On the night of November 7, 1780, Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton and his Green Dragoons, together with Harrison’s Provincials, a large unit of Tories from the area between the upper Santee and Wateree Rivers, camped at the plantation of the late General Richard Richardson, hoping to surprise Francis Marion’s much smaller force. Marion learned the size of Tarleton’s force and in the dead of night withdrew east over Jack’s Creek toward the Pocotaligo River and Kingstree. Just before dawn Tarleton received word of Marion’s move and by daybreak was in full pursuit, galloping twenty-six miles through swamps, woods, and fastness toward Black River without a halt. But when they arrived at the wide, roadless expanse of Ox Swamp, they stopped, exhausted. Tarleton reportedly told his troops that they should turn back and that they would soon find the Gamecock, General Thomas Sumter, but that as for Francis Marion, the devil himself could not catch him. The story spread until people along the Santee and the Pee Dee called Francis Marion the Swamp Fox. Marion had an ambuscade set for Tarleton at Benbow’s Ferry ten miles east of Ox Swamp on the Black River. Unable to catch Marion, Tarleton punished the surrounding community. Marion reported that Colonel Tarleton had burned all the houses and destroyed all the corn from Camden down to Nelson’s Ferry, and that women and children sat in the open air around a fire without a blanket or any clothing but what they had on, because he spared neither Whig nor Tory.