by John Oller
Greene had one immediate request of Marion, which was to provide badly needed intelligence regarding the enemy’s operations. “Spies are the eyes of an army,” Greene wrote, “and without them a general is always groping in the dark and can neither secure himself nor annoy his enemy.” Again he was not telling Marion anything new. Greene was particularly interested in learning of any reinforcements arriving in Charleston who could march to join Cornwallis, and he asked Marion to “fix some plan for procuring such information and for conveying it to me with all possible dispatch.” He promised that any money advanced to information couriers would be repaid.
Then Greene, who often lacked tact, presumed to tell Marion exactly how to carry out that mission. “The spy should be taught to be particular in his enquiries and to get the names of the corps, strength and commanding officer’s name, place from whence they came and where they are going,” he wrote. He told Marion to find someone who lived in Charleston to do this and to use a runner between the two of them because anyone who asked too many questions and lived out of town would be suspected. “The utmost secrecy will be necessary in this business,” Greene emphasized. Over time, as he gained greater confidence in him, Greene would learn to leave it to Marion’s discretion how to accomplish a particular goal.
Marion responded immediately to Greene’s letter, writing on December 22 to say that he would “endeavor to procure intelligence as you desire.” He explained, however, that spies required real money to do their job—gold or silver, not the IOUs Greene had offered. “The enemy is so suspicious they will not permit any men to pass on the south of Santee without the strictest examination and they have patroles along the river and guards at several passes,” he added. The reinforced British guard at Nelson’s now consisted of 80 Hessians and 150 new troops from Charleston. Marion also reported to Greene on his “skirmage” with McLeroth, but if it had involved the bizarre duel James described, Marion was not going to mention that in his very first communication with the new southern commander. He closed the letter by repeating what he had told Gates before: if he had a hundred Continental troops in addition to the militia with him, he would be able to accomplish much more.
At this point Marion went into camp for the winter. His brigade settled into a secret lair on Snow’s Island, a triangular-shaped, three-mile-long by two-mile-wide swamp plateau at the confluence of the Pee Dee River and Lynches Creek. Located in the southeast corner of present-day Florence County, it is surrounded by the Pee Dee on the northeast, Lynches Creek (now River) on the north, and Clark’s Creek, a branch of Lynches, on the west and south. In Marion’s time it lay within a few miles of each of Witherspoon’s, Port’s, and Britton’s Ferries, familiar retreats for Marion’s men over the previous four months. Marion or his fellow militia commander Hugh Giles, a surveyor and area landowner, had established the Snow’s Island camp by mid-November 1780 and may have first stayed there somewhat earlier; by Christmas it had become Marion’s main hideout and place of rendezvous from which his men ventured forth.
Snow’s Island (named for local settlers) was to become the most famous and romanticized of all of Marion’s various encampments. Neither here nor anywhere else did the Swamp Fox actually live in the swamps, which were breeding grounds for insects and disease. (Although that is not why no one dwelled in them; they thought that malaria and yellow fever were caused by poisonous vapors from the steamy morasses, not mosquito bites.) On Snow’s the camp was on dry, higher ground toward the northern tip of the island above the marshy, flood-prone land stretching south. Inaccessible except by water, deep within a forest of cypress and pines, it was protected by tall canebrakes, briars, and vines.
To insulate themselves as much as possible, Marion’s men felled trees and broke down bridges across creek fords and difficult passes. Sentries patrolled the area to warn of approaching danger or to signal the way clear for sallying out. To further guard against surprise attacks, they threw up a small earthworks, or redoubt, at Dunham’s Bluff on the east side of the Pee Dee, opposite the island, and set up a camp there as well. In fact, recent archaeological findings suggest that rather than a single, permanent Snow’s Island camp, there may have been multiple camps in the same vicinity, both on and off the island, and that Marion, like a classic guerrilla warrior, moved constantly from one to the other to maximize secrecy.
Here at Snow’s was Marion’s Sherwood Forest, his feudal fortress. As William Gilmore Simms, the most literary of Marion’s early biographers, wrote, “The swamp was his moat; his bulwarks were the deep ravines, which, watched by sleepless rifles, were quite as impregnable as the castles on the Rhine.” It was here, too, that the most famous of all Marion legends—the sweet potato dinner—has its setting. According to the oft-repeated story, a British officer arrived at Marion’s camp from Georgetown to negotiate a prisoner exchange. Marion offered him dinner, which consisted only of roasted sweet potatoes on pieces of bark along with Marion’s favorite drink of water and vinegar (the drink of the Roman Legion, known for its mild antibiotic qualities).
“But surely, general,” the officer inquired, “this cannot be your ordinary fare.”
“Indeed it is, sir,” Marion replied, “and we are fortunate on this occasion, entertaining company, to have more than our usual allowance.” The idealized story holds that the visiting Briton was so impressed that when he returned to Georgetown he resigned his commission, saying that the British had no chance of defeating men of such endurance and sacrifice.
