Francis Marion

Colonel Francis was a real historical figure, one of the heroes of the Revolutionary War. Nicknamed "Swamp Fox," Marion became famous as a guerilla fighter against the British in the early 1780s. Like Faulkner's Colonel Sartoris, he led a small troop of men that effectively harassed a larger occupying army; this is the long campaign that Philip Backhouse refers to in "My Grandmother Millard" when he says his grandfather fought "with Marion all through Carolina" (682). Marion is mentioned again in Requiem for a Nun.