In December, 1794, the General Assembly was induced to make a grant to the University which brought to it little money but much animosity. The preamble recites that the Trustees have, with a laudable zeal for the promotion of literature, erected a building for the use of the institution entrusted to them and are prepared to commence the exercises, but have not funds to proceed in the liberal manner, which the honor and interest of the public demand. The act then gives the Trustees all unsold confiscated land, including the forfeited rights of Henry Eustace McCulloch, a British subject, for lands contracted to be sold by him, title being withheld for security of the purchase money. The Trustees were authorized to make title on payment of the balances due. The donation under the act was greatly weakened by the provision that all above twenty thousand dollars should be paid over to the State, that only the interest on receipts should be used, and that after ten years the principal should be subject to the disposition of the General Assembly.

The Trustees employed able lawyers to realize funds under the act. The principal receipts were from the moneys due McCulloch, for lands contracted to be sold to sundry inhabitants of Mecklenburg and adjoining counties, and from the sale of confiscated lands, principally of McCulloch. Adlai Osborne, of Rowan, a University attorney, reported sales from June, 1795, to July, 1798, amounting to $14,946, most of which were on credit. There were 77 buyers. The net amount received up to November, 1807, was $7,160.58. In 1804 the Court of Conference decided in the cases of Ray's Executors v. McCulloch, and Trustees v. Rice, that the claim of McCulloch was by the Treaty of Peace of 1783 made good to him; whereupon the General Assembly ordered the refunding of the foregoing amount, which had been invested in United States stock, to the State Treasury in trust for such of his debtors as had paid the Trustees. The University, however, had the receipt of the interest on the amount collected from time to time. Notwithstanding this, as will be hereafter seen, the act of 1794 was a distinct injury. It raised unfounded hopes and caused the University to be hated in a very powerful section of the State. It well nigh caused its ruin. Davie alludes to it in one of his letters, evidently with little hope.

“If any man of proper literary merit could be found imprudent enough to engage with us as President upon the prospect of our ten years fund, I hope the Board may have more discretion than to employ him. I still hope these funds may become permanent. As the proceeds of the confiscated lands will now soon be collected it may perhaps be in our power to employ another professor.” * * * Dr. McCorckle has pledged himself to demonstrate to the Board at the next meeting that we are able to employ all the officers the plan of education calls for, and pay them liberally, too. I am afraid it will remain a problem notwithstanding the doctor's learning and talents.”

We learn from a letter of Caldwell written in January, 1804, that it was his opinion that the chief cause of the outbreak of the hostility against the University in the General Assembly of 1800 was the litigation instituted by the Trustees under the authority of the act of 1794. Having enjoyed these lands for about twenty years since the confiscation law was passed, it was in accordance with human nature for their possessors to be angry with a corporation which was actively pressing in the courts suits on these old claims. We find that George Fisher, of Rowan, a county adjoining that in which most of them resided, made the motion, which was supported by all the members from that and the adjacent counties with only four exceptions, to repeal the act.

A letter from a “Gentleman in Raleigh” to the editors of a journal called “The Anthology,” in relation to the literature of North Carolina, states in regard to the University:

Such was the popular odium at this time against the University that the General Assembly of 1800 not only repealed the act of 1794, but, notwithstanding the strenuous exertions of some of the ablest men of the day, went further and repealed that of 1789, granting escheated property. So far as the hostile legislation affected confiscated property, it was not of much consequence, because the grant was to expire in 1804 and the courts would have forced the University to disgorge the receipts from the mortgages and liens of McCulloch. But the deprivation of escheats, if successfully carried out, would have been fatal. It would have taken away the unclaimed land warrants located in Tennessee, the proceeds of which were the interest bearing endowment prior to the Civil War.

But it was not carried into effect. In the first place the Court of Conference in the case of University v. Foy, 1 Murphy, 58, decided the repealing act unconstitutional; and although this case was overruled by that of University v. Maultsby, 8 Ired. Eq., 257, the action of the court, and we hope a change of sentiment, led the General Assembly in 1805 to restore the escheats. One of the strongest advocates of such restoration was Maurice Moore, heretofore described as one of the early students. I have examined the votes on this drastic measure and find them chiefly, but not entirely, on party lines. The names of those who stood by the institution on this vital question should be recorded.

The Senators were Henry S. Bonner, of Beaufort; John Johnston, of Bertie; I. Lewis, of Bladen; Benjamin Smith, of Brunswick; Caleb Phifer, of Cabarrus; William Gaston, of Craven; Bythell Bell, of Edgecombe; Jordan Hill, of Franklin; Thomas Taylor, of Granville; Robert White, of Green; Stephen W. Conner, of Halifax; Thomas Wynns, of Hertford; Joseph Masters, of Hyde; Durant Hatch, of Jones; Wm. McKenzie, of Martin; John H. Drake, of Nash; John Hill, of New Hanover; John M. Beauford, of Northampton; David Ray, of Orange; Frederick Bryan, of Pitt; Elias Barnes, of Robeson; James Collier, of Warren; Richard Croom, of Greene.

John Johnston was a nephew of Governor Samuel Johnston. Wm. Gaston at the age of twenty-two was beginning his long career of enlightened public service, always advocating liberal and progressive ideas. He made a motion which would have secured to the University all lands actually taken into the possession of the Trustees, but it was voted down. Senator Benjamin Smith is the same who, at the first meeting of the Board in 1790, donated Tennessee land warrants to the new institution. He induced the Senate by his powerful influence to agree to refer the whole matter to a joint committee, but the House refused to agree to it.

The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 32 to 23, having already passed the House by the decisive majority of 82 to 35. Among the minority Senators I notice only one who attained any eminence: Peter Forney, of Lincoln, who was afterwards a member of Congress. Of the majority, Senators Smith became Governor, Gaston a member of Congress and Judge of the Supreme Court of our State, Wynns, after whom Winton is named, a member of Congress.

The worthy President was in those days a fighting member of the Church militant. We have a long and extremely spirited reply of his to an attack on the University for which he held Basil Gaither, Senator from Rowan, Absalom Tatum, Commoner from the borough of Hillsboro, who had once been a friend of the institution, James Welbourn, Senator from Wilkes and William Slade, Commoner from Edenton, responsible. An analysis of this open letter gives a good idea of arguments used by the opponents of higher education a century ago, and of Caldwell's style and manner of answering them.

For the purpose of more thoroughly realizing the escheats, which had been re-granted to the institution, the State was divided in 1809 into ten districts and an attorney over each appointed. Naturally the friends of education were chosen and hence their names should be recorded. For the 1st District beginning with Ashe, Israel Pickens of Burke and Robert H. Burton of Lincoln; for the 2nd beginning with Rowan, Lewis Beard of Salisbury; for the 3rd beginning with Anson, John Cameron of Fayetteville and Alexander McMillan of Richmond County; for the 4th beginning with New Hanover, Samuel R. Jocelyn of Wilmington; for the 5th beginning with Chatham, A. D. Murphey of Hillsboro; for the 6th beginning with Halifax, John Whitaker of Halifax; for the 7th beginning with Carteret, Wright C. Stanly and John T. West, both of Newbern; for the 8th beginning with Hyde, John Roulhac of Martin County and Thomas B. Haughton of Washington County; for the 9th beginning with Bertie, Samuel Turner of Bertie; for the 10th beginning with Wake, Robert H. Jones of Warren.

Any two Trustees, with the Attorney, were authorized to compromise all litigation. They might select three freeholders to fix the price of land, which might be sold on a credit of one, two and three years, with a discount of six per cent allowed for cash. The Attorneys were allowed three per cent commissions for selling, and two and a half per cent for collecting and paying over the money. In case of suit fees usual among lawyers could be charged. Annual reports must be made. Amounts over $1,000 were to be remitted in one month. Less amounts within three months. As might be expected the commissions were increased in special cases. In settling with Samuel R. Jocelyn he was, on account of great and signal services, allowed ten per cent on sales, and was not charged with failure to collect $3,218. This was very handsome, as his sales amounted to $21,800.

At the same session of the Board Samuel Polk of Tennessee was authorized to sell all the Gerrard lands except his “service right,” 2,560 acres. Under this authority Col. Wm. Polk became the purchaser at the price of $4,352, for all which could be identified.

The receipts mainly from this source and from escheats were so liberal about this time that the Trustees were not only able to pay for the South Building, but to buy $11,050 stock in the Bank of Newbern, $8,400 in the Bank of Cape Fear, and $2,000 in the State Bank of N. C. Twenty shares of the Newbern Bank were bought of Judge Gaston at 15 per cent premium and 27 shares of Cape Fear at 25 per cent premium of Judge Murphey. Dividends of 8 and 10 per cent per annum were received from the State Bank in addition to a bonus of 17 1-2 per cent.

As in duty bound the Trustees were active and watchful in claiming the rights devolved by the law upon them, yet whenever a case appealing to their generous feelings came up they were sufficiently liberal. I give one example: John R. Donnell, afterwards a Superior Court Judge, who graduated at the University with highest honors in 1807, was the heir of an uncle who owned a plantation in Lenoir County. As young Donnell was born in Ireland, he could not, as the law then stood, inherit the land. The Trustees in 1810 relinquished their claim, taking the precaution, however, to have the General Assembly approve their action.

I find an application for relief by Jonathan Price. In a letter dated July 21st, 1817, he stated that the State, in 1792 and 1794, loaned him and Christmas, (William Christmas, doubtless, the Surveyor who laid out the city of Raleigh, Senator from Franklin), money to complete a map of the State from actual survey. This debt was transferred to the University. Christmas deserted him and Strother took his place. In this work he had spent the prime of his life and his little patrimony. The work commanded the admiration not only of our sister States, but of European Reviewers. One of the English Reviews pronounced the map worthy to be classed among the first published of its kind in the world. Some of the States have made provision for the publication of the maps of their territories “on the plan of that of Price and Strother,” and have voted ample means for the purpose. He pathetically adds, “May the persons employed reap the reward of their labors, and not, like me, in the winter of their age, be left in the pinching hands of poverty, nor doomed to the melancholy reflection, that on one hand a grave is yawning to receive them and on the other a prison. But I should feel proud, even in a dungeon, of the advantages which the present generation are receiving, and which posterity will receive, from the time and fortune I have devoted to my country; and though my feelings make my old hand tremble while I write, my heart beats with honest exultation in the recollection that my labors will survive me.” He applied to the legislature for relief. If that should be refused, he offered, if the University withdraw the process issued against him, to give one-half of all sums due him for maps sold, and half of future sales during his life, reserving the other half as a small pittance for his maintenance; after his death the copyright and all unsold to go to the University. It must be remembered that at this time a debtor could be imprisoned by the creditor twenty days before taking the proper oath and being released.

Three members of the Executive Committee, Messrs. Porter, Haywood and Polk, authorized the recall of the ca-sa which had been issued and reference of the matter to the Board of Trustees. At their next meeting further action for the collection of the debt, £698, 18s. was indefinitely suspended on payment of costs, the reason given being the poverty of the defendant. The offer of Mr. Price with regard to sales and copyright was generously not accepted.

The map referred to was the only large, or wall, map until that of McRae was published in 1831.

The first Commencement during which diplomas were granted was on July 4, 1798. Seven young men headed the honorable procession of graduates of the University of North Carolina.

It is proper to name all of these graduate fathers. Samuel Hinton of Wake, a farmer; William Houston, a physician of Iredell; Hinton James, the first student; Robert Locke, farmer of Rowan; Alexander Osborne, physician of Rowan; Edwin Jay Osborne, lawyer of Salisbury and New York; Adam A. Springs, planter of Mecklenburg, all prominent and useful citizens. Houston, Locke and Springs were distinguished.

The Committee of Visitation after expressing their high sense of the talents of the gentlemen engaged in the competition in declamation, awarded the first honor to Mr. Nathaniel W. Williams of Tennessee, the second to Mr. Richard Eagles of Brunswick, and the third to Mr. John B. Baker of Gates. It appearing that there was a tendency to adopt dramatic acting, General Davie strongly advised against it.

He wrote, “Dramas are by no means so well calculated for improvement in elocution as single speeches. If the Faculty insist on this kind of exhibition the Board must interfere. Our object is to make the students men, not players.” It appears that very harsh criticism of the teaching and morals of the institution had been idulged in in some quarters. Davie remarks concerning this: “Human malevolence in some, interested views in others, the ignorance and caprice of parents, will continue to injure our institution, until it has acquired some stability, some fixed character, and this process will require some years.”

The creation of the spirit of dramatic acting was due to the influence of a very interesting person, William Augustus Richards, the Tutor in the Preparatory Department, of whom we have an excellent sketch by Judge Murphey. He was a native of London, and had a fair education. For some reason he left home and enlisted as a common sailor, serving both on merchantmen and men of war. Having aspirations for a higher life, he deserted his ship at either Baltimore or Norfolk and was saved from the searching party by the kindness of an old lady, who had pity on his forlorn condition. By accident he met the manager of a strolling band of players and joined the company, gaining of course only a small pittance for his services. In the course of their journeyings they reached Warrenton in North Carolina, the seat of an excellent Academy, under the management of Mr. Marcus George, the teacher of many of our best men, among them Chief Justice Ruffin and Weldon N. Edwards, a member of Congress and President of the Convention of 1861. Two of the Trustees of the Academy, Dr. Gloster and Mr. Wm. Falkener, discerned in Richards qualities superior to his station and procured his appointment as assistant to Mr. George. Thence he was induced to come to the University as Tutor, and till his death in December, 1798, discharged his duties, in the language of the Board of Trustees, “with singular reputation to himself and advantage to the institution.” Judge Murphey says, “His acquaintance with the stage in some degree vitiated his morals and gave an air of affectation to his manners. But these defects he greatly corrected before his death, and counterbalanced by his many good qualities of mind and heart.” He naturally was interested in instructing the young men in elocution, and his proposal to deliver lectures on oratory was accepted by the Trustees, but its execution was prevented by his death. It was he who induced the Literary Societies to join in substituting for a time a dramatic performance for all other duties. It is allowable to conjecture that the scenery in Williamsboro, a few miles from Warrenton, which they purchased for the occasion, was the tristes reliquiae of the strolling company, which he left for more serious and useful work.

The term preceding the Commencement of 1799 was especially stormy. For some reason Mr. Gillaspie became personally obnoxious and the students broke out in rebellion against the laws and the Faculty. They actually, according to the testimony of Mr. Caldwell. “beat Mr. Gillaspie personally, waylaid and stoned Mr. Webb, accosted Mr. Flinn with the intention of beating him, but were diverted from it, and at length uttered violent threats against Mr. Murphey and Mr. Caldwell, which were never put into execution.” The disorders were going on for a week. The students proposed to Mr. Caldwell that he should assume the supreme authority, which request was, in his own language, “rejected with contempt. It was necessary to summon the Trustees for the appointment of a superintendent and restoring submission to the laws.” Three of the worst offenders were dismissed from the institution.

The effect of these disorders, of course, was to diminish the number of the students. While there were eight graduates in 1799, there were only three in 1800. The Faculty all tendered their resignations, so that there was danger of the University failing for want of teachers. In November, 1799, a committee of the Trustees, by order of the Board, advertised for a Professor of Natural, Moral and Political Philosophy, of the Languages and Belles Lettres, and of Mathematics. They stated that the salary and emoluments of each professorship had been upwards of 500 dollars per annum, exclusive of board at Commons. A Tutor in the Preparatory Department was also wanted at a salary of 200 dollars and board. The result of this glittering offer was the re-election of Caldwell to the Chair of Mathematics, also to succeed Gillaspie as Presiding Professor, and of Wm. Edwards Webb to be Professor of Languages in the place of Holmes.

From time to time the By-Laws or, as they were called, Ordinances were revised and much enlarged. I give some of the changes, deemed of interest. The Faculty consisted of the President, Professors and Tutors, the President having two votes in case of a tie.

They must not be members of either of the societies or even attend a meeting.

Each was bound to enforce the laws and report all breaches.

They must hold monthly meetings and a report of their proceedings must be submitted to the Trustees. A history of each student must be kept.

The winter session must begin on the 1st of January, if there one student to form a class, if not as soon as there shall be.

Examinations for admission were in the presence of all the Faculty.

Tuition and board at Steward's Hall were payable in advance. If the student arrived at the middle of the session or afterwards, he paid one-half.

Each student must buy a copy of the laws for 12 1-2 cents. The certificate of membership was endorsed on the copy; and each must pledge his truth and honor to obey the laws.

The Faculty were authorized to dismiss a student for general worthlessness, without specifying a particular offence.

Even when not in study hours students must observe “proper silence and respectful deportment.”

After the resignation of John Taylor, usually known as Buck Taylor, Pleasant Henderson, a Major of Cavalry under Col. Malready in the Revolutionary War, the youngest son of Samuel and Elizabeth (Williams) Henderson, brother of Judge Richard, who was father of Archibald and Chief Justice Henderson, was for some years the Steward of the University. Besides this position, he was during the sessions of the General Assembly Reading Clerk of the House of Commons. He married Sarah, daughter of Col. James Martin, brother of Governor Alexander Martin. The late Hamilton C. Jones, Reporter of the Supreme Court, married his daughter. He removed to Tennessee in 1831.

The next Steward was Samuel Love, who came to Chapel Hill from Virginia. His son, Wm. Caldwell Love, was a student in 1802, but did not graduate, settled in Salisbury as a lawyer, served one term in Congress, and was one of our Trustees from 1814 to 1818.

Mr. Love was succeeded by Wm. Barbee, son of Christopher Barbee, one of the donors of the University site. He lived for some time in Chapel Hill and then succeeded to part of his father's land, his home being on a conspicuous hill called “the Mountain,” about two and a half miles east from Piney Prospect. As the village became more populous boarding at Commons became less favored, especially among the wealthier students. The compulsory feature was relaxed and finally abolished. Mr. Barbee was a member of the House of Commons in 1819.

In 1810 it was concluded to create a new office with a salary of $20 a year, called Superintendency of Buildings and Lands. The first Superintendent was John Taylor, the elder, usually called Buck Taylor. He soon gave place to Wm. Barbee, the Steward, who held both offices for several years.

The records show that some of the students were abundantly wild in the early sessions of the University. In addition to the riots of 1798-99 the Faculty records, though incomplete, show that drinking and fights and rowdyism were too frequent. A distinguished statesman, Thomas Hart Benton, figured in a dangerous fray, drawing a pistol on Archibald Lytle, of Tennessee, the difficulty occasioned by Benton's having struck his adversary's nephew, a lad in the Grammar School. Lytle excused himself for not engaging in a duel with Benton by the plea that he had come a long distance at great expense for an education and could not afford to be expelled. We have such entries as these: “H. M. expelled for gross insolence in the Preparatory School. T. N. suspended for six months and recommended for expulsion for cutting C. I. over the eye with a stick.” The Trustees declined to expel him. As to the charge of theft brought against one who afterwards became famous in the councils of the nation, I conclude that it arose from a mistake, distorted by the fierce party spirit of the day.

A member of the Grammar School, “M. J., severely whipped for stabbing O. J. with a pen-knife in the shoulders.” “W. R. suspended for kindling a fire in the house of the Trustees with intent to burn it.” “J. G. was suspended for stealing beehives.” Mr. Caldwell reports to the Trustees: “It is no uncommon thing for the students to go out at night at a very late hour and take bee-hives from the inhabitants of the village and the country round. They have found safety in the caution they practice.”

Other entries are: “W. K. admonished before all the students for exploding powder and refusing to go into recitation when ordered.” “R. A. carried a keg of whiskey into his room, and he, A. J. and R. C. had a spree. He also associated with two suspended persons. R. A. was sentenced (offence not given) to sign a confession and read it before the students assembled for prayers. H. N. was expelled by the Trustees for gross insolence in the Preparatory School.”

At a somewhat later period H. B. was expelled for insolence to the President while suppressing a disturbance, firing pistols in the buildings and breaking a window-glass over the head of Tutor Clopton while holding recitation. I do not think that the glass came into actual contact with the Tutor's cranium.

R. S. was expelled for firing pistols and for throwing stones at the Faculty. C. W. had the milder punishment of suspension for the rest of the session, as he only tried to break open a Tutor's door, and helped carry off a carriage and a gate.

J. R. received a forced vacation of six months for firing a pistol in college and helping block up the Chapel door, while J. A. and R. B. got four months for firing pistols only. Public admonition before Trustees, Faculty and students was meted to J. W. for carrying off a carriage and gate and beam of the bell, J. P. for rolling stones in the passage of the building, J. L. for abstracting the irons of the bell, R. L., S. K. and J. M. for carrying off a carriage, and N. B. for threats of violence to Mr. Johnston, the teacher of the Academy.

