Francis Marion
- Byname:
- the Swamp Fox
- Born:
- c. 1732, Winyah, South Carolina [U.S.]
- Died:
- February 27, 1795, Pond Bluff Plantation, Orangeburg county, South Carolina, U.S.
Francis Marion (born c. 1732, Winyah, South Carolina [U.S.]—died February 27, 1795, Pond Bluff Plantation, Orangeburg county, South Carolina, U.S.) was a colonial American soldier who fought in the American Revolution (1775–83). He was nicknamed the “Swamp Fox” by the British for his elusive tactics.
Marion gained his first military experience fighting against the Cherokee in 1759 during the French and Indian War. Then, serving as a member of the South Carolina Provincial Congress in 1775, he was commissioned a captain. It was after the surrender of General Benjamin Lincoln to the British in 1780 at the Siege of Charleston in South Carolina that Marion slipped away to the swamps, gathered together his band of guerrillas, and began leading his bold raids. Marion and his irregulars often defeated larger bodies of British troops by the surprise and rapidity of their movement over swampy terrain. For a daring rescue of Americans surrounded by the British at Parkers Ferry, South Carolina, in August 1781, Marion received the thanks of Congress. He was then appointed a brigadier general.
After the war, Marion returned to his plantation in South Carolina, which he had purchased in 1773 and where he died in 1795. He was a member of the senate of South Carolina from 1782 to 1790.
