He is best known for his renowned Southern memoir Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory, first published in 1942 and still in print.

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.

[2] In 1938, Robertson served as a political columnist for the short-lived Clemson Commentator, a semi-weekly that first published on June 6, and ceased printing on July 22, 1938.

In January 1943, Robertson joined Wendell Willkie and Eleanor Roosevelt in a series of talks in three large Canadian cities, urging a campaign for Russian relief.

[2] Ben Robertson was one of 24 passengers killed on February 22, 1943, in the crash of the Pan Am Yankee Clipper into the Tagus River at Lisbon, Portugal.

[10][11] He was killed while en route from the United States to his new job, chief of the New York Herald-Tribune's London bureau.

[13] After a funeral service in the Clemson College Chapel on April 18, 1943, he was buried in the Robertson family plot in West View Cemetery in Liberty, South Carolina.

[14] A Liberty Ship, the SS Ben Robertson, named for him, was launched at Southeastern Shipbuilding Corporation, Savannah, Georgia, on January 4, 1944.