The Swamp Fox, Francis Marion

Description for THE SWAMP FOX, FRANCIS MARION:  A BIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL ABOUT THE MAN WHO DEVELOPED MODERN GUERRILLA WARFARE DURING THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION by Noel B Gerson:

There is no more enigmatic or extraordinary figure in all of American history than Francis Marion, the prophetic soldier known to the world as “the Swamp Fox.”

Prophecy was hardly in evidence in Marion’s early life:  he was born to a simple Huguenot family in South Carolina; his father was an honest farmer; his two elder brothers became lawyers.  Like his brothers, Francis wanted to give up farming for the law---but he discovered this profession did not satisfy his most urgent need:  Individualism.  Nor could he stay long away from the untamed tidal basin marshes where he had hunted, fished, and meditated as a boy.  His loyalty to England was equally strong---but he rapidly realized that independence was the only possible path for the Colonies. 

Already in his forties when hostilities broke out, soon promoted to the rank of colonel in the South Carolina militia, Marion suddenly and effortlessly invented a new kind of fighting---a kind of fighting for which his whole life had unwittingly prepared him, and whose influence upon the future has been without parallel:  guerilla warfare.

Tactical necessity made Marion and his outnumbered men masters of an unprecedented hit-and-run offensive technique.  Armed with his inexhaustible knowledge of the swamps, he harassed and evaded wave after wave of professional troops, badly thinning their ranks, crucially contributing not only to Britain’s failure in the South but also to its total defeat in the whole of the Revolutionary Colonies.

THE SWAMP FOX, RRANCIS MARION has permanently captured every side of this remarkable man.  It is a lively addition to Noel B Gerson’s gallery of protraits of great Americans.