Part 11

His greatest and most persevering exertions, however, were devoted to the subject of internal improvement. His reports and memoir on that and kindred topics were examined with high commendation in the year 1822, in an article in the North American Review, then under the editorial charge of the Hon. Edward Everett. It must be borne in mind that in that day the modern resource of the railroad for transportation at long distances had entered the contemplation of no one in Europe or America; sluices, canals and turnpike roads were the only improvements deemed to be practical. To effect these in the most approved methods, Mr. Hamilton Fulton, an engineer of much reputation, was brought into the service of the State from Europe, at a salary of twelve hundred pounds sterling ($6,000) per annum, who made surveys of all the harbors and rivers, and of many routes for roads in all sections of the State. The main features of the plan of Mr. Murphy, and to which he obtained the approbation of Mr. Fulton, after the improvement of inlets at Nag's Head (if practicable), Ocracoke, Beaufort, Swansborough, and Wilmington, consisted in opening for batteau navigation the rivers Roanoke, Tar, Neuse, Cape Fear, Yadkin, Catawba, Broad, and sundry tributaries, and by canals to join the Roanoke and Tar or Pamlico, and Neuse, so as to ship the productions of the country watered by each of them from Beaufort; and to unite by similar means the Cape Fear with Lumber River, and at a more northerly point with the Yadkin, and the Yadkin with the Catawba, so as to bring to the mouth of the Cape Fear the commerce of our whole watershed trending from the Blue Ridge, except that of Broad River (which was to be opened into South Carolina), and thus making commercial marts of Fayetteville and Wilmington. Places and sections more remote from these waters were to be supplied by roads. The boldness and comprehensiveness of this plan, providing, as it proposed to do, for the whole State, with the only facilities then known to science, must be seen by all. Whether it was practicable, and if so, at what cost, was a question for engineers. It was in all probability practicable at a cost not exceeding the amount which up to this time the State has invested in railroads, and if accomplished it would evidently have been a great advance beyond the cart and wagon, then the only means of transportation in use. Its very comprehensiveness, however, was probably the reason of its failure. To conciliate favor, inadequate appropriations for various parts of it in all sections of the State were made at once, and work was commenced under incompetent supervision, which resulted in failure. After a few years' trial the whole was abandoned, and the engineer, whose salary had at no time been less than twice that of the Governor of the State, was discharged. Its miscarriage is the less to be regretted since the iron rail and steam car, then undeveloped in the womb of time, would have superseded, if not supplanted, the most perfect works which it contemplated, so far as regards inland transportation at least. But the fame of its author as a patriot, statesman and sage should not be dimmed by mistakes or failures in the details of its execution or the advances made in the science of engineering in a subsequent age. The expenditures upon it from the State treasury, including the salaries of the principal engineer and assistants, did not exceed $50,000, and this was repaid tenfold in the topographical and statistical information which it elicited and caused to be published, and in the loyal and true North Carolina patriotism aroused by Mr. Murphy's discussions of the subject in the hearts of her people. We have recurred to this matter of expenditure with some care, for the reason that before the subject of internal improvement became popular in the State, it was the custom of its opponents to hold up Mr. Murphy's scheme of improvements as a kind of South Sea Bubble, from which the treasury had been well-nigh rendered bankrupt.

While immersed in endeavors to press forward those projects of improvement, and at the same time assiduously laboring in his profession, either as a judge on the bench or a lawyer at the bar, Mr. Murphy conceived the purpose of writing the history of his native State. He had studied her interests by every light of political economy and every record of the past within his reach, was personally acquainted with nearly every citizen of intelligence, and his talents, public spirit and engaging manners had rendered him a favorite among the surviving officers and soldiers of the Revolution. This latter circumstance had made him acquainted with the traditions of that period, and the great injustice by omission and commission which the State had suffered at the hands of the writers of history. He seems to have undertaken this task with the same motives of zealous patriotism which had inspired his legislative action. In a letter to General Joseph Graham, of Lincoln, dated July 20, 1821, he says:

