The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution by John Oller This is a counter piece to The British Are Coming, by Rick Atkinson, that was the book of choice off Bob’s bookshelf in early June. His book looks at the first two years of the war, ending in early 1777 with the Battle of Trenton and Princeton. It discussed the strategy of Washington and crew and gave us a global view of the first part of the conflict.
The Swamp Fox is the flip side of that opus. It presents a chronicle of 20 or so small battles in South Carolina during the last few years of the war. This author writes about Francis Marion, known as the Swamp Fox, as he harassed British troops in South Carolina during the last years of the American Revolution.
Marion was a gentleman farmer in South Carolina for the first few years of the revolution, which did not touch the south until its last few years. He was 5’ 2” tall and weighed 110 pounds, hardly an imposing presence.
Francis Marion had fought with the British in the 1750s in various Indian wars. Besides developing his military skills, he learned that the Redcoats were arrogant and fairly stupid sometimes, findings which served him well as he harassed the larger British army for about three years, winning/not losing all but one of two dozen skirmishes. Most of these were too small to be called battles, but he essentially convinced the British to suspend efforts to pacify South Carolina and move the troops north to Virginia.
Most of the action takes place between 1779 and 1782, although South Carolina did declare war on Britain right after Lexington and Concord. Early on, the Brits were too busy in the north to pay attention to the south. Marion started out as a Continental officer (that was like Regular Army) but ended up leading local militia troops for most of his career. By most accounts he was a decent man who kept his word, respected his troops, and treated his slaves well. (I know – he had slaves – but that was a constant among the landed gentry who became officers back then.) He happened to be a brilliant military tactician who, while almost always severely outnumbered, found ways to routinely beat the Brits. His main tactic was to charge the enemy when they weren’t expecting it; it usually worked.
I must refer back to The British Are Coming. Author Rick Atkinson includes plenty of situations where General George Washington zigged when he should have zagged. He was a poor battle tactician who might not have been able to outflank a Boy Scout troop. The Father of Our Country was a brilliant leader and a good strategist, and that made all of the difference.
Marion was a very good leader who really understood the nuts and bolts of armed conflict. He did not engage in too many set piece battles where each side marched towards each other shooting, the preferred Redcoat style. Marion ran a guerrilla operation. He bobbed and weaved and ambushed and faked retreats and did all sorts of creative things. The British were not amused. “Marion will not fight like a gentleman,” complained one of his defeated opponents.
Since he wasn’t part of the Continental Army, Marion had to recruit his own troops and live off the land. That meant that he couldn’t behave like some officers back then. The British liked to burn homes and plunder areas as a matter of course, a major reason that many South Carolinians, who initially were against the revolution, switched sides and helped the rebels. Marion didn’t burn and steal things, so he was able to convince men to join him and he was also able to get food from the locals.
In August of 1780, the British routed the Americans at Camden, SC, and became very confident that they could win South Carolina easily. Things looked bad for the good guys. In the five months following that, Marion and others kept the British on edge and induced them to leave the state. That was an impressive defeat, and many historians say that it greatly helped the overall war effort.
One of the major points of the book is that the British often had to retreat (and eventually leave South Carolina) because of extended supply lines that just couldn’t keep up with the army’s demand for food, ammunition, and supplies. Great Britain was 1,800 miles away, and the Redcoats could only plunder so much. Marion’s work constantly disrupted supply lines, which was critical to the final victory.
General Cornwallis led his troops out of South Carolina, eventually ending up in Yorktown, VA, where on October 19, 1781, he surrendered to George Washington. The war droned on for another year, with the Treaty of Paris finally being signed in November of 1782.
Marion and his militia men were not invited to the celebration in Charleston when the city was liberated in December of 1782. Marion himself could join the party but his superiors were not wild about the militia – ruffians, uncouth – compared to the regulars in the Continental Army. Marion chose not to go. He stood by his troops.
As the war wound down, Francis Marion, like many officers, was elected to the state senate where he served for a few years. He wasn’t a politician. He received no money for his military service - even when they were fighting, he and his troops usually went unpaid - but he did get a commendation from the legislature and a gold medal which was never delivered to him. (Remember - It’s the thought that counts.) He did receive 300 acres and eventually built up a farm, financially assisted by the woman he married late in life.
One of his colleagues in arms summarized Lieutenant Colonel Francis Marion: "His appearance was not prepossessing, his manners were distant, but not repulsive, yet few leaders have ever been so popular among their men; none ever had more of their confidence…. Cool and collected, he was always the general, never the common soldier. In short, the whole bent of his soul was how he should best provide for his men, how he could most annoy the enemy, and how he could soonest achieve the independence of his country."
Bob’s Take
This book was really interesting. Daughter Caroline gave it to me for Father’s Day. Both daughters have excellent taste in books for Bob at the Bookshelf, and they don’t come up with duds. It is a small book, only about 250 pages of text, a relief after having to plow through much lengthier tomes to report on for my loyal fans.
South Carolina I had no idea how important South Carolina and Francis Marion were to the success of the rebellion. Had South Carolina fallen to the British, as was their plan, the war would have probably gone on much longer and who knows what would have happened.South Carolina was the scene of over 200 battles, one-third of the war’s totals. During the last two years of the revolution, 20% of the deaths in the war were in South Carolina. During the last two years of the fighting, 90% of the 2,000 troops wounded were in South Carolina.
Leslie Nielsen played the Swamp Fox on TV I also had no knowledge of the Swamp Fox, except from what I learned in the 8-part Disney mini-series that ran episodically on Sunday night from 1959 to 1961. Nielsen, of Airplane! and The Naked Gun classic movies, played our hero. Anyway, the real Francis Marion didn’t hang around in swamps, which were really nasty, deadly places back then. He didn’t invent guerrilla warfare but he perfected it. He was not a trained soldier but he had an innate talent for warfare.
Leadership comes in all sizes and shapes Francis Marion was physically unassuming and underwhelming He was short, lame, and had a big hooked nose, but his men would follow him anywhere. That’s leadership. George Washington had a regal bearing and was huge for his times, 6’ 2”, a foot taller than Marion. George also was a fine leader.
It turns out that Francis Marion has more memorials to his contributions to the revolution than anyone else except George Washington. That says it all.
