Slicing Open Marion’s Sweet Potatoes

If Jervais Henry Stevens and Samuel Weaver both said they saw Gen. Francis Marion share a meal of roasted sweet potatoes with a British officer, is that enough to validate the legend?

Unfortunately, both Stevens and Weaver were first set down a few years after the Rev. Mason Weems published the story in his biography of Marion. Newspapers and magazines reprinted the tale. Around 1820, apparently, John Blake White painted a picture of it. The sweet-potato dinner became a widely known detail in the story of a regional hero, with a patriotic moral. That meant there was probably value in putting oneself into that story, and little value in casting doubt on it.

I’m impressed, however, that Weaver swore that “He has been told by some, that this [meal] has been recorded in the life of Genrl as a dinner, but this was a breakfast.” Weaver indicated that he had not read the printed accounts, and furthermore that he was willing to contradict them in one detail.

Weaver also said Marion’s guest was “a British Officer as he was told [who] came into camp, but for what he does not know.” The veteran obviously wasn’t trying to present himself as important.

I suspect that Weaver had also not seen White’s painting since that shows a servile black man dishing up the potatoes. Weaver said he served the breakfast himself, and as a white in ante-bellum South Carolina would almost certainly not have enjoyed being represented as a black man.

Therefore, even though Weaver told his story about two decades after the tale first appeared in print, it seems to ring true.

In contrast, we don’t have Stevens’s story. Instead, author Alexander Garden appears to have read the Weems version, asked around, and found some old companions of Marion who said it—or something like it—was true. Even then Garden admitted some doubt by writing “It is said” before his final paragraph.

And that paragraph is, I suspect, all Weemsian mythmaking. The preacher may have come across the sweet-potato story from Weaver, or Stevens, or somebody else, and decided to add it to his Marion biography. Since he was writing a “romance,” Weems felt no compunction about making up dramatic dialogue between the American general and the British officer.

Most important, Weems added a moral to the story, which otherwise was just a little episode about American partisans living off the land and a British officer polite enough to share one meal with them. Weems’s version went on to say that Englishman went back to the Crown forces so impressed by Marion’s dedication that he told his commander they had no chance of subduing the Americans. By the time Garden wrote, “It is said,” that officer even resigned his commission.

But how was an American author privy to a private conversation between British officers in British-occupied Georgetown? How could an American author know why a British officer resigned when he clearly doesn’t know that officer’s name or the date of the event? Weems’s ending to the story is a big part of its power, but it’s not nearly as convincing as Samuel Weaver’s simple tale of how he “wiped the ashes off with a dirty handkerchief.”

TOMORROW: Back to the Brockington claim (and away from increasingly strained metaphors about sweet potatoes).

Digging for Marion’s Sweet Potatoes

As quoted back here, in his biography of Gen. Francis Marion, the Rev. Mason Weems described the general treating a British officer to a dinner of roasted sweet potatoes during the Revolutionary War. Weems presented that tale as coming from Marion’s subordinate officer Peter Horry, but Horry repudiated the first edition of the book, and never saw later editions that contained the tale.

So is there any solid basis for this story?

In fact, at least two men stated that they had witnessed or participated in such an event. In Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War in America, published in Charleston in 1822, Alexander Garden introduced the story like this:

An anecdote is related of him, of the authenticity of which, many of his followers can still give testimony. I name one of them, Lieut. J[ervais]. H[enry]. Stevens, of [Hezekiah] Mayham’s regiment, who was an eye witness of the occurrence.

A British officer was sent from the garrison at Georgetown, to negotiate a business interesting to both armies; when this was concluded, and the officer about to return, the general said, “If it suits your convenience sir, to remain for a short period, I shall be glad of your company to dinner.” The mild and dignified simplicity of Marion’s manners, had already produced their effect; and, to prolong so interesting an interview, the invitation was accepted.

The entertainment was served upon pieces of bark, and consisted entirely of roasted potatoes, of which the general eat heartily, requesting his guest to profit by his example, repeating the old adage, that “hunger was an excellent sauce.”

“But surely general,” said the officer, “this cannot be your ordinary fare.”

“Indeed it is sir,” he replied, “and we are fortunate on this occasion, entertaining
company, to have more than than our usual allowance.”

It is said, that on his return to Georgetown, this officer immediately declared his conviction, that men who could without a murmur endure the difficulties and dangers of the field, and contentedly relish such simple and scanty fare, were not to be subdued; and, resigning his commission, immediately retired from the service.

In addition, a veteran named Samuel Weaver (1755-1852), applying for a pension in 1836, swore under oath:

During the time he was with Gen’l Marion, a British Officer as he was told, came to Camp but for what reason he does not know & he was roasting and baking sweet potatoes on the coles—

Gen’l Marion steped up with the British Officer and remarked he believed he would take Breakfast; he felt proud of the request, puled out his potatoes, wiped the ashes off with a dirty handkerchief, placed them on a pine log (which was all the provision they had) and Gen’l Marion and the Brittish Officer partook of them.

He had been told by some that this had been recorded in the log of the Gen’l as dinner but this was breakfast.

There’s a transcription of Weaver’s pension application memoir here.

TOMORROW: Slicing open the evidence.