Finding the Swamp Fox

[Draggingtree]

Finding the Swamp Fox

By Jeff Rogers on Feb 20, 2017

 

 

John Oller, The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution (Da Capo Press, 2016)

 

Francis Marion is better remembered today than he used to be. There was a time, however, when, outside of his native South Carolina, hardly anyone without a good knowledge of the Southern theatre of the American Revolution would have heard of him. And there just weren’t that many Americans with that particular knowledge. In whatever education they may have received about the Revolution, the South’s important role in that epic struggle was either unknown by those doing the teaching, glossed over, or ignored. The result was that the extraordinary efforts of men like Marion, Thomas Sumter, Elijah Clarke and so many others in the fight for American independence in South went largely unheralded while those in more northerly regions received sustained and sometimes fawning attention from historians, popularizers, documentary film makers, etc. For example, in the preface to his book The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The American Revolution in the Carolinas, published in1997, New York author John Buchanan claims that, “On learning of my subject, a friend of mine, well educated, well read, intellectually curious, looked surprised and admitted, ‘I really don’t know what happened south of Philadelphia.’’ https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/finding-the-swamp-fox/