A brawl, which created great excitement, occurred during the Commencement of 1804 between Henry Chambers and a son of General Davie, Hyder Ali, humorously described by Dr. Hooper. The annual ball was held in the dining-room of Steward's Hall. The non-dancers stood around witnessing the amusement, and among those in front stood Chambers. While dancing Davie trod twice on the toes of Chambers, who demanded an explanation in such threatening manner as to incense the offender. Whereupon, though there was disclaimer of intention to insult, a fight ensued in the yard of the dwelling, Davie using a knife on account, he alleged, of the disparity in size between himself and antagonist, who was wounded, but not dangerously. The Trustees, being in session, tried the case, and on each signing a written declaration of regret and admission of being in fault, graciously pardoned the combatants. Davie expressed himself as especially grieved because he had used a weapon when his adversary was unarmed.

T. J. fired a pistol in college but afterwards helped to put down disorder; C. D. C. “mischeviously trimmed” a horse in Mr. Taylor's enclosure, but satisfied the owner. The sentences were as follows The pistol-firer and horse-trimmer were admonished before the Faculty and students; the carriage-taker and Chapel-blocker above mentioned, were admonished before the Board of Trustees.

I give these instances in order to show the character of the pranks thought to be “smart” and funny. There were many students who attended to their duties faithfully and obeyed the rules. For example the idea of Vice-President King or Governor Branch sallying out at midnight and stealing bee-hives is inconceivable. There were many like them.

The difficulties of government were greatly increased by the existence in the village of one of those fruitful sources of evil, a grog-shop, then called tavern. An Ordinance was adopted prohibiting the students visiting it, but of course it was brutum fulmen. Public opinion by no means condemned drinking ardent spirits, and for many years, if the drinking by students did not amount to excess, it was not regarded as a serious offence. The University law was directed mainly against intoxication. To preserve order and detect offenders, the Tutors were charged with the combined duties of detectives and constables. They must with eager ears listen for sounds of revelry or even innocent jollity and forthwith disperse the assembly, and report its members for punishment. Besides this some Professor was ordered to visit the rooms each morning. Of course, in addition to constant collision with high-spirited young men, such supervision had the tendency to impair their self-respect, and to make them regard the Faculty as their natural enemies.

In addition to the foregoing I find in Caldwell's handwriting a memorandum of what he called “notable transactions,” in 1802:

On the 28th of May a calf was placed in the Chapel and the benches pushed up against the pulpit. On the 5th of June a fence was built around the door of one Nutting and across the road. Captain Caldwell's house was stoned. Before these offences were committed the house of the Steward, Major Henderson, was stoned, one of his buildings overturned, his gate taken from its hinges and placed upon the pulpit.

On Sunday night the 27th of June a bee-hive was stolen from John Taylor, carried to the Preparatory School-house, the honey taken out and daubed over the floor. The hive was left in the woods.

Saturday night, 14th of August, Yeargin's corn was cut. A great number of toad-frogs and terrapins thrown into Monsieur Molie's room. He was also insulted with the utmost license in the dining-room and elsewhere; “nor was decency or order anywhere observed.” In the dining-room stamping and outrageous insults; outside hollowing and extreme disorder.

Wednesday night, 25th of August, Molie's room was burst open and a bee-hive placed in it. His bed was filled with a vast quantity of hair. The intention was professed to drive him from the University. President Caldwell adds the astounding information that this method of getting rid of officers by unremitting insult, abuse and violence has grown up with the institution. It was to put a stop to outrages like the foregoing that the ill-starred monitor experiment, hereafter to be described, was made.

President Caldwell frequently bewailed the committal of secret offences, and the impossibility of procuring evidence against the offenders. The students on the other hand evidently resented his acquiring information in any manner not known to them. On one occasion, in 1810, pistols were fired in the building, and stones thrown at the windows of a recitation room while the Professor and his class were at their duties. Some of the offenders were suspended and others reprimanded. Forty-six students, a majority, including many good, orderly men, presented a paper stating that they were “bound by every sentiment of honor and justice to request the names of those who had given secret information to the Faculty.” They charged that injustice had been done to some of those disciplined and urged the “impropriety of such information being received as evidence.” “Falsehoods will be invented and we will be convicted without knowing our accusers, or having an opportunity of acquitting ourselves of the charges against us.” * * * “We anxiously hope that by granting our petition you will put it out of the power of envious and malicious informers privately injuring the innocent.” The journals of the Faculty are so imperfect that it is not known how this attack on the fair dealing of the Faculty was received, but it is certain that the name of the informer was not given up.

In the spring of 1803, for some cause not now apparent, bitter quarrels occurred among some of the students, convulsing the student body and threatening to result in four or five duels. Challenges were given and accepted. There was one meeting, as the journal states that Samuel G. Hopkins, of Kentucky, and John H. Hawkins, of North Carolina, were expelled; the one for being in a duel and the other for acting as second, but further particulars are not given. Three or four other conflicts seemed imminent. Unable to cope with the difficulty Caldwell called in the help of the Trustees. The President of the Board, a Continental officer of the Revolution, who fought all the way from Brandywine to Eutaw, Col. Wm. Polk, famous for his chivalric courage and high sense of honor, responded with a letter to the students at large, blazing with earnest depreciation of their conduct. He is shocked by the report of the disgraceful and disorderly state of the University. I give a few sentences of his vigorous letter: “That students, almost grown, should at this late and inauspicious day, be guilty of the deplorable madness and folly of rashly sacrificing their character and fame, and laying in dust and ashes the fairest prospects of their country, through the destruction of her best anchor and hope, her University, is too much. It is folly in its most gigantic and hideous shape; insanity replete with consequences too direful and deleterious to be tolerated. In fine a deed of the kind meditated would operate as the worst of treason against the State.” But for the arrival of three students, Searcy, James Benton and Nunn, who gave the information that the dangers were passed, he would have collected some Trustees and with them visited the University “with the fixed determination to expel with the most marked ignominy and disgrace any student guilty of giving, bearing or accepting a challenge.” If the thing was not ended he urged Caldwell to send expresses for General Davie, Walter Alves, Richard Bennehan and Duncan Cameron, and notify him.

Col. Polk was a stern, determined, strong man, physically and mentally, ready to fight any man on provocation, of commanding influence by reason of his war record, unyielding will, a mind, not great but strong, vigorous and well-balanced, and extensive possessions in North Carolina and Tennessee. The would-be duelists probably expected his approbation. His letter, therefore, couched in such threatening language, effectually and promptly crushed the tendency to deadly conflicts—as it has turned out, forever. As showing the evil sentiments on this subject once prevailing, I state that two students of the College of South Carolina who had been friends, promising young men, fought a duel with pistols for slight cause, one being killed and the other so wounded that his life was blighted; and the second of one of them was a prominent lawyer, afterwards United States Senator Butler.

At this University there was no one killed or wounded. The two students who had been expelled, on the motion by the bye of General Davie, applied to have the sentence remitted, but a committee of which ex-Governor Martin was chairman reported against it and the application was refused. The Board adopted a most stringent ordinance, commanding the Faculty to expel and then hand over to the civil authorities all engaged in such conflicts as principals or as aiders and abetters.

By the kindness of General Rufus Barringer, we have a letter dated February 28, 1804, by a sprightly student, Henry Chambers, to Adlai Osborne, of Salisbury, a recent graduate, which describes a 22d February celebration at the University. There was prevailing what the physicians called “nervous fever.” One student, Philips of Edgecombe, uncle of ex-Judge Fred Philips, had died from it, and his countryman, Lemuel Sessoms, was not expected to live. He goes on, “My dear fellow, amidst all our afflictions of sickness, etc., we did not forget the 22d of February; nay we cherished a lively recollection of the character to whom that day gave birth and celebrated it in a pleasing and splendid manner. Yes; on that day we not only gave to the world the strongest, most conclusive indications of our love for the exalted, the immortal Washington, but showed incontestibly that we were hopeful votaries of Bacchus. About thirty of the most respectable students subscribed for a supper to be furnished by Mr. Nunn. The recent death of Mr. Philips prevented our having a dance as was intended, after the Senior class had finished speaking. Will you believe it—that out of that number there were but four or five sober. I, though strange to tell, was one of this number; but it was almost impossible for me to have been otherwise than sober as I was chosen President, and it was indispensable that I should keep cool. All the Faculty attended by special invitation. They gave us some good toasts, drank pretty freely, retired (except ——, whom we consider one of ourselves), early and left us to our own enjoyment. —— performed noble feats that day. He got intoxicated twice. He, some others and myself, commenced drinking wine at 11 o'clock in the forenoon and continued drinking until one. By this time all found it necessary to go to bed to get sober enough to attend the supper. This we did, and —— got ‘all seas over’ again. College exhibited a pretty scene next morning. I am unable to describe it.”

It is impossible to imagine such a debauch in our day. Chambers was in the Senior class, a man of talent, afterwards a leader in the anti-monitor dispute with the Trustees. He was a physician of strength.

Comical incidents and sayings form so large part of University life that I record some as specimens of what in the old days were considered amusing. I begin with two pictures of incorrigible boys.

For a short while during this period little descriptive notes were kept in a book, of which the following are specimens of the worst. For the most part they are favorable.

“R. B. is very indolent, seldom or ever recites his lessons well; and absents himself from the class at recitations, and for his absences seldom produces but frivolous excuses. He has made very little improvement and the repeated admonitions of his teachers are insufficient to rouse him to industry and to induce him to apply himself to study.”

“J. V., who reads nothing but Virgil, neither construes or parses very correctly. He is possessed of only moderate genius and is much inclined to be indolent. He takes little pains to improve and seldom remembers on one day what he has been told on the preceding. He is nearly grown and though he has been much at school, he has made but little progress and certainly will never be proficient in the languages.”

Of the anecdotes some are true, some mythical.

A letter written February 8, 1809, from Henry H. Watters to his mother, who lived near Wilmington, shows that, while the spirit of insubordination had not entirely died out, the buoyancy of youth had caused the students to turn their attention to other matters than resisting the Faculty, even using intensive culture to promote the growth of sprouting beard.

“The young men have for some time been very irregular in their conduct, and yesterday one received a public admonition and six or seven a private one. None have merited suspension or expulsion. A little mischief now and then is expected from young men and only serves to remind teachers of their duty. I have not spent but one quarter uselessly and that was in buying cider. I have purchased other things, but they are necessaries. I have received the articles which I purchased last fall at a vendue; A. Reaves, a noted gambler, was my security, so you see I have not lost my credit. I had a pair of shorts made of the cotton cassimere and am resolved to shine here, if not with you. My beard and whiskers are sprouting finely. I shave them once a week and grease them every night with tallow. I am told by some of my fellow students that greasing is a fine thing to make them grow, and I have no doubt that warm weather will accelerate the growth very much. You have again attacked me about my cough. I can tell you for the hundredth time that I have none. Next time you write to me about it you shall hear that I incessantly spit hogsheads of blood every day, eat nothing, and am nothing but skin and bone.”

“As politics are so often the topics of conversation I have written to Mr. Boylan to send me his paper and apply to Papa for the money. Mr. Caldwell is more fond of conversing on that than on any other subject, and without some information on the subject I will be unable to converse with him.”

When Paul C. Cameron matriculated in 1824 he had a letter of introduction from his father to a senior, James M. Wright, son of Judge Wright of Memphis, who lived in the South Building. Young Paul was a typical Highland Scotchman in appearance. His hair was red, his face was red, and he wore a suit of clothes of the color called turkey-red, made at home by his loving mother. As he walked up alone from the hotel he passed a group of students sitting on the steps of the north entrance of the Old East Building. One of them, attracted by the passing flash of rubicund light, called out, “Red Bird!” The Freshman's blood was as red as his face, hair and garments. He stopped and offered battle. “I can't whip you all at once,” he savagely said, “but if you will come out one at a time, I will whip every one of you.” No one felt inclined to accept the challenge. Young Wright took him in as his roommate and he never was hazed.

The following incident illustrates Dr. Caldwell in his gentler mood. He descried a student fastening a goose to the ridge of the roof of the East Building. “Ah, Joseph, Joseph,” said he, “I suppose thou art fixing up that poor bird there as an emblem of thyself.” This was the eminent editor of the National Intelligencer, Joseph Gales. Dr. Hooper adds, “Perhaps that severe cut from his teacher may have goaded the youthful truant to throw away the goose forever afterwards, reserving only a quill to write himself into renown.”

Among the mythical, I class that which tells of a plot to steal Dr. Caldwell's carriage and haul it to the foot of the hill on the Pittsboro road, a mile off, and leave it there. The Doctor, ever watchful, not averse to what was not considered dishonorable in that day, eavesdropping, heard of the scheme. When night came he hid in the vehicle and was transported by the jovial draught boys to what is now Purefoy's Mill, once Merritt's. As they were about to return to their rooms, he poked his head out of the window and blandly said, “Now, young gentlemen! will you please haul me back to my residence?” As the ascent was 250 feet towards the skies the chapfallen students were nearly exhausted, so much so that no further punishment was inflicted. I class this as mythical, although firmly credited in the old University circles, because the same story is told of an English pedagogue.

The next incident is probably true. The Doctor's nickname was Bolus, abbreviated from Diabolus. He got wind of a project to steal his turkeys, which he was fattening for some festival dinner. Hiding near the coop, he heard one fowl searcher stealthily creep therein and seizing the gobbler remark to his confederates, “Here, boys, is old Bolus!” Then grabbing the hen, “And here is Mrs. Bolus.” The Doctor then rushed forward so rapidly that in order to escape, the turkeys were dropped. He had them killed next day and invited the marauders and others to the dining at which they were served. After carving he looked significantly at the ringleader and asked, “Mr.—, will you have a slice of old Bolus, or do you prefer a slice of Mrs. Bolus?” He then gave the same option to the other delinquents successively. It is said that there was never a more severe punishment.

At one time it was the rule to require written excuses for delinquencies. Dr. Caldwell said, “Mr.—, you have offered seven excuses to four absences.” “All right, Doctor! let the surplus three go on the absences of next week.”

After graduation, Matthew Troy was a Tutor in the Preparatory Department—the hero of a story recorded by Dr. Hooper in his “Fifty Years Since.” “I told you,” he says, “that I remembered Mr. Troy with gratitude; but I believe nothing he ever taught me imprinted itself so deeply on my memory, as the burst of eloquence which the boys told me he had made, when he was a student, upon the charms of Miss Hay, afterwards the first Mrs. Gaston. Troy was given to the grandiloquent style, and on that occasion Miss Hay, who was the belle of the day, with a small party came to visit the Dialectic library. It was then kept in one of the common rooms inhabited by four students; and you may judge of the tumult that was excited by such visitation and how much sweeping and fixing up was required, and how many frightened boys ran to the neighboring rooms, and shut the doors, all but a small crack to peep through. On this memorable occasion, Troy had fixed himself in a corner of the room, whence he could contemplate the beautiful apparition in silent ecstacy. After she was gone the librarian called him out of his trance, and said: “Well, Troy, what do you think of her?” “Oh! sir, she's enough to melt the frigidity of a stoic, and excite rapture in the breast of a hermit”; to which he might have added: ‘And like another Helen, fire another Troy.’ A man that could talk in that way, appeared to me, in those days, to have reached the top of Parnassus.”

The following story was told me by Dr. Johnston B. Jones, of Chapel Hill and Charlotte.

There came a long, lank student from a region where literary culture was not abundant. The members of the Faculty were generally preachers and attendance on Prayers in the chapel twice a day was rigorously enforced. At the end of the first week the neophyte was reported habitually absent. He was sent for in hot haste “to appear before the Awful Tribunal,” as the students called Faculty meetings. “Mr.—!” said President Caldwell in his severest tones, “the Faculty have learned with deep regret that you have been in the last week absent from Prayers fourteen times. What have you to say, Sir?” With bland and innocent tones the culprit made the shocking answer, “I don't hold with Prars, Sir!” Without deigning to discuss the constitutional provision that every man has the right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, he was sternly informed that if he could not hold with Prayers, the University could not hold with him.

The late Judge William H. Battle, of the Graduating class of 1820, is authority for the happening on our University rostrum of an incident, which is sometimes credited elsewhere. A Freshman, who had a face of portentous gravity, had a coat of Revolutionary pattern, blue, with brass buttons, with short waist and tail reaching nearly to his heels. It was the rule that the students in turn should declaim a short extract of prose or poetry before the Faculty after evening Prayers. When our Freshman's time came he mounted the rostrum and in a peculiarly lugubrious and sing-song tone began Addison's Evening Hymn. He made no gesture until he reached the lines: “Soon as the evening shades prevail,The Moon takes up the wondrous tale,” and then he reached for the tail of his Revolutionary coat, and gently waved it in the air.

Some years later I witnessed a ludicrous scene something like that. A Senior of 1853, Wm. B. Dusenbury, was usually so droll that every one expected from him a humorous speech, called “a Funny.” Senior speaking came on, when every member of the class delivered an original oration. To the disgust of his audience, whose risible muscles were ready, expecting to be called into action by Dusenbury's wit, his speech was as dry as that of the average orator. But fortunately for our fun a fly happened to alight on his nose. Pausing in his utterance he gazed at the annoying animal in a cross-eyed way, and deliberately proceeded to catch him. After opening his hand to ascertain whether he had succeeded, he proceed with his speech. It was inexpressibly ludicrous. There was a wild burst of applause and inextinguishable laughter. Dr. Mitchell was sitting several yards in front of me and it added to our amusement to see how his bald head and huge frame, rocking for several minutes, gave evidence of his appreciation of the comicalness of the situation.

Dr. William Hooper says, “Our geographical recitations were enlivened by some rare scenes, one or two of which I will venture to relate.

“ ‘Mr. Sawney,’ says the Professor, ‘can you tell me anything about the animals of Greenland?’ ‘Yes, sir; there's one called the seal.’ ‘What kind of animal is it?’ ‘I don't remember exactly, Sir, but I believe he says it is a very amphib—a very amphibibobus kind of animal, Sir.’ The boys plagued him about this new kind of animal until he became as irritable as a nest of wasps by the way-side. Another student whom we will disguise under the name of Riggie, used to amuse various companions by telling the story upon Sawney. Now Riggie was the last man that ought to have made people merry over the blunders of others, for he had got his own nickname by his ludicrous pronunciation of Riga, a Russian town on the Baltic. He was asked where were the chief towns in Russia. He mentioned several, and among them Riggie on the Baltic, pronouncing the first syllable of the last word as it is heard in balance. The name Riggie stuck to him forever afterwards. But it often happens that he who smarts under a joke is most ready to avert pursuit by throwing ridicule upon others. Sawney, goaded by Riggie's persecution, determined to avenge himself; so he laid a trap for him. He got a friend to invite a company including Riggie into his room, and to call for the story, while in the meantime, Sawney concealed himself under the bed. Riggie, alas! unconscious of the Trojan horse within the walls, was going on with his story, full sail, the audience convulsed with the enjoyment and the anticipation of the paulo-post future; when in the very fifth act of the drama, out popped Sawney from his ambush, and pitched into the dismayed comedian. I shall not attempt to describe the battle; but it may well be supposed that Sawney, with wounded pride and bursting with long imprisoned rage, fought with more desperation, and that his adversary startled by a foe emerging suddenly from ambush, must have fought at a disadvantage.”

Here is Dr. Hooper's description of Steward's Hall. “Do you wish to know the ordinary bill of fare fifty years ago? As well as I recollect board per annum was thirty-five dollars! This, as you may suppose, would not support a very luxurious table, but the first body of Trustees were men who had seen the Revolution and they thought that that sum would furnish as good rations as those lived on who won our liberties. Coarse corn bread was the staple food. At dinner the only meat was a fat middling of bacon, surmounting a pile of coleworts; and the first thing after grace was said, (and sometimes before), was for one man, by a single horizontal sweep of his knife, to separate the ribs and lean from the fat, monopolize all the first to himself, and leave the remainder for his fellows. At breakfast we had wheat bread and butter and coffee. Our supper was coffee and the corn bread left at dinner, without butter. I remember the shouts of rejoicing when we had assembled at the door, and some one jumping up and looking in at the window, made proclamation—‘Wheat bread for supper, boys!’ And that wheat bread, over which such rejoicings were made, believe me, gentlemen and ladies, was manufactured out of wheat we call seconds, or, as some term it, grudgeons. You will not wonder, if, after such a supper, most of the students welcomed the approach of night, that as beasts of prey, they might go a prowling, and seize upon everything eatable within the compass of one or two miles; for, as I told you, our boys were followers of the laws of Lycurgus. Nothing was secure from the devouring torrent. Beehives though guarded by a thousand stings—all feathered tenants of the roost—watermelon and potato patches, roasting ears, etc., in fine everything that could appease hunger, was found missing in the morning. Those marauding parties at night were often wound up with setting the village to rights.”

