the country. It was in vain that the patriots summoned their cunning and energy for the capture of the band of demons, which, as it had been discovered, numbered six men, masked and mounted on black horses. They came and went like < hosts,. but always left behind the terrile sentence which had made their existence execrable. At times they fell upon their hunters, and left them upon the roadside marked with the sign of vengeance. „ t Fear began to paralyze the Carolinians; many abandoned their homes for the sake of their families; and it is probable that the entire district would have been depopulated in a short time, had it not been for the courage of one woman. Her name was Alice Beauchampe. It was a dark night in the last week of November, when the heroine of my story left the house of a friend. Her own house, which had been deserted for several days, was not far away, and she determined to return to it for the purpose of securing an article of apparel left behind in her recent flight. Before she set out. on her journey she was warned of the dangers that environed it; but she smiled and declared that she did not fear them. She could enter the old home through the kitchen, in the rear, find the garment without a light, and return safely to her friends. The path she had often traversed was barely discernible; but she made good headway, and reached her home without incident. The silenop of the grave hung about tltp forsaken place, and the lifting of the latch sent a chill of terror through the girl’s heart. Through the kitchen, across the deserted parlor, and up the stairs, she crept to the room where she had left the object of her nocturnal quest. The drawer of the old bureau yielded without noise, and Alice was drawing forth the garment when the voices of men fell upon her ears. She started, dropped her prize, and with her heart in her throat crept to the window that overlooked the porch in front of the house. She could see nothing, for the night was too dark; but the voices of men, mingled with the champing of bits, continued to salute her ears. “ This is old Beauchampe’s house,” said one. “It has been deserted for several days. The daughter, frightened by the manner in which we treated her father, has fled somewhere for protection.” These words drove every vestige of color from tlie listener’s face; they told her who the men helow were, though she could not even see the outlines ot their persons. One week prior to her visit, her father, one of the King’s Mountain heroes, was found dead in a palmetto grove, and the words of Ferguson’s Avengers lay on his breast. Then she had deserted her home, knowing that the hand that had struck the father would not spare the daughter. „ Well might the popr girl tremble when she found herself so near tlie Scourges of the country, anil she didnot move unlit she heard the front dooropened by a kick, and heavily booted feet in the room below. Then a calm thought of her situation drove fear from her heart, and Alice Beaucliamiie prepared fur one of the most dar. ing deeds ot the Revolutionary War. The noise in the house increased, and

oaths and rude jests preceded and followed the lighting of a fire on tlie hearth. Alice, who had longed for a sight of the dreaded six, crept to a spot near the bureau where there was a crack in the floor. Then applying her eye to the peekhole, she saw six wild looking men directly beneath her. a They were, beyond doubt the avengers of Ferguson’s death, for several masks lay on the table, along with three or four bot'ties of wine which they had taken from some patriot’s cellar. Tall, rough, devil-may-care looking fellows they were, armed with pistols, carbines and sabers, the kind of men who never court the smilesjof mercy or listen to the pleading of innocence. Just such fellows as they were, Alice had supposed them to be, for she had seen many of the prisoners taken at the King’s Mountain, and she longed for the presence of a band of patriots. There were true men in South Carolina at the time who would have given their right arms for a chance to exterminate tlie Avengers, and Alice knew where a little party of patriots lay, but alas! they were not very near. “ We’ll rest here and finish that wine!” said one of the leaders of the band, whose face told that he had already imbibed freely. “ Bring in the poultry, and on old Beauchampe’s hearth we’ll prepare a feast.” At his command, one of the men left the house, but soon returned, bearing with him a duck and several chickens, from whose freshly-wrung necks the blood was dripping. “ How’s the horses?” asked one of aqj Avengers, as the man flung the poultry on the table. “ Standing like rocks.” was the reply. “ Such horses as they don’t need ing, and, beside, there isn’t a rebel within ten miles of this accursed place.” “ Why, there’s the Widow Hartzel.” “ I diun’t think of her,” was the reply. “How bitterly old Hartzel hated us, but we caught him at last.” “And presented him with a breast-pin! Ha! ha!” And the laugh went round the room. Alice Beauchampe did not wait till the laugh was ended; while yet it filled the house with its devilish echoes, she glided across the room to a winddV that looked out upon the dark palmetto grove, behind the building. There was no sash in the window, and the cold wind of the night kissed the pallid cheek of the partisan’s daughter. For a moment she tried to pierce the darkness beneath the window; but, failing in her endeavors, she crept over the sill, resolved to trust to fortune for success.

