Gen. Marion in his swamp encampment inviting a British officer to dinner [engraving]

Gen. Marion in his swamp encampment inviting a British officer to dinner [engraving]

[New York] : Published by the Apollo Association for the promotion of the fine arts in the U.S., 1841

1 print ; image 48 x 52 cm. matted 59 x 66 cm.

P&E L2013F36f

(OCoLC)76958685

Signed: Painted by John B. White ... ; Engraved by John Sartain; Printed by J. Dalton.|"No. 1. 1840."|"Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1841 by the Apollo Association in the clerks office of the Southern District of New York."|This print, based on the 1836 painting General Marion Inviting a British Officer to Share his Meal by John Blake White, was engraved and printed for the Apollo Association for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in the United States. Like the painting, the print depicts an anecdote related in Mason Locke Weems' Life of Marion (first published in 1805) about the visit of a British officer to Marion’s camp to negotiate a prisoner exchange. According to Weems, Marion offered to share his simple dinner of roasted sweet potatoes and water with his guest. The British officer was surprised that Marion lived so simply. “Why, sir,” Marion replied, “the heart is all; and when that is once interested, a man can do any thing. . . . I am in love; and my sweetheart is LIBERTY.” When he returned to his own camp, the officer told his commander: “I have seen an American general and his officers, without pay, and almost without clothes, living on roots, and drinking water—and all for LIBERTY! What chance have we against such men!”|White probably intended the black man preparing the meal to be Oscar Marion, Francis Marion's slave and personal servant during the war. Oscar Marion is not mentioned in Weems' Life of Marion, but he appears in William Dobein James, A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion (1821), in which the author describes dining with Marion in a wartime camp: "At this place, the author had, (in the absence of his father,) the honour to be invited to dine with the general. The dinner was set before the company by the General’s servant, Oscar, partly on a pine log and partly on the ground; it was lean beef, without salt, and sweet potatoes." A South Carolinian with a considerable interest in Marion lore, White was undoubtedly familiar with James' book and probably conflated the two accounts of impromptu meals in Marion's camp to produce the scene depicted in his painting and subsequently in the Sartain engraving.|Digitized image available, see URL|The same engraving (P&E L2007F37f) deaccessioned & traded for this better copy.

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