THARIN, Robert Seymour Symmes (tha'-rin), lawyer, born at Magnolia, near Charleston, South Carolina, 10 January, 1830. The family-seat at Magnolia was also the birthplace of Robert's father, William Cunnington Tharin, grandson of its founder, Colonel William Cunnington, an officer on General Francis Marion's staff. Robert was graduated at the College of Charleston in 1857 and at the law-school of the University of New York in 1863. He began practice in Wetumpka, Alabama, in 1859. During the political excitement of this time, he became known for his Union sentiments and his sympathy with non-slaveholders. He advocated the establishment of small farms and factories, the emigration of the blacks to Africa, the representation of non-slaveholders, who were in the majority, in legislatures, conventions, and congress, and the repeal of the ordinance of secession. His Union sentiments led to an attack on him by a mob in 1861, and he fled to Cincinnati, Ohio. Mr. Tharin then settled in Richmond, Indiana, and enlisted as a private in the Indiana volunteers, but was mustered out in 1862. While he was in the service he wrote a letter to the London "Daily News," denouncing his former law-partner, William L. Yancey, who was then commissioner from the southern Confederacy to England. This letter, Mr. Yancey afterward confessed, was worth an army corps to the Union, as it defeated recognition. He returned to the south after the war, and in 1884 was corporation counsel of Charleston, South Carolina In February, 1888, he was tendered, by the Industrial conference at Washington, a nomination for president of the United States, but declined on the ground that the body was not a convention, and that presidential conventions are dangerous to the people who are not represented therein. He is now employed in the auditor's office in Washington. He is the author of "Arbitrary Arrests in the South" (New York, 1863), and "Letters on the Political Situation" (Charleston, South Carolina, 1871).