It was indeed a day that called for the strongest type of courage, and nobly did the women face the crisis.  In the South the wives and daughters of patriots were forced to appear at balls given by the invading forces, to entertain British officers, to act as hostesses to unbidden guests, and to act the part pleasantly, lest the unscrupulous enemy wreak vengeance upon them and their possessions.  The constant search on the part of the British for refugees brought these women moments when fear or even a second’s hesitation would have proved disastrous.  One evening Marion, the famous “Swamp-Fox,” came worn out to the home of Mrs. Horry, daughter of Eliza Pinckney, and so completely exhausted was he that he fell asleep in his chair while she was preparing him a meal.  Suddenly she heard the approaching British.  She awakened him, told him to follow the path from her kitchen door to the river, swim to an island, and leave her to deceive the soldiers.  She then met at the front door the British officer Tarleton, who leisurely searched the house, ate the supper prepared for Marion, and went away with several of the family treasures and heirlooms.  On another occasion when Mrs. Pinckney and her grand-daughter were sleeping in their plantation home, distant from any neighbor, they were awakened by a beautiful girl who rushed into the bedroom, crying, “Oh, Mrs. Pinckney, save me!  The British are coming after me.”  With the utmost calmness the old lady arose from her bed, placed the girl in her place, and commanded, “Lie there, and no man will dare to trouble you.”  She then met the pursuers with such quiet scorn that they shrank away into the darkness.

What brave stories could be told of other women—­Molly Stark, Temperance Wicke, and a host of others.  What man, soldier or statesman, could have written more courageous words than these by Abigail Adams?  “All domestic pleasures and enjoyments are absorbed in the great and important duty you owe your country, for our country is, as it were, a secondary god, and the first and greatest parent.  It is to be preferred to parents, wives, children, friends and all things, the gods only excepted, for if our country perishes, it is as impossible to save the individual, as to preserve one of the fingers of a mortified hand."[309] Mrs. Adams herself was literally in the midst of the warfare, and there were days when she could scarcely have faced more danger if she had been a soldier in the battle.  Hear this bit of description from her own pen:  “I went to bed about twelve, and rose again a little after one.  I could no more sleep than if I had been in the engagement; the rattling of the windows, the jar of the house, the continual roar of twenty-four pounders; and the bursting of shells give us such ideas, and realize a scene to us of which we could form scarcely any conception."[310]