“Our band is few, but true and tried , Our leader frank and bold; The British soldier trembles When Marion's name is told.”
There is the poem, and there is the sentence or two in schoolbooks about the phantom general who sallied at night I'rom his secret lair in the swamps to attack the British loe. And there is the sobriquet, the Swamp Fox. And that's about all anyone seems to remember about General Francis Marion—except, perhaps, that once he invited to dinner a British officer, in his camp under flag of truce, and served only fire-baked potatoes on a bark slab and a beverage of vinegar and water. “But, surely, general,” the officer asked, “this cannot be your usual fare.” “Indeed, sir, it is,” Marion replied, “and we are fortunate on this occasion, entertaining company, to have more than our usual allowance.” The visiting Briton is supposed to have been so impressed that he resigned his commission and returned to England, full of sympathy for the sell-sacrificing American patriots. That's not exactly the way it happened, but no one has ever cared much about the details; that is the way it goes in the Marion legend, and it is the legend that Americans cherish.
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