THE FOX AND ME

This is the story of Oscar, a third generation slave on a modest South Carolina rice plantation belonging to the Marion family, whose five sons were third generation French Huguenots. Oscar's life would follow that of the youngest Marion, Francis, as the need arose for planters to become militia men fighting the Cherokee, then Patriots fighting England, then guerillas fighting a brutal two and a half year British occupation. Francis Marion, a modest but well-liked planter only a few inches over five feet tall, became the most dreaded of the guerilla fighters and would be known as the Swamp Fox. The poet William Cullen Bryant wrote, "The British soldier trembles / When Marion's name is told." Throughout these many turns of fate, Oscar, as noted by several contemporaries, never faltered in his loyalty to Francis Marion, and Oscar himself was included in a painting of Marion's camp that today hangs in the U.S. Capitol. Who better to tell the story? As Oscar says, I been knowin' The Fox since I can remember. And that was how the good Lord intended it.