This person was Nancy Hart, a woman entirely uneducated, and ignorant of all the conventional civilities of life, but a zealous lover of liberty and of the "liberty boys," as she called the whigs. She had a husband whom she denominated a "poor stick," because he did not take a decided and active part with the defenders of his country; although she could not conscientiously charge him with the least partiality to the tories. This vulgar and illiterate, but hospitable and valorous female patriot could boast no share of beauty; a fact she would herself have readily acknowledged, had she ever enjoyed an opportunity of looking in a mirror. She was cross-eyed, with a broad, angular mouth--ungainly in figure, rude in speech, and awkward in manners--but having a woman's heart for her friends, though that of a tigress or a Katrine Montour for the enemies of her country. She was well known to the tories, who stood somewhat in fear of her vengeance for any grievance or aggressive act; though they let pass no opportunity of teasing and annoying her, when they could do so with impunity.
On the occasion of an excursion from the British camp at Augusta, a party of loyalists penetrated into the interior; and having savagely massacred Colonel Dooly in bed in his own house, proceeded up the country with the design of perpetrating further atrocities. On their way, a detachment of five from the party diverged to the east, and crossed Broad River to examine the neighborhood and pay a visit to their old acquaintance Nancy Hart. When they arrived at her cabin, they unceremoniously entered it, although receiving from her no welcome but a scowl, and informed her they had come to learn the truth of a story in circulation, that she had secreted a noted rebel from a company of "king's men" who were pursuing him, and who, but for her interference, would have caught and hung him. Nancy undauntedly avowed her agency in the fugitive's escape. She had, she said, at first heard the tramp of a horse, and then saw a man on horseback approaching her cabin at his utmost speed. As soon as she recognized him to be a whig flying from pursuit, she let down the bars in front of her cabin, and motioned him to pass through both doors, front and rear, of her single-roomed house--to take to the swamp, and secure himself as well as he could. This he did without loss of time; and she then put up the bars, entered the cabin, closed the doors, and went about her usual employments. Presently, some tories rode up to the bars, calling vociferously for her. She muffled up her head and face, and opening the door, inquired why they disturbed a sick, lone woman. They said they had traced a man they wanted to catch near to her house, and asked if any one on horseback had passed that way. She answered, no--but she saw some one on a sorrel horse turn out of the path into the woods, some two or three hundred yards back. "That must be the fellow!" said the tories; and asking her direction as to the way he took, they turned about and went off, "well fooled," concluded Nancy, "in an opposite course to that of my whig boy; when, if they had not been so lofty minded--but had looked on the ground inside the bars, they would have seen his horse's tracks up to that door, as plain as you can see the tracks on this here floor, and out of t'other door down the path to the swamp."