Oddity of the Week: Revolutionary Bunkum
Created | Updated Sep 28, 2014
Historical revisionism can be downright embarrassing.
Lies Their Teachers Taught Them
Historians, pah. Liars, the lot of them. From old Herodotus to Parson Weems, Early American mythmaker, they've told more fibs than a roomful of naughty schoolboys. Weems gave us George Washington and the cherry tree, George Washington throwing a dollar across the Potomac, and…the 'Swamp Fox', that Revolutionary War version of Robin Hood.
Balderdash. The South Carolinian was a bandit, pure and simple. He terrorised everybody down there into opposing the British. Otherwise, he'd burn down their houses. Nobody could catch him and his raiders, because they hid in the swamps. Hence the name.
In 1876, which was the centenary year for independence, an insurance company put out a calendar with this exciting, but bogus, story for September. We thought you'd get a chuckle. The story on the back involved Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, abducting a British officer, blindfolding him, leading him to his lair in the swamp, and feeding him sweet potatoes until he gave up. When the British officer demanded to know why Marion's men fought without being paid, Marion told him was because of 'love of Liberty'.
Whose liberty? Certainly not his cook's. Note the slave in the picture. Yep. This is why we fail to be impressed. More likely, the yahoos in the countryside did what they did for sheer love of mischief.
The 'Swamp Fox' legend has a long reach. Aside from the film The Patriot, of which the less said, the better, Marion's story has been immortalised on Disney TV. Back in the 1950s, the freshwater pirate was portrayed by none other than Leslie Nielsen. (Yes, that Leslie Nielsen, of Airplane! fame.) You want to see it? Be our guest, if you can stand the singing.
Warning: history, especially of the heroic variety, should be taken with a LARGE grain of salt. Especially if it shows up on an insurance calendar.
