The Legend Of The Swamp Fox; General Francis Marion

[TomSea]

The Legend Of The Swamp Fox;  General Francis Marion

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.



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.

After Charleston had fallen and the Americans were driven from the field
at the Battle of Camden in August of 1780, General Marion and his band of irregulars, with whites and blacks, free and slave, along with friendly Native Americans, were the only organized fighting force in action in America, as General Washington’s army was at a stalemate outside of British occupied New York. (It is believed that Marion’s Band was the first integrated fighting force in America as well.) ...

Continued: http://www.swampfoxmemorial.org/francismarion.html