A letter from State Treasurer Haywood in 1803 to Dr. Caldwell shows that according to modern ideas complaint of Steward's Hall fare may have been well founded. “In re matter of having Mr. and Mrs. Love furnish butter at supper, we think with you that a supper of Tea and Bread, or Coffee and Bread, without either butter or meat, has few charms, and can be but illy fitted to gratify palates accustomed to better fare, but the contract has been made and published and cannot be changed.” He adds with apparent naivete that there would be “no objection to students adding Butter out of their private Purse, but not to be charged to parents or guardians.” He means that the University should not include such self-furnished luxury in its official rendering of expenditures.

“Dr. Caldwell,” adds Dr. Hooper, “seems to have made it a part of his fixed policy, that no evil-doer should hope to escape by the swiftness of his heels. He was in the habit of rambling about at night, in search of adventures, and whenever he came across an unlucky wight engaged in taking off a gate, building a fence across the street, driving a brother calf or goat into the Chapel, or any similar exploit of genius, he no sooner hove in sight than he gave chase.”

“I will relate,” said Dr. Hooper, one of these nocturnal adventures, and it was only ‘unum e pluribus.’

“Dr. Caldwell was the podas okus Achilles of Chapel Hill, and he had more occasion for powers of pursuit than of contest, for his antagonists uniformly took to flight. You call this a ‘fast age,’ gentlemen, and so it is, but I don't know a man of this generation who is faster than was Dr. Caldwell. He was not satisfied to take two days in getting to Raleigh. He and I have set out for the metropolis in the morning, and stopped the first night at Pride's, ten miles this side, such was the state of the roads. Who knows but such snail-like progress as this suggested to him the first idea of the present railroad from Beaufort to the mountains, the honor of which, I believe, is now conceded to him? Now, O! muse, that didst inspire Homer to describe Achilles' pursuit of Hector, three times round the walls of Troy; or thou, gentle muse, who didst breathe thy soft afflatus upon Ovid when he described the race between Apollo and fair Daphne; or thou, Caledonian muse, who didst preside over Walter Scott, when he sung the race of Fitz James after Murdock of Alpine, or over Robert Burns, when he made immortal the flight of Tam O'Shanter from the witches,—either of you or all of the nine at once, assist me to describe the race between President Caldwell and Sophomore Faulkner (James T. Falconer), on the night of the....day of........18... The President lived at that time where the President's new residence is being erected, and was returning about bed-time “from walking up and down the earth,” 1

1 The appropriateness of this sentence is evident, as his nickname was Diabolus, or Bolus.

In 1812 we find in the Raleigh Register an enumeration of the improvements and advantages at the University. “In six months the Principal (South) Building will be ready for the reception of inhabitants. There will then be accommodations for eighty students. There will be separate halls for the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies, one for the Library, and a Public Hall for Prayers. Each of the Society libraries contains 800 to 1,000 volumes, that of the University 1,500, a total of 3,100 to 3,500 volumes. A society has been recently formed for the study of sacred music. An organ ordered to be built in New York is already finished. Public worship is held every Sunday in Person Hall, which the students are bound to attend. The Faculty consists of a President, three Professors and one Tutor. The Academy for boys, under the charge of Rev. Abner W. Clopton, is subject to the supervision of the President. In it there are four classes. Every possible attention is paid to improvement in reading, writing, spelling and the English Grammar. Wm. Mimerall is now a resident of Chapel Hill for the purpose of teaching the French language, and is well qualified. The sessions run as follows: The first from 1st of January to 24th of May. The second from the 20th June to the 15th of November. The expenses are for the first session in the dining-room and College, Diet, $30; Tuition, $10; Room-rent, $1; Servant hire, $1.50; Library, 50 cents; Washing, $8; candles and wood, $4; Bed, $3.50; Total, $58.50. For the second session, the same. Plainness of dress and manners will be the rule.”

It is noticeable that “every possible attention” was not promised for Arithmetic. Whether Rev. Clopton was weak in that branch, or that he left it to be taught in the University classes we are not informed.

Dr. Caldwell, although his masterly temperament indicated that his proper place in the University world was that of Chief Executive officer, was also a devotee of Mathematics. At this period love of his chosen science predominated over his sense of duty for being chief ruler in the University world. He longed for time in which he could complete his work on Geometry and perfect himself in the knowledge of Astronomy and use of astronomical instruments. He accordingly proposed to the trustees to appoint a President in his place, and to give him the chair of Mathematics. They graciously adopted the plan and elected to the first place Rev. Robert Hett Chapman, D.D., a Presbyterian minister.

Rev. Dr. Chapman was a son of a Presbyterian minister of New York, who was a warm Whig in Revolutionary days, Rev. Jedediah Chapman. Robert was born in Orange, New Jersey, and graduated at Princeton in 1789. He was then Instructor in Queen's College, New Brunswick, until licensed to preach in 1793. For a year or two he was a Missionary in the Southern States and was then pastor at Rahway, installed in 1796, and afterwards took charge of a church in Cambridge, New York. To Dr. Caldwell's letter asking him to allow the use of his name for the Presidency of this University, he complied reluctantly with the request, saying, “in doing this I conceive that I should be called to relinquish the dearest object of my heart, the advancement of the cause of our Glorious Redeemer, but I would hope that my usefulness in this respect would be enlarged.” He adds, “I am in the midst of usefulness and reputation in this part of the world, but my salary, which the people have refused to increase, is utterly inadequate to the expense of a growing family.” The letter is dated February 12, 1812.

The Committee on Nominations in their report to the Board December 12, 1812, feelingly state that they accepted the resignation of Dr. Caldwell, but “the unpleasant forebodings at the resignation of an officer so distinguished for his zeal, usefulness and talents is in some sort dissipated by his willingness to accept the Professorship of Mathematics.” The Board unanimously elected Dr. Chapman President, with a salary of $1,200, and Dr. Caldwell, Professor, with $1,000. The Trustees present were: Governor Wm. Hawkins, Chairman ex-officio; Rev. Joseph Caldwell, John Haywood, Archibald D. Murphey, Duncan Cameron, Calvin Jones, David Stone, Atlas Jones, Henry Potter, Montfort Stokes and Robert Williams, the Treasurer. The latter must not be confounded with Robert Williams, M.D., of Pitt, also a Trustee. The General Assembly promptly elected the new President a member of the Board of Trustees.

The administration of Dr. Chapman is generally thought to have been a failure, but his defects seem to have been somewhat exaggerated, and some of the troubles proceeded evidently from the hot party spirit engendered by the war. He was a man of sincere piety, of strong principles, zealous in the spread of religion. He was a preacher, according to the testimony of Chief Justice Nash and Dr. James E. Morrison, very earnest, interesting and effective. Judge Nash said: “He was more highly gifted with power on his knees than any man I know. His public prayers warmed the hearts of all who heard them.” His manner in preaching was earnest and tender and he was successful beyond what is common in securing attention.

There was to his management of the University, however, a fatal obstacle. He was a Peace Federalist and his students were in favor of the war. It is difficult for us at this day to realize the keen disappointment and even rage felt by our people at the disasters on land, such as the surrender of Hull, the failure of the Canadian Invasion, and the capture of the Capital, and on the other hand the wild exultation over our naval victories. The one conspicuous land victory, gained after the signing of the treat, of peace, that of New Orleans, carried the American commander into the Presidential chair.

The Republican leaders had the address to turn the dissatisfaction arising from the imbecile conduct of the war from themselves to their opponents. They claimed the credit of all the victories and placed the discredit of defeats on the odious Federalists, who, they alleged, gave blue-light signals to British ships on our coast, intrigued at Hartford to join New England with Old England, encouraged Great Britain and discouraged Americans by denouncing the war as unjust and inexpedient. In the minds of most people Federalist was synonymous with Traitor.

Dr. Chapman was too honest to conceal or to tone down his views. The friction which the strict and irritative methods of discipline made inevitable at all times, was considered more harsh in the days of unreasoning partisan hatreds. If the good Doctor after peace was declared had continued unwaveringly in his executive position he might have lived down the memory of the outbreaks, which are connected so unpleasantly with his name. Dr. Caldwell had experiences quite as disastrous to his reputation as an administrator, but he continued so long and bravely in his position that his failures were forgotten in the light of his subsequent successes. Dr. Chapman preferred to go back to his more congenial work as a pastor and left his reputation as a University President to the mercy of adverse critics.

I give sketches of two outbreaks, which occurred during his administration, which illustrate the peculiar difficulties under which he labored, as well as the spirit of the times in Chapel Hill.

About twelve months after his inauguration in January, 1814, a series of outrages at night was perpetrated on his property. Dr. Caldwell, who could not resist the impulse to take the place of leader, determined to ferret out the offenders by process of law. Accordingly he applied to a Justice of the Peace, Major Pleasant Henderson, for a warrant against the unknown perpetrators, intending to call up all the students and examine them on oath. He was unaware that such precepts, called “general warrants,” had been resisted successfully in England by John Wilkes, had been decided to be illegal by Chief Justice Camden, that our people were so much interested in the controversy as to name one county Wilkes and another Camden, and had prohibited such warrants in our fundamental law, the Declaration of Rights. He forgot in his zeal that similar warrants, called Writs of Assistance to enforce the Navigation Acts, had led to armed resistance in New England and other commercial sections. The Justice refused the application, being rightly instructed as to the unlawfulness of general warrants; but the fiery doctor, who could be no more easily diverted from his purpose than a well-trained blood-hound from the track of a fleeing criminal, amended the precept by inserting the names of five students. A solemn court was held. The panic in this little community cannot be imagined. There were “great searchings of spirit.” The charges were, 1st., breaking into and entering the stable of President Chapman, and cutting the hair from the tail of a horse of the said Chapman; 2d., “for taking away and secreting a cart, the property of said Chapman;” 3d., “entering said Chapman's premises and turning over or throwing down a house; 4th., taking from its hinges and carrying away one of said Chapman's gates.”

It is interesting to note the behavior of the students under this trying ordeal. It is rather surprising that there was no combination for the purpose of refusing to answer. Possibly the Federalists among the students sympathized with the President. Some declared emphatically that they knew nothing about the matter. Among these were Aaron V. Brown, Bryan Grimes, father of the gallant General of the same name, and John Y. Mason. Others said that they knew nothing themselves, but gave the names of suspected persons, some of whom were undoubtedly not guilty. A few gave direct evidence tending to criminate Chambers, Thornton, Peebles, Knox and Haywood, the men charged by Dr. Caldwell, and as these refused to exculpate themselves, they were probably dismissed from the University, though the record has been lost. I knew Francis A. Thornton nearly half a century afterwards, when he was a member of the Secession Convention of 1861, a neighbor of Nat. Macon, a mild-mannered, gentlemanly, venerable man, with no suspicion of tar on his hands, tho' he was a fire-eating Secessionist. Thomas J. Haywood lived to be a Supreme Court Judge of Tennessee. All were probably good men moved by party feelings. The justice's examination violated all the rules of evidence. Leading questions were asked, the witnesses were required to give their suspicions, and hearsay evidence was even admitted as to what suspicions were entertained by others, and as to what students knew of any of the perpetrators. Among the innocent men whose names were mentioned as suspected was the eminent divine, Dr. Francis L. Hawks. A few, among them Bedford Brown and Edmund Wilkins, lawyer of Virginia, refused to answer these illegal questions, but strong men, such as David F. Caldwell, George C. Dromgoole, Charles L. Hinton, Charles Manly, Willie P. Mangum, appear to have made a clean breast of the facts they knew as well as the imaginations of their hearts. This is strong evidence that there were not a few who sympathized with the insulted President in his views. There was a strong anti-war party in the State, probably in the University, but they were of the modest and silent order.

Dr. Chapman was likewise insulted by receiving an anonymous letter which is quite unique, showing another outrage on his property, not included in the warrant. It was superscribed “Chapel Hill,” and is as follows:

This precious morceau of literature proves that the persecution was distinctly in resentment for the supposed leaning to Federalism of the clerical President. The insult is the more pointed because in the direction he is dignified only as “Mr. Robt. Chapman,” ignoring his official and ministerial character.

In November following the Faculty report that, though during this year they have passed through troublesome times, they have been enabled to stand at their post and maintain the authority of the institution. Some of the persons suspended last session have returned, and, with scarcely an exception, have been orderly. This session has been characterized by order and attention to business, with the exception of some irregularities originating in Steward's Hall, and for which one student was suspended. It is essential to the growing prosperity of the University that further suitable provision be made on this subject (i. e., management of Stewards Hall). With the expectation that the Board will make such provision the Faculty consider the Seminary as in a truly flourishing condition.

The other outbreak was on September 18, 1816. It injured the reputation of the President still more because the sympathy of the public was strongly with the students rather than the Faculty. The following account is substantially correct:

Wm. Biddle Shepard, a very able member of the Senior class, belonging to an influential family of New Bern, connected with the Donnells, the Blounts, the Bryans, the Pettigrews and others, had some sentences in his oration submitted for correction, of a strong political character favorable to the Republican party. These sentences, the President, exercising a discretion vested in him, cut out and ordered Shepard not to deliver them. This order, when the speech was delivered in public, was disobeyed, whereupon the President promptly commanded him to take his seat. The orator insisted on proceeding with his address. Numbers of the students shouted, “Go on! go on!” The prompter, Wm. Plummer, continued to perform the duty which he had undertaken. Shepard finished his speech in defiance of the President, being vociferously encouraged and applauded. The next day the students had a meeting in the Chapel and passed resolutions upholding the rightfulness of his and their conduct.

The Faculty acted promptly and sternly. Forty-six of the participants were summoned before them. Shepard was suspended for six months, and also George C. Dromgoole, for being the leader in upholding him. It was a material part of the charge against them, that they declared they were justifiable. The Trustees added the severer sentence of expulsion, declaring that the interest of the University required that the disobedience of which they were guilty should be punished in the most exemplary way. Thomas N. Mann was suspended for six months for participating in the riot, and “refusing to admit his guilt.” Plummer for prompting, applauding and afterwards justifying his conduct, was suspended for four months.

The punishment of those, who in a public meeting disapproved the action of the Faculty and upheld the conduct of Shepard and his aiders and abettor, was conditional. All who would in writing acknowledge, 1st., that those who applauded Shepard were guilty of gross disorder and disrespect of authority; 2d., that on the next morning they transgressed their duty as students and as good members of society, by proceeding with tumultuous noise and riotous behavior to the Public Hall, and uniting in an unlawful and disorderly assembly for the purpose of opposing the Faculty and violating the laws; 3d., that they hoped for forgiveness and solemnly promised faithfully to submit to the laws of the University and deport themselves as orderly members of society. A few refused to sign the paper and were suspended. Among the signers were such orderly students as Wm. M. Green, Wm. D. Moseley, Hugh Waddell, and Hamilton C. Jones.

Notices of the suspensions were sent to all other colleges.

In talking with the students of that day after they had become elderly men I derived the impression clearly that the President was generally blamed for his conduct in this matter. It was thought that, even if he concluded that Shepard's act was worthy of severe punishment, he should have allowed him to finish and prosecuted him afterwards. I happen to know that Plummer's father, Kemp Plummer, next year a Trustee, sustained his son. The criticism appears to be just, but certainly the President is not censurable for enforcing a law of the Trustees forbidding political speeches.

All the actors in this riot achieved success in life. The principal, Shepard, was afterwards a leading lawyer, and member of the State and national Legislatures. Plummer stood high as a lawyer and business man, as Chairman of the County Court of Warren, conducting its business with ability. Mann, after a brilliant beginning as a lawyer, member of the General Assembly and Charge d' Affaires to Guatemala, which position he obtained in the hope of curing the pulmonary consumption, under which he was suffering, passed away in early manhood. The fact has come down to us that Plummer, while unable to see the impropriety of his conduct, was desirous of returning and obtaining his diploma. His father, thinking he had been treated unjustly, refused to allow it. Mosely, Dromgoole, Waddell, Jones, Leak and Green are mentioned hereafter.

In October, 1816, in revenge doubtless for the action of the Faculty, a forerunner of the modern dynamiters perpetrated a dastardly outrage on one of the Tutors, John Patterson. Wm. M. Green, in a letter to one of the suspended, Martin Armstrong, told the story. “While sitting alone a few nights since I was startled by a tremendous report, when on inquiry I found that a brass knob from one of the doors had been filled with powder and placed before Patterson's door with a lighted match at the end of it. While in this state Glascock discovered as he thought a piece of fire dropped by accident and picked up this affair, but immediately dropped it. He had proceeded only a few steps when it exploded, but without injuring him.” It is easy to see that his life, or his eyesight was in imminent danger.

So far as the discipline extended the Faculty were victorious. Peter O. Picot, of Plymouth, writes to his cousin. Alfred M. Slade, who had been sent home for some fault, in doleful jeremiads: “All quiet here; the students seem to have lost their energy and yield implicitly to the yoke. The storm has blown over, but it has made impressions not easily to be eradicated, for this place looks like some half-deserted village, where you may see its inhabitants collected in small groups, talking over the news of the day, some commiserating your unjust fate, and others pouring out invectives against the Faculty for their palpably erroneous decision and rash suspensions.” * * * The suspension of Shepard, Plummer and Mann * * * was as unjust and unfounded as disgraceful to its authors, who seem to be callous to equity and justice.” In a letter written three weeks afterwards he says: “Never was a place so much altered as this. The Chapel looks destitute. No crowds to hear the news are seen running before a member of the Faculty. All is still! All is quiet! With implicit obedience they bend to the yoke, and undergo with patience the bondage of supercilious domination.” * * * “The poor Philanthropic members are to be pitied for they have but thirteen members.”

Wm. Mercer Green, from boyhood a model of correct behavior, wrote to his friend, Martin A. B. Armstrong, one of the victims: “All again is quiet; the countenances of our most noble and impartial Faculty are unclouded, and those of the boys marked with contempt. The thought of the near approach of the examination has dispelled all others, and the absence of the suspended, we are only able to call to mind when we look into the vacant rooms.” Then follows an evidence of the tact for which Bishop Green was distinguished through life. “I speak of others, my friend; rest assured you are not forgotten.”

While the first impulse of the students was to take sides against the Faculty there was a partial reaction. Hamilton C. Jones wrote in the February following the disturbance that “Shepard and Dromgoole are very much censured by all the sober part of the community. Shepard's speech has lost its popularity, and notwithstanding the great puffing of the New Bern editor has been stigmatized by every judge of literary merit as a flowery piece of nonsense.” It should be noted, however, that Jones and Shepard belonged to different societies and feeling between the two was then bitter. In the letter in which the above criticism occurs is found the following: “The Dialectic Society is still in a very flourishing condition. The other (Philanthropic), though increasing in numbers, degenerates in point of talent.” The writer too, though the Federalist party was practically extinct, sympathized with its principles, and afterwards followed Clay into the wigwam of the Whigs, while Shepard continued to be a warm Republican and became a Democratic leader.

It is altogether probable that this unfortunate trouble led to Dr. Chapman's leaving the institution, for at the meeting of the Board of Trustees next after its occurrence, November 23, 1816, he “in solemn form resigned his office as President of the University.” The words “in solemn form” have an ominous sound. His resignation was certainly associated in the public mind with the disturbance, which political partisans and advocates of free speech declared to be evidence of his incapacity. The letter of resignation dated three days before asserts that his duties had been performed “faithfully and successfully,” and that he was desirous to be more fully devoted to the gospel ministry. He gave notice that his place would be vacant at the close of the year 1817, but the Board accepted the resignation to take effect immediately, agreeing, however, unanimously to pay him one-half year's salary ($800), and to allow him to retain the President's house until the end of the next session. There is a notable absence of praises of his past services and regrets at his departure. Judge Cameron wrote to Judge Murphey on November 27, 1816, that he was glad Dr. Chapman had resigned—that he wished he had done so twelve months ago. “It would have been much better for himself and the University.” He presumed that Mr. Caldwell and the Committee of Appointments would open an official correspondence with Dr. Neil on the subject of the Presidency, but he sincerely wished that Mr. Caldwell will resume the office himself. Dr. Neil was not again mentioned; probably Dr. Wm. Neill, a Presbyterian clergyman of Philadelphia, President of Dickinson College in 1824-'29, an author.

