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Southern Classics
Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory
Red Hills and Cotton is suffused with Ben Robertson's deep affection for his native Upcountry South Carolina. An internationally known and respected journalist, Robertson had a knack for finding the interesting and exotic in seemingly humble or ordinary folk and a keen eye for human interest stories. his power of description and disarmingly straightforward narrative were the hallmarks of his writing.
A loyal Southern son, Robertson cherished what he judged to be the South's best traditions: personal independence and responsibility, the rejection of crass materialism, a deep piety, and a love of freedom. He repeatedly lamented the region's many shortcomings: poverty, racial hierarchy, political impotence, lack of inttellectual curiosity, and its tendency to blame all of its twentieth-century problems on the defeat of the Confederacy.
An informative and entertaining new introduction by Lacy K. Ford, Jr., associate professor of history at the University of South Carolina, provides fascinating new facts about Robertson's life and recasts his achievements in Red Hills and Cotton as social commentary. Ford captures the essence of Robertson's restless and questioning, but unfailingly Southern, spirit.
A loyal Southern son, Robertson cherished what he judged to be the South's best traditions: personal independence and responsibility, the rejection of crass materialism, a deep piety, and a love of freedom. He repeatedly lamented the region's many shortcomings: poverty, racial hierarchy, political impotence, lack of inttellectual curiosity, and its tendency to blame all of its twentieth-century problems on the defeat of the Confederacy.
An informative and entertaining new introduction by Lacy K. Ford, Jr., associate professor of history at the University of South Carolina, provides fascinating new facts about Robertson's life and recasts his achievements in Red Hills and Cotton as social commentary. Ford captures the essence of Robertson's restless and questioning, but unfailingly Southern, spirit.
344 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1942
16 people are currently reading
290 people want to read
About the author
Ben Robertson
2 books3 followersBen Robertson was a journalist, author and war correspondent during World War II. He attended Clemson Agricultural College(now Clemson University) and graduated in 1923 with a degree in horticulture. He then went to the University of Missouri and received a degree in journalism in 1926.
His professional career in journalism began with a short stint at the News and Courier in Charleston. His first major job after graduating was at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. In 1927 he went to Australia to work for The News in Adelaide. From 1929 to 1934 he reported for the New York Herald Tribune, after which he went to work for the Associated Press in New York and London. In 1935 he went to the United Press and also sent stories to the Anderson Independent in South Carolina. In 1937 Ben Robertson returned to AP and also did disaster relief work for the American Red Cross during the Ohio River flood of 1937.
His work as a war correspondent began in 1940 covering England for the New York paper PM. He worked with Edward R. Murrow covering The Blitz of London. In most of 1942 he roved for PM and the Chicago Sun in the Pacific, Asia and North Africa. In the later part of the year he returned to the Herald Tribune and was on his way to head its London bureau when he was killed in a plane crash in Portugal in 1943.
In his short life, Ben Robertson published three books. The first was Travelers Rest published in South Carolina in 1938. The second was I See England, published in 1941, which told of his interaction with the British during wartime. The last, his masterpiece, was Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory published in 1942.
His professional career in journalism began with a short stint at the News and Courier in Charleston. His first major job after graduating was at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. In 1927 he went to Australia to work for The News in Adelaide. From 1929 to 1934 he reported for the New York Herald Tribune, after which he went to work for the Associated Press in New York and London. In 1935 he went to the United Press and also sent stories to the Anderson Independent in South Carolina. In 1937 Ben Robertson returned to AP and also did disaster relief work for the American Red Cross during the Ohio River flood of 1937.
His work as a war correspondent began in 1940 covering England for the New York paper PM. He worked with Edward R. Murrow covering The Blitz of London. In most of 1942 he roved for PM and the Chicago Sun in the Pacific, Asia and North Africa. In the later part of the year he returned to the Herald Tribune and was on his way to head its London bureau when he was killed in a plane crash in Portugal in 1943.
