CHAPTER 1.
Introduction--The Huguenots in South Carolina.
The name of FRANCIS MARION is identified, in the history of South Carolina, his parent state, with all that is pleasing and exciting in romance.

He is, par excellence, the famous partisan of that region.
While Sumter stands conspicuous for bold daring, fearless intrepidity and always resolute behavior; while Lee takes eminent rank as a gallant Captain of Cavalry, the eye and the wing of the southern liberating army under Greene; Marion is proverbially the great master of strategy--the wily fox of the swamps--never to be caught, never to be followed,--yet always at hand, with unconjectured promptness, at the moment when he is least feared and is least to be expected.

His pre-eminence in this peculiar and most difficult of all kinds of warfare, is not to be disputed.

In his native region he has no competitor, and it is scarcely possible to compute the vast influence which he possessed and exercised over the minds and feelings of the people of Carolina, simply through his own resources, at a period most adverse to their fortunes, and when the cause of their liberties, everywhere endangered, was almost everywhere considered hopeless.

His name was the great rallying cry of the yeoman in battle--the word that promised hope--that cheered the desponding patriot--that startled, and made to pause in his career of recklessness and blood, the cruel and sanguinary tory.