American History Hit - Revolutionary War: The Swamp Fox's Guerilla War

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

Francis Marion aka the 'Swamp Fox' is a legend of the Revolutionary War. He was the basis for the movie The Patriot. But what is the truth about this guerilla warrior who harried the British in the South? Don is joined by historian Patrick O'Kelley, author of 'Be Cool and Do Mischief: Francis Marion's Orderly Book' and 'Nothing But Blood and Slaughter: The Revolutionary War in the Carolinas' to find out.Edited by Tim Arstall, produced by Freddy Chick. The Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. It's 1780. Francis Marion, who will come to be known as the Swamp Fox, inspiration for the film The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson,

is rolling on the ground outside a house in Charleston, South Carolina. He clutches his ankle, grimacing in pain. He's just leapt from a second-story window to escape one very tedious party, where his fellow Patriot officers were drinking to get drunk with endless toasts to their own noble cause. A devil-may-care attitude has swept through. through the Americans in Charleston. Five years into the war, struggling up north,

the British have come south. And General Cornwallis will lead his troops to a triumphant capture of Charleston, taking 5,000 patriot prisoners of war. Little would Cornwallis know, though, that this teetotalling American now clutching his busted ankle and writhing in pain will become a painful and inescapable thorn in his side,

turning the back waters of South Carolina into his own fortress, harrying the British every chance, earning himself a nickname, The Swamp Fox. Good day, history hit listeners. This is American History Hit, and I'm your host, Don Wildman. Thanks for punching us up on your pods. Today, we have the story of a bold figure of the American Revolution, a man who, if you don't know his name, you probably know some version of his character, if not his actual person. His is a true tale and tangled in the undergrowth of our revolutionary history, the man having served a significant part of the war deep

in the backwater wetlands of South Carolina, earning himself the nickname, the Swamp Fox. Over time, his actual name has become so ubiquitous across the country, so many townships, counties, colleges, hotels are named for the guy. He's become part of the vernacular landscape. He is Francis Marion, Lieutenant Colonel of the Continental Army, Brigadier General of the South Carolina Militia, who would play a pivotal role in the outcome of the revolution, when in 1778 action shifted south, after fighting in. in the north had reached a stalemate. Marion was a decisive presence in turning the tide in the

South against the British, paving the way to victory at Yorktown in 1781. The accepted story of the swamp fox is that of a maverick guerrilla fighter striking at the British, then vanishing into the untamed wilderness, employing unconventional tactics learned from fighting the Cherokee. Marion outwitted his English nemesis, Bannister Charlton, the no-good cavalry officer dispatched to capture him. It's all the stuff of legend, and I'm talking Hollywood blockbuster, Mel Gibson in the Patriot. But how much of what we accept is actually true? Who was the real, Francis Marion? We'll discuss it all with historian and author Patrick O'Kelly, resident of the deliciously named Barbecue Township, North Carolina, who served in the U.S. Army and Special Forces. Mr. Kelly has published a forensic account of the

Revolutionary War in the Carolinas, entitled Nothing But Blood and Slaughter, as well as publishing and editing Francis Marion's orderly book, Be Cool and Do Mischief. He is also an active member of the Second North Carolina Regiment Reenactment Group. Welcome, Patrick O'Kelly, thank you for joining us. Hey, no problem. Francis Marion, stuff of legend. Might as well get it out of the way right at the top. Mel Gibson used his story in part for the character he played in the Patriot back in 2000. I'm a good old Yankee, and those of us up north are very cloudy on our understanding of what happened down in the South during the Revolutionary War, which was obviously critical. So I'm very excited about this conversation. Francis Marion, let's talk about who this kid was.

Born 1732, same year, it's George Washington, total contemporary there, very active militarily, joins the militias, et cetera, et cetera. He is born on a plantation, father's a planter, enslaved labor, all that sort of thing. Berkeley County, South Carolina. Today, about an hours drive north of Charleston. Can you explain his early military time in the Anglo-Chirkey War? We've already mentioned it. Well, the Cherokee War, some British regulars there. There was a Highland Unit.