The number of students, however, did not indicate any failure in Dr. Chapman's administration. For his term of four years the aggregate was 352, averaging 88 yearly, while for the four preceding years under Caldwell the numbers were 209, averaging 52 per annum. There were 63 graduates of Chapman's term, averaging about sixteen, while for the four preceding years there were 24, averaging six per annum. Of course most of the improvement was due to the spread of the desire and the means for attaining higher education. The war evidently stirred up the people. Taking the four years after Chapman left and Caldwell resumed the reins we have 465 students, averaging 116, and 50 graduates, averaging 12 1-2 per annum. The next four years showed still better with 640 matriculates, averaging 160, and 119 graduates, averaging 30. The reason for this rapid increase of prosperity will appear hereafter.

Doubtless, however, Dr. Chapman must have had unpleasant recollections of Chapel Hill. He had a grievous private affliction in the death of a daughter. In the village graveyard is a marble slab, which records that Margaretta Blanch, daughter of Rev. Robert H. and Hannah Chapman, died November 25, 1814, in the sixteenth year of her age.

We have the testimony of Rev. Dr. James E. Morrison, a Tutor under Chapman, that he “introduced a most salutary moral change.” He required the study of the Bible, as a textbook, and was the chief factor in organizing the Presbyterian church at Chapel Hill.

The teaching of the Bible probably had a flavor of Calvinism. In 1814 we find one class of the University Grammar School charged with 20 questions on the Catechism and 21 chapters in a book entitled, “Beauties of the Bible.” Another class had 39, a third 38, and the fourth 77 questions in the Catechism. The Senior class of the same school for entrance into the University were examined on four books of the Aeneid, ten chapters of St. John's Gospel in Greek, and 37 questions in the larger Catechism, well known as that used in the Presbyterian church, issued by the Westminister Assembly.

Dr. Chapman's degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred by Williams' College, Mass., in 1815. After leaving the University he became pastor of Bethel church in the Shenandoah Valley. In 1823 he had a church near Winchester, Virginia, and then labored for a year or two as a Missionary in the hill country of North Carolina. His next and last charge was at Covington, Kentucky, in 1830. He was chosen to be a member of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church in 1833, and died at Winchester on his return, June 18, 1833, and is there buried. In 1797 he married Hannah Arnette, of Elizabethtown, New Jersey, who died at St. Louis, July 7, 1845. They left seven children, one of whom was Rev. Robert Hett Chapman, D.D., who is buried in the cemetery of the Presbyterian church at Asheville, N. C.

Of the teachers of the University during his term I have already mentioned Professor Rhea. A sketch of Tutor Hooper will be hereafter given. I find no further mention of John Harper Hinton than that he was Principal of Caswell Academy at Yanceyville in 1818, and probably afterwards. He was a native of Wake County.

James Morrison, who was Tutor from 1814 to 1817, studied divinity under Dr. Chapman and was ordained by the Orange Presbytery in 1817. He was for a while a teacher in the Raleigh Academy. He was pastor of New Providence church, Rockbridge County, Virginia, from 1819 to 1857. He was born in 1795 and died in 1870. Dr. Charles W. Dabney, once Director of the Experiment Station of North Carolina and State Chemist, then President of the University of Knoxville, and now of the University of Cincinnati, is a grandson of Dr. James Morrison.

Abner Wentworth Clopton, the Principal of the Grammar School, has been heretofore described. He died March 21, 1831, praised in a newspaper of the day as an “eminent and devoted member of the Baptist church, and one of the earliest and most efficient promoters of the temperance cause, and was equally attentive to the duties of the society of which he was a member.”

The University bells of the early period were very inferior. A second was bought in 1813. We are told that this was bought in Fayetteville; it, however, was so inferior that seven years afterwards another was procured. This latter on the procurement of the new was hung in the back yard of Dr. Mitchell's lot to be used when the clapper of the other was stolen or in hiding. About the same time the Trustees gave $50 for the transportation of the organ procured for the University by private contributions. This effort to make worship in the Chapel more attractive was supplemented by authorizing Tutor Hooper to procure shutters and a chandelier for the same.

On the resignation of Professor Rhea in 1814 the experiment was tried of a “Senior Tutor,” with a salary of $500, authorized to live out of the college buildings and to pay his own board, instead of eating without charge with the students at Commons. At the same time the Committee of Appointments were authorized to abolish Commons and rent out the building if they thought best. The dissatisfaction implied in this resolution resulted doubtless from the rise of prices in consequence of the war. The Committee concluded to add improvements to the building, paying Bennett Parton $456, and to allow an increase of 10 per cent (to $33) in price of board. The Senior Tutor was William Hooper, whose health, always delicate, probably required the superior diet of his mother's table. There were other Tutors, James E. Morrison and Abner Stith, and for part of the time John Harper Hinton. In 1815 the Committee on Salaries reported the salaries to be:

President $1,200 Professor of Mathematics 1,000 Senior Tutor 500 Two Tutors, $300 each 600 Board of two Tutors 150 Treasurer 200 $3,650

Rev. Dr. Joseph Caldwell was a second time elected President of the University on December 14, 1816. According to the stateliness of the old school a regular commission was issued to him:

The answer of the old school President was likewise in writing. He said, “with diffidence I will accept it, and if I shall ever be found to have gone wrong in discharge of the duties, I hope that the members of the Committee and of the Board in general will be ready to make allowances for defects, which may easily in me proceed from frailty and error without the intention of evil.”

The degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him by the University in the same year.

The Trustees, who accepted Dr. Chapman's resignation, were Wm. Miller, Governor and Chairman; Judge Henry Potter, John Winslow, James Iredell, Calvin Jones, Atlas Jones, Robert Williams (of Raleigh); Henry Seawell, Robert H. Jones, Wm. Polk, Lewis Williams, Simmons J. Baker and A. D. Murphey. Dr. Chapman is also mentioned as present. Most of these were present at the election of Dr. Caldwell on December 17, 1816.

The Faculty records are singularly deficient during Chapman's administration and for 1817. The following, although incomplete, is accurate, I think:

The Graduates of 1813 were in number 14. The report of the class standing of the members has been lost. The following attained distinction. William E. Bailey was a Professor of Ancient Languages in the College of Charleston; William S. Blackledge was a Representative in Congress; John H. Hinton and Abner Stith, Tutors in the University of North Carolina and afterwards Classical teachers. William J. Polk was a prominent physician.

Of the matriculates with the class not graduating, Elijah Graves was a Presbyterian preacher and a teacher of repute; Alexander Long, a very popular physician, and Romulus M. Saunders, a Judge, Congressman and Minister to Spain; Robert Williams, State Adjutant-General and Secretary and Treasurer of the University.

To Rev. Jeremiah Atwater was given the degree of Doctor of Divinity (D. D.)

The Senior class of 1814, in numbers 16, was of a high grade. Aaron V. Brown was a member of the Tennessee Legislature, Governor, Representative in Congress and Postmaster-General; Charles L. Hinton, a planter, Trustee, Secretary and Treasurer of the University, and State Treasurer; Charles Manly, a Trustee of the University 42 years, and Secretary and Treasurer 46 years, Governor of the State; Samuel Pickens, Comptroller of Alabama; James Morrison, a Tutor in this institution and a Presbyterian preacher.

Of the Graduates of 1815, in numbers 18, some became famous.

John H. Bryan was elected to Congress and the State Senate at the same time, and chose the first. He was a Trustee of the University 45 years. Robert R. King was a Tutor and then a preacher. Francis L. Hawks, D.D., LL.D., an eminent preacher and author, in early life Reporter of the Supreme Court of N. C.; Edward Hall, Judge of the Superior Court; Willie P. Mangum was a Judge, Senator of the United States and President of the Senate; Mitchell was Clerk of the General Assembly and President of the Bank of Tennessee; Richard Dobbs Spaight was the last Governor elected by the General Assembly.

The honors are not mentioned in the reports, but tradition gives the highest to Croom, Bryan, Hawks and Spaight.

We have the exercises of the class of 1815. The Latin Salutatory was spoken by Isaac Croom, the Mathematical Oration by Richard Dobbs Spaight. There was a “Forensic Dispute,” anticipatory of the Know Nothing Party, “Whether Civil Offices should be open to Foreigners?” Matthew McClung opened as “Respondent,” Henry L. Plummer, called the Opponent, replied, and Hugh M. Stokes closed as Replicator. Another Forensic Dispute was “Whether Theatrical Amusements are Beneficial?” between Robert Hinton, Respondent, Semuel D. Hatch, Opponent, and Robert King, Replicator. A third dispute was between Priestly Mangum, Stephen Sneed and Edward Hill, the subject being “Should a Penitentiary be immediately erected?” This was followed by an oration on Natural Philosophy, by Stokely D. Mitchell, of Tennessee. In the afternoon there was the English Salutatory by John H. Bryan, followed by a three-handed dispute as to whether students should be subject to Military Duty, a theme which became very acute during our Civil War. The Respondent was Matthew Moore, the Opponent James Hooper, the Replicator George F. Graham. Francis L. Hawks closed with the Valedictory. His oratorical gifts were even then widely known and warmly admired.

The Committee of Appointments reported to the Board in November that they had selected for the Chair of Chemistry Denison Olmstead, a graduate of Yale, and had allowed him a year's study there before coming to the University. For the Chair of Mathematics, made vacant by the elevation of Dr. Caldwell, they had searched in vain in many directions for a suitable man, but, not discouraged, they had at length found Mr. Elisha Mitchell, of Connecticut, who had accepted their offer.

The choice was exceedingly fortunate as the newcomer was not only accomplished and able, but was resolved, like his President, to live and die among us. He was born August 19, 1793, and was, therefore, 24 years old. His native place was Washington, Litchfield County, Connecticut. His father was a farmer, Abner by name; his mother Phoebe Eliot, a lineal descendant of John Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians, whose Bible translated into their language is one of the famous books of the world. From her grandfather, Rev. Jared Eliot, M.D. and D.D., one of the most noted American savants of his day, he inherited his fondness for Natural Philosophy, Botany and Mineralogy. He was prepared for Yale College by Rev. Azel Bachus, a noted teacher, afterwards President of Hamilton College.

At Yale he graduated in 1813, one of the best scholars in his class. Among his class-mates were Denison Olmsted, destined to be his colleague; James Longstreet, author of Georgia Scenes and President of the University of Mississippi; Rev. George Singletary, an influential Episcopal clergyman; Thomas P. Devereux, an able lawyer and Reporter of our Supreme Court; and George E. Badger, an eminent Senator and Secretary of the Navy, who did not graduate.

After leaving Yale young Mitchell taught in the academy of Dr. Eigenbrodt at Jamaica, on Long Island. In 1815 we find him in charge of a school for girls in New London. The next year he was appointed a Tutor in his college, where he discharged his duties so faithfully and well that the Chaplain of the Senate of the United States, a son of President Dwight, of Yale, recommended him to Wm. Gaston, then a Representative in Congress from North Carolina and a Trustee of its University, as learned in Mathematics, as a cultured man of letters generally and as skillful in teaching.

On notification of his appointment Mr. Mitchell spent a few weeks at the Theological Seminary in Andover, Massachusetts, receiving a license to preach as a Congregational minister. He reached Chapel Hill on the 31st of January, 1818, and at once entered on his nearly forty years' service, with the intelligence, zeal and success for which he was distinguished. He was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian church in 1821.

In the fall of 1819 young Mitchell went back to Connecticut in order to take to himself a wife. His bride was handsome, intellectual and well educated, Maria S. North, daughter of a physician of New London. Mrs. Spencer in the University Magazine of October, 1884, gives extracts from letters from her after her arrival at Chapel Hill. The first is dated January 1, 1820. I abridge the narrative. It shows vividly the discomforts of old-time traveling. They started from New York Monday before Christmas, 1819, and journeyed by boat to Elizabeth-town, thence by stage to Trenton; thence by stage to Philadelphia, stopping a day to visit Peale's Museum, West's picture and the Academy of Fine Arts. Thence they took boat down the Delaware to New Castle; thence traveled by stage to Frenchtown, where they again took a steamer, and after a moonlight trip reached Baltimore by sunrise on Thursday. There they had time to visit the Roman Catholic Cathedral and other places. After breakfast they boarded the steamer, United States, for Norfolk, starting at 9 o'clock. They had a delightful trip, the day being pleasant. One of their traveling companions was Dr. Simmons J. Baker, whom they describe as a man of liberal education, very lively and intelligent in his conversation—a Trustee of the University. “He sets a higher value on the amor patriae than any man I've ever known.” They reached Norfolk at 1 o'clock on Friday. As the stage was waiting they missed their dinner and speeded to the head of Dismal Swamp, eleven miles. Here they entered a canal boat 20 feet in length. “ 'Twas sunset of a rainy Christmas eve when we entered this boat and were drawn along for 22 miles at the rate of four miles an hour.” It was suggested that as Christmas was a holiday for slaves and many runaways were living in the swamp, firearms might be needed; so the gentlemen prepared their pistols, three in number for possible robbers. The five locks and three bridges impeded their progress so that they did not get through the swamp until 10 o'clock at night. The driver of the stage for passengers had been restive and gone off, so a one-horse gig and a one-horse cart for baggage were procured, and they made their way to a country tavern not far off, where they spent the night, sending to Elizabeth City for the stage to return for them. They ate breakfast in that town and dined in Edenton Saturday afternoon. As the steamboat for Plymouth was gone, in an open boat rowed by four men, over a rough sea, one of the passengers bailing out the water which poured through the gaping seams, the travelers in seven hours reached Plymouth. Here their first care was to unpack their trunks and dry their soaked clothes. They then proceeded by stage by way of Williamston and Tarboro to Raleigh, only to find that the stage to Chapel Hill had departed. They hired a special conveyance, whose driver was suspected of being a murderer, and the Professor thought it wise to hint that he was provided with firearms. After a day's ride through a country almost uninhabited the bride reached her new home December 29th, and her husband preached his first sermon on the following Sunday in the old Chapel or Person Hall.

For a while they boarded with Prof. Olmsted at the house built for the President, that nearest to the University buildings on the west, paying $288 a year for board, lodging and washing. Their host kept four servants besides the washerwoman. He had a wife and a son and, although a Connecticut man, paid $350 for a slave girl as a nurse to the youngster. Their household expenses were $1,000 a year.

Mrs. Mitchell expressed much admiration for the Doctor and Mrs. Caldwell. She spoke of the lady as being sociable and friendly. They gave a dinner party in honor of the newcomers, a handsome dinner, handsomely served. The bride had the honor of drinking the first glass of wine with Dr. Caldwell, the sentiment being, “To Absent Friends.” Womanlike she tells her mother of what a Carolina dinner consisted: “Roast turkey with duck, roast beef and broiled, broiled chicken, Irish and sweet potatoes, turnips, rice, carrots, parsnips, cabbage, stewed apples, boiled pudding, baked potato pudding, damson tarts, current tarts, apple pies and whips.”

She was pleased with her new surroundings, notwithstanding the two hundred curious eyes of the students when she was in the Chapel. She praises particularly the fine apples and abundance of them. Thirty years afterwards the neighborhood was equally distinguished for peaches. The orchards have been allowed to go to decay. She whiles away the hours when her husband is absent, by study, reciting to him at night. She asks her mother to send her some fine thread, worsted yarn and some needles, the package to be forwarded to New York in order to come in the next box of books. Fine materials for ladies work were not procurable at Chapel Hill in those days. It was not long before Dr. Olmsted bought himself a residence and the young couple started housekeeping in the home he vacated, which they occupied for thirty-seven years.

At the same session the Committee on Buildings were authorized to erect a building embracing recitation rooms whenever the funds would allow.

The vision of golden streams to flow from the escheated warrants of Tennessee emboldened the Trustees in 1818, with only one dissenting voice, to add the Professorship of Rhetoric and Logic and adjunct Professorship of Moral Philosophy. Rev. Shepard Kosciusko Kollock was chosen to fill the chair of Rhetoric and began at the same term with Olmsted, the fall term of 1819. His salary was $1,240. The President held the Chair of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics. The Tutors were King and Simon Jordan. The number of students during the year was 118.

Dr. Kollock was born in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, June 25, 1795. His father, Shepard Kollock, was an officer in the Revolutionary Army, and hence delighted to honor the Polish patriot. The son graduated with high honors at Princeton at the age of sixteen. He began the study of Theology under his brother-in-law, Rev. John McDowell, D.D., and finished his course under his brother, Rev. Henry Kollock, D.D., whose ministerial work was at Savannah, Georgia. His first charge after ordination was that of the Presbyterian church at Oxford, North Carolina, marrying during his first year, 1818, Miss Sarah Blount Littlejohn, daughter of Thomas Blount Littlejohn. Coming to the University in 1819, he remained until 1825, when he accepted a call to the Presbyterian church of Norfolk, Virginia, where he remained about ten years. He then removed to New Jersey, and was for three years the successful agent of the Board of Missions, after which he was pastor successively in Burlington and Greenwich, both in New Jersey. In 1860 his health failed and he accepted light work in connection with a charitable institution in Philadelphia. He died April 7, 1865.

Dr. Kollock married a second time—Miss Sarah Harris, of Norfolk. Several children and more grandchildren of this marriage survive. A child, Sarah, of the first marriage, was one of the highly esteemed principals of the excellent School for Females of the Misses Nash and Miss Kollock. The Misses Nash are daughters of a sister of Professor Kollock, wife of Chief Justice Frederick Nash.

The election of Prof. Kollock caused an outcry against President Caldwell for filling the Faculty with Presbyterian preachers. This he emphatically denied in a letter to Treasurer Haywood, calling attention to the fact that Prof. Hooper was an Episcopalian, and making the rather odd statement that he would have been nominated to the Chair of Rhetoric and Logic if he had been ordained as a preacher and could have rendered to him as much relief in the pulpit as Mr. Kollock. Moreover, he contended that the best man should be selected regardless of denominational bias. It should be noticed too that Olmsted, howbeit a Presbyterian, although he studied Theology, was not licensed to preach. A letter from Treasurer Haywood to Judge Murphey of the date of April 26, 1819, shows that the President was so chagrined at the postponement by the Board of his nomination, that he hinted at accepting a Professorship in the South Carolina College. It is stated that the hesitation arose from the fear that this placing the religious instruction in the charge of two Presbyterian ministers might be against the Constitution, as exalting one denomination over the others. It is notable that Treasurer Haywood stated that he and Colonel Wm. Polk, adherents of the Protestant Episcopal church, were of the opinion that it was imprudent to elect one of their own faith, for fear of giving offence to other denominations. As Professor Hooper was then an Episcopalian, one other of the same faith would have been a too heavy weight to be carried by the struggling institution. This seems to prove that the prejudice from the old hostility to the Church of England, allied with the odious Colonial government, still lingered among our people. After Kollock's election the Faculty stood, Caldwell, Mitchell, Olmsted, Kollock, four to one Episcopalian, tottering towards the Baptists. As the Tutors changed almost yearly, I have not inquired into their religious proclivities.

The scheme of studies was of course considerably changed by the addition of the two new Professorships. For admission into the Freshman class the following was prescribed:

In Latin—The Grammar; Prosody; Corderius; 25 of Aesop's Fables; Selectæ Veteræ, or Sacra Historia; Cornelius Nepos or Viri Romae; Mair's Introduction; Seven Books of Cæsar's Commentaries; Ovidi Editio Expurgata; The Bucolics and Six Books of Aeneid in Virgil.

In Greek—Greek Grammar; St. John's Gospel and The Acts of the Apostles; Graeca Minora to Lucian's Dialogues.

It is remarkable that neither Arithmetic nor Algebra is in this list.

The Plan of Education in the University was as follows:

It is interesting to compare the foregoing scheme of studies with the plan of Judge Archibald Murphey, who distinguished himself about this time by a very able report on Public Education, and was a man of large experience at the bar, on the bench, and in the General Assembly, and had professional experience in the University. He moved for a committee to report “a revised plan of Education,” embodying “changes suited to the present improved state of science and general knowledge;” also to report a plan of new buildings. The following is the scheme, recommended but not adopted. It is analogous to our modern system of “Schools” or “Colleges,” the term classes, however, being used:

1. Class of Languages, embracing Greek and Latin; Murray's English Grammar; Elements of Chronology; Millot's Elements of History; Blair's Lectures.

2. Class of Mathematics.—Pure Mathematics up to Fluxions; Mensuration up to Astronomy; Geography.

3. Physical Sciences.—Embracing Chemistry, Mineralogy, Geology, Philosophy of Natural History; History of the Progress of Mathematics and Physical Sciences.

