GENERAL FRANCIS MARION, SWAMPFOX

General Francis Marion, Swampfox



General Francis Marion, Swampfox

General Francis Marion, known as “The Swamp Fox,” was a Revolutionary officer from Berkeley County, South Carolina. Even though he was a commissioned officer in the South Carolina Second Regiment, he also led a band of irregular fighters in the back- and low-country swamps of South Carolina fighting the British troops under Lord Cornwallis. He is generally credited as the Father of Guerilla Warfare, and is recognized as such at various War Colleges.

Marion, Francis (1732-1795), was an American military leader from South Carolina whose shrewd, daring raids in the Revolutionary War in America won him the nickname of The Swamp Fox. He and his soldiers repeatedly darted out of the marshes to attack the British and Americans who supported them and then vanished before their victims could strike back(Bass, 1974).

Marion was born in Berkeley County, South Carolina. He spent his youth on his parents' farm near Georgetown, South Carolina. He had his first experience in war as a lieutenant of colonial militia in 1761, when he led an attack against the Cherokee Indians.

A man of diminutive stature, General Marion was a lifelong citizen-soldier and planter, living on his plantation, Pond Bluff, which now lies under Lake Marion in Central South Carolina. He fought as a lieutenant in the French and Indian War in the 1750s, The Cherokee Campaign of 1760, as a captain at the Battle of Sullivan's Island on June 28, 1776, and as a lieutenant colonel at the Battle of Savannah on October 9, 1779. One interesting fact about his life is that he was carried out of Charleston in 1780 with a broken ankle suffered when he jumped out of a window to escape a Loyalist trap, thus avoiding the fall of Charleston under General Benjamin Lincoln and his 5,000 Continental Troops(Boddie, 2000).

In 1775, at the start of the Revolutionary War, Marion became captain of a militia company. He helped defend Charleston, South Carolina, against a British attack in 1776. The British captured Charleston in May 1780. But Marion had left the city before it surrendered(Cornelius, 2001).

Few American troops remained in South Carolina after the British won the Battle of Camden in August 1780. Marion could form only a band of fighters, which was too small to fight the British in open battle. So he used the band as guerrillas, favoring ambushes and sudden raids. Ammunition was scarce. ...