"Your letter to Colonel Conner first suggested to me the plan of a work which I will execute if I live. It is a work on the history, soil, climate, legislation, civil institutions, literature, etc., of this State. Soon after reading your letter I turned my attention to the subject in the few hours which I could snatch from business, and was surprised to find what abundant materials could, with care and diligence, be collected--materials which if well disposed would furnish matter for one of the most interesting works that has been published in this country. We want such a work. We neither know ourselves nor are we known to others. Such a work, well executed, would add very much to our standing in the Union, and make our State respectable in our own eyes. Amidst the cares and anxieties which surround me, I cannot cherish a hope that I could do more than merely guide the labors of some man who would take up the work after me and prosecute it to perfection. I love North Carolina, and love her more because so much injustice has been done to her. We want pride. We want independence. We want magnanimity. Knowing nothing of ourselves, we have nothing in our history to which we can turn with conscious pride. We know nothing of our State and care nothing about it. We want some great stimulus to put us all in motion, and induce us to waive little jealousies, and combine in one general march to one great purpose."

His habits of labor, his readiness as a writer, and addiction to literary exercise as a pleasure, the philosophical cast of his mind, and above all, his sentiment of devotion to North Carolina, eminently fitted him for this enterprise; and he seems to have entered upon it with his characteristic industry and zeal. He gathered materials for the work from a great variety of sources, public and private, within and without the State. At his instance the Legislature, through the intervention of Mr. Gallatin, then the Minister of the United States in Great Britain, caused the office of the Board of Trade and Plantations and the State Paper Office in London to be explored, and an index of the documents therein, pertaining to our colonial history, to be furnished; literary men in other States, including Mr. Madison and Mr. Jefferson, readily seconded his efforts by supplying information sought of them; the families of deceased public men in the State, including those of Governor Burke, Governor Samuel Johnston, and Mr. Hooper, opened all their papers to his inspection; and many officers of the Revolution, then living, among whom were Colonel William Polk, General Lenoir, Major Donoho, of Caswell, General Graham, and divers others, undertook to contribute to him their personal reminiscences of the war. The memoranda of the gentleman last named, prepared in accordance with a request of Mr. Murphy, were given to the public in the pages of our _University Magazine_ in the year 1856. Upon application of Mr. Murphy, by memorial, the General Assembly at the session of 1826 granted him authority to raise by lottery a sufficient sum for the publication of his contemplated history, the plan of which he set forth in detail. We regret that we have not at hand a copy of this memorial to lay before our readers the outline of the work as then prepared. It was more voluminous, and embraced a greater variety of topics than would have been preferred by the generality of readers, but its very magnitude showed the comprehension of his genius and the intrepidity of his mind. Beyond one or two chapters on the Indian tribes of the State, he appears to have done but little towards its composition, though his collection of materials, directing attention to the subject, and rescuing from oblivion much that was passing away, rendered the undertaking itself a great public benefit. Decayed health and a ruined fortune arrested him in mid-career, put a stop to his favorite enterprise, and clouded with poverty and adversity the evening of his days.

Among his public employments may be classed his mission to Tennessee as the representative of the University in 1822. The chief endowments of the University from the State consisted in escheats, or the estates of persons dying without heirs or next of kin, which passed to the State by a prerogative of sovereignty. In her deed of cession to the United States of her Tennessee territory, North Carolina had reserved the right to satisfy the claims of her citizens for military service in the army of the Revolution, by grants of land in the ceded territory, and where her soldiers had died leaving no heirs, or none who appeared and made claim within a limited period, their titles were considered as escheats, and vested by law in the Board of Trustees, and warrants were issued by the authorities of North Carolina, in the names of such soldiers for the benefit of the institution. The State of Tennessee took exception to these proceedings of North Carolina, alleging that they were in conflict with the provisions of the deed of cession, and, since her admission into the Union, with her sovereign rights as an independent State. The controversy became a serious one, and Mr. Murphy was sent to confer with the Legislature of Tennessee respecting it, in the year 1822. He was received with the courtesy due to his high character and the important interest he represented, and was heard upon the subject at the bar of the Legislature on two successive days. An adjustment of the dispute succeeded, by which a portion of the claims of the University were yielded for the benefit of a similar institution at Nashville, and the residue were confirmed. From the sales of the lands thus acquired have arisen a large portion of the investment in bank stocks, on which this institution is at present maintained.