I can't remember the name of it. I think it was like 78th or something like that. But anyway, there was a Highlander unit that were side by side. He learns to fight against the Indians. He's not in a lot of fights because the whole war is very short. But he notices the discipline of the regular troops, how well they were, and also the ability to fight against the Cherokees. Now, there's a lot of myth where people thought,

oh, he learned how to fight so effective as a guerrilla warfare because he fought against the Indians. That's not true. The entire war lasted. I mean, you could time it on a freaking, you know, a wristwatch. So it wasn't that he learned a lot. Mainly he just got his taste of combat. He'd probably learned more about how to fight guerrilla warfare

using classical warfare, like the Maccabees against the... I can't remember who they were fighting. I want to say Syrians. But all the old school guerrilla warfare, because he had a classical education. His time against the Cherokees was about... I mean, you literally could time it on an hourglass. The war wasn't that long.

It's kind of like the war in Grenada. The thing lasted, you know, literally four days. Wow. Or you know, Panama. The war lasted two weeks. So you can't say, I learned everything I know how to fight in four days in Grenada. No, you get a taste. He is elected to the South Carolina Provincial Congress in support of the colonial self-determination.

1775. This is all that period of time. It's so interesting to imagine what it must have been like for somebody down in South Carolina that he hear about Lexington and Concord, which is so far away at that point and how that could possibly bear relevance to their lives down there. But it does for him. And that's a sign of what's to come. He volunteers for the militia. He's put in charge of a regiment. He fought at a battle called Fort Sullivan early on in 1776. The American, the American Markens defend Sullivan, the British retreat from that. Francis Marion is part of all that. So he remains there for three years.

This is, you know, sort of a gestation period for him, guarding Charleston until the war will come back to him later on, which is what we're going to talk about mostly. During this time, there's a raucous party, which is fundamental to this story, probably also mythologized, but let's discuss it as such. 1780, he is at a party where he jumps out of a window. Take me through this story because he ends up breaking his ankle, and it's important. Well, here's the deal with Marion.

I always like to use a modern analogy. I don't know about anywhere else, but down south, when a hurricane's about to wipe out everything and kill everybody in sight, you have these weird little things called hurricane parties where people are just going to drink everything in the house because you're going to lose power anyway and you might be dead tomorrow.

And it's just this weird thing where we're all going to die so we might as well have a party about it. Well, the siege of Charleston was one of the longest sieges of the war. And we're talking massive bombardment every single day. I mean, it's hellacious. Well, they realized they're going to lose. They could have got out of the city.

They wanted to get out of the city with this entire Continental Army. But the city fathers said, if you leave the city, we're going to open the gates to the British and let him come in. They wouldn't let them leave. So it's like, we're screwed. So we have to stay here and defend, which means we are going to lose. So everybody realized we're going to lose. So what happened was you had these parties where they would literally go to somebody's house and drink all the liquor. And what they would do is they would lock the doors.

Nobody could get out until all the liquor was drunk. And it was only the officers. Regular men are in the trenches. They ain't getting jic. Now, here's the deal. Francis Marion is a Huguenot. I don't know if you're familiar with Huguenots are. They don't drink.

You're like 18th century Mormons. So basically, Marion is told, go to this house. We're going to have a war meeting with all these different leaders. So, you know, we're going to make plans. He gets there. They lock the doors. And they say, all right, it's one of those parties. Everybody drinks.

nobody can leave. And Francis Marion is like, I got time to this crap. I'm a regiment commander. My men are in the trenches. I'm not going to sit here drinking booze because I don't drink. And I'm not going to sit there drinking booze while my men are dying in those trenches. Screw you. I'm out of here.

So he went to the second floor. And the actual building, it's on Trad Street. You can see it today. But it goes to the second floor, jumps out, when he jumps out, snaps his ankle. Horrible. Now, this was actually one of the best things to happen. because they allowed people to still get out. They hadn't quite closed Charleston off with the siege.

