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That changed Monday when the U.S. House passed a bill to commemorate his Revolutionary War heroics by authorizing the creation of a statue on federal park land in the District of Columbia.
John McCabe, a financial adviser in Columbia, said he stumbled across Marion Park last June when he was visiting Washington. Surprised that he didn't find a statue of the Swamp Fox, he took up the cause to erect one, persuading the Palmetto Conservation Foundation to create a Marion Park Project committee.
His goal: an 8-foot-tall bronze statue of Marion.
"A monument of arguably our greatest state hero in our nation's capital is an outward symbol of the gratitude and the importance of South Carolina in the creation of our country," McCabe said.
Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., introduced the bill, which was co-sponsored by the other members of the South Carolina delegation. Wilson is working to make Marion Park the home of the statue. Named for Marion in the 1880s, the park is at the intersection of E Street and South Carolina Avenue.
"As a South Carolinian, I am proud his legacy has been honored with a memorial park in Washington, D.C.," Wilson said in a written statement. "Yet I feel strongly that a statue of the 'Swamp Fox' should be erected on its premises. Passage of this bill is a crucial first step in making this dream a reality."
Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint sponsored the Senate version of the bill, which is pending.
Walter Edgar, a member of the Marion Park Project committee and professor of history at the University of South Carolina, said many people do not know that Marion's troops are believed to be the first racially integrated force -- "composed of Native Americans, African Americans and European settlers" -- fighting for the United States.
"The way he fought the Revolution was the very embodiment of American liberty," he said. "Francis Marion is one of the heroes of the American Revolution. He was an American hero, not just a South Carolina hero."
