The Swamp Fox of the Revolution Author:Stewart H. Holbrook To The Reader page: — "There are few if any figures in American military history stranger than Francis Marion, and certainly none more appealing. A small wizened man who walked with a swaying limp, he was swarthy, eagle-nosed, careless of appearance, and no more communicative than an Indian. — In a day when cocked hats were the proper garb of Ame... more »rican officers, General Marion fought through the Revolution wearing a battered little old helmet of the militia. In a day when rum was the drink of soldiers, Marion's canteen never held anything else than vinegar mixed with water.
With little help he organized a crowd of backwoodsmen into a brigade which without pay, often without enough ammunition and, living as they could off the country, carried on a practically private war against redcoats and Tories.
Marion's raids on their outposts and supply trains so troubled the British, who could never catch him, that they called him The Swamp Fox. Lurking in the dard marshlands until chance offered a target, he led his bushwhackers without warning out of the swirling mists to hit the enemy quickly and savagely, then disappeared into the trackless swamps.
When General Nathanael Greene came to head the southern department of the American army, South Carolina was in the tight fist of the British. Greene was quick to enlist the aid of Marion's little band of irregulars. They struck the enemy again and again, to such effect that Greene counted them of imcomparable help in knocking out the chain of enemy forts, one after the other, until the British were driven to their last stand in Charleston, and from there sailed away to England.
Little wonder that in his native South Carolina, whose people have long memories and are happily given to remembrance of the heroes of the past, Fracis Marion stands superb and unique-The Swamp Fox of the Revolution. He now belongs to the nation."