In his short life, Ben Robertson published three books. The first was Travelers Rest published in South Carolina in 1938. The second was I See England, published in 1941, which told of his interaction with the British during wartime. The last, his masterpiece, was Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory published in 1942.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
December 29, 2010
This is one of the best books I have ever read. Robertson brings things to life and makes me feel like I'm right there with him. I can hear the train whistle, I can see the Blue Ridge mountains in the distance, I can see his grandparents and great aunt sitting on the piazza. Maybe it's because I'm a South Carolina upcountry boy myself, but I really resonate with all that Robertson says. He sheds so much light on the Southern perspective of life, one that is still relevant in today's south as life continues to shift in the post-textile era. I feel a connection to Robertson's thoughts, ideas, and perspectives. Somehow I feel as if part of this story is my own.
November 4, 2015
Red Hills and Cotton is a classic must read for anyone, especially those from the upstate South Carolina area, Mr. Robertson was gone long before I was born but his legacy lives on in his writing.
Ben Robertson’s memories which he shares in this book are so familiar to me simply because we grew up in the same area, the descriptions he gives us makes you feel like you are actually there, the demeanor and mindset of his family is classic Southern and I actually could see members of my own family in his writing.
I would recommend this memoir for anyone, and people from the Southern states will definitely relate.
Ben Robertson’s memories which he shares in this book are so familiar to me simply because we grew up in the same area, the descriptions he gives us makes you feel like you are actually there, the demeanor and mindset of his family is classic Southern and I actually could see members of my own family in his writing.
I would recommend this memoir for anyone, and people from the Southern states will definitely relate.
March 30, 2023
This book belongs in the category of place writing. It’s a loving examination of the Upcountry of South Carolina, written by a man who had grown up in these same hills. So by definition it’s no book of travel. Nor is it a memoir since we learn few biographical details about the author Ben Robertson. We read about his grandfather and grandmother, Aunt Narcissa, and other individuals living around these hills, but the subtitle gets it exactly right by calling the book a “memory” rather than a “memoir.” The book appealed to me during a visit to this part of South Carolina. Driving through stretches of country we passed Baptist church after Baptist church, often with an attached cemetery. In the midst of this “Bible Belt” landscape we also caught glimpses of the BMW plant in Spartanburg and walked through the smartly developed downtown of Greenville. I found this Red Hills and Cotton on the local interest shelves at the M. Judson Bookstore on Main Street in Greenville.
This is a book that would be difficult to discuss now in a college class, representing as it does a white southern point of view. Beginning the chapter on his grandfather, Robertson mentions that he “took part dutifully in the first Ku-Klux Klan—he had ridden at night like all the rest of our kinfolks.” It is disconcerting to have the author set this fact out and then move into fulsome praise of the moral character of that grandfather. At the same time the author felt himself in broad alignment with the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt (no surprise since this was then the Solid South), so both book and author are impossible to align with our political present. Despite his acceptance of the Southern past and its racial inequalities, Robertson portrays a way of being in this world. My inclination as a reader—my ethic, you could even say—is to engage with any attempt to set down in words a way of seeing and feeling the world.
Red Hills and Cotton was published in 1942, but it functions as a treasury of popular themes. Early in the book Robertson takes up the idea of rambling. His kinfolks were natural ramblers, ready to pick up and go someplace new just for the sake of doing it. He tells of a cousin who went to church, heard a sermon, and then decided he just had to go somewhere he’d never been to before. And so the cousin takes off for Macon, Georgia, leaving behind his responsibilities. He didn’t do anything in particular in Macon, just hung out, but it was someplace different and that was all that mattered. I’m probably not the only reader who would recall the chorus “Lord, I was born a ramblin’ man” by the Allman Brothers.
Something similar happens as Robertson discusses how trains were perceived in the South. In much of English literature trains are the embodiment of modernity, bringing timetables and industrial exactitude. Robertson grew up with a different view: “They were not plodding cars making their way, over and over again, from station to station, working like a clock. They were free agents, roaring through the night, speeding off into distance.” Yet again a rich musical heritage comes to mind, from “Lonesome Whistle” to “Mystery Train.” The train in these songs is no schedule-bound machine but a lost ghost passing over the landscape.