It hadn't sealed it yet. And so Mariam was able to get out because he was invalid. He was able to get out so he could recover. Now, because he got out, when Charleston fell, the entire Southern Continental Army is captured. And it's the worst defeat in U.S. history until the fall of the Philippines in 1942. I mean, it is that bad. Because you've got to figure they lost the harbor.

They lost, I think it was like 350 cannons. They lost all the ships. They lost the entire Southern Continental Army. The entire North Carolina line is gone. South Carolina line is gone. Most of the Virginia line is gone. All that just wiped out. Now, Marion is able to recover.

Because he's able to recover, he's not captured. He doesn't have to sign the oath saying, I won't fight anymore. He is a free-reigning guy. He can do what he wants. And what does he do? He goes out to the woods, right? Well, no, what he is is Congress realizes, all right, we lost Charleston. We got to get Charleston back.

So they decide to send South a guy they think is a really great guy. It turns out he's a freaking loser. And that's Horatio Gates. Horatio Gates is the guy who's the hero of Saratoga. But he's really not the hero of Saratoga. He is the figurehead of Saratoga. The guys who actually won the battle of Saratoga, it's Daniel Morgan and it's Benedict Arnold.

Those are the guys that won Saratoga. Rachel Gates gets all the credit. People thinks he's a great leader. So Congress decides to send him south and take over the Southern Army. Now, Gates marches into, he's at Charlotte, North Carolina, gathers what's left of the army, gathers what few men he's got, a lot of militia. But now he goes into South Carolina to find these other groups of militia to combine them into one giant army.

Now, Marion found out that Gates was heading south. So Marion rides to Gates' camp. Now, the description of Marion riding in the camp, I don't have it in front of me, but it was something to the effect of he rode in the camp looking like vagabonds. Part of his men were black, part of his men were white, and they're all wearing different clothing. And Marion's a little dude with a big nose, and now he's got a horrible lip. And so he gets off. He greets Gates.

He's like, I'm Francis Marion. And I commanded this unit that got captured. And Gates is like, I have no use for you. I'm trying to gather all these militia guys. before all hill breaks loose. So I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, there's a bunch of militia guys out in the east, Williamsburg County.

Go there, try to get those guys to join up with you. Just go out there. You can do what you want. Now what happened next? Battle of Camden, one of the worst defeats. Corman Wallace, he surrounds the Continentals, and he annihilates them. Now, he doesn't kill them all.

A lot of them get away, but for a second time, they're defeated. Now, what that means, there is no, zero, continental, regular army in South Carolina at that time.

So, yeah, things are going very badly, battle after battle as the British are coming further and further into Carolinas.

And at this point, Marion's been sent away by Gates. Where is he? He never, and this is number one. Mary was smart. Very smart.

It was no residence. He moved every night. I think the longest he ever stayed anywhere in one place was maybe five days. So he's constantly moving. Now,

I did the orderly book. Here's the cool thing about the Francis Marion orderly book is the first part of the orderly book is his orders You know orders of the day when he's a conventional commander. You know this guy's on guard these are punishment This is this this is that but when he becomes a guerrilla warfare guy He also keeps an orderly book He writes down the orders of the day and what's going on I mean because he's a conventional guy Now running a guerrilla warfare about the best comparison is my first taste of combat for me Was I did Grenada with the 82nd Airborne now my

first taste of combat was conventional, but then I went special forces. So now I'm a conventional guy in an unconventional world, and I know how to do things based upon the conventional army. Well, Marion was the same way. He's a conventional guy, but when he went in an unconventional war, he still does things like conventional war. He does guards. He does orders.

He does logistics. He knows how to fight, but he also knows how to make sure they still maintain their presence and not just a wild group of ruffians running around, you know, burning things down. What kind of landscape are we talking about? He's out in the swamps, right? No. No. No, they call him the swamp.