4. Class of the Moral and Political Sciences, embracing Philosophy of the Human Mind; Ethics and Practical Morality; Elements of Theology; History of the Progress of Ethical and Moral Sciences; Political Philosophy by Paley; Constitution of the United States by Publius; Political Economy by Genith.

It is very notable that the distinguished Judge did not include in his programme the study of the great sciences, Electricity or Magnetism; nor is there mention of Mechanics, Biology and similar branches now so much cultivated.

I am fortunately able to give information of interest with respect to this decade of University history, derived from letters by students. Bryan Grimes writes to his mother in January and April, 1813, regretting his inability to visit her during the approaching vacation because of the impossibility of hiring a horse. He requests one or two waistcoats to be sent him at the next session. He is inconvenienced by having only three pair of summer stockings, because the washerwoman brings in clothes weekly and, therefore, he must every alternate week wear a pair for seven days without change. All things seem to proceed in harmony in college. The students are exerting themselves for examinations, having no time for sport. He reminds his mother that she had promised to write every month, and he begs her to continue this frequency. He asks her to excuse his penmanship because he has no knife wherewith to mend his bad pen.

He testifies that he was received with great politeness, which indicates that the evil practice of hazing did not then afflict the institution. Before applying for admission into the Junior class he spent several days in assiduously reviewing Arithmetic, his passing on the Freshman and Sophomore studies not dispensing with this branch. Mr. Grimes proved to be a good student, but did not remain to graduate. He was in after-life a very influential and wealthy planter—a most worthy citizen.

In October, 1816, Peter C. Picot gives the history of a fight in which two students were involved. James R. Chalmers and Thomas G. Coleman were among those suspended for the Shepard riot. They concluded to sojourn at Hillsboro. A citizen of that town volunteered to reflect severely on the conduct of the students, for which Chalmers kicked him out of doors. In the progress of the fight Coleman, whose nickname was Cub, was severely choked. The offenders were about to be consigned to prison when Judge Thomas Ruffin, a Trustee of the University, appeared and settled the whole matter by a compromise. The adversary of Chalmers declined to prosecute him, on condition that the student, Coleman, should let the choker go free, a curious example of the doctrine of set-off.

Picot gives a pathetic story of Chapel Hill life. “The beautiful and accomplished Miss P.'s father is no more. Though the world will not grieve, nor has society to lament, for he was to the former a burden and to the latter a disgrace, yet a helpless girl, in the dawn of youth, has to mourn a disgraced father, for he died in jail and laid there some time, until they sent to the Governor to obtain leave to take him out. Oh! if you could have heard her shrieks and witnessed her lamentations it would have pierced your heart and rent your soul. But she has got pacified, and I had the inexpressible pleasure of accompanying her last Thursday evening to preaching.” The subsequent history of this consoled inconsolable damsel I have not been able to trace.

Martin W. B. Armstrong writes on January 31, 1818, for money on account of unexpected expenses. He was one of a committee selected to choose toasts for a dinner to be given on the “birthday of our political father,” and was bound therefore to subscribe for the dinner. “According to custom the Committee had to treat those from whom they received the distinction.” He was also with five others chosen as a manager of the ball to be given to the graduates at Commencement. For this honor he was “again forced to be at the expense of making college drunk.” He estimates the cost at two or three dollars. He regrets the expense for suitable clothes, which according to an account sent his father cost $56. He presses for more clothing for daily use. Cambric shirts are soon gone when they become crazy and old, and he requests that his mother will make him others. His cassimere pantaloons are worn through on the seat and are thin on the knees, and his only other pair requires washing after one week's wearing. “It will not be improper,” he adds, “to provide for another supply.”

Hamilton C. Jones wrote in the same year to Major Abraham Staples that the business of the Dialectic Society had been conducted with order since the repeal of the law compelling members to attend prayers, which had caused great disturbance. He praises in the highest terms the President, Samuel T. Hauser, of Stokes. The next question for debate was “Do we experience more pleasure in contemplating the works of Nature or of Art?” Jones was to advocate the claims of Nature, saying among other arguments “because no painter nor no sculpturer can produce in the mind of man the exquisite sensation produced in the mind of the lover from contemplating the fascinating charms of his Dulcinea.” He has many other arguments but this preponderates. We must presume that his adversary contended stoutly that the modern fine lady is in a large degree the work of Art and made some allusion to the known fact that Jones was desperately in love with a fair one in the village, whom he afterwards married. Miss Eliza Henderson.

As the notion was lodged in the public mind that Dr. Chapman failed as a disciplinarian, the disorders of September, 1818, must have been of some consolation to his friends. They heard of three students, after loading up with corn whiskey, tumultuously shouting on the streets of the village, breaking into a kitchen, beating a negro, and insulting his owner and family with loud vociferations. On the same day another threw stones at a dwelling. On the same day, being God's holy day, two others were drunken and noisy in the street. All but the stone-thrower were suspended for four months, though they might have escaped as the stone-hurler did by submitting to public admonition in the Chapel. At the time of these rowdy occurrences S. H. was admonished for being deficient in scholarship, often absent from his room and strongly suspected of participation in frequent explosions of gunpowder, and A. W. “after repeated warnings was dismissed for negligence of studies.”

We learn from a letter of James R. Chalmers, written in 1818 to Alfred M. Slade, that besides being suspended for participation in the street riots, one J. B. was charged with assisting in transporting to the third story of the South Building a large stone or other hard substance, with the intent to injure said building. President Caldwell swore out a warrant against him and he was keeping in hiding, attempting to collect evidence of his innocence. Slade was urged to write a letter avowing J. B.'s guiltlessness that “he may clear himself in the eyes of the Faculty, the Trustees and the world.”

In the next month a too lively Virginian was charged with the following offences:

1st. Torturing animals with spirits of turpentine. Doubtless this was the primeval joke of attaching rags saturated with the flaming fluid to the tail of an innocent canine, not with Sampson's motive of revenge on the hereditary enemies of his country, but for cruel delight over the antics of a frightened and tortured beast.

2d. With lying.

3d. With slandering the Faculty.

4th. With threatening physical violence to a member of the Faculty.

5th. With writing scurrilous and abusive stuff on the Chapel walls about the same.

6th. With drawing a dirk on a student.

The government of the village of Chapel Hill was primitive. All white males between 21 and 50 years of age were distributed into classes and in turn patrolled the streets at night. Slaves were liable to a whipping of ten lashes, or a fine of one dollar, for being absent from home without a written permit from the owner. Nor could a slave hire his own time.

Shooting firearms in the village “in sport, wantonness or licentiousness” was forbidden under a penalty of one dollar. But firing on public occasions or musters was not only not prohibited but encouraged. Two dollars was the penalty for working on Sundays in one's ordinary avocation, unless in case of necessity or mercy. Nor, with like exception, could any person buy or sell any article under penalty of five dollars, doubled in case of sales by merchants.

The streets were to be worked by male white persons between 18 and 45, and black males between 16 and 50. Fines for whites were inflicted for absences. Whipping for slaves was the rule, but owners could save them from punishment by paying a fine. The Commissioners were to pay one dollar for absence from meetings without excuse.

Most of the misconduct at this period consisted of fighting and annoyances to the Faculty. The war fever was partly the cause of the former. The familiar songs were all boastful of the deeds of Perry and McDonough, Decatur and Hull, and of General Jackson. But the war spirit was stimulated to action partly by use of intoxicating liquors so common that the Faculty hardly censured it except when drunkenness resulted; even then often not cutting the offender off from the institution. But this was not the sole cause. There was evidently a fashion to resort to bodily injury for fancied insults. It is noticeable that it was not considered derogatory to one's reputation to knock his antagonist down with a club, without warning. T. D. Donoho, afterwards a lawyer of repute, wrote to his friend Armstrong, who had felled W. H. Haywood in this manner, that all his friends sustained him as having acted properly.

Another class of offences was impertinent and offensive speeches and conduct towards the Tutors. Most of this arose from irritation at being ordered by men, little, if any, older than themselves, to repair to their rooms, when found visiting a friend after 8 o'clock at night. A son of Chief Justice Henderson, usually a polite and good-natured youth, stoutly insisted that the officer had no right to “order him about,” and submitted to being sent home, “rather than surrender his rights as a freeman.” Others, however, while obeying the officer's commands secretly vented their spite by exploding gunpowder at his door, throwing stones through his windows, shouting abusive words from a distance in the darkness, and other like amenities. One Tutor became so obnoxious by his tactless severity that it became necessary to fortify his window-panes with wooden shutters.

One of the Secretaries, Tutor Andrews, has left on record as evidence in a case on trial the dialogue between the Tutor and the student-offender, whom he found visiting a friend. It is worth quoting as showing the actual working of a hard law.

Tutor—Mr. H.—Do you know that the bell has rung for 8 o'clock?

Student—Yes, sir; I know that it has rung.

Tutor—Do you not intend to go to your room?

Student—I intend to go by and by.

Tutor—Why not now, Mr. H.?

Student—I wish to read some more before I go.

When Abner W. Clopton gave up the Grammar School in 1819, the University abandoned it. At that time there was an uncommonly good classical school in Hillsboro called the Hillsboro Academy. The general superintendence was under Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon, but the active teacher was Mr. John Rogers, who had distinguished himself in his profession at Wilmington. President Caldwell induced them to agree that their institution should be preparatory to the University. Members of the faculty could participate in the periodical examinations of the pupils and those passing the examinations of the highest classes had a right to enter the University on certificate of the fact.

The old Grammar School house was then left to the bats and owls, but was after some years in the occupancy of a family whose head was the last survivor in this section of a class, important in the early settlement of the country, and interesting figures in fiction—that of the professional hunter. His name was Peyton Clements.

Notwithstanding that the University ceased its connection with a preparatory school at Chapel Hill, sundry teachers endeavored to supply its place. The first was a graduate of the class of 1816, James A. Craig, who advertised extensively in the Raleigh Register, then the State Gazette. We have no means of knowing his success, but feel sure that parents at a distance were not willing to send to him their boys of tender years. Certainly when Judge Battle and others in 1843 and 1844 attempted, with very competent teachers, to inaugurate a flourishing academy at Chapel Hill the number of pupils did not exceed a dozen, not one of whom was from abroad. The schools here relied on local patronage and that was meagre. Still from time to time, intermittently, there have been teachers of intelligence and skill, and many of their boys have taken a high stand in the University.

In this year (1822) the General Assembly authorized a Board of Agriculture, and in the next year gave the Board authority to employ a “person of competent skill and science to commence and carry on a geological and mineralogical survey of this State.” The modest sum of $250 per annum for four years, and a year in addition, was appropriated. The Board employed Professor Olmsted, who made a report which was published, the first probably of any State in the Union. After he returned to Yale the survey was continued by Prof. Mitchell, who made one report. The appropriation was not renewed. Both Professors made tours through the State. Part of the diary of Dr. Mitchell is published as the James Sprunt Historical Monograph of 1906.

Of the class of 1823, in number 28, Richmond M. Pearson, afterwards Judge of the Superior and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was first and spoke the Latin Salutatory. Wm. S. Chapman was also first with the Valedictory, afterwards a Judge in Alabama. Thomas G. Graham, second honor man, was a physician; Robert B. Gilliam became Speaker of the House and a Judge of the Superior Court; Daniel W. Courts became State Senator and Treasurer; George S. Bettner was a physician in New Bern and New York, and author of a book called “Acton, or the Circle of Life;” James H. Dickson was a physician of wide reputation, author of an admirable address before the Alumni Association; and James Augustus Washington achieved a national reputation as a physician.

Matriculating with these, though not graduating, were Wm. M. Inge, a Judge in Tennessee; Alexander D. Sims, a member of Congress in South Carolina; and Thomas Jefferson Green, a member of the Legislatures of North Carolina, Florida, California and Texas, a member of the Texas Congress when it was a Republic and a Brigadier-General in the Texan army.

The degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred on John Stark Ravenscroft, the first Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina.

We have the list of speakers on Commencement Day:

Richmond M. Pearson, the Latin Salutatory.

Thomas G. Graham, Natural Philosophy.

Debate—Ought Military Posts be established on Columbia River?, Alexander M. Boylan against James K. Leitch.

Robert B. Gilliam, American Literature.

George F. Davidson, Character of the Irish.

James H. Dickson, Will the new States of South America continue free?

James A. Washington, Superstition of the Hindoos.

George S. Bettner, Belles Lettres.

Daniel W. Courts, Theatrical Entertainments.

Thomas J. Sumner, Oratory.

John Rains, Effects of the Waverly Novels.

Wm. S. Chapman, Sympathy, with the Valedictory.

The grades of Pearson, Chapman and Graham have been mentioned. The third distinction was given to Bettner, Rains and Washington. What was called the “intermediate” grade was assigned to James H. Dickson, Robert B. Gilliam, Thomas J. Sumner, George F. Davidson, Daniel W. Courts and Matthias E. Sawyer.

Nineteen out of twenty-eight members of the Senior class of 1823 concluded, after they had passed their final examinations, to celebrate the event by having a “high old time.” They procured a large quantity of whiskey and brandy and carried it to a gushing spring north of the village, known as Foxhall, doubtless a corruption of Vauxhall, once a London pleasure resort, and proceeded to get on, as the phrase goes, a “glorious drunk.” The tradition of the extravagance of this carousal lingers yet about the village. After the reason of one of them was in a measure dethroned, he proceeded to make a wholesale toddy by pouring the liquor into the spring, forgetting how rapidly it would be diluted.

On being summoned before the Faculty the delinquents pleaded that they entered into the revelry because it was the last time they would be together, and these final “treats,” as they were called, were customary with the Senior classes. The sentence was that “proper concessions and acknowledgments” shall be made by all, except one, and that then their diplomas should be granted. Direful threatenings were made as to future like disorders. The excepted student almost lost his diploma, because, in addition to being inattentive to all his duties, he had behaved in a riotous manner on the streets after the “Senior treat.” Among the festive youths of 1823 were a future Chief Justice, a State Treasurer, two Judges of the Superior Court, four prominent physicians, several able lawyers and other like good citizens. It is comforting to know that the expected one wrote such a feeling and dignified letter of contrition as to induce the Faculty to pardon him and the tale of the class was not lessened.

About this time two students were accused of writing scurrilous and defamatory letters. One confessed and was reprimanded. The other, who falsely denied his guilt and had committed the same offence before, was suspended. He afterwards attained high legislative and judicial positions. It is altogether likely, though not so stated, that the defamation was abuse of the Faculty.

In February, 1824, President Caldwell addressed to the Board very important recommendations. The first was for the purchase of more books. Much advantage was derived from the expenditure for this purpose of the two dollars per annum fee from each student, but this was not sufficient. Without it “we must have become completely stationary, within limits, which if known to others, would have been disgraceful.” “A Professor in a college without books in tolerable supply, is analagous to the creation of nobility, which for want of estate is obliged to live in rags.” He then compares a bookless Professor to a lawyer without a legal library, to a shoemaker without awls or lasts, to a printer with insufficient types. Books were much cheaper in England than in America and cheaper on the Continent than in England.

He added that it was impossible to carry on the study of Natural, sometimes called Experimental, Philosophy, without a proper supply of apparatus. For the purchase of such a reliable agent is necessary. “An Astronomical Clock, a Transit Instrument, an Astronomical Telescope, are articles of high cost, and if they be not really good, they are so much money thrown away, only to tantalize us with standing objects of chagrin and disappointment.” Makers of philosophical apparatus, unless carefully watched, will have their defective articles “mingled with the mass of his instruments of the same kind and talked off upon the terms of the best.”

The President then modestly suggests his willingness to act for the Trustees, paying his own expenses. He would be compensated for the sacrifice by “personal improvement and accession of strength in regard to the affairs of the University.” He submits to the judgment of the Trustees. Whatever they shall judge to be the best he “shall be prepared to admit in a moment, and to settle upon it with the utmost complacency and conclusiveness.” The offer involved a trip to Europe, then a very expensive and prolonged journey, full of physical discomforts.

The Trustees felt strong enough to spend $6,000, to be divided equally between books and apparatus, and accepted the offer of the President. We have a long letter of his to Dr. Olmsted giving some account of his voyage. The writer was singularly lacking in enthusiasm, the wonderful sights of the Old World not seeming to quicken the heart-throbs of the back-woods mathematician. It is dated London, August 31, 1824. It was forwarded by “Y. A. Steamer, Thomas W. Evans, Liverpool,” and was received at New York October 4th. It is as follows:

Colonel Benjamin Forsyth was killed in battle in Canada in the war of 1812 and gave his name to a county. The education of his son, James N., was being paid for by the General Assembly. In 1824 he forfeited his place in the University by irregular conduct. He afterwards entered the navy and was lost with the ship Hornet, on which he was a petty officer.

One division of the Sophomores and the whole of the Freshman class absented themselves from recitation on the morning of Senior speaking. They were all required individually to acknowledge the impropriety of their conduct, and pledge themselves to refrain from similar conduct in the future. All gladly complied except R. J., who was dismissed. Ten days afterwards he made the required promises and was readmitted.

In 1824 occurred a flagrant outrage. A. A. and L. K. loaded themselves with whiskey in the village grog-shop, and arming themselves, one with a club and the other with a pistol, “sallied forth for the purpose of attacking the persons of different members of the Faculty.” They committed “violent outrages” on two of the persons hunted.

The Faculty concluded that extraordinary proceedings were necessary. The Trustees resident in Orange County were summoned to meet with the Faculty to consider the case, namely, Thomas D. Bennehan, Esq., Honorable Duncan Cameron, Francis L. Hawks, Esq., Hon. Thomas Ruffin, Dr. James S. Smith, Dr. James Webb.

The Faculty present were Rev. Elisha Mitchell, Presiding Professor; Ethan A. Andrews, Joseph H. Saunders, Elisha Young. Dr. Caldwell was in Europe.

The young criminals expressed their regret for their misconduct, but it appeared to the authorities assembled impossible that the peace and good order of the institution could be maintained, if such outrages were permitted to pass without exemplary punishment. The said A. A. and L. K. were therefore expelled. As we now say, “the line was drawn” at cudgelling the Faculty with sticks, while looking into the muzzle of loaded pistols.

W. R. was dismissed for twice throwing brickbats into the room of the Tutor.

A youth, who afterwards became a distinguished physician, came from the village in a state of intoxication and disturbed the good order of the College in a most outrageous and violent manner. As this was the first offence, he was sentenced to receive an admonition in the presence of the Faculty, and a minute of the proceedings was read in the Chapel after evening prayers.

There was a strange occurrence, at this day not to be accounted for. In November, 1828, after the students assembled for divine worship in the Chapel on Sunday morning, thirty of them retired from the hall, not all at once but by degrees. The Faculty proceeded next morning to investigate the matter. It was explained that two laws of the institution, one certainly and the other apparently, had been broken. The first was absence from Divine service, the second combination or conspiracy to break a law. The absentees were severally examined as to their conduct. Seven at once gave satisfactory excuses, and were allowed to retire. At an adjourned meeting six others offered valid excuses for withdrawing. The remaining seventeen after being questioned disavowed any combination, and the trial was ended. The causa causans of the movement cannot be ascertained, possibly some transient anger against the preacher. Some of the most orderly students were among the retiring party, for instance, Wm. Eaton, R. H. Smith of Halifax, Cadwallader Jones of Hillsboro, Judge James Grant of Iowa.

On the resignation of Professor Olmsted, passed into the ownership of the University the dwelling occupied for many years by Dr. James Phillips and of late by President Venable. Belonging to a widow lady, Mrs. Puckett, it was bought from her for $1,300 by Dr. Denison Olmsted, who spent $900 on it by way of additions and repairs. After having converted, to use his language, “an awkward, inconvenient and rude structure into a handsome, commodious and neat dwelling,” a description which must be deemed quite roseate by those who have seen its perpendicular outlines and inconvenient interior, he induced the Board of Trustees to take it off his hands at cost, using the argument that the expense of removal from New Haven and of living had exhausted his funds. The lot was set apart for the use of the Professors of Chemistry, but between Dr. Olmsted and Dr. Venable there was an interregnum of over three-score years.

Dr. Olmsted resigned his professorship in December, 1825, and accepted that of Mathematics in Yale College, (now University). In 1836 he was transferred to the Chair of Astronomy and Natural Philosophy. He published text-books of value in the departments of science under his charge, and a number of biographical memoirs. He made important observations on hail, meteors, the aurora borealis, etc., which were published in the Smithsonian Contributions. He was born in East Hartford, Conn., June 18, 1791, and died May 13, 1859. His work in North Carolina has been described elsewhere.