This is no book about the generic “South.” Part of its charm is Robertson’s insistence on keeping the focus tight on his particular place. He pointedly distinguishes his Upcountry from Charleston and the coast (“We knew more about Texas and California than we knew about Charleston”). The Upcountry was not the South of plantations and tall white columns. Those things were characteristic of another place. He describes how the Upcountry had been settled by migrants from the North rather than colonial high-church planters. For me this helped me reimagine the winding roads, with all those Baptist churches and small land-holdings, as a displaced and clannish remnant of Puritanism.
In other ways the Upcountry was a full participant in the greater South. Robertson’s stories are a vivid proof of the centrality of the Civil War in white southern identity. The old Lost Cause narrative takes on the trappings of a religious tradition. The conflicts of the war became the stories that could always be repeated and relived: “Like most Southerners, I visit battlefields.” These battlefields are sacred sites connected to stories that he had heard over and over from his grandparents and others. Even eating all the food on his plate becomes associated with a memory of the Confederacy, since his grandparents could never forget the “days of starvation” in the South. At any time or place a reference to the Civil War was liable to come up, an anecdote related. Yes, these people were true Baptists in theology, but everything bled into the Civil War, as is clear in this passage: “...intuition has led us in the South to Andrew Jackson, to Lee and Stonewall Jackson, to Appomattox too and to Château-Thierry [World War I] and to Calvary and the Cross.” The religion reflected there is “Lost-Causeism.”
In the person of Aunt Narcissa we get a fleeting glimpse of someone who stood outside that Lost Cause narrative: “She talked hardly at all about the Civil War.” Her stories were about the Revolutionary War and the West. Walking around downtown Spartanburg and Greenville I had noticed the lack of Civil War monuments. The absence of the Civil War in these public spaces was notable given the depth of feeling that Robertson demonstrates had existed. But the business-first philosophy of these main streets could only truly flourish as the Civil War was demoted, or at least forced to retreat into private spaces. Aunt Narcissa with her interest in the founding narratives of the country (in which the Southern states participated) pointed the way toward a different stance. It’s Revolutionary War heroes that are represented in statues along these main streets.
This Lost-Causeism had to be jettisoned not only because it could repel Northern visitors, but also because it was an ideology overtly hostile to business interests. The anathema of modern business practices and values is one of the main themes of Robertson’s book: “We do not understand shares and stocks, the use of money to make money... we want to work for a man we know personally, to live in our own house.” The fear of mechanical life is always present, and the only resistance to that capitalistic world is a linked system of small landholders. But the BMW plant and the new housing divisions, not to mention the successful downtown of Greenville, depend on a new way of seeing the world.
This is a book that would be difficult to discuss now in a college class, representing as it does a white southern point of view. Beginning the chapter on his grandfather, Robertson mentions that he “took part dutifully in the first Ku-Klux Klan—he had ridden at night like all the rest of our kinfolks.” It is disconcerting to have the author set this fact out and then move into fulsome praise of the moral character of that grandfather. At the same time the author felt himself in broad alignment with the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt (no surprise since this was then the Solid South), so both book and author are impossible to align with our political present. Despite his acceptance of the Southern past and its racial inequalities, Robertson portrays a way of being in this world. My inclination as a reader—my ethic, you could even say—is to engage with any attempt to set down in words a way of seeing and feeling the world.
Red Hills and Cotton was published in 1942, but it functions as a treasury of popular themes. Early in the book Robertson takes up the idea of rambling. His kinfolks were natural ramblers, ready to pick up and go someplace new just for the sake of doing it. He tells of a cousin who went to church, heard a sermon, and then decided he just had to go somewhere he’d never been to before. And so the cousin takes off for Macon, Georgia, leaving behind his responsibilities. He didn’t do anything in particular in Macon, just hung out, but it was someplace different and that was all that mattered. I’m probably not the only reader who would recall the chorus “Lord, I was born a ramblin’ man” by the Allman Brothers.
