“Most certainly ’tis not MY history, but YOUR romance.”

The first edition of The Life of Gen. Francis Marion appeared at the end of 1809. As I described yesterday, it was brought to press by the Rev. Mason Weems (shown here), but written in the voice of Peter Horry, one of Marion’s officers.

It took until 4 Feb 1811, over a year after publication, before Horry told Weems what he thought of the book, in a fun-to-read letter later printed in William Gilmore Simms’s Views and Reviews in American Literature:

I requested you would, (if necessary,) so far alter the work as to make it read grammatically, and I gave you leave to embellish the work,—but entertained not the least idea of what has happened—though several of my friends were under such apprehensions, which caused my being urgent on you not to alter as above mentioned.

Do you not recollect my sitting on the ground with you near the Georgetown Printing Office, and urging you again on the subject of no alterations to the work—That you replied, (seemingly out of humour,) that, “When the work came out, you engaged I would be satisfied.” I replied, “That is enough;”—and, I recollect nothing farther passed between us afterwards on the subject.

How great was my surprise on reading these words in your letter: “Knowing the passion of the times for novels, I have endeavoured to throw your ideas and facts about General Marion into the garb and dress of a military romance.” A history of realities turned into a romance! The idea alone, militates against the work. The one as a history of real performance, would be always read with pleasure. The other as a fictitious invention of the brain, once read would suffice. Therefore, I think you injured yourself, notwithstanding the quick sales of your book.

Nor have the public received the real history of General Marion. You have carved and mutilated it with so many erroneous statements, your embellishments, observations and remarks, must necessarily be erroneous as proceeding from false grounds. Most certainly ’tis not MY history, but YOUR romance.

You say the book sells better than [Weems’s book on George] Washington! The price of the one is much less than the other—[that] is the reason. Besides, persons unacquainted with the real history, buy and read your book as authentic. When known to be otherwise, [it] will lie mouldering on the shelves, and no more purchasers [will] be obtained. You have my work; compare [it] with yours, and the difference will appear. Yours is greatly abridged, and the letters contained in mine (which I thought much of,) are excluded from yours.

You say, “you are surprised to hear that I am displeased with your book, particularly as it places Marion and myself in so conspicuous and exalted a light.” Can you suppose I can be pleased with reading particulars (though ever so elevated, by you) of Marion and myself, when I know such never existed.

Your book is out. My dissatisfaction of it is no ways material. You say you want to see me to procure some additional anecdotes for your 2d edition—and that, if I can point out any errors or places where improvement may be made, that you will cheerfully attend to any instructions. Could such improvement be really made, I fear for its fate—to be disregarded as my first performances were.

According to a sketch of Horry in the South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, “Horry’s annotated copy is extant and it shows many of Weems’ false statements, but not near all.”

That same article says, “The title page of the first edition credits the alleged biography to Weems, but after Horry’s death [in 1815] new editions falsely assigned it to Weems and Horry, despite Horry’s repeated repudiation of it during his lifetime.”

So it seems far less likely that Horry witnessed the sweet-potato dinner as his narrative voice described. In fact, if my supposition is right, Weems added the episode to the book only after Horry died, when he couldn’t object so vociferously.

TOMORROW: Other eyewitnesses to the sweet potato dinner?

“O that mine enemy would write a book”

For most of the nineteenth century, editions of The Life of Gen. Francis Marion, a Celebrated Partisan Officer in the Revolutionary War, carried this author credit:

By Brig. Gen. P. Horry, of Marion’s Brigade:
and M. L. Weems

The book was written in the voice of Peter Horry (shown here, courtesy of the Horry County Historical Society). For a sample of that voice, the preface began:

“O that mine enemy would write a book.”—This, in former times, passed for as sore an evil as a good man could think of wishing to his worst enemy.—Whether any of my enemies ever wished me so great an evil, I know not. But certain it is, I never dreamed of such a thing as writing a book; and least of all a war book. What, I! a man here under the frozen zone and grand climacteric of my days, with one foot in the grave and the other hard by, to quit my prayer book and crutches, (an old man’s best companion,) and drawing my sword, nourish and fight over again the battles of my youth.

The Lord forbid me such madness! But what can one do when one’s friends are eternally teazing him, as they are me, and calling out at every whipstitch and corner of the streets, “Well, but, sir, where’s Marion? where’s the history of Marion, that we have so long been looking for?”

’Twas in vain that I told them I was no scholar; no historian. “God,” said I, “gentlemen, has made many men of many minds; one for this thing and another for that. But I am morally certain he never made me for a writer. I did indeed once understand something about the use of a broad sword; but as to a pen, gentlemen, that's quite another part of speech. The difference between a broad-sword and a pen, gentlemen, is prodigious; and it is not every officer, let me tell you, gentlemen, who can, like Caesar, fight you a great battle with his sword to-day, and fight it over again with his pen to-morrow.”