The distinctions of the class of 1825 were awarded as follows:

1st. To John M. Gee, Wm. H. Hodge, and Marshall T. Polk.

2d. To Wm. J. Bingham, Wm. P. Boylan, James Martin, James Moore, and John J. Wyche.

3d. In the order of their names, to Frederic W. Harrison, Walter Alves, Albert Vine Allen, Burwell B. Wilkes, Wm. A. Wright, and James C. Bruce.

The program at Commencement has been lost, except that Polk spoke the Latin Salutatory, Hodge the Valedictory, Gee the English Salutatory, Wright, Bruce Harrison and Alves had what were called Intermediate Orations, but the subjects are unknown.

Of these, Polk, a brother of President Polk, settled in North Carolina at Charlotte, and was cut off in early life, considered one of the most promising young lawyers in the State. His son, of the same name, who became Treasurer of Tennessee, not a son of the University, left children who are among the best citizens of that State. Hodge was a physician of Tarboro, and then of Granville. Wm. A. Wright was an able lawyer of Wilmington and President of the Bank of Cape Fear; Harrison was a physician in Virginia; Bruce a wealthy and cultured planter of Virginia, and member of its General Assembly; William J. Bingham, the second able Principal of the Bingham School, whose fame under him was extended; Wyche was a Tutor of the University and Professor in Jefferson College, Mississippi; Alves, a physician in Kentucky; Allen, a lawyer of much reputation.

The honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) was conferred on Nathaniel Macon, United States Senator; that of Master of Arts (A. M.) on Charles Bailly and on John H. Eaton, of Tennessee, a matriculate of 1803. To William Glascock, of Virginia, a matriculate of 1816, was granted the degree of Bachelor of Arts (A. B.)

In August and September of the year 1825 there was a very serious sickness in the University, evidently typhoid fever. Three students died—Wm. H. Beard, Zenas Johnston, and another whose name is not recorded. The acting President reported that the first two brought the seeds of disease with them. From an unknown cause it was thought that the air was worse than usual, as was shown by the pallid countenances of the students generally. There were no ponds or marshes near Chapel Hill and the disorder was attributed to “unknown conditions of the air or water.” The learned Professor drops no hints of ferocious and treacherous bacteria. Skilled physicians had stated that the elevated parts of the country had suffered most. He recommends that a resident physician should be obtained, who should teach a class of medical students.

At that date the Faculty had no power to prevent theatrical and other shows. Urgent request was made that they be invested with such authority. A band of strolling players had given nightly dramatic performances for a week and had received, it was estimated, $383, more than $300 of which was from students. Value received cannot possibly be expected from such acting and scenery as can be exhibited in a room over a store in this village. The use of the University Chapel was refused, as intolerable profanation. The General Assembly passed a law in compliance with the wishes of the Faculty, giving them prohibitory powers.

On motion of Bartlett Yancey, a number of resolutions were submitted to a Committee, and at the June meeting, 1825, were substantially reported back and adopted. They were:

1st. The appointment by the Trustees of a Superintendent of the property and financial concerns of the University, who shall reside at Chapel Hill, give a $10,000 bond, and receive not exceeding $500 salary per annum.

2d. He was to care for all the property of the institution and carry out all orders of the Trustees.

3d. Each student shall pay him all his money, and shall pledge his honor to pay all received at any time. The Superintendent shall out of the same pay college dues and other necessary expenses, the repair of injury to College property done by the student; also such purchases of merchants as the student may buy, and to the student not over one dollar pocket-money each month.

The next year a properly fitted up room in the College buildings was ordered to be assigned to each professor, and it was made his duty to be in it from 9 a.m. to 12 m., and from 2 p.m. to 5 each day, except “Sundays and other College holidays.” The object was to aid in the administration of discipline and give occasional assistance to the students in their studies.

It was stated that the nightly visitations of the rooms of students by the Tutors had been insufficient to maintain order and insure the presence of the students in their apartments. It was therefore required that each student's room should be visited by a professor at night at least three times a week.

This rigorous code was at the instance of Col. Wm. Polk, who always regarded students in the light of soldiers in barracks and professors as military officers. They were, with some modifications, obeyed, by some without failure, by others spasmodically, until near the beginning of the Civil War. They led to numberless clashings and ill feelings. The halls and campus were not lighted, and occasionally stones and cold water were thrown at an unwelcome visitor. One, who was accused of opening a drawer of the absent inmate, was forced to hide under a table in order to escape the missiles through crashing glass. Signals were invented which showed to the listening students the progress of the professor, so that card-players would have time to open their dictionaries, and the corn-whiskey bottle could be safely hid. When the word DOGS! or FACULTY! was shouted from the window of one building, it was the sign that those in another might expect at once the professorial policeman. While the manners of some professors were so agreeable that they were usually welcomed, others were so rough that they became odious. Every species of disorder was prevalent in the recitation rooms of these latter, partly in the spirit of childish fun, but mainly for the annoyance of the instructor.

The professors vigorously protested against the mandatory provision in regard to spending their mornings and afternoons in the College buildings, and nightly visitation of rooms. Dr. Mitchell addressed an able letter to the Board, giving cogent reasons against it. He himself could not comply, as he must spend most of his time in his laboratory, which was in Steward's Hall. It was unfortunate that the professors were not consulted, as they are in the position of both witnesses and lawyers. The visiting rooms at night will do no good, as students wishing to go on excursions will wait, as they do now in case of the Tutors, until the visits are over. The students will not consult professors about their studies, as was found by experience at Yale and at Chapel Hill. They are afraid of the jeers of their fellows. If rooms were provided the professors would undoubtedly be in them often and so secure better order without requiring them to spend their mornings and evenings in them. The professors have not been slow to improve the work of the University of their own accord. As an instance, when he came to Chapel Hill the two upper classes recited only once a day, the lower twice. The Faculty have continually increased the number of recitations, and he believes that they are more frequent than in any Northern college. The provision will be peculiarly burdensome for several reasons:

One of the most popular Chapel Hill belles of this period, very winning and beautiful, a good singer, accustomed to raise the tunes in church service, was Miss Sarah Williams Kittrell, whose father removed from Granville to a home about two miles southwest of the University buildings, where he carried on a farm and took student boarders. Tradition says that she agreed to marry a promising Senior, afterwards United States Senator, but the match was broken off because of his poverty and great distance from Chapel Hill. After he became famous, he returned by invitation to deliver the annual Commencement address, and his old boarding house keeper, Mrs. Betsey Nunn, upbraided him for breaking faith with her favorite Sally Kittrell. Learning that she was living in Midway, Texas, in her 90th year, Mrs. Goree, aunt of Judge George W. Kittrell of California, I wrote to her and received in reply a most sprightly letter, giving her reminiscences of Chapel Hill society. I add that five of her sons and grandsons were officers in the Confederate Army, and that during a visit of Miss Winnie Davis to Texas she rode one hundred miles to pay her respects to the “Daughter of the Confederacy.” The kindly manner in which she speaks of her old flame indicates that their engagement and its disruption, if true, left no permanent scar on her happy soul. With her aid and from other sources I endeavor to depict the life of Chapel Hill in the twenties.

There were few residents of the village, but among them were strong characters, male and female. Among the men Dr. Caldwell and Dr. Mitchell overtopped all in learning and influence, while in society Major Henderson and his four sons, James, William, Pleasant, and Tippoo Saib, *

* Note.—The hatred of England by our people is shown by their naming sons after cruel oriental despots, simply because they fought our old enemy. Thus Davie had a Hyder Ali, Major Henderson a Tippoo Saib, and a prominent citizen of Edenton a Tippoo Saib Haughton.

There was an excellent Sunday School held in Person Hall, called the Chapel, now the Medical Building. The teachers were Mrs. Caldwell and the wives of the Professors. The task was memorizing five or six verses of the Bible and part or whole of a hymn. Four score years afterwards the pious “Mother in Israel” recalled vividly the moral and educational value of this, one of our earliest religious institutions for the young.

The multitudinous speeches on the programme of 1826 probably led to the radical change of 1827. In that year began the series of orations by eminent men elected by the two Literary Societies alternately. The Dialectic had the first choice, which fell on ex-Judge Archibald Debow Murphey. His address was in the main historical and reminiscent and was perhaps the last work of one who had done much for his State. His portrait in the Dialectic Hall, taken at this time, shows that his physical powers were rapidly waning, but his mind was strong and lucid. A contemporary writer in the Raleigh Register testified that “the debility of his body gave an interest to his appearance. Unassuming, yet easy and insinuating in his address, clear and distinct in his enunciations, perspicuous and eloquent in his style, he was sustained through a long and eloquent oration by the admiration and applause of a crowded assembly.—None of his audience will soon forget their own emotions, or the glow of sympathy imparted to them by the orator's beautiful remembrance of his friend and patron, the late Wm. Duffy.”

The writer described the exercises as “No longer, as on former occasions, a monotonous succession of heavy and uninteresting speeches, but a Literary Banquet, where the different tastes of the audience were gratified by alternate displays of Oratory and Wit.” “We were all particularly pleased with a little ‘ludicro-comico’ piece written and (as the Dramatists say) gotten up by one of the Professors, and called, I think, ‘Improvements in Modern Duelling.’ It was well delivered Tuesday evening by five young gentlemen, and exhibited in the most ridiculous attitude certain late exquisites and proficients in that sublime art.” As Dr. William Hooper was skillful in this kind of writing, conspicuous in his own address in 1859, entitled “Fifty Years Since,” it is evident that he was the author.

It was at this time that, on motion of Chief Justice Ruffin, the once-a-month holidays, which had been in vogue for some time, were discontinued, to the great discontent especially of boys of a smaller growth, or less studious disposition.

The speakers of the graduating class of 1827 were: Richard Henry Lewis, the Latin Salutatory; Charles B. Shepard, the Valedictory; Thomas P. Hall, Oration in Greek; Lorenza Lea, Oration in French; Alfred O. P. Nicholson, Oration on Political Economy; Jesse H. Lindsay and Alexander Mackey, Intermediate Orations.

The Trustees were occasionally embarrassed by petitions from persons who claimed that they were injured by escheated property vesting in the University. One Mary Bell stated the pitiable fact that by twenty-five years hard labor in keeping a public house she and her husband had accumulated some property, the title of which under the law vested in her husband; that on his death without heirs half of the property devolved on the University; that she was sixty years old and could not live on what the statute allowed her. “I am a poor widow, citizen of a country whose policy and well regulated government does not need the assistance of property drawn from old age and infirmity, leaving me to starve, in order to support most valuable institutions.”

The minds of the Trustees were torn by the conflicting ideas of natural pity and fiduciary duty. They finally concluded to invest the money and pay the interest to Mrs. Mary Bell so long as she should live.

They seemed to experience no difficulty in deciding another case, which in our times would be considered hard. A free negro had a daughter, the slave of another. He bought her, and she then became the mother of a boy. The woman's father died without kin and intestate. His child and grandchild being his personal property became the property of the University. They were ordered to be sold. This sounds hard, but it was proved to the Board that they were in the lowest stage of poverty and degradation and that it would redound to their happiness to have a master. It must be remembered that slaves were considered to be as a rule in a better condition than free negroes.

One of the saddest claims which devolved on the University was that of Governor Benjamin Smith, the first benefactor. In his old age he became surety for a man who owed the institution, and the Trustees felt compelled to enforce payment. There is on record a petition by him for extension of time, which was granted. The tradition already mentioned that he was imprisoned has a modicum of truth, but the detention was only for a short while and, as he himself says, by the hard action of a lawyer, who was his personal enemy. The Trustees released him as soon as the matter was brought to their attention. It must be remembered, too, that ex-Governor Smith was hopelessly insolvent, and if the University had released him from the debt, his other creditors and not himself, would have reaped the benefit. All his valuable lands on the Cape Fear were subject to the judgment obtained by the United States to make good the defalcations of Collector Reid, for whom he was bondsman.

At the Commencement, on Monday evening there was a declamation by James Lea, William Owen, Julian E. Sawyer, Wm. Smith, John S. Hargrave, Thomas F. Jones, Solomon Lea.

On Tuesday evening, the 21st of June, the speakers were James Grant, J. DeBerniere Hooper, Wm. W. Spear, Jacob Thompson, Thomas S. Ashe, Michael W. Holt, and James O. Stedman.

On Wednesday, there were original speeches delivered by representatives of the two Societies.

The best scholar, to whom was given the Latin Salutatory, was Nathaniel H. McCain. James W. Osborne was next, with a speech on Moral Philosophy. Next came Cicero Stephens Hawks, whose subject was Influence of Rewards Bestowed on Distinguished Characters. The fourth in scholarship was John A. Backhouse, to whom was assigned the Valedictory. The fifth in scholarship was Richard K. Hill, with a speech on Political Economy, and sixth was Aaron J. Spivey, whose subject was “The Use and Abuse of Parliamentary Debates.” The next honor men were George G. Lea, who spoke on the Importance of Liberal Education to all professional men; then Mr. W. L. Kennedy, on the Influence of Periodical Literature, and lastly came Rawley Galloway, who discussed Design in the Constitution of Nature. Benjamin F. Terry and William K. Ruffin debated whether the gold mines, recently discovered in North Carolina and elsewhere, are attended with greater advantages or disadvantages to our State and to the Union. There was evidently in the air dread of inflation of the currency and diversion of labor from other pursuits, as well of the evils of making haste to be rich.

John H. Edwards and Elisha Stedman, both afterwards physicians, discussed this question: “Could the United States maintain its Constitution if the Atlantic Ocean did not separate her from Europe?” J. M. Stedman's thesis was whether there could be a Permanent Government without Education.

McCain removed to Mississippi, and was a highly respected and successful planter. Backhouse had a strange career. He was of fine promise, was a Tutor of his Alma Mater after graduation; then studied theology, teaching at the same time. After being ordained a minister of the Gospel, he was deposed for conduct unbecoming a minister, and died early. Osborne was a prominent lawyer and Judge, member of the Legislature and of the Convention of 1861. Hawks was Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Missouri. Hill was a teacher of repute in North Carolina and Texas.

At the Commencement of 1830, Hon. John H. Bryan, who changed his home from Newbern to Raleigh, chosen by the Philanthropic Society, was the orator. The reporter described his effort as chaste and eloquent.

The report of the President at the annual meeting of the Board in December, 1827, deplores the falling off in numbers. This was attributed to three causes: 1st, the establishment of Universities and Colleges in Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia; 2nd, to the financial stress and unparalleled depreciation in the pecuniary resources of the people; 3rd, vast efflux of population to the West.

He also informed the Board that the Main Building was in ruins. It had not been occupied for years. The materials were worthless, the work wretched. The experiment of employing a Superintendent of Buildings not connected with the University, at a salary of $20, was unsatisfactory. Prof. Mitchell assumed the duties.

The financial panic of 1825, with its sequelae, was in truth a fearful blow to the University. The receipts from Western lands and payments for those sold were largely cut off. The tuition receipts diminished with the number of students. The debts to the banks, incurred for building the Old West and work on the Old East and unfinished Gerrard Hall, were unpaid. The Trustees thought that turning off Professors would destroy the prestige of the institution, and therefore borrowed money to meet their salaries. By 1830 the University seemed on the verge of ruin. Energetic steps were necessary to avert it. The President of the Board of Trustees called a special session to consider the matter. It was on the 21st June, 1830, at Chapel Hill.

There were present, Governor Owen, Dr. Caldwell, Messrs. John H. Bryan, Willie P. Mangum, Charles Manly, James Mebane, Alfred Moore, John M. Morehead, Wm. Robards, John Scott, James S. Smith, John Witherspoon, D.D.

On motion of Judge Mangum, a committee of seven were appointed to draft an address to the Trustees, setting forth the urgent necessity for them to meet in Raleigh on the 19th of July. Dr. Caldwell was directed to send by express, that is, a special messenger, a copy to every Trustee within a reasonable distance of Raleigh, and to the rest by mail.

Considering the difficulties of travel in the hot July days, there was a very respectable attendance, about one-third of the Trustees. Their names should be held in remembrance. They were: Governor John Owen, Dr. Caldwell, Messrs. George E. Badger, Thos. D. Bennehan, John H. Bryan, Duncan Cameron, James Craven, Wm. Gaston, John D. Hawkins, Louis D. Henry, James Iredell, Charles Manly, Alfred Moore, Willie P. Mangum, Angus McBryde, Frederick Nash, Wm. Robards, Thos. Ruffin, Romulus M. Saunders, John Scott, Hugh Waddell, James Webb, W. McPheeters, D.D. Of these, nine were residents of Raleigh, ten of Orange, one of Fayetteville, one of Moore County, one of Franklin, one of Craven, one of Kinston. None except those from Fayetteville, Moore, Franklin, and Kinston lived more than one day's distance from Raleigh, and they only a two-days' easy journey. It is possible that Messrs. Gaston and Henry were in attendance on the Supreme Court. On motion of Mr. Gaston, not then a judge, a strong committee, Messrs. Iredell, Cameron, Moore, Henry, Bryan, Webb, Robards (State Treasurer), and Waddell, were appointed to report the debts and resources of the University, and recommend a plan of relief.

President Caldwell had always been fond of the Science of Astronomy. It was on this account that, in 1813, as I have shown, he was called on to be the scientific expert on the part of North Carolina in running the South Carolina boundary line. He built on the top of his dwelling a platform, on which he would take the Seniors in squads of three and four, and point out to them the heavenly bodies. He erected in his garden a sun dial, which stood until the invasion of the Federal cavalry. He also built two pillars, still standing, covered with vines, their eastern and western faces accurately showing the true North and south line in his day.

In this period an American woman, said to have lived among the Indians as a captive, coarse and ignorant, Mrs. Anne Royall by name, was the authoress of “Sketches of History, Life, Manners, in the United States, by a Traveller.” In 1830 was published her “Southern Tour, or Second Series of the Black Book.” She visited Chapel Hill the preceding year and evidently was avoided by the Faculty ladies, as her pen was dipped into gall when she wrote of her visit. Her first impression was unpleasant, as the inn keeper's lady met her with the question, “have you no man with you?” The University, she said, was in a most delightful situation, sitting upon an eminence, in the midst of a handsome grove, but, to the disgrace of the State, is under the influence of a woman, the President's wife. She is ruled by priests, the priests are ruled by money, and she rules the University. The institution, which cost so much money, is under the dominion of “these she wild cats, a Priest loving woman, fleecing the last cent of pocket money from the innocent, unsuspecting young men. Meantime they are ruled by a rod of iron by this she wolf. Not a step dare the hen-pecked President take without apprising this tyrannical woman.” As Mrs. Royall was leaving Chapel Hill, a tall, genteel young man stepped into the stage. He had been dismissed, she said, for “smiling in church.” The students, fine, manly looking young men, came to take leave of the dismissed man. In the opinion of Mrs. Royall, he deserved a statue, and “so would any man who would raise his voice against such hypocrites and besotted fools.” “This young gentleman possessed more virtue and honor than the whole posse of the Faculty, with Madam President to boot.”

The truth is, that the student was dismissed for bad behaviour at the preaching in the village chapel on Sunday night, before the arrival of the preacher. There was much noise, vociferation, laughter, and tumult. “The house was turned into a scene of wild riot.” After the arrival of a member of the Faculty, he persisted in ill-behaviour, conspicuously disregarding the order of the place, was directed to leave the house, but refused to obey. On the next morning at Prayers he interrupted the prayer by scraping with his feet. He had repeatedly been guilty of disorder, and had incurred the censure of the Faculty.

Mrs. Royall was either a malicious, untruthful woman, or demented. Mrs. Caldwell was a woman of talent, of polished manners, and excellent heart. She naturally dominated and gave tone to the village society, but her husband was distinguished for his independence of character and inflexible will. Neither she nor any other human influence could dominate or lead him. I quote from the bitterness of the slighted vanity of Mrs. Royall, because, although long ago consigned to oblivion, her book was once the theme of amused conversation. Her vitriolic satire on Chapel Hill ladies is really a high tribute to their conservative feminine virtues. Notoriety-seeking, “mannish” females could get no countenance from them.

After leaving North Carolina, Mrs. Royall sojourned in Washington City, where she engaged in writing vituperative books and edited a “Paul Pry” newspaper, so full of scandal that she was arraigned and convicted of the crime of being a common scold—“communis rixatrix.” She was sentenced to the old common law punishment of being ducked in the Potomac, but, modern ideas being against the infliction of this primitive rough penalty on a woman, the Court was induced to substitute a pecuniary fine.

