The Swamp Fox Read online

  ALSO BY JOHN OLLER

  Jean Arthur: The Actress Nobody Knew

  An All-American Murder

  American Queen:

  The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague—Civil War

  “Belle of the North” and Gilded Age Woman of Scandal

  Copyright © 2016 by John Oller

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address Da Capo Press, 44 Farnsworth Street, Third Floor, Boston, MA 02210.

  Designed by Trish Wilkinson

  Set in 10.75 point Goudy Oldstyle Std

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Oller, John, author.

  Title: The Swamp Fox: how Francis Marion saved the American Revolution / John Oller.

  Description: Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016018548 (print) | LCCN 2016019425 (ebook) | ISBN 9780306824586 (e-book)

  Subjects: LCSH: Marion, Francis, 1732-1795. | Generals—United States—Biography. | South Carolina—Militia—Biography. | United States—History—Revolution, 1775-1783—Biography. | South Carolina—History—Revolution, 1775-1783—Campaigns. | Georgia—History—Revolution, 1775-1783—Campaigns. | United States—History—Revolution, 1775-1783—Campaigns.

  Classification: LCC E207.M3 O45 2016 (print) | LCC E207.M3 (ebook) | DDC 973.3/3092 [B] —dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016018548

  Published by Da Capo Press, an imprint of Perseus Books, a division of PBG

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Title page art: Francis Marion as a Continental officer (New York Public Library)

  For my family

  Contents

  List of Maps

  Author’s Note

  Prologue: The Darkest Hour

  1 A Most Uncivil War

  2 “A Spirit of Toleration”

  3 Frontier Lessons

  4 Manning the Ramparts

  5 Commander of the 2nd Regiment

  6 Birth of a Partisan

  7 Hitting and Running

  8 “My Little Excursions”

  9 Dead Man’s Hand

  10 The Swamp Fox

  11 “I Must Drive Marion Out of That Country”

  12 “I Have Not the Honor of Your Acquaintance”

  13 “Two Very Enterprising Officers”

  14 Hound and Fox

  15 Fox and Hound

  16 “A War of Posts”

  17 Ball of Fire

  18 Winning by Losing

  19 Dog Days

  20 “The Most Galling Fire”

  21 “At Eutaw Springs the Valiant Died”

  22 “Watchful Anxiety”

  23 “As Soon as They Can Spare Me”

  24 “To Prevent the Effusion of Blood”

  25 “An Affectionate Farewell”

  26 “The Purest Patriotism”

  Acknowledgments

  Abbreviations

  Notes

  Selected Bibliography

  Index

  Photographs following page 160

  Maps

  1. South Carolina in 1780

  2. The Principal Theater of the Campaigns of Francis Marion

  3. Marion’s Bridges Campaign

  4. The Battle of Eutaw Springs, September 8, 1781

  Author’s Note

  ANYONE WRITING ABOUT Francis Marion immediately confronts the task of sifting fact from folklore. The mythmaking began with the first and highly embellished biography of him, written in 1809 by Mason L. “Parson” Weems, the same man who fabricated the famous story of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree. The romantic tradition continued with the Walt Disney television series that ran from 1959 to 1961, starring Leslie Nielsen as the Swamp Fox, and took another turn in 2000 with the popular film The Patriot, in which Mel Gibson portrayed a Rambo-like action figure loosely, if inaccurately, based on Marion. As stated on an interpretive marker at Marion’s gravesite in Pineville, South Carolina, much about the Swamp Fox remains obscured by legend, even though his achievements are “significant and real.”

  Beyond the more blatant fictionalizations of Marion’s life, the original documentary sources are often fragmentary and conflicting (e.g., Was there an ambush at Blue Savannah? Was Marion actually present at Lower Bridge?). I have tried to synthesize the various sources to arrive at sound conclusions as to what most likely happened, making use of much new information that has come to light since the last major Marion biography in 1973, including scholarly research, archaeological findings, pension records, military rosters, and genealogies, not to mention the Internet. In most cases I have reserved the more detailed discussions of conflicting accounts and theories for the endnotes, which I encourage readers to consult.

  Some terminology, for readers not steeped in American Revolutionary War history, and geography, for those unfamiliar with South Carolina—as I once was—may be helpful at the outset.

  TERMINOLOGY

  In describing those Americans who fought for or otherwise sided with the cause of colonial independence from Great Britain during the Revolutionary War, I use the terms patriots, Whigs, and rebels more or less interchangeably. Those who remained loyal to the British Crown are referred to as Tories, loyalists, or sometimes king’s men or friends. Where the context is clear, I also use Americans to refer to the patriot side, even though the Tories were Americans too.

  Trained, uniformed, full-time soldiers who fought in the American Continental Army are described as Continentals or regulars; their British army counterparts are redcoats or British regulars.

  The American militia, also known as partisans, were amateur, unpaid soldiers who furnished their own horses, hunting rifles, and ammunition. Some historians take pains to distinguish between the state-regulated “militia” and the purely volunteer “partisans,” but for much of the period in question here (1780–1782) there was little or no distinction between the two. Another group of South Carolina soldiers were the so-called state troops who were raised in 1781 for more definite terms of service.