But that's it said. Nobody during the war ever called him the swamp fox. Nobody. That is a myth. What it was is a guy who wrote with Marion, a 17-year-old kid. After the war, he wrote the book like 50 years later. He's the guy that created the nickname of Gamecock for Sumter, Swampbox for Marion. Your question is, where does he stay?

Plantations. You're nerds. You don't. You can't live. in a swamp in water and conduct warfare. Probably the one location that people tend to go back to was it was an area called Snow's Island. The reason it called Snow's Island, it was surrounded by swamp.

So the swamps were used to prevent the British from getting to them, but they didn't live in the swamp. They lived on islands. They had plantations there, Bell Plantation, Boy Plantation. There was all these different plantations. It was kind of like, you know, what did Mao say? The gorilla lives in the Sea of the People or swims in the Sea of the People. He was swimming in the sea of people.

The people knew him. The people backed them up. So they let him stay at all these different plantations with his army of men. There's so much apocryphal things about the American fighting techniques and so forth. Starting in Lexington, I mean, it starts way, way early. How aware was Marion of intentionally using unconventional tactics in this situation? Well, he had to figure out. I'll give you a great example.

His very first action, this is kind of balzy. His very first action was he gathered up these guys in Williamsburg. First off, he didn't go in there and say, I'm in charge, because he knew he had no authority. He had zero authority. He was not a militia leader. He was a conventional commander. And how it worked back then was only militia officers commanded militia. Only conventional officers commanded provincial.

So if a conventional officer went in there and told the militia, this is what we're going to do, militia didn't ignore him if they wanted to. But Marion went in there with just because of who he was. They trusted him. He said, hey, I need men. We're going to go basically. Gates just got defeated. There is a crap ton of prisoners that he's bringing to Charleston.

If we intercept that convoy, we can free those prisoners. And he was able to convince enough guys. It wasn't many. We're talking only like about 50. So it's 50 versus a convoy of British bringing prisoners south. And the name of that one was called Nelson's Ferry. It's his first action. Now, Nelson's Ferry, they basically hit the British by surprise.

And they attacked the raid. the British either ran away or very few got killed, but most of them ran away because they didn't know what the hell this was. Now, here's the irony of that. The guys who they freed was men from Maryland. Marylanders saw who freed them, these ragged guys that look like hobos from the swamp. They're all dirty, nasty, and everything else. And this guy with a bad limp, this short dude with the big nose and a bad limp is in charge of him. And he's like, we're going to free you.

You can be with us now. And most of the Maryland soldiers said, no, we're going to keep going to. to Charleston, we'd rather be prisoners than be with you guys, because you guys suck. A handful of state, and a few of them, there was a guy named Sergeant McDonald. This guy was a badass. He was one of the Marylanders who fought with Barry until he stayed with him. So after that, they go around and they do ambushes because he realizes I can't fight the British one-on-one, but I can do raids.

I can get in, get out. I can do an ambush, get in, get out, and get more stuff. Mainly if I keep interdicting the British every time they try to resupply stuff, we could interdict their logistics lines. So it was classical guerrilla warfare because you can see that type of warfare throughout history. And he was a guy who had a classic education. There's a famous painting. I'm not sure where it hangs, but it's of Francis Marion talking to a British officer in the Cyprus swamps. It's all very colorful and very dramatic. It indicates what in this painting about that time? He had invited this officer or was found there? Where does this work? How does this work

That was an incident that actually happened, was he had defeated a British officer and his men, and they brought him into their place, and they're eating, I think, sweet potatoes. That's all they had. I think the painting is Marion holding a sweet potato. And the British officer was just kind of shocked, like, holy crap, you guys are the ones that just kicked their ass? Who are you people? It's kind of shocked and amazed. The British finally realized that there was a threat.

Now, you got to realize things aren't happening in a vacuum. Marion is rising up in the area. I always like to describe it in modern terms. In the area that's, most people know where Myrtle Beach is. The Myrtle Beach was nothing but sand. There was nothing there. But at that time, most people know where Merl Beach is. So it was about inland from Myrtle Beach, right around the Georgetown area.

