Clipped from
HORSESHOE ROBINSON
Hero of the Novel Was an Oconee Man.
Sketch Appearing in Clemson Chronicle.
Mesers Editors: There has recently come to my desk a pamphlet, "Revolutionary Soldiers Buried in Alabama, with press date Montgomery, Ala., 1904. The author is Mrs.Patrick Hues Mell. In it are many references to South Carolina. One of the sketches would grace the pages of our Chronicle,and would interest many readers within and beyond the limits of our college home county -Oconee. May I request you to publish the article referred to, a copy of which I hand you herewith.
William S. Morrison. Clemson College, January 6, 1902.
The following tribute to "Horseshoe Robinson" is extracted from a poem, entitled, "The Day of Freedom," by Alexander B.Meek, » Author and delivered as an oration at Tuscaloosa on the 4th of July, 1838: .
Valorously He bore himself, and with his youthful arms
Chivalrous deeds performed, which in a land
Of legendary lore had placed his name,
Embalmed in song, beside the hallowed ones
Of Douglass and of Percy; not Entirely his fame;
Romance has wreathed With flowering fingers, and with wizard art
That hangs the votive chaplet on the heart,
His story, mid her fictions, and hath given
His name and deeds to aftertimes.
When last This trophied anniversary came round
And called Columbia's patriot childron out
To greet its advent, the old man was here,
Serenely smiling as the autumn sun
Just dripping down the golden west to seek
His evening couch.
Few months agone I saw Him in his quiet home, with all around
Its wishes could demand -and by his side
The loved companion of his youthful years
This singing maiden of his boyhood's time;
She who had cheered him with her smiles when clouds
Were o'er country's prospects; who had trod
In sun and shade, life's devious path with him
And whom kind Heaven had still preserved to bless,
With all the fullness of maternal wealth,
The mellowing afternoon of bis decline.
Where are they now--the old man and his wife?
Alas! the broadening sun sets in the night,
The ripening shock falls on the reaper's arm;
The lingering guest must leave the hall at last;
The music ceases when the feast is done;
The old man and his wife have gone from earth,
Have passed in peace to heaven; and summer's flowers,
Beneath the light of this triumphant day,
Luxurious sweets are shedding o'er T
he unsculptured grave of "Horseshoe 'Robinson.'
" The grave of James Robertson is in Tuscaloosa county, on the banks of the Black Warrior River, near Sanders' Ferry, in the old family burying ground.
He was the famous "Horseshoe Robinson" of Revolutionary fame in South Carolina, and the hero of the novel of that name, written by John Pendleton Kennedy in 1835. John P. Kennedy - Wikipedia
The name "Horsehoe" was given because of a bend in a creek in his plantation in South Carolina, shaped like a horseshoe. The following inscription is taken from his tombstone: Major James Robertson. A native of S. C.
Died April 26, 1838, aged 79 years, And was buried here. Well known as Horseshoe Robinson, he earned a just fame in the war for independence, in which he was eminent in courage, patriotism and suffering. He lived fifty years with his worthy partner, useful and respected, and died in hopes of a blessed immortality. His children erect this monument as a tribute justly due a good husband, father, neighbor, patriot and soldier. James Robertson was born in 1759, and his epitaph states that he was a native of South Carolina.
He was married in 1782, and lived fifty-six years with his worthy partner; she died in January, 1838, and he died April 26, 1838. The name of. his wife was Sarah Morris ; tradition says her maiden name was Hayden; they left several children; one daughter was living in Mississippi a few years ago. James Robertson was a famous scout during the Revolution, and a terror to the Tories.
After the war he settled in Pendleton District, and was living there when Kennedy met him in 1818. In the preface to Kennedy's novel of "Horseshoe Robinson," he gives an account of the circumstances which led him to write the story. He says that in the winter of 1818-19 he had occasion to visit the western section of South Carolina. He went from Augusta to Edgefield, then to Abbeville, and thence to Pendleton, in the old District of Ninety-Six, just at the foot of the mountains. His course was still westward until he came to the Seneca river, a tributary of the Savannah. He describes how he happened to spend the night at the home of Col. T- who lived thirty miles from Pendleton.
Horseshoe Robinson came there that night. "What a man I saw! Tall, broad, brawny and erect. His homely dress, his free stride, bis face radiant with kindness, the natural gracefulness of his motions, all afforded a ready index to his character. It was evident he was a man to confide in." The old soldier was drawn out to relate some stories of the war. He told how he got away from Charleston after the surrender, and how he took five Scotchmen prisoner; and these two famous passages are faithfully preserved in the narrative: It was first published in 1835.
Horseshoe Robinson was then a very old man. He had removed to Alabama and lived, I am told, near Tuscaloosa. I commissioned a friend to send him a copy of the book. The report brought me was that the old man had listened very attentively to the reading of it, and took great interest in it. « *What do you say to all this?' was the question addressed to him, after the reading was finished.