The distance to the ground was not great, and the daring girl alighted without injury. Now she was free to make her escape to the friends she had lately left; but immediate flight in that direction was not her intention. “Heaven aid me!” she murmured as she glided along the old house and approached the horses which the tories had left tethered to the small trees a few yards from tlie door. A glance into the room revealed the forms of the Avengers discussing the wine with oaths and jest, or watching the roasting of the fowls. They did not fear danger, for their horrible deeds had completely terrorized tlie country, and under the sway of their lawlessness it was becoming a desert. Alice counted them before she touched a single rein; and then in a brief period of time she loosened the horses and quietly led them into a small copse not far away. The steeds did not refuse to obey her guidance, and when she reached the copse she struck them with a whip which she found beneath a saddle. It was a smart blow which she administered, and the horses started forward and disappeared in an instant. Thus in a few- moments Ferguson’s Avengers had been deprived of their horses.

Flushed with triumph, Alice Beauchampe returned to the house, and again looked in upon its hilarious tenants. She now held a pistol in her hand—a weapon which a holster had granted her —and she crept to the edge of the porch before she halted. There was a flash of vengeance in the dark eyes of the partisan girl while she gazed upon the party beyond the threshold. Once or twice she raised the weapon, but loweied it again, as if playing with the life of the leader of the six, whose burly form was revealed by the light of the fire. She saw the fowls smoking, and well burned, placed on the table, and watched the greedy men crowd around for their shares. Their tongues and movements told her that stolen liquor was doing its accustomed work on all save the giant, who had superintended the cooking of the late repast. This man appeared perfectly sober, and the angry glances Which he often cast at his comrades told that he did not sanction their bacchanalian conduct. “Come! enough of this!” he suddenly cried, rising from thd table, which had been dragged to the center of the room. “Get up, boys, and let’s be going. I told you at Wiley’s that you had wine enough, but you must bring some here and drink yourselves stupid, lorn Scott, and you, Blakeson, I am ashamed of you? What would we do if a gang of rebels should catch us in this condition? You know the mercy we would get, and yet you sit there as careless as statues—drunk as old Bacchus himself.”

Then an expression of contempt passed over the man’s face, and, stooping, he cried: “Up! up! the rebels are coming!” But his cry of alarm did not infuse much life into the men at the table. One or two heads were raised, but the drunken leer that made the faces hideous was enough to provoke a smile, eVen from the mad tory. “Men!” he sneered,.contemptuously. “ Dogs! every one of you I’ve a mind to ride down to the Pacolet swamp and tell the rebels hiding there that the men they hate are in their power. I have thought that I cammandcd men, not drunkards!” and he struck the table with the butt of of hie pistol, but could not rouse his stupid followers. The next moment, with an oath on his lips, he strode to the door, which he jerked ppen and stepped upon the porch. ; “ Curse such dogs as I lead!” he hissed. “ I suppose I must lead the horses up and tie each fool in the saddle.” He was stepping from the porch for the purpose of attending to the horses, which he supposed vvere still tethered at the trees, when a form rose before him and he started back with a gasp of terror. “ Who in the rpisefiief?— “Alice Beauchampe!” was the inter*' ruptionof the apparition. “ The daughter of the old man basely murdered at your hands! Down on your miserable knees, Godfrey Langr and the

mercy you have never granted others! Down, I say!” Perhaps the shadows of the window sash did not permit him to see the pistol that was clutched in the hand of the fearless girl, else his rashness might have been curlied. “Kneel to you? Never!” he cried. The weapon that he raised dropped before the flash that followed his last words, and with a groan of pain he staggered back to drop dead among his drunken comrades. Alice Beauchampe, amazed at her own courage, stood silent amidst the smoke of her own pistol. She saw the bacchantes try to shake oil' their torpor at the sight of their stricken leader, and one rose to his feet to fall as soon as he needed support. “ Now for the swamp!” She cried, with triumph, and the next minute rushed from the disgusting sight An hour passed away, and the drunken tories began to recover; their chief, who had dropped to the floor, seemed to sober them with his cold face and staring eyes, and when they had almost recovered their scattered wits the foe they dreaded was upon them. Alice Beauchampe’s voice fired the hearts of a patriot band for vengeance. On her way to the swamp she had encountered the partisans who had captured some of the flying horses, and were following the trail. The conflict between patriot and tory was brief and almost bloodless. The five Avengers were made prisoners, and sued like cowards for the mercy they had never granted to a living being. I need not describe the scene that followed. Suffice it to say that lie trees in front of Alice Beauchampe’s home bore the strangest fruit that ever hung from living limb. The vengeance of the patriots was complete as terrible, and when the glorious sun rose again the dreaded men of the lovely district had ceased to frighten people with their name. i ...«*. Alice Be«uchaffipe, whose courage had led to the extermination of the avenging band, became the heroine of the day, and, after the termination of hostilities, wedded a Lieutenant of Marion’s men. Her heroism is venerated, and her gallant exploit narrated daily by hundreds of her descendants in the Palmetto State.