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._

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

The events narrated in the following pages, came to my knowledge in the
progress of my researches into the personal history of some of the
characters who figure in the story. I thought them worth being embodied
into a regular narrative, for two reasons:--

First, because they intrinsically possess an interest that may amuse the
lovers of adventure, and,

Second, because they serve to illustrate the temper and character of the
War of our Revolution.

As yet, only the political and documentary history of that war has been
written. Its romantic or picturesque features have been left for that
industrious tribe of chroniclers, of which I hold myself to be an
unworthy member, and who have of late, as the public is aware, set about
the business in good earnest. It shall go hard with us if we do not soon
bring to light every remnant of tradition that the war has left!

An opinion has heretofore prevailed that the Revolution was too recent
an affair for our story-telling craft to lay hands upon it. But this
objection, ever since the fiftieth anniversary, has been nullified by
common consent,--that being deemed the fair poetical limit which
converts tradition into truth, and takes away all right of
contradiction from a surviving actor in the scene. The pension roll is
manifestly growing thinner, and the widows--married young after the
peace--make a decided majority on