Horse Shoe came to the fire-side, and took a chair, saying, "I larnt that, Colonel, in the campaigns. A man picks up some good everywhere, if he's a mind to; that's my observation."
This case being disposed of, Horse Shoe determined to remain all night with the family. We had supper, and, after that, formed a little party around the hearth. Colonel T. took occasion to tell me something about Horse Shoe; and the Colonel's eldest son gave me my cue, by which he intimated I might draw out the old soldier to relate some stories of the war.
"Ask him," said the young man, "how he got away from Charleston after the surrender; and then get him to tell you how he took the five Scotchmen prisoners."
We were all in good humor. The boy was quite easy, and everything was going on well, and we had determined to sit up until Mrs. T. should arrive, which could not be before midnight. Horse Shoe was very obliging, and as I expressed a great interest in his adventures, he yielded himself to my leading, and I got out of him a rich stock of adventure, of which his life was full. The two famous passages to which I had been asked to question him—the escape from Charleston, and the capture of the Scotch soldiers—the reader will find preserved in the narrative upon which he is about to enter, almost in the very words of my anthology. I have—perhaps with too much scruple—retained Horse Shoe's peculiar vocabulary and rustic, doric form of speech—holding these as somewhat necessary exponents of his character. A more truthful man than he, I am convinced, did not survive the war to tell its story. Truth was the predominant expression of his face and gesture—the truth that belongs to natural and unconscious bravery, united with a frank and modest spirit. He seemed to set no especial value upon his own exploits, but to relate them as items of personal history, with as little comment or emphasis as if they concerned any one more than himself.
It was long after midnight before our party broke up; and when I got to my bed it was to dream of Horse Shoe and his adventures. I made a record of what he told me, whilst the memory of it was still fresh, and often afterwards reverted to it, when accident or intentional research brought into my view events connected with the times and scenes to which his story had reference.
The reader will thus see how I came into possession of the leading incidents upon which this "Tale of the Tory Ascendency" in South Carolina is founded.
It was first published in 1835. Horse-Shoe Robinson was then a very old man. He had removed into Alabama, and lived, I am told, upon the banks of the Tuskaloosa. 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 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."
April 12, 1852.