Although the particulars of the story are doubtful, attempts to substantiate it persist. True or not, the anecdote has proved valuable, for it produced the only image of Francis Marion created by someone who knew him during his lifetime—a painting by South Carolina artist John Blake White that has hung in the US Senate since 1899. Also appearing in the painting is Marion’s African American servant, Oscar (or “Buddy”), whose contribution to the patriot cause was recognized by presidential proclamation in 2006. A claimed descendant of the slave describes him not only as a soldier but as Marion’s “personal assistant, sous chef, bugler, [and] oarsman.” He also played the fiddle, as Marion bought him one soon after the war.a
The Snow’s Island community was dominated by Whigs, and they furnished Marion’s partisans with food and supplies to support the resistance effort. Even with many of the able-bodied men off fighting, women and slaves kept the nearby farms and plantations running, with slaves carrying salt and other necessities to Marion’s brigade. The island became a beehive of activity. Peter Horry said the Whig neighbors played the dual role of “generous stewards and faithful spies, so that, while there, we lived at once in safety and plenty.”
In return for supplies and information from the locals, Marion declined to plunder them. He took only what was necessary for his men’s subsistence and gave patriot citizens receipts for supplies taken from them, many of which were redeemed for compensation from the government after the war. At least it was Marion’s intent to make whole those citizens who provided his men with food and supplies. He apologized on one occasion to a man who had furnished an unusually large number of provisions and was given a receipt, explaining that “Some other damages has been made, but you well know the unruly militia which cannot be at all times restrained.”
Marion also offered the citizens security and protection from Tory antagonists such as Ganey and Barefield, who lived a few hours’ trek north of Snow’s Island. Given that proximity, Marion and his men sometimes conducted foraging raids in the Tories’ own backyard as a show of force. On one such sortie in late December, into the Waccamaw Neck region north of Georgetown, Captain (later Major) John Postell brought back 150 bushels of salt, the most precious commodity in the state. After satisfying his brigade’s needs, Marion distributed the rest to the local Whigs, a bushel per family, further endearing himself to them.
Marion’s cooperative relationship with the Snow’s Island Whig community marked him as one of the earliest guerrilla warriors who understood the importan
ce of moral, material, and intelligence support from the local civilian population. It was a principle applied by later guerrilla leaders such as Mao Tse-tung and continues to be endorsed as part of official US Army military doctrine. And it was one reason Marion gained the hearts and minds of his countrymen, whereas the British, with their threats and reprisals against the inhabitants, failed to do so.
Marion’s living quarters on Snow’s Island were the same as those of his men: crude lean-to huts that sheltered them from the wind and rain. It was the only home Marion had at the time, for the British had impounded his Pond Bluff plantation. In November, under the authority of Cornwallis, the British seized the plantations of Marion and several of his brigade members. William Moultrie, John Rutledge, Henry Laurens, and other prominent rebels had their homes taken as well. Anyone who tried to interfere with the property seizures was threatened with punishment for aiding and abetting the rebellion. The day after New Year’s a Philadelphia Whig paper asked whether it was not “high time to think of retaliation or in future neither to give or take quarter from such an enemy?”
By New Year’s Day, in addition to his new home, Marion had a new title. At the end of December, Governor Rutledge commissioned Marion as a brigadier general in the South Carolina militia with authority over the Lowcountry east of Camden above the Santee. Marion was now the senior-most militia commander in the state who was active in the field. Thomas Sumter, still laid up from the wounds suffered at Blackstock’s, was in charge of the upcountry west of the Catawba River. Technically Sumter’s earlier appointment as brigadier general gave him superior rank over Marion, which would lead to friction between them in later months. More important than their formal authority, though, was their practical ability to attract and retain men under their command, and their differing approaches to that challenge would separate them as well.
As the southern campaign of 1780 drew to a close, the patriots in South Carolina had to be encouraged that they remained in the fight at all. It was less than five months since Cornwallis’s trouncing of Gates at Camden had all but sealed British domination of the state. And had it not been for Marion, things likely would have remained that way.
It had been a bloody year in South Carolina as well. Of the thousand patriots killed in action in the Revolution in 1780, 66 percent died in South Carolina. Even more startling, 90 percent of the two thousand patriots wounded in action in 1780 fell in that state. But 1781 would be bloodier still.
a Even if the modest repast of legend did take place, it probably was not on Snow’s Island or the surrounding area. More likely, as some accounts hold, it took place outside Georgetown, fifty miles to the south, during one of Marion’s forays there. The British officer was from Georgetown, and Marion’s brigade, when traveling, would live off provisions they brought with them. Furthermore, Snow’s Island and its environs had abundant supplies of livestock, fish, game, corn, and rice, and it is unlikely that Marion’s men were subsisting on sweet potatoes while camped there.
13
“Two Very Enterprising Officers”
As he did with the Snow’s Island community, Marion quickly established a symbiotic relationship with Nathanael Greene. It may not have seemed that way at first: unable to offer Marion much of what he needed, Greene did not hesitate to ask for this, that, or the other from the partisan leader. Greene wanted “a party of negroes” sent to him as soon as possible to assist the army with day-to-day chores and requested they bring with them corn and rice for the soldiers. Marion immediately complied by having John Postell collect fifty slaves from enemy territory above Georgetown (“taking care not to distress any family, but taking them where they can be best spared,” he instructed Postell from Snow’s Island). The slaves and provisions were sent up in boats to Greene’s winter camp on the Pee Dee just below the South Carolina border, where Greene had moved because it was a more fertile forage area than Charlotte.
