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._ 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 the list. These are the second-hand retailers of the marvels of the war; and it is observed that, like wine which has descended to the heir, the events have lost none of their flavor or value by the transmission. This is all so much clear gain to our fraternity; and it is obvious, therefore, that we must thrive.