Columbia Star

1963        Celebrating 60 Years      2023

Pineville, a historic refuge

Francis Marion, guerrilla fighter
Originally published May 4, 2007


This John Blake White painting, General Marion Inviting a British Officer to Dinner (1836), depicts the story of a British officer’s visit to Marion’s camp to arrange an exchange of prisoners.

This John Blake White painting, General Marion Inviting a British Officer to Dinner (1836), depicts the story of a British officer’s visit to Marion’s camp to arrange an exchange of prisoners.

Francis Marion was probably the first guerrilla fighter. He refused to follow the accepted rules of warfare during the American Revolution and became the most feared Partisan leader.

A moral yet practical man, Marion required his men to attend church services, cut their hair short, go lightly on the whiskey, and act as gentlemen at all times. His soldiers, black and white, seldom more than 20 at any one time, wore small leather caps with white cockades, homespun clothes, and carried muskets, pistols, and swords. They cooked their own food, usually corn meal, beef jerky, peas, and sweet potatoes. When caught in the woods at night, each soldier bedded on his own blanket spread over pinestraw and Spanish moss.

Each had a mount and knew the quickest route from town to town and from ferry to ferry. They were not trained, but they were disciplined. They charged out of the darkness with pistols smoking, swords flashing, yelling at the top of their lungs, curdling the blood of the confused Tories and British Regulars.

When Charleston fell to the British in May of 1780, Marion took command of the Second Regiment. He and his ragtag regiment of part-time militia took up arms against Loyalist troops. They farmed during the day, struck during the night, then disappeared into the swamps of the Santee, Lynches, Black, and Pee Dee Rivers, only to appear innocently the next day behind their mules and plows.

British General Cornwallis sent the vengeful Sir Banastre Tarleton to subdue Marion after Marion had cut the British lines between Charleston and Camden. Tarleton moved down the Kings Highway to Nelson’s Ferry on the Santee, burning houses and churches (mostly Presbyterian), destroying crops, and mistreating women.

Upon hearing the widow of Gen. Richard Richardson had warned Marion, Tarleton ordered his troops to dig up Richardson’s six-week-old body. While the widow mourned, Tarleton had all the cattle, hogs, and chickens driven into the barn. Tarleton marched away as the barn and the home burned.

At the edge of the Pocotaligo Swamp between Kingstree and Stateburg, Tarleton thought he had Marion cornered but came up empty. In a fit of frustration, Tarleton said, “But as for this damned old fox, the devil himself could not catch him.” From that moment on, Francis Marion was known as The Swamp Fox.

On his flights along the Santee River Road from Lenud’s Ferry at Jamestown to Murray’s Ferry at St. Stephens to Nelson’s Ferry at Eutaw Springs, Francis Marion occasionally stopped at his brother Gabriel’s Belle Isle Plantation. Once he had to bury his nephew, Young Gabriel, who had been seized by Tories and executed as a warning for his uncle.

Marion and his band of weary patriots attacked British garrisons in Georgetown, retreated to Snow’s Island in the Pee Dee, then attacked again. To keep the British off guard, they stopped wagon traffic on the River Road and boat traffic on the Santee River. While camped at Snow’s Island, he received a letter from Governor Rutledge promoting him to Brigadier General. A few days later, he was told his Pond Bluff Plantation had been destroyed by the British.

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