So Marion, that was Marion territory. If anything goes through there, it got hit, it got interdicted, it got ambushed, it got raided. Meanwhile, go west a little bit. the area around Columbia, South Carolina, Thomas Sumter. Now, Sumter was massive. He had an army of a thousand. Anything trying to go through Sumter's area was hit. Then you get west and you had William Richardson Davy.

He was probably like the most, the guy that's most like a Delta Force trooper than anybody in the Revolutionary War. The guy was a seriously deadly, scary guy. But he wasn't like a mean guy. He was very quiet. If he had to kill you, he'd kill you. If he didn't, he didn't. He was just a matter of fact. And he's the guy supposedly he killed more British.

soldiers with a sword to anybody else didn't brag about. He was just a real quiet guy, but man, he was deadly. But he owned that area west of Columbia going into Charlotte. So you got to think of this. Anybody trying to get anywhere in North Carolina was hit by these partisans. So the British realized, okay, we've got to take this guy out. That's where Charlton comes in because Tarleton is one of the best cavalry officers in the British Army.

So I'm getting a sense of this. The British thought they were just going to march on north, link up with northern troops there. This was all going to work out for them. Along the way come the likes of a Francis Marion, along with others, I'm sure, using unconventional tactics, basically hitting supply lines. This is part of the process, you know, disrupting things all the way along. I would imagine that's very similar to what you've learned in the special forces and so forth,

right? There's some of Marion's actions that were actually taught in special forces. His opposition, I mean, famously in the movie, of course, it's played by Jeremy Isaac, but his opposition is British lieutenant colonel Bannister Tarleton, who is sent to capture Marion. He scours the countryside, is tipped off about his whereabouts. It becomes kind of an detective work. He's chasing this guy down for 26 miles through swamps and so forth. He ends up saying about this guy, as for this damned old fox, the devil himself could not catch him. Is that apocryphal too, or is that a true statement?

That was written by that one kid named James when he was 55 years old. Now, let me, I got to stop you there. I change a few things because you got to understand. Part of this is why the British wouldn't get able to get them. You were saying that, oh, the British wanted to link up with the forces of North. No. It's a major problem. It's what happens, limited war for you.

You can't win a limited war. Vietnam was a limited war. Afghanistan was a limited war. We couldn't go in Afghanistan. We couldn't go in North Vietnam. You can't win a limited war. The British and South Carolina were fighting a limited war. What it was is the guy who took Charleston was General Clinton.

really squared away guy. I mean, he took Charleston. But then he went back up north to New York City because that's the main base. He left Cornwallis in charge of Charleston. He told Cornwallis, number one, get all these guys to give up and sign a parole so they won't fight anymore. He was really successful with that up until a point. One guy screwed up the entire thing. But then he also said, do not leave South Carolina.

Do not go in North Carolina. If you do, you'll be surrounded and be goigned. because that's what happened to Burgoyne. He went so far deep into heading toward New York that he was surrounded and crushed and destroyed. And so Clinton knew that if you go in North Carolina, you're going to be so far away from your supply base, they'll get you.

Do not do that. Marion used this to his advantage. He would raid, and when they got hot on his heels, he would leave and go into North Carolina and then wait there for a little while because the British couldn't follow you, and then head back into South Carolina and do raids. So he was constantly doing it.

this. Now, Donaldson-Larksaid is a really good leader. He is, again, another one that's more myth than BS about him than anything else. By the way, you keep bringing up the movie The Patriot. I'm the guy that taught the British Army extras in the movie of the Patriot. Oh, wow. Oh, yeah, yeah, me and a handful of other guys. And by the way, we hate that movie. It is the worst freaking movie on the face of Earth. I'm only referring to it because it's famous. Well, no, we always like to say the only two things that are correct in that movie is, number one, there was a South Carolina. And number two, there was a revolutionary war. Everything else is BS. But it didn't start out that way. In the beginning, we taught the British Army how to be effective,

but then this German director called Roland In Rick comes along, and he wanted the British Army to be exactly like the Nazis in World War II. So all the stuff you see in the movie is actually what the SS did in Ukraine. Never happened in the Internet. You never would burn civilians in a church. The first time a British officer would try to kill a woman, his own men would rise up and hang him. That would never happen. And Cornwall said, Talthy had taught him. actually did this. One of Tarleton's men actually raped a woman and she was a loyalist woman.

