FRANCIS MARION
(1732-1795)

Francis Marion, the partisan general of South Carolina, was of Huguenot descent, the first American settlers of the name being Benjamin Marion and Judith Balnet, his wife, who came from France in 1690, and established themselves in a plantation on one of the tributaries of the Cooper River, near Charleston. Gabriel, the son of Benjamin, married Esther Cordes. These were the parents of Francis Marion. He was born, it would appear, in St. John's Parish, Berkeley County, probably in 1732. His early life was passed, till his twenty-seventh year, in agricultural pursuits, when we first hear of him in connection with military matters in the period of the old French war. He took the field with Moultrie, and fought gallantly by the side of that officer in the Cherokee country against the savages at the battle of Etchoee. He then returned to his farm, near Eutaw Springs, ripening for the work of the Revolution, which found him at the height of manhood, at the age of forty-three. The people of his district relied upon his understanding, for we find them sending him as their delegate to the Provincial Congress of 1775, when he was appointed captain in the regiment of his former superior officer, Colonel Moultrie. His first duty was to gather a company, which he speedily effected in the Eastern region, where he was well known. He was then employed in the neighborhood of Charleston; being engaged in the occupation of Fort Johnson and the command of Dorchester.

He was with Moultrie, at Sullivan's Island in May, 1776, during that fierce day of battle when the British were driven from the southern colonies, and particularly distinguished himself in the gallant defence.

At the ill-managed attack upon Savannah, by the combined forces of D'Estaing and Lincoln, which ended so disastrously for the Americans, Marion was present with his regiment, which did much by its gallantry to redeem the honor, if not the fortunes, of the day. Next came, in the winter of 1780, the siege of Charleston, by Sir Henry Clinton. It was evident from the beginning that the city must fall, and it has been a point much discussed whether Lincoln should have attempted to defend it, whether it would not have been better for the cause that he should withdraw his troops, and besiege the British from the open country. This was what afterward took place when the conquerors were reduced almost to starvation. An accident which happened to Marion has been esteemed a piece of singular good fortune to the cause, in saving him from surrender. He was in command of the small body of light troops, outside of the city, when he was called to aid in the defence. During the first days of the very deliberate investment, he was dining with some friends in the town, when, according to a custom not unusual in those hard-drinking times, the door was locked that no one should avoid his share of the conviviality. Determined to escape the infliction, he threw himself from the window into the street. The fall fractured his ankle and incapacitated him from service. In obedience to an order of Lincoln, commanding all officers unfit for duty to retire from the city, he left while the country was still open, and took refuge in his native region of St. John. His freedom was thus preserved for the service of his country.

Now came the incursions of Tarleton and the devastating warfare of Cornwallis—a policy of savage extermination which would have driven a people with less capability of exertion to despair. But it happened, as it has before, that the very means employed to crush, excited the spirit of resistance, and deliverers were raised up for the oppressed. It was a peculiar species of warfare which was now entered upon, requiring novel resources both for attack and defence. A thinly inhabited country was the scene of operations, cut up in all directions by rivers and their branches, and innumerable swamps. Large bodies of troops could move only with difficulty; it was a service for small parties of cavalry always in movement, making up by rapidity for want of numbers. On the side of the British, Lieutenant-Colonel Tarleton, an officer of spirit, whose fiery youth has been vividly handed down to us in the portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, was the leading representative of this method of warfare, harrying the land with his mounted troops, and overcoming by his activity and unscrupulousness. Success added terror to his name, as he gained victory after victory, and seemed destined to sweep the land of its patriot defenders. He was the right arm of Cornwallis, in his movements in the interior, and began to be deemed invincible, when his course was arrested by Morgan, the Virginian, and his resolute companies of native defenders of the State, at the battle of Cowpens. But it was in Marion that the chief spirit of resistance was incorporated. On the arrival of Gates from the North, in command of the Southern army, having partially recovered from his lameness, he presented himself before the hero of Saratoga, on his march toward the fatal field of Camden. American commanders were accustomed to odd sights of dress and equipment in the patriot soldiery who enlisted under their banners, and Gates must have been used to appearances with which the eye of Washington himself was but too familiar. The little band of Marion, however, seems to have astonished even their American brethren-in-arms. As for the well-equipped British, they always held the ragged American regiments in contempt, till they were soundly flogged by them. An intelligent looker-on at the camp, Colonel Otho Williams, in his narrative of the campaign, speaks of Colonel Marion's arrival, "attended by a very few followers, distinguished by small leather caps and the wretchedness of their attire; their number did not exceed twenty men and boys, some white, some black, and all mounted, but most of them miserably equipped. Their appearance was, in fact, so burlesque, that it was with much difficulty the diversion of the regular soldiery was restrained by the officers; and the general himself was glad of an opportunity of detaching Colonel Marion, at his own instance, toward the interior of South Carolina, with orders to watch the motions of the enemy, and furnish intelligence."

It was while Marion was engaged on this service, that the battle of Camden was fought; but luckily, he had no share in the misadventure. He was employed, in fact, in quite an independent career of his own, organizing his own forces and acting at his own discretion. He was at the head of that system of partisan warfare, which, in its developments, was to rid the State of the foreign foe. His present command, "Marion's Brigade," was formed from the hardy spirited population of Irish descent, settled between the Santee and the Pedee, in the territory of Williamsburg. They were convinced of the intentions of the British rulers at Charleston to reduce them to political servitude; they knew their rights, and knowing, dared to maintain them. Their movement was voluntary, as they gathered their small but resolute force of picked men, and called Marion to its command. He had already assumed it, and caused the Tories to feel his new authority when the defeat of Gates took place. It roused him at once to a new effort to redeem the fortunes of war. He was already in the neighborhood of the field, and hearing that a British guard was on its way with a considerable body of prisoners, he determined to arrest the party on its march. Two days after the battle, he concerted an attack, and with the loss of but one man, killed and took 22 regulars and 2 Tories prisoners, and retook 150 continentals of the Maryland line. He was now a recognized leader in the field, and the British commander-in-chief directed his efforts to his overthrow. "I most sincerely hope," wrote Cornwallis to Tarleton, "that you will get at Mr. Marion." But Mr. Marion was not so easily to be caught. On the appearance of a superior force, under the command of Tarleton, which it would have been vain to resist, the skilful partisan turned his forces in another direction, to the borders of North Carolina, where he overawed the Scotch Tories in that disaffected region. The ruthless conduct of the British whom he had left behind, now raised the South Carolinians to fresh resistance, when Marion, ever mindful of his opportunity, returned to the State with speed, accomplishing sixty miles in one day, and in a bold night attack, defeated a large body of Tories on the Black Mingo. Following this up with some smaller successes of the kind, he again attracted the attention of Tarleton, who issued out of Charleston in force for his capture, and when he was fairly on his heels, wearied out and perplexed by the windings of his foe, gave up the chase, it is said, with the exclamation, "Come, my boys! let us go back. We will soon find the Game Cock [Marion's brother partisan, Sumter], but as for this damned Swamp-fox, the devil himself could not catch him."