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GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS 297
from the ends of good strong pieces of hemp, all of the Tories who survived the
little drama in the backwoods cabin were left dancing in mid-air to the tune of
Yankee Doodle. ____
Cunning strategy made possible the dramatic situation in which Nancy Hart was
enabled successfully to defy the Tory band. She lacked none of the elements of
Spartan courage, but, added to the dare-devil spirit of the enraged lioness, she also
possessed unusual presence of mind. Under the guise of feminine simplicity, she
induced the Tories to believe that she was art easy mark. It seems that the first
demand of the visitors, who arrived rather early in the forenoon, was for something
to appease the pangs of hunger. Breakfast had already been served, and Captain
Hart having rejoined the frontier guard, she was attending to various household
duties. But she stopped everything else to serve the travelers in the most obsequious
stylo of the wayside tavern. Not by the least token did she exhibit the weakness
of fear or betray the stratagem which was quietly lurking behind her shrewd eye
brows. She disarmed them completely of all suspicion and urged them to feel
perfectly at home while she prepared the utensils in the big open fireplace for
dispensing warm hospitality to the unexpected arrivals. Lest she might appear to
be lacking in courtesy to the strangers she also instructed the children, to look after
the gentlemen., and busily she applied herself to the task of providing another meal.
Finally when the Tories, having stacked arms, were beginning, like Jack Falstaff,
'' to take their ease in their inn,'' she managed to engage them in an opposite corner
of the room; and, falling back upon her own armory, she snatched an old fowling-
piece from the wall and instantly leveled the weapon at the breast-plates of the
surprised emissaries of John Bull. As she did so, she dispatched one of the young
sters of the household to the place where Captain Hart could be found, urging him
to hasten to the house at once with able-bodied help; and she also stationed her eldest
daughter, Sukey, directly in the rear to fill the post of supply agent in the event
another load of buckshot was required to keep the visitors bunched until re-enforce
ments could arrive. Then followed in quick succession the events which have already
been narrated. Captain Hart duly came upon the scene; the Tories were made
secure, and Nancy Hart lowered her musket. Thus an unprotected woman in the
danger-infested thickets of Upper Georgia during the darkest hour of the struggle
for independence, had not only outwitted and outbraved the whole band of Tories,
but had added another immortal name to the heroic roster of the Revolution.
Though memorialized in the county which bears her name, there seems to be little
certainty concerning the precise spot in which the heroine lies buried; but she needs
no help from the device of bronze or marble to keep her memory ablaze about the
hearthstones of the Georgia commonwealth. She has ever been the fireside favorite
of the Georgia home. In the drama of the Revolution she claims the enthusiastic
plaudits of the Georgia youngster above all the other characters. She outstrips
Washington and overtops LaFayette and surpasses Sergeant Jasper; and, though
only an ill-favored country dame, yet in childhood 's verdict, hers is the lustiest shout
and hers the truest weapon of all the hurrying host whose quick-step answered
the battle-cry of Lexington.
Granting that her eyes were crossed, they were true enough to sentinel the Georgia
forest in the hour of danger, and, like twin stars upon the morning sky, they were
glorious enough to light the dawn of liberty. Wherever she lies buried it is hal
lowed earth in which she rests. Even Westminster Abbey might sue to enshrine the
ashes of this homely heroine of the Georgia backwoods, who, on the historic page,
shares the austere company of seeptered sovereigns and receives the kneeling vows
of subject princes from afar. It is enough to know that the courts of liberty are
all the brighter for the luster which she lent to the annals of the Revolution; and,
borrowing the beautiful illusion of the old Germanic myth, it is easy to imagine how
the entrance to the great Valhalla must have swarmed with the spirits of the brave
departed as the Georgia heroine mounted the immortal hill, and how the solitude of
Jean d'Arc, unbroken through the lapse of seven centuries, must have brightened
with the electrical announcement that Nancy Hart had come.—"Reminiscences of
Famous Georgians," L. L. Knight, Vol. II.
FORT MORRIS: THE LAST TO LOWER THE COLONIAL FLAG.—Occupying an eminence
somewhat to the south of old Sunbury, on lands belonging to the Calder estate, are