  On the loyalist side there were two groups of soldiers: the loyalists or Royal Militia (or just militia), and the provincials. In the southern theater of war the Tory militia operated essentially like the American militia/partisans and were generally southern born and bred. The provincial soldiers were trained and paid by the British and often were commanded by British regular army officers. Most of the provincials were recruited from among American Tories living in the North, particularly the pro-British areas of New York, New Jersey, and parts of Pennsylvania.

  GEOGRAPHY

  The South Carolina Lowcountry is usually defined as the area within fifty miles of the Atlantic Coast, parallel to the two largest port towns, Charleston and Georgetown. Everything else is the backcountry or upcountry, although the latter term is sometimes reserved for the mountainous region in the northwestern tip of the state, near the original land of the Cherokees. Of the three great partisan leaders in South Carolina, Francis Marion operated mostly in the eastern third of the state, encompassing the
Lowcountry and portions of the backcountry; Thomas Sumter, a backcountry man, had the middle third of the state; and Andrew Pickens led the partisans in the northwest third of the state, closest to Indian Territory.

  Frequent reference is made in these pages to South Carolina’s major rivers and ferries. The two most important rivers for our purposes are the Santee and the Pee Dee (spelled Peedee or Pedee at the time). Most of Marion’s most famous engagements took place in between or near these two rivers and their various branches and tributaries.

  The Santee, the largest river in the state, held great strategic importance during the Revolution. It has its origins in the mountains of western North Carolina as the Catawba River, which becomes the Wateree in South Carolina and merges with the Congaree in the middle of the state to become the Santee, flowing southeast and emptying out on the coast below Georgetown. (See maps, pp. xiv–xv.)

  The Pee Dee (sometimes called the Great Pee Dee, to distinguish it from its tributary, the Little Pee Dee) begins farther east in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina and flows south-southeast through the northeastern part of South Carolina until it reaches Georgetown.

  Bridges across the major waters of inland South Carolina were relatively uncommon during the Revolution. Most wide river and creek crossings were made in flatboats at state-franchised, privately operated ferries that consisted of two sides, with a landing on each bank. The most important of these was Nelson’s Ferry, the principal crossing point on the Santee for travelers or troops between Charleston to the south and British army headquarters to the north. Other ferries frequently used by Marion, because they were near his base of operations, were Witherspoon’s, Britton’s, and Port’s Ferries. Marion’s men often camped at these and other ferry landings to provide quick access to water crossings.

  In the years before and during the Revolution the South Carolina Lowcountry was divided into numerous local parishes as part of the dominant Anglican Church system.

  In referring to cities and towns I generally use the modern spelling, such as Charleston, not Charles Town, and Winnsboro, not Winnsborough.

  A NOTE ON THE TEXT

  As an aid to readability I have modernized capitalizations and punctuation in the original texts of letters and military orders. I have generally maintained the originals of spelling, grammar, and English usage, even if they would be considered incorrect by today’s standards. As a result, Marion in particular may come across to modern readers as semiliterate, and he has sometimes been described as such. But despite a lack of formal schooling, he was about as educated as most American-born men of his time and class.

  South Carolina in 1780

  The Principal Theater of the Campaigns of Francis Marion

  An eerie, shrill whistle pierced the humid night air above Gaillard’s Island in the Santee River Swamp. A second call followed, then another. Like the cry of the whip-poor-will, the sound penetrated through the pines, the moss-draped cypress trees, and the tall canebrakes surrounding the patriot militia camp. There, among their palmetto-thatched huts, the men sat and talked around small campfires they had lit to ward off the mosquitoes and deer flies that swarmed the surrounding marshes and creeks. These oozing, misty morasses were made all the more impenetrable by the alligators and water moccasins that inhabited them.

  The bird calls on this night were not, however, those of the whip-poor-will but a series of signals by sentries concealed in the nearby treetops. At times a guide to friends searching for the secret lair, at other times a warning of the approach of foes, the whistles on this August evening were a summons for men to gather for an expedition south to reinforce a fellow patriot force being harassed by Tories. A nearly hundred-mile march, commencing at night over unfrequented roads, lay ahead of the men encamped at Peyre’s Plantation.

  It was time again for the Swamp Fox to move out.

  PROLOGUE

  The Darkest Hour

  JULY 25, 1780—GENERAL GATES’S CAMP AT HOLLINGSWORTH’S FARM ON DEEP RIVER NEAR BUFFALO FORD, NORTH CAROLINA

  They were a motley-looking bunch, the twenty or so militia volunteers who rode on horseback that day into the camp of General Horatio Gates, the newly appointed commander of the American Continental Army in the South. Some were white, some were black, and among them was a Catawba Indian or two, enemies of the British and Cherokees. A few of the soldiers were barely in their teens. One of Gates’s officers, noting the “wretchedness of their attire,” described the newcomers’ appearance as “so burlesque” that the Continentals had to restrain themselves from laughing at them.