At the Commencement of 1831, the Freshman competitors were Julius C. S. Bracken, of Caswell County; Thomas Pollock Burgwyn, of Craven County; William H. R. Wood, of Alabama; Thomas G. Haughton, of Edenton; Pleasant Buchanan, of Alabama; James B. Shepard, of Craven; John Gray Bynum, of Stokes County; Addi Edwin Donnel Thom, of Greensboro.

For Tuesday evening the Declaimers were James N. Neal, of Chatham; William H. Owen, of Oxford; William N. Mebane, Greensboro; Julian E. Sawyer, Elizabeth City; Thomas L. Clingman, of Surry County; Thomas W. Harris, of Halifax; John H. Haughton, of Tyrrell County; James R. Holt, of Orange.

Of the Class of 1831, numbering 15, the best in scholarship was John DeBerniere Hooper, who spoke the Latin. The Valedictory was the next highest, by Calvin Jones, of Tennessee. Next to him was Jacob Thompson. His subject was, “Inducements to the men of talents to improve their powers.” Then was Lemuel B. Powell, who spoke on “National Pride”; then Giles Mebane, on the Most Effectual Means of Promoting National Wealth, and Thomas J. Pitchford, on the Advantages Derived from the Study of Natural History. Then came John L. Hargrove, on the Influence of America on the Future of Europe; James O. Stedman, on Christianity as a Civilizer; John H. Haughton, on Christianity and Civil Liberty; Thomas F. Jones, on the Intellect of the North American Indians; Samuel B. Stephens, on the Fine Arts; and Thomas P. Armstrong, on the great question, “Ought the Legislature to Provide for Public Liberal Education?”; Samuel S. Biddle, on the effect of multiplying Colleges on Education; Michael W. Holt, on the Community of Interests between North and South American Republics. After this, the following subjects were debated: “Is the Salic law correct in principle and practice?”, by Charles C. Wilson and Thomas W. Harris; “Are Honorary Distinctions in College expedient?”, by Stephen S. Sorsby and Thomas E. Taylor; “Is the character of the Athenians or Spartans more worthy of admiration?”, by George Hairston and Thomas E. Taylor; “Can a Christian properly become a Soldier by profession?”, by Thomas W. Harris and Rufus M. Roseborough; “Would it be expedient for the United States to employ Exploring Expeditions for the advancement of Science?”, by Thomas B. Hill and Richard H. Smith; “Is National Calumny properly an Occasion of War by the Law of Nations?”, Cadwallader Jones, Stephen S. Sorsby and Samuel A. Williams.

These are the most pretentious Commencement Day exercises on record. All had places on the programme except Doak and Grant, probably absent. Some spoke twice, as seen above.

The honor men did well in after life. Hooper was Tutor and then Professor successively of Latin, of Modern Languages, and of Greek and French in the University. Jones was a Professor in the University of Alabama and Chancellor of West Tennessee. Thompson was Tutor, lawyer, Congressman from Mississippi, Governor, Secretary of the Interior, Inspector-General of the Confederate States. Powell was a physician of reputation. Giles Mebane was an able and upright member of the Legislature, President of the Senate; Thomas J. Pitchford a prominent physician and State Senator.

Among other strong men was James Grant, a Judge of the Superior Court of Iowa and a benefactor of the University.

The only honorary degree was that of Master of Arts, conferred on John Tate, of North Carolina.

The Oration before the two Societies was delivered by Rev. Wm. Mercer Green, Rector of the Episcopal Church in Hillsboro, of the Dialectic Society, a graduate of 1818.

During the week, on the 22d of June, 1831, an organization was made of the friends of education into an association called “The North Carolina Institute of Education.” A constitution and by-laws were adopted on motion of Benjamin M. Smith of Milton, who explained the objects of the Association in a highly interesting and appropriate address. Doctor Simmons J. Baker, of Martin, was unanimously elected President, and Wm. McPheeters, D.D., of Raleigh, Rev. Wm. M. Green, and Hon. Frederick Nash, of Hillsboro, Vice-Presidents. Dr. Walter A. Norwood, of Hillsboro, was Recording Secretary, and Mr. Wm. J. Bingham, Corresponding Secretary. The Executive Committee were Professors Mitchell, Wm. Hooper, and James Phillips of the University. The Committee met and elected Hon. Alfred Moore, of Orange, Orator for 1832.

Lectures were appointed to be given at the Commencement of 1832, as follows: On Imperfections in “Teaching in Primary Schools,” by Prof. Wm. Hooper; on “Elocution, with Particular Reference to Reading,” by H. S. Ellenwood, of Hillsboro; on “Lyceums and Similar Institutions,” by James D. Johnson, of Oxford. The subject selected for discussion was, “The Period Necessary for Preparing for College.”

The Corresponding Secretary was directed to obtain for the Institute the “Annals of Education,” and five copies of the “Educational Reporter,” afterwards reduced to one copy.

In the summer of 1829, some of the students formed themselves into a Temperance Society. It had a marked effect in causing a decline in the drinking of spirituous liquors. In 1831, Professor Mitchell delivered a very able discourse before the University at the request of the Society. It was printed, and the strength of his argument and the excellence of the style extended the reputation of the speaker. By the kindness of a friend, I have a copy, and quote a few sentences which vividly portray the downward career of the drunkard.

“It seems hardly necessary to state in detail how fatal are habits of Intemperance to the poor wretch who has become their victim. Standing perhaps high in the society of which he is a member, he finds the respect with which an antecedent life of virtue, temperance, and integrity have been rewarded, passing silently away, like the snows of spring beneath the influence of the sun. The old, whose conduct used to show how highly they prized his friendship, and the young, who were once so eager to exhibit evidence of their esteem and regard, now pass him by without more than a cold and distant salutation. His opinions no longer have the same weight in cases of doubt and perplexity. His neighbors think that a cloud has settled down upon his judgment, and darkened that mental eye once so clear and keen. * * * His affairs are involved in confusion and disorder, and either his schemes are not laid with his usual sagacity, or the turns of accident or misfortune are very much against him. He finds that he has lost a portion of his power for both physical and mental exertion. His family appear melancholy and dejected, and it is in vain that he wakes up all his wit and tries to revive their drooping spirit. They used to meet him when he returned from a distance with countenances lighted up with smiles and welcome home the protector, husband, friend, and father. But the time comes at length when his wife and children no longer rejoice at his return, but, as he approaches they stand silent; their hearts wrung with unuttered sorrow, and turn away their eyes and refuse to look upon the ruin and degradation of what was once so venerable and lovely. Oh, if there be one thing beneath the circuit of the sky, of which there is any hope that it will awaken the strong feelings of nature that are either asleep or dead within him, and rouse him to one last despairing effort to shake off his chains and regain his freedom, it is that distress of his family. But often, as we know, even that is unavailing. The voice of the strong appetite he has created is stronger than the voice of nature, and the mansion that has hitherto been the abode of love and peace, becomes the very scene of his excesses, and when his brain is heated to frenzy, the arm of violence is perhaps raised against a woman—the wife of his bosom, or against those children, who should be the object of his tenderest love. But why pursue the melancholy story, the particulars of which from the unhappy frequency of their occurrence, are but too well known to us all? Why speak of the ruin of his credit, the wasting of his property, the quarrels (with his best friends, too,) into which he is betrayed, when petulant and ill-natured through the effect of intoxication? His friends deriving no pleasure from his society, at length forsake him. His estate is squandered, and his children (because the wealth that should have come down to them from their ancestors, is intercepted in its descent by the author of their being, whom the law of nature that binds even the brute creation, required to be their friend and protector), are driven away to seek their fortune in some foreign land or distant shore.

“The poor wretch himself feels at length the access of those diseases, of which he has so long been sowing the seeds. The poison he has for years been taking into his system operates decisively. He sinks beneath a complicated load of disorders and infirmities—shall I say into a late or an early grave? An early grave, inasmuch as he has but just reached the age when the sober and temperate part of mankind are in their prime—a late one also, for he has long since ceased to be useful in the world, and ceased therefore to execute the office for which God created him, and for which his life was prolonged from day to day.”

“If the youth of a country be neglected, no matter what may be its physical advantages, or the form of its government, its soil may be fertile as the border of the Nile, its government monarchical, aristocratical, or democratical, as you choose, that country, taken as a whole, will be poor and wretched. * * * We may borrow the pen of Draco, and write the statute book from end to end in letters of blood; we may crown the summit of every mountain and hill with a gibbet and a prison—amidst all that apparatus of law and justice, vice will present herself with a bold and unblushing countenance in the most public places, and laugh the lawgiver and judge to scorn.”

“The moral and religious education of the children of the drunkard must be miserably neglected. How will he dare to assemble his children about him to unfold and explain to them the distinctions between good and evil, vice and virtue, with their eternal sanctions—recommend the one and warn them to avoid the other—he whose conduct is an open violation of the laws and morality and religion every day he lives?”

“The mind in ancient days did not demand the application of stimulants more than the body. The orators of Greece and Rome needed not those aids to eloquence, which our modern statesmen and declaimers employ. To the poet, the fervor of his own bosom—to the philosopher the regular and natural operation of his own vigorous and unclouded mind, were fully sufficient for the production of those masterpieces of taste and wisdom which have been the admiration of every following age. The lips of Moses, the Jewish lawgiver—of David, the sweet singer of Israel—of the holy and sublime Isaiah—of the Redeemer of mankind, were never polluted by the products of distillation.”

These extracts are given because Professor Mitchell is known to have been a many-sided man in science, but it is less known that he possessed no little literary ability. As said elsewhere, his reputation as a writer of sermons and addresses was obscured by his monotonous and awkward delivery. It is worthy of notice that he believed that the ancients did not use—did not know how to make—distilled spirits, that the “strong drinks” mentioned in the Bible, meant the products of simple fermentation from honey, grain and substances other than grapes, and neither “wine” nor strong drink were much stronger than cider or ale. He states that our whiskey, brandy and other liquors did not influence the morals and happiness of mankind earlier than the end of the reign of James I. of England.

There is a notable tradition dating from this year. Peter Dromgoole of Virginia came to enter the University in 1831. He was fond of card-playing and of wild company. He was not a matriculate. He took offence at a remark of one of the professors and refused to submit to further examination. After a few days he disappeared and was never heard of afterwards. A story was started that he was killed in a duel and his body carefully concealed. His uncle, Hon. George C. Dromgoole, one of our alumni, an able lawyer, came to Chapel Hill and for weeks investigated the case. It is said that he was satisfied that there was no truth in the rumor. The room-mate of Peter, a very reputable man, Mr. John Buxton Williams, of Warren County, in a letter to the press, stated that he never heard of Peter's getting into a quarrel, and that he started from Chapel Hill in a public stage. I conclude that he was ashamed to go home, journeyed to what was then the turbulent Southwest, and was killed in a brawl or assassinated. A modern tradition originating within my knowledge places the scene of his fatal duel on Piney Prospect, and asserts that he was buried under a rounded rock on its summit. Certain stains of iron in the rock are pointed out as drops of his blood, and a still later story is that his sweetheart, Miss Fanny, hurried to stop the combat, arrived too late, went into rapid loss of reason and health, and was buried by his side. The spring at the base of the hill, where the lovers are said to have sat and cooed, bears the name of Miss Fanny's Spring. This last story is embodied in a short poem of merit by Mr. L. B. Hamberlin, an Instructor of Expression in this University, and that of Texas, and published in our University Magazine of 1892.

The persistency of belief in student circles in the Dromgoole legend and its accretions throws light on the growth of similar legends elsewhere and in the times of old. It doubtless suggested to Edwin Fuller in his novel of Sea-Gift to create a fatal duel in which De Vare was killed. Some credulous young people unblushingly avow their belief that the rains and snows of three-quarters of a century have not washed out Dromgoole's blood spots on a rounded granite rock.

At the Commencement of 1832 the address before the two Societies was delivered by Hon. William Gaston, chosen by the Philanthropic Society. It met with public favor to a most extraordinary degree. It ran through four editions, the first of 5,000, published by the Philanthropic Society, a second shortly afterwards by LaGrange College. Alabama, a third by Mr. Thomas W. Whyte at Richmond, Virginia, with a strong commendation by Chief Justice Marshall. It was also published in part in various periodicals and entire in the North Carolina University Magazine of 1844. To satisfy the popular demand, the two Societies in 1849 jointly issued a new edition.

It is remarkable that when the public mind was inflamed peculiarly on account of the bloody insurrection of Nat Turner in the preceding year the orator should have frankly avowed himself an advocate of the ultimate abolition of slavery, and that the audience cheered the utterance. “Disguise the truth as we may,” he said, “and throw the blame where we will, it is Slavery which, more than any other cause, keeps us back in the career of improvement. It stifles industry and represses enterprise—it is fatal to economy and providence—it discourages skill—it impairs our strength as a community, and poisons morals at the fountain head.” This bold language did not weaken his standing in the State. Six months afterwards, although a Roman Catholic, and the Constitution contained a clause inhibiting men of that faith from holding office, he was, by the General Assembly, elected a Supreme Court Judge. He accepted the office, being persuaded that the clause was contrary to the Declaration of Rights and therefore void. One cause of the popularity of the address was the eloquent denunciation of Disunion and praise of the Constitution, at a time when South Carolina threatened Nullification and many openly advocated Secession.

The Graduating Class had 36 members and was notable for merit. The honors were as follows: The best, Thomas L. Clingman, who had the Latin Salutatory. Next, John Haywood Parker, who had the Valedictory. Thomas S. Ashe, speaking on the Application of Steam to the Arts, being third, and James C. Dobbin, on Mental Philosophy, being fourth.

As a rule, the members were successful in after life. Of the honor men, Clingman was a Representative in Congress, and a Senator, also prominent in State legislation. He was, moreover, a Brigadier General of the Confederate States. Parker was an Episcopal clergyman of power; Ashe was a Senator of the Confederate States and Justice of the Supreme Court of this State. Dobbin was an able member of the State Legislature and Secretary of the Navy. To this class belonged Richard H. Smith, a sound lawyer, wise member of the Legislature, and Delegate to the General Conventions of the Episcopal Church; Cadwallader Jones, Solicitor for his Circuit and Colonel in the Confederate army, and John H. Haughton, a very able lawyer, and efficient in the General Assembly in shaping the legislation of the State.

Among the non-graduates was the eminent physician, Wm. F. Strudwick, of Hillsboro. Of the matriculates of 1832, Charles G. Nelms, of Anson County, after reaching the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, lost his life in the Civil War.

The honorary degree of Master of Arts was granted to Rev. Jarvis Barry Buxton, Rector of the Episcopal Church of Fayetteville, and Rev. Samuel Lyle Graham, of Virginia.

The second meeting of the North Carolina Institute of Education was on June 19, 1832. Mr. Alfred Moore delivered the Annual Address according to appointment. Rev. Dr. Wm. McPheeters and Messrs. Wm. Hooper and Wm. J. Bingham were appointed a Committee to report on questions and subjects for the next Commencement. Mr. James Grant, afterwards Judge Grant of Iowa, moved that a Committee be appointed to memorialize the Legislature on the subject of Popular Education. The motion was carried, and Wm. Gaston, Frederick Nash and David L. Swain were appointed.

The Institute adjourned until 3 o'clock, at which time was heard the lecture on Primary Schools by Prof. Wm. Hooper. It met with such favor that it was published in pamphlet form. He began by stating that good schools cannot abound in communities where all are engaged in clearing and subduing new lands. Then his first point was that the imperfections of our schools were due to the circumstances of our youth, raised amid active toil and hunting and fishing, and the slack discipline of parents. He was noted for his numerous illustrations. I give a sentence or two as showing this, and also the nicety of his scholarship. “Will it be wonderful if a youth sent from domestic indulgences, should find school ungrateful and accuse his teachers of being cruel, that he should recite with mournful recollections, and still sadder forebodings, that awful Greek verb, tupto, to beat, particularly in the passive voice, tuptomai, I am under beating now; etuptomen, I was under beating a little while ago, and then the dismal future, tuphthesomai, I shall be beaten—but above all the tenses (denoting the imminence of his dangers), tetupsomai, I shall be very soon beaten again.” He then argues for more severe training, praising the father of John Adams, the President, who, when his son was reluctant to learn Latin, put him to ditching as a punishment.

Those acquainted with college life are surprised at the intensity of earnestness felt in this microcosm, miniature world, over matters trivial in the estimation of those who move in the greater world. An abstract of a petition to the Trustees in 1833, signed by Christopher C. Battle, John H. Watson and William P. Webb, written by Battle, will illustrate this. They were a Committee appointed by a mass-meeting of students, for the purpose of procuring from the Board of Trustees permission to use a room in Steward's Hall for the Commencement Ball. The petitioners are “sensibly touched with the delicacy of presenting their petition at so early a period (November 6th), but, knowing not whether there will be another meeting of the Trustees before Commencement, the strongest motives of policy constrain their sending it in now, though stamped with the impress of prematurity.” The intellectual improvement and gentlemanly accomplishments caused by dancing would justify a special ball-room, and if the New Chapel were completed, they would have asked permission to fit up the old Chapel for the purpose at their own expense. It would be extreme presumption to argue the propriety of balls, since the Trustees “deduce conclusions from the wisdom of experience.” No genius, however promising, can effect much in the present enlightened era, destitute of the polished accomplishments.—Since on this retired Hill of Science, we are precluded from the improvement of Society, we feel an inevitable drawback upon our literary acquirements. As balls greatly promote gentility, acquiescence in the petition is earnestly asked for. Waiving all personal concern, we strenuously advocate its principles as promoting the best interests of the institution, as enhancing the splendors of our Commencements, and as contributing much, very much, to the gratification and pleasure of the adored Fair, who honor us with their company on that universal jubilee.”

The Trustees could not stand against such eloquence. The Ball Managers in their gratification concluded to send special invitations to all the great men in the State. Young Battle (a brother of Judge Battle) wrote to the Governor, Swain, a personal letter, asking him to attend the Ball, “in order to give dignity and stability” to it. The Governor replied, regretting that he could not attend, and suggested that “agility” would be more needed than “stability.” Battle was so afraid of this becoming known to the students, that he made his colleague, Judge Webb, promise to keep the correspondence secret, which he did faithfully until after their graduation.

In 1833, Tutor John DeBerniere Hooper resigned his place in order to become a teacher in the Episcopal School in Raleigh, which had been inaugurated with great promise of usefulness, which however for various causes failed as a school for boys, but afterwards as St. Mary's Girls' School became a power for good. The Sophomore Class passed resolutions, which show the strong hold the Tutor had on their admiration.. The letter of the Committee accompanying the resolutions is such a characteristic specimen of the peculiar style which has given the name of Sophomoric to a species of Oratory, that I quote some sentences. In truth, no history of a University would be complete without embalming a specimen of such euphuism. The praises, though grandiloquently expressed, were well deserved.

“In every day occupations Farewell has an awful and ill-boding sound in it, but when we reflect that we are now about to be parted, and perhaps forever, with one who has labored so diligently for our present happiness and future aggrandisement, and who, by his own example of piety and virtue, has also pointed out to us the bright and glittering paths of morality, we are constrained to transcend the usual cold formalities of separation and bid you that word bearing in its aspect our true expressions of grief in a valedictory letter.” . . . “Now since we are all in the glow of youth and health, and have ample opportunity, let us take an affectionate and deep-impressioned farewell, such a one as long-cherished friends take when they part with the expectation of meeting no more on this side of eternity. Working out the great course of Nature, some dire pestilence may sweep across our country and fell you or us, and perhaps both; war and famine may hurry us into oblivion, or an earthquake may submerge us; to part we must, and whether we ever again shall meet is on the fluctuating tides of chance, therefore let us part as convicts doomed to die, but not despairing of hope. To the reckless and unthinking this may indeed appear more the outward expressions of grief than the spontaneous emotions of sorrow-stricken hearts, but they should recollect that we are about to bid adieu to him that has so honorably conducted us through the Sophomore year, to him that has laid the foundations of our future eminence, to him that has connected the beauties of the scholar and the refinements of the gentleman. It belongs alone to the viper to implant his fangs in the bosom that warmed him, but to a man who is endowed with the finer sensibilities of his God, it belongs to repay in a two-fold proportion every generous and benevolent action.” . . . “Now, in all the emotions which the word naturally suggests, we bid you an affectionate ‘farewell.’ In the name of the whole class, ‘farewell.’ ”

It was in 1833 that Messrs. Gaston and Badger gave the opinion that the Board had the right to sell the “service tract” of Maj. Charles Garrard, at the mouth of Yellow Creek in Tennessee, notwithstanding the wish expressed in his will that it should be retained by the University. Colonel Polk as attorney made the sale, $6,400 for the 2,560 acres, and $2,000 of the proceeds was voted to the finishing of the new Chapel. It was resolved, that in order to manifest a grateful sense of the liberality of the donor and perpetuate his memory of it, this building be forever known as Gerrard Hall. Col. J. B. Killebrew, the late very intelligent ex-State Geologist of Tennessee, informed me that the tract is not of especial fertility, and that the iron deposits once reported to be in its limits are of little value.

