Daily Quiz for July 17, 2008

Banastre Tarleton. Banastre Tarleton gave American partisan leader Francis Marion the nickname of ‘The Swamp Fox.’ Tarleton, a young lieutenant colonel of British cavalry, had triumphed in a series of bold and lightning-fast attacks against Rebel forces. He was sent by Cornwallis to stop the increasingly troublesome Marion whose strikes on Tory patrols, British convoys and encampments had grown from a minor annoyance to a major problem for British supply lines. Given information on Marion’s camp, Tarleton hunted the rebel general and his men through about 25 miles of barely passable terrain. Tarleton finally halted at a body of murky water called Ox Swamp and decided to give up the chase. ‘Come my boys!’ he declared to his men. ‘Let us go back?as for this damned old fox, the devil himself could not catch him.’ He spurred his horse and led his men away from the swamp leaving behind the nickname by which Marion is still remembered.