Greene also continued to press Marion for intelligence about the large body of British reinforcements under General Alexander Leslie reportedly making their way toward Winnsboro to join Cornwallis for his invasion of North Carolina. The information was of vital importance to Greene, who had split his already small, ill-equipped army by sending six hundred men under grizzled veteran general Daniel Morgan to the west of the Catawba River—Sumter territory—which put Morgan within striking distance of the British post at Ninety-Six. Greene’s audacious move, against all conventional military thinking, was done as much out of necessity as choice: he could not feed his entire army in one place at one time. But the strategy also forced Cornwallis to divide his own force by detaching Tarleton west to defend Ninety-Six. Cornwallis himself could not chase Morgan, for Greene might link up with Marion to menace Camden or Charleston. So Cornwallis had to stay put. As soon as Leslie arrived, however, Cornwallis would be in position to strike offensively against Greene. He was convinced the rebels in South Carolina would not stop their harassment so long as Greene’s army, shielded by friendly North Carolina territory above him, remained in the field. To subdue South Carolina, he needed to control North Carolina, and to control North Carolina, he needed to defeat Greene.
Marion was the first militia leader to learn of the arrival of Leslie’s troops in Charleston in late December. He estimated their force at two thousand or fewer (the actual number was about fifteen hundred). He also was the first to learn of their departure for the interior, and he kept Greene up to date with regular reports of their strength and movements. He promised to keep his patrols constantly near the opposing forces to watch their movements and to notify Greene of “every particular respecting the enemy.” In fact, throughout the war, despite the lack of hard money to pay spies, Marion informed Greene about everything significant happening in and around Charleston and Georgetown. He became, in effect, Greene’s director of intelligence.
Greene also wanted Marion to harass the enemy; he obliged by sending Peter Horry from Snow’s Island into the plantation-rich Waccamaw Neck region, from which the British garrison in Georgetown drew its subsistence, to remove rice and drive off cattle. Horry’s mounted troops ended up engaging in some skirmishes with the British that Greene said “were clever and do them a great deal of honor.”
What Greene wanted most, though, was horses. He understood, as Gates had not, that mounted forces were essential both to cover the vast open distances in the Carolinas and to navigate the often difficult terrain. “The war here is upon a very different scale to what it is to the Northward,” he explained to Joseph Reed, the chief executive of Pennsylvania. “It is a plain business there. The geography of the country reduces its operations to two or three points. But here it is everywhere, and the country is so full of deep rivers and impassable creeks and swamps, that you are always liable to misfortunes of a capital nature.” Greene, who had never set foot in the South before taking command there, learned its topography not only from on-the-ground experience but also from an intense, scientific study of maps. Within weeks of his arrival he knew the landscape as well as the British commanders, including Cornwallis, who had been there for half a year.
As Greene quickly discovered, roads in South Carolina were little more than dusty footpaths or wagon tracks, useless when the rains turned them to mud—and the winter of 1781 was an especially wet one. Bridges were few, and rivers were unfordable when flooded, as they often were. Not all men could swim, but horses could. Horses could negotiate most of these impediments better than men were able to, and where crossings were blocked, horses could more quickly get their riders to better passages elsewhere.
And so almost from the beginning of his arrival in South Carolina, Greene repeatedly requested that Marion find and send him as many horses as possible—preferably his best ones. When Marion was unresponsive, which was often, Greene was quick to remind him. “I hope you paid particular attention to the order sent you by Governor Rutledge for collecting the horses. Please to let me know what number you have and what addition you expect,” Greene wrote on
January 16. Later he would tell Marion to “get all the good dragoon horses you can to mount our cavalry. . . . This is a great object and I beg you pay particular attention to it.”
When Marion did acknowledge Greene’s requests on the subject, he replied that he had only enough horses for his own troops and that what few he might be able to collect were so “ordinary” that Greene probably wouldn’t want them anyway. Before Greene arrived, Marion explained, the British had taken all the good horses, as a result of which his own brigade was now “badly mounted.” The best he could promise was to send Greene “a few more [that] may be got.”
Marion was not trying to be difficult, just realistic. His men, most of whom were farmers, were not going to give up their coveted horses to Greene’s army. If Greene needed horses, they figured, let him get them from the Continental Congress, not from unpaid volunteers. In fact, the merest rumor that Greene was trying to take their horses from them prompted some of Marion’s men to desert him.
Beyond this, Marion’s militiamen, to be effective in the field, needed horses as much or more than Greene’s army. True, it was important that the regular army have horses, as it was for everyone. But if horses were important to Greene, they were crucial to the militia. Militiamen could hardly scour the countryside for forage on foot. Greene wanted the militia to scout for his army and to serve, in part, as cowboys—driving cattle to the army and away from the enemy. And no cowboy was ever without a good horse.