I have it from good authority, that this great soldier, at his birth, was not larger than a New England lobster, and might easily enough have been put into a quart pot.

Peter Horry,
who fought with Francis Marion

Short, bowlegged, and moody, Francis Marion was as far away from the template of the dashing war hero as his tactics were from the storybook exploits of military literature. The father of modern guerrilla warfare was born an unimpressively small and sickly baby, the youngest of seven, somewhere in Berkeley County, South Carolina in 1732 to hardworking French Huguenot parents. Soon his family would move near Georgetown on the coast, and the teenage Marion became enamored with the sea. While his infatuation with maritime life lasted exactly one voyage — a whale rammed and sank his ship — a taste for adventure remained.

During the French and Indian War, Marion fought local Cherokees, and revisionist historians would later revile the enthusiasm he showed in this venture. But Marion’s own words show a more conflicted character, as shown by his reaction to an order to burn Cherokees out of their homes.

“Some of our men seemed to enjoy this cruel work, laughing very heartily at the curling flames, as they mounted loud crackling over the tops of the huts. But to me it appeared a shocking sight. Poor creatures! thought I, we surely need not grudge you such miserable habitations.”

While the irregular tactics Marion learned fighting the Cherokee would come in handy during the Revolution, his first experience in that conflict was in more textbook engagements, such as the defenses of Fort Moultrie and Fort Sullivan and the siege of Savannah. But with the fall of Charleston in 1780, a vengeful Marion and his ragged band of volunteer fighters — who unusually for the time included African Americans — vanished into the bogs of the Pee Dee and took up a different way of warfare: ambush and retreat, harass and vanish.

In a foreshadowing of the revolutionary movements of the 20th century, “Marion’s Men” provisioned themselves with food and supplies from a sympathetic local populace, offering receipts for reimbursement after the war.

Astride small, agile mounts called “Marsh Tackies,” descendants of horses originally left by the Spanish, the Patriots rode where bigger British cavalry horses balked. Marion’s nocturnal cunning and his superior intelligence network frustrated the British army and their Loyalist supporters to no end, leading to his nickname the “Swamp Fox.”

British Col. Banastre Tarleton, himself known as “The Butcher” for atrocities toward civilians, was dispatched to neutralize Marion. The savage cat-and-mouse game between the two formed the basis for the storyline of Mel Gibson’s 2000 film The Patriot (Gibson’s character was reportedly a composite of Marion and several other South Carolina irregulars). Filmed entirely in South Carolina — including at Middleton Plantation, Cypress Gardens, and Historic Brattonsville — The Patriot is far from an exact chronicle. But it does accurately portray the nature of the war in the Southern theater, in which quarter was rarely asked or given, and little distinction was made between combatant and civilian.

While certainly the most famous, the Swamp Fox was merely first among equals in a veritable menagerie of hit-and-run fighters. Thomas Sumter, a Virginian by birth, became known as “The Carolina Gamecock” for his ferocity on the battlefield. Andrew Pickens, “The Wizard Owl,” and his militiamen played a key role in the Battle of Cowpens in the Upstate.

After the war, Marion served in elective office, married, and settled down at his Pine Bluff Plantation, now submerged under the lake which bears his name. He died in 1795 at the age of 63, peaceful at last.