Of course, the reason those friends kept asking Horry about his Marion book is that he had collected information for a history of the brigade. But he had trouble getting it published. The Rev. Mason Weems—already a bestselling biographer of George Washington—convinced Horry to send him the manuscript so he could make it saleable.

TOMORROW: Big mistake.

Parson Weems Cooks Up a Dinner for Francis Marion

The Rev. Mason Weems published the first edition of his Life of Gen. Francis Marion in 1809. It followed the hortatory model of the parson’s book on George Washington, issued nine years earlier, but Weems wrote in the voice of Peter Horry, a South Carolina officer who had served under Marion (shown here, courtesy of NNDB.com) and loaned him documents as raw material.

I haven’t found an 1809 edition of Weems’s Marion online, but there are copies of the reprints from 1815-20 and later. That’s also when an incident from the book—the story of Marion and the sweet potatoes—was first reprinted in American periodicals, such as the 1817 volume of the Monthly Magazine, or British Register. That makes me suspect that Weems added the anecdote to his second edition and thus brought it into the public eye.

Weems’s text described Marion dining off sweet potatoes several times, but it highlighted a particular moment when an “Englishman” had brought “a flag from the enemy in George-town, S. C. the object of which was to make some arrangements about the exchange of prisoners.” After that gentleman had concluded that business with Marion:

The officer took up his hat to retire.

“Oh no!” said Marion, “it is now about our time of dining, and I hope, sir, you will give us the pleasure of your company to dinner.”

At the mention of the word dinner, the British officer looked around him, but to his great mortification, could see no sign of a pot, pan, or Dutch-oven, or any other cooking utensil that could raise the spirits of a hungry man.

“Well, Tom,” said the general to one of his men, “come, give us our dinner.”

The dinner to which he alluded was no other than a heap of sweet potatoes, that were very snugly roasting under the embers, and which Tom, with his pine-stick poker, soon liberated from their ashy confinement, pinching them every now and then with his fingers, especially the big ones, to see whether they were well done or not. Then, having cleansed them of the ashes, partly by blowing them with his breath, and partly by brushing them with the sleeve of his old cotton shirt, he piled some of the best on a large piece of bark, and placed them between the British officer and Marion, on the trunk of the fallen pine on which they sat.

“I fear sir,” said the general, “our dinner will not prove so palatable to you as I could wish; but it is the best we have.”

The officer, who was a well-bred man, took up one of the potatoes, and affected to feed as if he had found a great dainty; but it was very plain that he ate more from good manners than good appetite. . . .

The Englishman said, “he did not believe it would be an easy matter to reconcile his feelings to a soldier’s life on general Marion’s terms; all fighting, no pay, and no provisions but potatoes.”

“Why, sir,” answered the general, “the heart is all; and when that is once interested, a man can do any thing. Many a youth would think hard to indent himself a slave for fourteen years. But let him be over head and ears in love, and with such a beauteous sweetheart as Rachel, and he will think no more of fourteen years’ servitude than young Jacob did. Well, now this is exactly my case. I am in love; and my sweetheart is LIBERTY.” . . .

I looked at Marion as he uttered these sentiments, and fancied I felt as when I heard the last words of the brave [Baron Johann] De Kalb. The Englishman hung his honest head, and looked, I thought, as if he had seen the upbraiding ghosts of his illustrious countrymen, [Algernon] Sydney and [John] Hampden.

On his return to George-town he was asked by Colonel [John Watson Tadwell] Watson why he looked so serious? “I have cause, sir,” said he, “to look so serious.”—

“What! has General Marion refused to treat [i.e., negotiate]?”

“No, sir.”—

“Well then, has old Washington defeated Sir Henry Clinton, and broke up our army?”

“No. sir, not that neither; but worse.”—

“Ah! what can be worse?”

“Why, sir, I have seen an American general and his officers, without pay, and almost without clothes, living on roots, and drinking water—and all for LIBERTY! What chance have we against such men!”

Weems always liked to draw a heroic little lesson out of his anecdotes, which helped make them popular with magazine and textbook editors. As I noted above, this story began to be reprinted in the late 1810s (punctuation and other small details differing from one publication to another).

When John Blake White painted Marion inviting a red-coated officer to share a meal of sweet potatoes about 1820, he surely had this episode in mind. It was becoming widely known, and it had a moral and patriotic message for the American public. No wonder a version is now hanging in the U.S. Capitol.

In contrast, no publication before 1999 appears to have reported that Marion also shared sweet potatoes with the Loyalist officer John Brockington as he returned home after the war. In fact, why would a planter like Marion be dining on vegetables in the woods once the war was over? And what message and value would that scene have held to the American public?

Of course, that doesn’t mean the scene Weems described ever happened.

TOMORROW: Hearing from Peter Horry.