General Nathanael Greene's Memorial Day Message to our intrepid hero, the Swamp Fox Francis Marion

Submitter Photo - John Warner Submitted by: John Warner on May 23, 2009 at 3:38 pm Tagged with: swamp fox Source: Swamp Fox

After the Fall of Charleston to the British in 1780, the course of the American Revolution turned on the ingenuity and daring of the Swamp Fox Francis Marion and rag tag group of irregular militia. Marion's Brigade almost alone held eastern South Carolina from the British between between the American debacle at Camden on 15 August 1780 and the Battle of Eutaw Springs on 8 September 1781, the last major battle in South Carolina which completely broke the British hold in the South and, more important, denied needed aid to the North. Only six weeks later Cornwallis succumbed to Washington at Yorktown, and American Independence was assured.

British Lieutenant Colonel Watson officer, who suffered from Marion's innovative tactics, bitterly complained:

    Marion and his men would "not sleep and fight like gentlemen." Instead, "like savages," they were "eternally firing and whooping around us by night, and by day waylaying and popping at us from behind every tree!"

General Nathanael Greene, himself the unappreciated hero of the American Revolution as Commander of the Southern Campaign, had a different view of in a letter to Marion:

    When I consider how much you have done and suffered, and under what disadvantage you have maintained your ground, I am at a loss which to admire most, your courage and fortitude, or your address and management. Certain it is no man has a better claim to the public thanks, or is more generally admired than you. History affords no instance wherein an officer has kept possession of a country under so many disadvantages as you have; surrounded on every side with a superior force; hunted from every quarter with veteran troops, you have found means to elude all their attempts, and to keep alive the expiring hopes of an oppressed Militia, when all succor seemed to be cut off. To fight the enemy bravely with a prospect of victory is nothing; but to fight with intrepidity under the constant impression of defeat, and inspire irregular troops to do it, is a talent peculiar to yourself. Nothing will give me greater pleasure, than to do justice to your merit, and I shall miss no opportunity of declaring to Congress, the Commander-in-chief of the American Army, and to the world in general, the great sense I have of your merit and services.