He had that man and his accomplice sent back to Charleston and hanged. So in order, Charlton had this reputation as a guy who raped women. He didn't. As a guy who killed prisoners. That was one of the greatest psychological operations with fake news on the American side of the

war. It was great. Because what happened was, and not really much of a tangent, but it all ties in. It's all linked. Talton went up and intercepted what was an army that was heading into Charleston, but Charleston fell. So this army under the command of Beaufort, it was Virginians, started marching back to North Carolina. Well, Talton did this god-awful ride. He ran double guys, two guys on a saddle, 40 miles in less than 48 hours,

in the heat of South Carolina, gets there, charges Beaufort. They fire one shot, all ran away, and they end up, you know, and here's a deal with a cavalry fight. Calvary fight, there's a lot of slashed and hacking because they fight with swords and that's it. And so a lot of guys are slashing hack. Now, not one single prisoner was killed after he surrendered. Not one. The only example anybody can use is a guy that was on the ground. He was shot to pieces.

And every time somebody went by him, they went, hey, you need help? He goes, kill me. And they shot him. didn't die. Next guy. Hey, you need help? No, kill me. They stabbed him. So this one guy who was basically stabbed and shot like 15 times finally died and they used him as an example that, oh my God, Tarleton kills prisoners. Well, no, here's a deal. That didn't happen. Anybody who was in it just say it was a hell of a fight, man. It was we lost and he kicked our ass. But the news media used it, the American news media for propaganda because all across South Carolina,

everybody was given up because they thought the war was over. The News media spread this story that even if you try to give up, people like Talton will kill you. They'll kill you anyway. So don't give a guy to keep fighting or they're going to kill you anyway. And that was known as Talton's quarter. And more Americans created atrocities based upon Talton's quarter than the British ever did. But Talton has this reputation. None of it is true.

How does this resolve with Charlton and Marion? Marion Talton. What's good about them, they are equally matched. They are both very smart, very effective leaders. and they both know it. So what happened was Talton went into Williamsburg-Towny, trying to find Marion and destroy his group. But at the same time,

Marion's trying to find Talton and ambush him. And both of them never can get an advantage. It's a stalemate. They can't really top each other. So what happens then is there's another major thing going on out west with Sumter. That's when he was having a fight at a place called Hanging Rock. And that was a bloody battle. Holy cow.

And the British lost. And so Cornwallis realizes, all right, Marion's got at the most, you know, two dozen men. Tell you what, ignore Marion, head west, take on Sumter. Let's get rid of Sumter. And so Tarleton was never able to take on Marion. Marion was never able to take on Tarleton. They were equally matched both about the same way. And then Tarleton heads out west.

And Marion is now able to do more stuff on his own with no British influence for about another month or two. So Tarleton is gone, sent to Chase. down Sumpter, story for another day. Marion just piles it on. 1781, big year for the highlight reel. Success after success, famous attacks like the siege of Fort Watson. Then a new name enters the campaign. American officer Nathaniel Green dispatched by Washington to replace Horatio Gates, assuming control of the Continental Army in the South. It all leads to an epic finale at Utah Springs, a major set piece battle, last one fought in the South before Yorktown. Marion's guerrilla fighters leave the swamp and join the march against British lines, pinning them down.

