In 1715, newly-weds, Gabriel and Esther Cordes Marion built their dream home on the Western branch of the Cooper River in South Carolina. The land along the river proved to be fertile and full of potential, but ensured time and hard work if the Marion’s were to reap the benefits. Over the next 17 years, the Marion’s would have six children to help satisfy the regular tasks of rural life. In 1732, Esther Cordes Marion gave birth to her youngest son, Francis Marion. At birth he was feeble and small in size. In Mason Locke Weems’s published biography of Marion, he writes, “I have it from good authority, that this great soldier, at his birth, was not larger than a New England lobster, and might easily enough have been put into a quart pot." The likeliness that an infant of this condition …show more content…
Seasoned in the wars against the Cherokees, Marion knew how to feed, camp, and move an army in the swampy South Carolina Low Country.” As Marion was able to gain followers, he was quickly able to change their mindset to that of a team and a functional unit in order to ensure that everyone was on the same page going into a battle. Peter Horry, who was a soldier in Marion’s militia, described Marion as, “The Washington of the south, he steadily pursued the warfare most safe for us and most fatal to our enemies. He taught us to sleep in the swamps, to feed on the roots, to drink the turbid waters of the ditch, to prowl nightly around the encampments of the foe, like lions round the habitations of the shepherds who slaughtered their cubs. Sometimes he taught us to surprise the enemy by distracting the midnight hour with the horrors of our battles: at other times, when our forces were increased he would lead us on boldly to the charge, hewing the enemies to pieces, under the approving light of