  At their head rode a diminutive, forty-eight-year-old man who, at around five-foot-two and 110 pounds, possessed the physique of a thirteen-year-old boy. His knock knees, deformed since birth, nearly touched one another, his hook nose and narrow face gave him a homely appearance, and he walked with a pronounced limp. Yet his flashing black eyes and steely demeanor, along with his blue Continental uniform, rumpled though it was, cautioned the mocking soldiers not to laugh at the ragged group in his presence.

  It was a precarious moment for the patriot cause. Two months earlier, in May 1780, the port of Charleston had fallen to the British after a six-week siege—the greatest disaster the Americans would suffer during the entire war. The British quickly established a chain of forts and outposts from the Atlantic Coast to the western mountains to control South Carolina’s interior. They planned to roll up through the Carolinas and Virginia one by one and eventually trap George Washington between New York and the redcoat advance from the south, finally ending the rebellion.

  Francis Marion, a Continental officer at the time of Charleston’s fall, had been absent from the city, having gone to the countryside to nurse an injured ankle. According to legend, he fractured it when he leapt from a second-story window to escape an officers’ dinner party in downtown Charleston shortly before the siege began. By eighteenth-century custom the host had locked all the doors to prevent the guests from leaving before the merriment was over. Marion, a light drinker at best, looked for a way out and jumped. A reckless act at the time, if true, it proved to be one of those lucky quirks of history.

  After the British captured the city, and realizing he was a marked man in British eyes, Marion hid out among friends’ and relatives’ plantations along the Santee River in South Carolina’s Lowcountry. He was accompanied by his faithful African American body servant (valet), a slave named Oscar who went by the nickname Buddy. Marion’s mentor, General William Moultrie, wrote that Marion “was so lame he was obliged to skulk about from house to house among his friends,” sometimes hiding in the bushes; as his ankle improved “he then crept out by degree and began to collect a few friends, and when he got ten or twelve together he ventured out.”

  In early July, Marion rode with his dozen followers to Cox’s Mill, North Carolina (near present-day Ramseur), to offer his services to the southern Continental army. The army’s interim commander, the German-born, nearly sixty-year-old Johann Kalb, had recently arrived there with fourteen hundred men. Kalb, self-christened “Baron de Kalb,” was not a nobleman but rather a soldier of fortune, serving in the French army as a protégé of Lafayette. In April, Washington had sent him south from New Jersey to offer relief to Charleston, but on the way de Kalb learned that the city had already fallen. Exhausted by the five-hundred-mile march, plagued by insect bites, and lacking regular food, he and his men were awaiting the arrival of Gates, the hero of Saratoga, who had been chosen by Congress to succeed Benjamin Lincoln, the surrendering general at Charleston.

  Around July 10, after Marion and his ragtag bunch reached Cox’s Mill, de Kalb sent them out to scour the area for intelligence and provisions. Two weeks later, on July 25, Marion and his little band, now numbering around twenty, were back at Hollingsworth’s Farm, a few miles from Cox’s, to witness Gates’s arrival. As Marion learned, Gates was preparing to march the army immediately on the British garrison at Camden in north central South Carolina, then under the command of Lieutenant
General Charles, Earl Cornwallis.

  Gates may have respected Francis Marion’s experience as a military man, but he had no place for Marion and his band of “irregular” fighters. English-born and a former major in the British army, Gates was of the school trained to fight set-piece battles in an open field. He was disinclined toward the kind of ambush tactics practiced by Native American warriors, a style of warfare Francis Marion had learned while fighting the Cherokees on the Carolina frontier during the French and Indian War. Primarily an infantry commander, Gates also had no appreciation for the important role cavalry would play in the southern theater, where the open terrain and the great distances between settlements placed a premium on mounted patrols. To Gates, that Marion’s men rode into camp on horseback was nothing to applaud.

  On July 27, the first day they set out, Gates allowed Marion and his little band to ride up front with him, a gracious gesture to make up for the slight they had received from the Continentals two days earlier. Evidently the incident embarrassed Gates, for the day before he had urged that every Continental officer and soldier “show the utmost cordiality and brotherly affection” to the militia, who “deserve[d] every kindness” for having volunteered to defend their invaded country. Still, Marion and his militiamen were little more than bodyguards for Gates, so when the opportunity arose to dispatch them elsewhere, Gates jumped at the chance.

  By happy coincidence a group of men forming a militia in South Carolina’s Williamsburg Township, a Whig stronghold northeast of the Santee, had asked Gates to send them an experienced Continental officer to lead them. When their request arrived at Gates’s camp, Marion offered himself for the job, and Gates was glad to oblige. On the morning of August 15, from his headquarters at Rugeley’s Mills, South Carolina, twelve miles above Camden, he sent Marion and his men off to Williamsburg to the southeast. Gates gave them orders to watch the enemy’s motions and to destroy any boats they found on the Santee River. In part that was a make-work assignment, but it also reflected Gates’s supreme confidence: expecting total victory at Camden, he wanted to prevent Cornwallis from escaping to Charleston.