Something similar happens as Robertson discusses how trains were perceived in the South. In much of English literature trains are the embodiment of modernity, bringing timetables and industrial exactitude. Robertson grew up with a different view: “They were not plodding cars making their way, over and over again, from station to station, working like a clock. They were free agents, roaring through the night, speeding off into distance.” Yet again a rich musical heritage comes to mind, from “Lonesome Whistle” to “Mystery Train.” The train in these songs is no schedule-bound machine but a lost ghost passing over the landscape.
This is no book about the generic “South.” Part of its charm is Robertson’s insistence on keeping the focus tight on his particular place. He pointedly distinguishes his Upcountry from Charleston and the coast (“We knew more about Texas and California than we knew about Charleston”). The Upcountry was not the South of plantations and tall white columns. Those things were characteristic of another place. He describes how the Upcountry had been settled by migrants from the North rather than colonial high-church planters. For me this helped me reimagine the winding roads, with all those Baptist churches and small land-holdings, as a displaced and clannish remnant of Puritanism.
In other ways the Upcountry was a full participant in the greater South. Robertson’s stories are a vivid proof of the centrality of the Civil War in white southern identity. The old Lost Cause narrative takes on the trappings of a religious tradition. The conflicts of the war became the stories that could always be repeated and relived: “Like most Southerners, I visit battlefields.” These battlefields are sacred sites connected to stories that he had heard over and over from his grandparents and others. Even eating all the food on his plate becomes associated with a memory of the Confederacy, since his grandparents could never forget the “days of starvation” in the South. At any time or place a reference to the Civil War was liable to come up, an anecdote related. Yes, these people were true Baptists in theology, but everything bled into the Civil War, as is clear in this passage: “...intuition has led us in the South to Andrew Jackson, to Lee and Stonewall Jackson, to Appomattox too and to Château-Thierry [World War I] and to Calvary and the Cross.” The religion reflected there is “Lost-Causeism.”
In the person of Aunt Narcissa we get a fleeting glimpse of someone who stood outside that Lost Cause narrative: “She talked hardly at all about the Civil War.” Her stories were about the Revolutionary War and the West. Walking around downtown Spartanburg and Greenville I had noticed the lack of Civil War monuments. The absence of the Civil War in these public spaces was notable given the depth of feeling that Robertson demonstrates had existed. But the business-first philosophy of these main streets could only truly flourish as the Civil War was demoted, or at least forced to retreat into private spaces. Aunt Narcissa with her interest in the founding narratives of the country (in which the Southern states participated) pointed the way toward a different stance. It’s Revolutionary War heroes that are represented in statues along these main streets.
This Lost-Causeism had to be jettisoned not only because it could repel Northern visitors, but also because it was an ideology overtly hostile to business interests. The anathema of modern business practices and values is one of the main themes of Robertson’s book: “We do not understand shares and stocks, the use of money to make money... we want to work for a man we know personally, to live in our own house.” The fear of mechanical life is always present, and the only resistance to that capitalistic world is a linked system of small landholders. But the BMW plant and the new housing divisions, not to mention the successful downtown of Greenville, depend on a new way of seeing the world.
April 26, 2016
This is a history written in the early 40s of a South Carolinian upcountry family. The author talks a lot about his family and the Southern values he grew up knowing. I particularly enjoyed matching my own Southern upbringing against his experiences - even though I was born after his book was written in another Southern state (Virginia). I found many congruences. I also enjoyed this history because it is set near the area that my husband and I chose to retire. The writing is like sitting on the porch, and hearing the elders talk about their past - very comfortable.
June 25, 2015
One of the very best books I have ever read. Having lived and gone to school in this same part of the Carolinas, I could so easily imagine my parents and grandparents on almost every page in the book. And the stories and descriptions of life back in these days helped me to further realize that it wasn't so bad back then.
May 25, 2013
I am grateful for the publishers at our universities, for without them we may never have treasures like Red Hills and Cotton.
December 17, 2021
I thought the book was kind of hard to follow.
I was kind caught off guard because I thought this book was about some kind of historical adventure in the up country, but the book was more about life in the up country.
There were some areas of the book where I felt they were contradicting between there thoughts on slavery and how blacks were treated. At the same time I’m black and reading it from an biased outsider, so my judgement could be wrong.