His I reply is a voucher, which I desire to preserve: 'It is all true and right-in its right place--excepting about them women, which I disremember. That mought be true, too; but my memory is treacherous--I disremember.'" It is a pleasure to know that this fine old hero was a real personage, and although his exploits may have been colored in a measure by the pen of the romancer, there still remains a rich stock of adventures, which were undoubtedly true, and the picture of a nature frank, brave, true and yet full of modesty. Extract from Flag of the Union, published at Tuscaloosa, January 17, 1838: Horseshoe Robinson- Who has not read Kennedy' delightful novel of this name, and who that has read it would not give an half day's ride to see the venerable living hero of this tale of "Tory Ascendancy," the immortal Horsesboe himself--the extermination of "Jim Curry" and Hugh Habershaw? The venerable patriot bearing the familiar soubriquet, and whose name Mr. Kennedy has made as familiar in the mouths of American youths as household words, was visited by us in company with several friends one day last week. We found the old gentleman on his plantation about twelve miles from this city, as comfortably situated with respect to this world's goods as any one could desire to have him.
It was gratifying to us to see him in his old age, after having served through the whole war of independence, thus seated under his own vine and fig tree, with his children around him and with the partner of his early toils and trials still, continued to him enjoying in peace and safety the rich rewards of that arduous struggle, in the most gloomy and desponding hour of which he was found as ready, as earnest, as zealous for the cause of liberty as when victory perched upon her standard, and the stars of the "Tory Ascendancy" was for awhile dimmed by defeat, and in which he continued with unshaken faith and constancy until it sank below the horizon never again to rise. The old gentleman gave us a partial history of his Revolutionary adventures, containing many interesting facts respecting the domination of the Tory party in the South during the times of the Revolution, which Mr. Kennedy has not recorded in his book. But it will chiefly interest our readers, or that portion of them at least to whom the history of the old hero's achievements, as recorded by Mr. Kennedy, is familiar, to be assured that the principal incidents therein portrayed are strictly true.
That of his escape from Charleston after the capture of that city, his being entrusted with a letter to Butler, the scene at Wat Adair's, the capture of Butler at Grindal's Ford, his subsequent escape and recapture, the death of John Ramsey, and the detection of the party by reason of the salute fired over his grave, his capturing of the four men under the command of the younger St. Jermyn, his attack upon Ines' camp, and the death of Hugh Habershaw by bis own hand, and finally the death of Jim Curry, are all narrated pretty much as they occurred, in the old veteran's own language: "There le a heap of truth in it, though the writer has mightily furnished it up." That the names of Butler, Mildred Lindsay, Mary Musgrove, John Ramsey, Hugh Habershaw, Jim Curry, and, in fact, almost every other used in the book, with the exception of his own, are real and not fictitious. His own name, he informed u8, is James, and that he did not go by the familiar appellation by which he is now 80 widely known until after the war, when he acquired it from the form of bis plantation in the Horseshoe Bend of the Fair Forest Creek, which was bestowed upon him by the Legislature of South Carolina in consequence of the services he had rendered during the war; this estate, we understood him to say, he still owned. He was born, he says, in 1759, in Virginia, and entered the army in the seventeenth year. Before the close of the war, he says, he commanded a troop of horse, 80 that bis military title is that of captain.
Horseshoe, although in infirm health, bears evident marks of having been a man of great personal strength and activity. He is now afflicted with 8 troublesome cough, which, in the natural course of events, must in a few years wear out his aged frame. Yet, notwithstanding his infirmities and general debility, his eye still sparkles with the fire of youth a8 he recounts the stirring and thrilling incidents of the war, and that sly, quiet humor so well described by Kennedy, may still be seen playing around his mouth, as one calls to his recollection any of the pranks he was wont to play upon any of the "tory vagrants," as he very properly styles them. The old gentleman received us with warm cordiality and hospitality ; and after partaking of the bounties of his board and spending a night under his hospitable roof, we took leave of him, sincerely wishing him many years of the peaceful enjoyment of that liberty which he fought 80 long and so bravely to achieve. It will not be uninteresting, we hope, to remark that the old bero still considers himself a soldier, though the nature of his warfare is changed; he is now a zealous promoter of the Redeemer's cause as he once was in securing the independence of his country.
Since the above was in type, we have heard of the death of the aged partner of this venerable patriot. An obituary notice will be found in another column. The novel, Horseshoe Robinson, is interesting reading, even in this critical and blase twentieth century. Judge A. B.
Meek, a fine literary critic, says that "Mr. Kennedy, the author of 'Horseshoe Robinson,' (has in that inimitable 'Tale of the Tory Ascendancy' in South Carolina, proved the suitableness of American subjects for fictitious composition of the most elevated kind. Although in his incidents and characters he has done little more than presented a faithful chronicle of facts, using throughout the veritable names of persons and places ag they were stated to him by his hero himself, yet such is the thrilling interest of the story, the vivid pictures of scenery, manners, customs and language, the striking contrasts of characters and the pervading beauty and power of style description throughout the work, that we think we do not err in saying that it is not inferior in any respect. to the best of the Waverly series." The home of James Robertson, in South Carolina, where he lived for a third of a century, is still standing. It is in Oconee county, a few miles from Westminster.
Itis now owned by Mr. Cox, and travelers frequently visit the place, drawn thither by the fame of "Horseshoe Robinson."
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home