Brigadier General Francis Marion

Francis Marion was born around 1732 in South Carolina's lowcountry, the grandson of Huguenot immigrants, and spent his early adult life as a planter. He gained his first military experience in the Cherokee War of 1759-1761, fighting in the South Carolina colonial militia and learning the guerrilla tactics of the backcountry that would later define his fame. When the Revolution began, he served as an officer in the 2nd South Carolina Continental Regiment and was present at the defense of Fort Sullivan in 1776, narrowly missing capture at Charleston in 1780 when a broken ankle sustained at a dinner party kept him away from the city during its siege.

Morgan's victory at Cowpens in January 1781 set in motion a campaign of attrition across South Carolina in which Marion played a central role. Operating in the swamps and rivers of the lowcountry, Marion commanded a fast-moving partisan force that disrupted British supply lines, liberated prisoners, and prevented the British from consolidating their hold on the interior. During the period surrounding Hobkirk's Hill in April 1781, Marion's raids on British supply routes into Camden were a critical element of Nathanael Greene's overall strategy: if Greene could not take Camden by direct assault, his partisan allies could make it too costly to hold. Marion's operations against Fort Watson, Fort Motte, Georgetown, and other outposts in this period forced the British to garrison scattered posts rather than concentrate their forces. Lord Rawdon's eventual decision to evacuate Camden and fall back toward the coast was a consequence of exactly the strategic attrition Marion's campaigns were designed to create.

After the war, Marion served in the South Carolina state senate and was appointed a general of the state militia. He was known in later life for moderation toward former loyalists, advocating reconciliation over retribution. He died in 1795, and in the decades that followed his reputation grew far beyond its wartime dimensions: novels, plays, and histories depicted him as the archetypal American guerrilla leader, and the Swamp Fox became one of the most romanticized figures of the entire Revolution.