I could relate to a lot of their moral beliefs and agree with a lot of their point’s on politics and their view on capitalism.
Some of their political ideas made them sounded like republicans values but they always voted democrat, which leads me to believe did democrats acted more on republican values and republicans acted more democrats values?
One of my favorite parts in the book were the two ladies competing with each other at church. That whole scene cracked me up.
There was one part in the book that I found interesting and opened my mind towards how some southern whites felt about slavery: The author said that some southerns agreed that slavery wrong, but southerns wanted to ended slavery on their own terms, which I thought was interesting.
I was kind caught off guard because I thought this book was about some kind of historical adventure in the up country, but the book was more about life in the up country.
There were some areas of the book where I felt they were contradicting between there thoughts on slavery and how blacks were treated. At the same time I’m black and reading it from an biased outsider, so my judgement could be wrong.
I could relate to a lot of their moral beliefs and agree with a lot of their point’s on politics and their view on capitalism.
Some of their political ideas made them sounded like republicans values but they always voted democrat, which leads me to believe did democrats acted more on republican values and republicans acted more democrats values?
One of my favorite parts in the book were the two ladies competing with each other at church. That whole scene cracked me up.
There was one part in the book that I found interesting and opened my mind towards how some southern whites felt about slavery: The author said that some southerns agreed that slavery wrong, but southerns wanted to ended slavery on their own terms, which I thought was interesting.
May 14, 2017
Enjoyed the immensely. One of my favorite passages from the book is two of his family’s cooks talking to each other (pg. 38):
Hattie got to talking about how sorry she was for Lot’s wife in the Bible. She said she understood how hard it was for Mrs. Lot not to look back, and if she’d been walking out of a city like that she’d have looked back too. ‘I got to look back,’ said Hattie. ‘Ain’t it the truth,’ said Lulu, ‘and I got to nibble the fruit.’
The book is full of gems like this.
Hattie got to talking about how sorry she was for Lot’s wife in the Bible. She said she understood how hard it was for Mrs. Lot not to look back, and if she’d been walking out of a city like that she’d have looked back too. ‘I got to look back,’ said Hattie. ‘Ain’t it the truth,’ said Lulu, ‘and I got to nibble the fruit.’
The book is full of gems like this.
December 30, 2024
A glimpse into the post-war South from 1870-1940. It was a hard time for both the Black and White populations with money tight and banks unreliable. Those who were able to hold on to their land fared better than those who were not. Never mortgage your land. The biggest threat to this life was industrialization coming down from the North. Told from a somewhat enlightened White perspective, the book provides a clear description in the final two chapters as to why the South felt so betrayed after the war.
February 5, 2019
I loved, loved, loved this book!!! Mr. Robertson's telling of southern life in upper South Carolina is so true. I am a native of this area and I felt that this book was telling my life's story. So rich in family and community......a book that all southerners should read and keep as a treasure!
March 1, 2020
Pretty good.
April 30, 2012
I read this book in both high school and college and could not put it down either time. It hits close to home for me, as it is about the region that I grew up in. Mr. Robertson's poetic words hit the nail on the head in describing the culture, beliefs, and history of the land he knew as home and the people he knew as friends, family, and neighbors. A must-read for any conoisseur of Southern literature.
July 26, 2015
I didn't like it. The writing is too vague and sentimental. I was looking for some real southern history, not a biographical account of the idiosyncrasies of hill folk. The writing is just a mash-up of short reflections that easily slip from your mind. Maybe it makes more sense if you're from the area. And the author belies his own roots, being an educated, world traveller and writer.
March 30, 2013
It was pretty interesting to read a book about the county in which I live and cities with which I am familiar. It did get a very interesting insights into the original Scots Irish settlers who's descendants have been here for 200 years.
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September 29, 2015Provides a history of the upcountry of South Carolina as memoirs.
August 10, 2025
This was a good book and did well highlighting the importance of faith, family and agriculture in the upcountry. It said “cotton” like 1000 times and I kinda got bored.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews