The Swamp Fox Revealed: Everything About Great General Francis Marion: Swamp Fox General Marion

By Alfonso Alvanas

Marion, a mere five feet tall, won fame and the "Swamp Fox" moniker for his ability to strike and then quickly retreat without a trace into the South Carolina swamps.

In 2000, The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson, captured the nation's attention with the highly dramatized story of an American patriot fighting the British in South Carolina during the American Revolution. As viewers learned that Gibson's character was loosely based on General Francis Marion, nicknamed the "Swamp Fox" by his enemies, people took a new interest in this often forgotten soldier.

Those who had seen the movie may have envisioned Marion as a family man, a widower with enlightened, 21st-century views, but those who dug deeper would find a man that Hugh Rankin, one of Marion's biographers, described as "something like a sandwich-a highly spiced center between two slabs of rather dry bread." In fact, Marion was a bachelor most of his life, and he likely only married so that he might have someone to care for him in his old age. Amy Crawford, writing in Smithsonian Magazine, reminded her readers, "Most heroes of the Revolution were not the saints that biographers like Parson Weems would have them be, and Francis Marion was a man of his times: he owned slaves, and he fought in a brutal campaign against the Cherokee Indians. While not noble by today's standards, Marion's experience in the French and Indian War prepared him for more admirable service. The Cherokee used the landscape to their advantage, Marion found; they concealed themselves in the Carolina backwoods and mounted devastating ambushes. Two decades later, Marion would apply these tactics against the British."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B093WKRG2G
• ISBN13: 9798746225122
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 38 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"