In 1832 the list of attorneys for the University was revised. On motion of Louis D. Henry the requirement of a bond was dispensed with, as being unusual, and sometimes mischievous, because excluding superior lawyers, who consider the requirement a reflection on their professional character. I give their names as a matter of history. The numbers begin in the mountain counties.

No. 1. Joshua Roberts Asheville 2. Anderson Mitchell Statesville 3. Robert H. Burton Lincolnton 4. Washington Morrison Mecklenburg 5. Clement Marshall Anson 6. John M. Dick Greensboro 7. John W. Norwood Hillsboro 8. John D. Eccles Fayetteville 9. John D. Hawkins Franklin County 10. Thomas P. Devereux Raleigh 11. William D. Mosely Lenoir County 12. Hardy L. Holmes Clinton 13. Joseph A. Hill Wilmington 14. Matthias E. Manly Newbern 15. Benj. J. Blume 16. Joseph R. Lloyd Tarboro 17. John S. Hawks Washington 18. John L. Bailey Elizabeth City

In the same year the Board sold at public auction their 243 shares in the Bank of New Bern. The average price per share was 63.10 1-2, the purchasers being Col. Wm. Polk and Messrs. John Snead and Alfred Jones. The purchase money, $15,208.56, was at once paid on the debts to the Bank of New Bern and the State Bank, leaving only $1,500 due the branch of the Bank of New Bern at Raleigh.

President Caldwell's disease proved to be beyond the surgeons' skill, and caused him excruciating pain the remainder of his life. Possessed of remarkable fortitude, he did not at once lay down his accustomed work. In December, 1833, the disease had made such ravages on his strength that for the first time he asked for help. At his suggestion it was ordered that when the President was unable by failure of health to take a personal and active part in preventing disorders in and among the College Buildings and the vicinity, the professor of oldest standing should be peculiarly vested with the responsibility and power to aid in the active duties of the Presidency. Thus Elisha Mitchell was at first partially, and then entirely, the acting President until the advent of President Swain.

Although President Caldwell insisted on doing his part in instruction, the Trustees determined to relieve him to some extent. On motion of Wm. Julius Alexander, an Adjunct Professorship of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy was created, with a salary of $1,000, soon raised to $1,240. The Standing Committee of Appointments elected Walker Anderson to the Chair. The house expected to be purchased from Thomas H. Taylor, that east of the Episcopal Church, was promised to him.

The following by-laws, regulating the conduct of students, were the last proposed by President Caldwell, and they, together with that above mentioned, in regard to the Senior Professor, show clearly his disciplinary ideas.

A mandate was laid on every member of the Faculty to be vigilant in carrying out the laws of the College, and to report transgressions.

It was declared to be a great object of the Trustees in assigning rooms in the buildings to Tutors, that they should individually and unitedly suppress disorders, not only in their own, but in all the buildings. They could not be absent without permission of the President.

The Tutors must go to their recitation rooms a reasonable time before the bell rings and teach the whole hour, unless bell for dismission should sound earlier.

Among other provisions, after several years of entreaty on the part of the Seniors, the vacation asked for by them of one month prior to Commencement, was granted. This became the settled practice for years, to the great satisfaction of those who had speeches to prepare for Commencement, and the delight of those to whom text-books were a torment.

As Professor Wm. Hooper owned his dwelling and Prof. Anderson rented one, they were allowed a commutation of $75 per annum, which was about the rental of the best houses in Chapel Hill.

Our modern football has not unrivalled distinction of peril to life and limb. The President reported that the favorite game of the students, known as Bandy, or Shinny, was dangerous, especially if played with a round wooden ball. The players were frequently knocked apparently lifeless and were incapacitated for duty several days. The students themselves were once so shocked that they voluntarily gave up the sport, but renewed it. It was so firmly established by prescription that the Faculty doubted their power of prohibiting it without the previous action of the Board, which action, however, was not had.

Rev. Dr. Wm. McPheeters, the Principal of the flourishing Raleigh Academy, earnestly pressed raising the standard for admission into the University. This was acceded to, and the following requirements were enacted.

In Mathematics, the whole of Arithmetic (Barnard's or Adam's) and Young's Algebra to Simple Equations. In the Classics, Jacob's Greek Reader, the whole of the prose; or Græca Minora and the latter part of Jacob's Greek Reader; the whole of Virgil, and Cicero's Select Orations, except the Philippics.

The work of the Faculty was assigned as follows:

President Caldwell to hear each week (if his health permit, and if not, Professor Anderson to hear for him), three recitations; Professor Anderson, six recitations; Professor Mitchell, eight recitations; Professor Hooper, eight recitations; Professor Phillips, eight recitations; three Tutors, each nine recitations.

For the coming session the President, or Dr. Mitchell, was to appoint three Tutors, temporarily, but from and after the 1st of January, 1835, the Trustees were to appoint three, at a salary of $500 each. One should be styled Tutor of Ancient and Modern Languages, one of Ancient Languages, and the third of Mathematics.

In 1834 there was published by Isaac C. Partridge, under the auspices of the Faculty, a weekly newspaper called the Harbinger. The terms were $3.00 if paid in advance, $4.00 if delayed six months, the publication being conditioned on obtaining six hundred subscribers.

The objects of this novel enterprise, as stated in the Prospectus, were very ambitious and patriotic,—“to diffuse literary information with correct taste, to impress the importance of popular and academic education, and explain the best methods discreetly but with independent freedom of stricture; to discuss subjects on which it is important to enlighten the public mind; to furnish events and circumstances occurring among ourselves, that deserve notice; to exhibit science in popular form that will solicit curiosity and be generally intelligible; to promote the cause of Internal Improvement; and to give a competent portion of the political and religious intelligence of the time, with studious exclusion of all party character.”

The opinion is expressed that the public had long expected such a publication from the site of the University, “the express purpose of which is to cultivate and diffuse valuable knowledge, such as is already treasured up and is constantly increasing with the progress of the age.”

Fears are expressed as to the promptness of remittances, which was all the more necessary, “as the enterprise will be wholly without profit except the necessary remuneration to the publishers and his employees. A periodical paper in all its movements must by the very terms run against time, and every experienced and reflecting man knows the truth expressed by Dr. Johnson, that he, who enters the lists with time for his antagonist, must toil with diligence not to find himself beaten. Every one who favors the Harbinger with his patronage we hope will do it with presence of mind to the importance of fidelity in his remittance. On this the establishment must depend for its support.”

Then the publisher comes in with a modest disclaimer that he “would not enlarge on the qualities of the proposed periodical even to excite in the bosom of his fellow citizens a disposition to give it countenance and support, lest while consulting that object, he might seem to expose himself to the charge of making vain promises, or raise expectations too high to be fulfilled. But that a paper of such a character, as perhaps has been already imagined in the minds of his readers, is desirable in our State, he cannot but think few will deny.”

The prospectus closes with the request that all to whom copies have been sent will not only subscribe for themselves, but procure subscriptions from others. Moreover, the publisher naively asks all the papers in the United States not only to copy it, but to act as agents to further its object. It is dated January 26, 1833, and it was hoped to begin publication by the first of the following June.

We do not have a file of the Harbinger, but fragments of it were cut out and pasted in a book, from which we are enabled to get a glimpse of its character. Judging from the subjects discussed and the style, the mixture of humor and gravity, Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Wm. Hooper were evidently the chief contributors. I give abstracts of some of the leading articles.

There is a very intelligent paper on “The Stars,” suggested by the great fall of meteors on the night of November 13, 1833. The writer suggested that they were “Terrible indications of war—between certain members of the editorial corps in North Carolina” (a Raleigh editor had recently felled another with a bludgeon), or “the Legislature are going to have a stormy session,” or, by their laws, “wage fatal war upon the best interests of their constituents.” This ridicule was then useful, as many ignorant people were really frightened. The article then treats, 1st of Lightning, 2nd, of “Fire-balls or proper Meteors,” 3rd, of the Aurora Borealis, 4th, of Shooting Stars, 5th, of Ignis Fatuus, 6th, of San Elmos. The first is pronounced the most dangerous of all. As to the Fire Balls, after giving three hypotheses, the author believes in a fourth, that they are terrestrial comets, which, becoming visible to us when in their perigeum, and, electrified passing through the atmosphere, discharge their electricity with an explosion that rends off part of their mass, and pass on. Shooting stars are very common, but never so brilliant as on the morning of the 13th November, 1833. The author, however, thinks their number was exaggerated, as he saw only one at intervals of two or three seconds, but greater numbers may have fallen earlier in the night. Of the Aurora Borealis, he states that it was so brilliant on the night of September 28, 1828, in Paris that the fire companies turned out and drove furiously through the streets, thinking the city was on fire. It is produced by “electricity in motion, we cannot tell why or how.” Of the Ignis Fatuus, he says that he has been tempted to pronounce it a delusion, but its appearance is too well authenticated to be doubted. The chemist can form nothing like it. It is “like rotten wood, which according to our theories ought not to be luminous, but it shines notwithstanding.” There is a note here which resembles the style of Dr. Mitchell laughing at the Professor of Ancient Languages. “The words (Jack-o'-the-Lantern, Will-o'-the-Wisp) will afford to the future investigator of the English tongue, when it shall have become a dead language, an ample field for dissertation. If we may be allowed to substitute the signs of the dialects of Greece for those he will use, we may suppose him to state that the original form was Jackwithalantern, which became Ionice, Jackothelantern; Doric, Jackomelantern; Attic, Jackalantern. He will also remark, that Willwithawisp is altogether irregular, from an obsolete root, as Haireo makes eilon in the second aorist.” San Elmo is a Spanish name for a meteor of electric origin. When there were two the ancients called them Castor and Pollux.

On January 2, 1835, the Trustees determined to place the management of the University in the hands of an Executive Committee of seven Trustees, of whom the President of the Board (the Governor), should be ex officio, a member, the other six to be elected annually by the Board; the Secretary of the Board to be Secretary of the Committee.

Their powers were:

1. All those of the Land Committee, of the Committee of Appointments, and the Building Committee.

The lands bequeathed to the University by Major Charles Gerrard had all been sold, but the 20,000 acres donated by Governor Benjamin Smith still remained. Of these 15,000 acres were well night unsalable, almost of no value. They had been shaken up by the great earthquake, called by the settlers “the Shake,” and were largely covered by the waters of the Obion river, which in places formed extensive lakes and swamps. Other portions were rocky and unfit for cultivation. After much negotiation 42,345 83-100 acres at one dollar per acre, and the 20,000 Smith acres at seventy cents an acre were sold to Messrs. Orme and Gifford, of Boston, for a Northern company, and the $56,345.83 purchase money was paid by drafts on New York and Philadelphia.

This sale included all the University land except three tracts, which were in litigation, and eight other parcels aggregating 5,020 acres, which Secretary Manly expressed the desire to purchase for himself on such terms as the Executive Committee should deem fair. He made collections of bonds for rent of part of the Gerrard lands due before their sale, $543.48 and “a tolerable good work horse and three mule colts.” “Finding the animals rather inconvenient baggage for a stage coach, he converted them into cash at the price of $204.”

The Secretary highly praised the fidelity, energy and accuracy of his associate, and gave a statement of his accounts from 1822 to the period of their joint action. He had sold 59,319 acres for $160,147.05, and had paid into the University Treasury $69,618.94, having disbursed on warrants of the Land and Building Committee, fees to attorneys, taxes on lands held under the Resolution warrants, his own compensation and other contingencies, $23,613.96, showing uncollected $81,079.71 and $10,309.13 interest; total uncollected $91,388.90.

The Secretary and Treasurer then gives a condensed statement of the financial condition of the University November 21, 1835:

Cash in the Treasury $77,235.99 Bonds for lands sold, in the hands of Col. Dickens 91,388.90 Bonds of one Kelly for land 1,500.00 Bonds for rent of Gerrard lands before sale 533.48 Interest of Trustees in litigated lands 1,000.00 Making an aggregate of $171,658.37

It seems proper to give a history of the Library up to the death of President Caldwell. I am aided by an eight-page pamphlet on the subject published by Fisk P. Brewer (A. B. Yale), Professor of Greek in this University, 1869-70.

In the charter of the University the importance of a Library is indicated by the direction that it shall be called by the name of its largest donor. As no one appeared to claim the honor, after about fifty years, the building was called after Governor Benjamin Smith, on account of his gift to the infant institution. The first book given was a folio copy of Bishop Wilson's works, one of a number presented to Congress by his son and by that body distributed to the States. The resolution of Congress March 22, 1785, is recited on the fly-leaf and then the following: “In pursuance of the above resolution the undersigned, delegates from the State of North Carolina, have agreed to transmit the works of Dr. Thomas Wilson to Newberne, to be deposited there in the Library, belonging to the Public Academy, till the time arrives, which they hope is not far distant, when the wisdom of the Legislature, according to the express intention of the Constitution, shall have caused a College or University to be erected in the State. HU. WILLIAMSON, JNO. SITGREAVES.

The next donation was by the “Father of the University,” Wm. Richardson Davie, thirty-nine volumes of such histories as those of Hume and Gibbon. Richard Bennehan gave eight volumes and Joseph Blount Hill an Encyclopedia of eighteen volumes.

Next came Rev. James Hall, D.D., the Revolutionary captain of cavalry, with forty-nine volumes. Joseph Gautier of Bladen County, a lawyer of ability and a State Senator, bequeathed by will his library of about 100 volumes, mostly in the French language. Besides public documents, nearly one hundred others contributed by Judge John Williams, James Reid of Wilmington, David Ker, first presiding professor; Abraham Hodge, the editor, of Halifax; the Centre Benevolent Society of Iredell, through Rev. Samuel E. McCorckle, D.D.; Francis N. W. Burton of Murfreesborough, Tenn.; Wm. Henry Hill, representative in Congress, of Wilmington; Edward Jones, Wilmington and Chatham County, Solicitor General; and General Calvin Jones of Wake and then of Tennessee. In 1812 it was reported that there were in the Society libraries 800 to 1,000 volumes and in the University library 1,500.

In 1803 it was enacted by the Board that every student should be considered as using the public library and should pay a tax for the privilege. The fee was fifty cents per term or one dollar per annum. This was doubled in 1813. We have a record of 174 books bought with this fund in the three years ending 1816. Afterward in 1824 there is a mention of forty-three volumes and sixty-four numbers of journals purchased for $350.25. As there is no further mention of receipts from the source it is probable that the tax was abolished, the students using their funds for the building up of the Society libraries.

Among the regulations were the following: A borrowed book could be kept out three weeks. Only juniors and seniors could take an Encyclopedia. The Faculty fixed the price of “hiring books,” i. e., those text-books which were kept on hand for this purpose. Of course injuries to books must be paid for.

The Librarian's salary was one-half the fees. His duties were light. The library was for some years in the President's house, in the room at the head of the stairs; afterward in the University building.

There were few works which undergraduates cared to read. The late Judge Battle said that it was a matter of pride to borrow them, and then use them as dead-falls for the swarming mice. The tall tomes of St. Augustine were as efficacious in slaughtering these troublesome rodents as was their great author in crushing the religious heresies of his day.

In 1822 the Faculty reported to the Trustees that the chief need of the institution was the procurement of books and apparatus. If five thousand or even one thousand dollars should be at once expended for this it would be a great relief of the distressing want. In 1824 President Caldwell went into the subject at length and earnestly. He began by testifying to the usefulness of the purchases made out of the library fees. He urged that it is perhaps hardly considered that a Professor in a College, who is without books in a tolerable supply, is analagous to the creation of nobility, which for want of estate is obliged to live in rags. He compared the bookless professor to a lawyer without copies of the statutes and reports of decisions. So a Professor of a College should “employ his whole time and utmost diligence in the extension of his knowledge by the examination and study of the multitude of authors who have written upon the subjects upon which it is his business to teach and deliver lectures.” He then gave illustrations of shoemakers without awls and lasts, of carpenters without planes and chisels, and printers with one or two fonts of worn-out type. “We have, however,” he said “been greatly relieved by the resource furnished by the library money, with which we have had it in our power to furnish some supplies of that species of food on which, as instructors, we are called upon to subsist and grow.”

Dr. Caldwell then asked for $6,000 for books and apparatus for instruction, offering to go in person to Europe at his own expense to make the purchases. As had been stated the offer was accepted, the money to be equally divided between additions to the library and apparatus. The books, 979 in number, were placed in the library by December, 1825. Donations were made by a bookseller in London of Thuanus in six folio volumes and fifty-four volumes by the British and Foreign Bible Societies.

In 1827 the Board expressed its intention to appropriate $250 per annum for additions to the library, abolishing the $1 tax on students, but owing to want of funds no purchases were made. Each professor sent in a list of works needed in his department, but there was no response. Dr. Mitchell recommended nine, including Gillie's History of the World. In expectation of an up-to-date collection it was enacted that a student should not take a book from the shelves. It must be delivered by the Librarian. Each Tutor in turn was to be Librarian.

The Record Commission of the English Government from 1833 to 1841 donated to the University eighty-three folios and twenty-four octavos, which was accompanied by twelve books and many pamphlets written or edited by Charles Parton Cooper, the Secretary of the Commission. Among the books presented by the Commission is a copy of the Domesday Book, compiled by order of William, the Conqueror.

In 1836 Professor Mitchell journeyed to the North for the purpose of examining a mineralogical collection. He reported that the greatest need of the University was books, philosophical apparatus, cabinets of minerals, rocks and shells, for which eight or ten thousand dollars should be expended. “We have a professorship of modern languages,” he said, “and with the exception of a broken copy of Voltaire's works and some old books of controversy between the Catholics and Protestants, presented many years ago by Gautier of Elizabeth, in Bladen, have hardly a French work—in Italian, Spanish and Portugese we have nothing. Books are continually published in the different departments of science and learning, which the professors must have, without which the library of the University can not be respectable.”

On the 27th of January, 1835, the sufferings of President Caldwell were ended. His death brought grief to the officers and alumni of the University, and to the friends of education and enlightened progress throughout the land. He had stood by the cradle of the University, had worked for it through its infancy up to strong manhood; had been the most potent factor in placing it on the highest table-land of Southern institutions. He had lived to see its pupils in all positions of usefulness and honor throughout our Southland, and he had their profound admiration. He had won the position of educational headship in our State. He was the recognized authority on matters connected with mathematical and astronomical questions.

The early history of Dr. Caldwell has been already given.

As a preacher, although not eloquent, he was an orthodox and fervid expounder of Christian principles. Some of his sermons were sought for with a view to publication, and a few, notably that on the death of Washington and at the funeral of Prof. Samuel A. Holmes, were printed in pamphlet form by admiring hearers. His style was elevated, too diffuse for modern taste, yet highly appreciated by his contemporaries.

Dr. Caldwell was on several occasions driven into print on account of attacks on himself for alleged aristocratic views, and on the institution under his charge. His adversaries found that he wielded with potency the weapons of ridicule and of sarcasm.

In his private relations he was neighborly, amiable and beloved. His accomplished and able step-son, Rev. Dr. William Hooper, has shown how the grave, almost stern, University President, at home disdained not the relaxation of genial humor, radiated happiness around him, was affectionate and kindly to all from his brilliant wife to the humblest slave.

He wrote a series of letters to the public over the nom de plume of Carlton, advocating, with much wealth of argument and information, gathered during his visit to Europe, and by reading, the construction of railroads. This gained for him the reputation of being one of the fathers of internal improvements in our State. He advocated with similar intelligence and ability common school education and thus took rank with Judge Murphey and Bartlett Yancey as a pioneer in this great work. It has been mentioned that he was the State astronomer in locating part of the Southern boundary of the State.

It was in recognition of his services to the State and its institutions that the General Assembly of 1841 conferred on a Piedmont county the name of Caldwell, the only county which honors a teacher.

Dr. Caldwell was a man brave and strong, of tireless energy, a scholar yet a man of action, stern in discipline, yet of kindly heart, a true Christian, firm in his Presbyterian convictions, but never intolerant towards others, a preacher fervent and forcible, a teacher patient and inspiring.

The following resolutions of the Trustees, whom he served, have the merit of truth without exaggeration:

The reply of Mrs. Caldwell is in excellent taste: