On the night of November 7, 1780, Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton and his Green Dragoons - together with Harrison’s Provincials, a large unit of Tories from the area between the upper Santee and Wateree Rivers - camped at the plantation of the late General Richard Richardson, hoping to surprise Francis Marion’s much
smaller force.Marion learned the size of Tarleton’s force and in the dead of night withdrew east over Jack’s Creek toward the Pocotaligo River and Kingstree. Just before dawn Tarleton received word of Marion’s move and by daybreak was in full pursuit, galloping twenty-six miles “through Swamps, Woods, and Fastness toward Black River without a Halt.” But when they arrived at the wide, roadless expanse of Ox Swamp, they stopped, exhausted. Tarleton reportedly said to his troops, “Come my boys! Let us go back, and we will soon find the Gamecock (General Thomas Sumter, another Patriot partisan leader). But as for this damned old fox, the devil himself could not catch him.” The story spread until all the people along the Santee and the Pee Dee called Francis Marion the “Swamp Fox.”
Marion had an ambuscade set for Tarleton at Benbow’s Ferry ten miles east of Ox Swamp on the Black River.
Unable to catch Marion, Tarleton punished the surrounding community. Marion reported: “Col. Tarleton has burnt all the houses, and destroyed all the corn, from Camden down to Nelson’s Ferry... It is distressing to see women and children sitting in the open air around a fire, without a blanket, or any clothing
but what they had on ..., for he spares neither Whig nor Tory.”
(Education • Patriots & Patriotism • War, US Revolutionary) Includes location, directions, 1 photo, GPS coordinates, map.