This is basically the story of 1781. Take us through it from your perspective. What happened was around January of 1781, you know, I figure Utah Springs in September, around January 1781, Green shows up. And Green has now got the mission of taking back South Carolina. But one thing he does is he detaches regular forces to link up with Marion and, bolster him and give him even more troops. So what he has is now you have Francis Marion

and you got to call Light Horse Harry Lee. Light Horse Harry Lee is the grandfather of Robert E. Lee. Now, he's a really good commander. So when those two link up, now they have double their forces. Marion has conventional units and he has unconventional units working both together. And they now do a series of fights. Now, you were talking about Watson, but also you had Fort Mott,

you had Witherspoon Frey, you had something called the Rivers campaign, and all of this is when Marion and Lee are working together. But let me do this, though, because this brings up more of how Marion's morality is. During the siege of Fort Mott, which was an interesting one, they lay siege to it. They win. And when they win, this is, you know, 18th century. So when they win, they have a dinner with the British officers, and they're all eating dinner. But all of a sudden, one of Marion's men comes in and says, hey, they're executing the prisoners.

Marion's pissed. Like, what do you mean they're executing prisoners? Lee's men are out there hanging people. Marion goes out there and says, anybody does his get, I'll kill you. I will kill you. You will hang. So he stops it.

Marion will not let an atrocity happen. He is going to be a conventional commander, fight by the rules. He will not happen. Now, you brought the movie Patriot, and the movie Patriot, I think Mel Gibson's son is Gabriel. There was a Gabriel Marion.

Gabriel Marion was his nephew. Gabriel Marion, this just shows you again how the man thinks he was not going to do an atrocity. Gabriel Marion was captured and a loyalist puts a gun against his chest and kills him, blows him away. Boom. Marion, when they capture this guy, they asked Marion what do you want to do with him. Can we kill? You want to execute him? Marion says no.

Marion will not do anything that will be an atrocity or anything else. And he stops Light Horse Harry Lee's guys from doing it. Now, moving into Utah Springs, when Green fought, he lost. Green lost every single battle we fought, every single one. He didn't care. Why? Because you can win a war and not win a single battle. Example, Vietnam.

We won all the battles, we lost the war. Afghanistan. We won all the battles, we lost the war. So you can win every single battle and still lose the war. Green knew that. I just got to get them to do what I want. So when he fought the British, he would fight him in an area, and then the British would win so badly, they lost some.

so many people, they have to leave. So what happens is after each of these victories, they have to retreat until now all that's left is Charleston. That's it. Now, they do one final fight against Green's men. There's a camp outside Charleston at Utah Springs. Green attacks the camp, but he does it with a combination of regulars and militia. Marion's militia at the Battle of Utah Springs fights exactly like conventional troops.

They're in lines and everything else. In fact, one of the British said they fought like Frederick the Great's Prussians. And they fought until they ran out of ammo. And we know exactly how many rounds they fired because it's in the orderly book. They had 19 rounds. So they fired all 19 rounds until they ran out of ammo and then they had to use the bayonet. Now, what's important about Utah Springs? And why is hardly anybody know about it?

Utah Springs has fought within about three weeks of the fall of Yorktown. So it hardly ever gets any recognition because Yorktown fell. the next one. Utah Springs is September 1781. Yorktown is October 1781. Now, what is important about Utah Springs because of the British lost, and I'm talking lost a lot. Everybody's got a hole in them. They're captured or they're dead. But they still won the battle because again, Brin lost every battle. But they had to retreat. When they retreat, they go into Charleston, and that's it. They can't leave Charleston. They can't move out of there. And so now, the only place where there are British is Charleston and New York City, and that's it.

And that's where England, way back in England, they had to figure out, what are we going to do? What now? And you got to figure it became a world war. They're fighting the Dutch, the French, the Spanish. And to Britain, they had to make a decision. What's more important? And what is the most important for the British at that time is India. And so they put all their focus on India and put a little focus on America.

But, yeah, after Utah Springs, the British had to retreat to Charleston, and that was it for them. They weren't fighting another major battle. I like the story of Francis Marion. because told through your eyes, it's stripping away so much of the myth, which I really think in this age we need to do with the American Revolution, especially now the 250 is right around the corner, because there are so many proud stories and amazing real stuff that happened. Yes. The eras of historiography, of how you tell the stories, have been so influenced by other means. Now we are at this different time. When we can look back and see these guys more for what they are through the orderly books and things, you know, real primary.

resource material. That's very exciting. In your studies, what has this told you about Francis Marion specifically? What should we take away from his legacy? One of the goals with my other series, it's called Nothing But Blood and Slaughter, and it's four volumes, and it's every single battle that happened in the Carolinas. And the name of the book comes from Green. When Green came down south, he was shocked at how they were fighting war, because it was like it was a real civil war, because you've got to figure half the country was a lot of the country is patriot. And he said that if the people continue to fight like that, it's, like I said, it's nothing but blood and slaughter.

As the people continue to fight like this, there'll be nothing left of the population. So I included it as a title. Now, Marion, Marion's whole story in a nutshell, as he's a guy that believed in duty. He was from the upper crust of Charleston society, and he believed in his duty. And his duty was, I have to do this because this is what is right.

And so he always went through everything with that high standard of this is how we fight, this is how we should do it. And so no atrocities, no killing prisoners, you know, men will adhere to military discipline. And so Marion went into this as his duty. When the war was over, he backed off and went back to being a plantation arm. Now, later on, they did give him an honorary title, but in reality, he didn't do anything after that. He just went back to being a plantation army. Hey, I want to ask you about something.

The reenactment, the world of reenactments, What have you learned about that you couldn't as a historian? Well, it's because of reenacting, I became a historian. I was doing all these reenetments at these little fights that I knew about, but they weren't any history books. And I finally said, if nobody else is going to write them, I'll write them. And so that's why I included them all in that nothing but blood the slaughter series. But basically in reenacting, you start learning the real history. And that's where, like I said, breaking the myth, the myth busters.

Because reenactors will tell you, you know, hey, this is not really happened. This is what happened. And so you start learning the truth. And also, because I'm a reenactor, I understand the experience of carrying the musket, wearing the career, wearing wool in freaking July. I mean, that's insane. Wearing wool in June. And so you get to learn exactly what the limitations are on the soldiers by going through this hands-on immersive experience. Now, yeah, it is reenacting.

I mean, I'm only out there doing it for a couple hours. They did it for years. So there's a huge difference. Interesting. I've always been tempted, but I've not yet done it. We have been talking to the author and historian Patrick O'Kelly, who has published a forensic account of the Revolutionary War entitled, we've quoted it several times, nothing but blood and slaughter, as well as publishing and editing Francis Marion's orderly book. You should look at these. The orderly books are all over because that was a big part of Washington strategy to impose some order into the continental army. Francis Marians is particularly interesting. The title fascinates me, Patrick, what is that? Be cool. and do mischief?

Was that your own title? This is the second time that orderly book got published. The first one had a title on Unwaring, Patience and Fortitude. And I said, you know what? That's not cool enough. So when I republished it, because I had new information. When I republished it, I sent it out to reenactors. Hey, I need a cool title.

Give me a cool title. Okay, okay. And Be Cool and Do Mischief is a quote. During the Battle of Fort Sumter, the guy who was the overall commander, gave them a bunch of gunpowder. And he said, you're limited on the gunpowder. make sure you use it sparingly, but be cool and do mischief. And I said, oh, that's a cool title for a book right there.

The Francis Sperian Ordery Book is the longest running orderly book that exists. Most orderly books only go for six months or maybe a year. His is eight years, and it covers his conventional time and his unconventional time. And then an orderly book by itself is kind of dry and boring, if you ask most people. But what I did was in between each of the entries, I wrote down, this is what's happening at the time. This is the context. This is why he's saying this. So it's, I always call the orderly book, the phone book, because it's about the size of a phone book.

But it had to do that because it's the longest running orderly book that exists. Patrick, much appreciated. You've straightened us out on the story of the swamp fox. We'll see you again soon. I hope. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. As you've made it this far, why not like and follow us wherever you get your podcasts? American History Hit, a podcast from History Hit.