As a literary character Mr. Murphy deserves to be classed among the first men of the State; and among those who, like himself, devoted their time laboriously to professional and public employments, he has had few superiors in literature in the nation. In the Latin, Greek, and French languages he attained such proficiency that till the close of his life he read the standard authors with pleasure and for amusement, and with the best of the English classics few were more familiar. To this, though self-taught, he added no inconsiderable attainments in science. As an epistolary writer he had no equal among his contemporaries, and in all his compositions there was an ease, simplicity, and at the same time an elegance of expression which showed him to be master of his native tongue. When it is known that a large part of his life was passed in taverns, on the circuit, where he was immersed in business--and when not so immersed, such was his proverbial urbanity and kindliness of nature that his rooms were the resort of all seeking advice and consultation, as well as of his circle of friends in every county, attracted by the charms of his conversation--his acquirements are a marvel to those less studious or less imbued with a true love of letters. His oration before the two Literary Societies of the University, in 1827, is a fair exponent of his style of writing, and also indicates his favorite studies, the subjects of his admiration, his enthusiastic American sentiment, his characteristic benevolence and kindness towards young men, and that unaffected modesty which was so remarkable a virtue in his character. Yet it is tinged with a vein of sadness, as if life for him was approaching its twilight and he was walking among the graves of the dead, some of them his comrades, whom he was soon to follow. Notwithstanding it was the first in the series of these discourses before the Societies, it has never been surpassed in appropriateness and interest by those of any of his successors, though among them have been many of the most distinguished scholars in the State. Its commendation by Chief Justice Marshall, in a letter to the author, published with the second edition, stamps its portraits of public characters with his approbation and renders it historical.

To the possession of genius in an eminent degree he united some of its infirmities. A sanguine temper, a daring confidence in results, a reliance on the apparent prosperity of the times, involved him in pecuniary obligations, many of them, perhaps, of a speculative character, which eventuated in disaster and swept away his estate. A little later came an attack of chronic rheumatism, from which he suffered much, and was often incapacitated for business during the last half-dozen years of his life. But during this season of adversity he struggled with a brave heart against the storms of fate. With a pallid cheek and disabled limbs he made his appearance in the courts, where, as we have seen, his gifted mind occasionally shone out in all its meridian splendor; and when this was not practicable, the hours of pain and misfortune were beguiled, if not solaced, by the pursuit of those noble studies which had been the delight of his leisure in the days of his prosperity.

He died in Hillsborough, then his place of residence, on February 3, 1832, and is interred in the graveyard of the town, a few feet from the door of the Presbyterian church, and nearly in front of it. No monument marks his resting-place. His sons, Dr. V. Moreau Murphy, of Macon, Mississippi, and Lieutenant P. U. Murphy, of the navy of the United States, are his only surviving children.

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The work and worth and greatness of Murphy have never been duly appreciated even in his own State; and yet, when our history is written, if greatness is measured by the public benefit it confers, perhaps Macon, Murphy, and Vance will stand together as the three greatest men the State has yet produced.

In common-sense statecraft, in the choice and application of principles to existing conditions, and in the prophetic knowledge of the fruit they would bring forth after their kind, Macon was greatest. In scholarship and breadth of culture, combined with originality to conceive the most far-reaching policies of public welfare, Murphy was greatest. In the knowledge of men, in his boundless wealth of human sympathy, as the advocate and champion of the people's rights, Vance was greatest. But Graham had a far greater knowledge and grasp of the details of public business than any of them; and Badger, in his ability to rapidly acquire and assimilate law and learning, easily outstripped them all.

The sensibilities of Murphy were too refined for what is called success in practical politics. His love and enthusiasm for the public weal were so great that he forgot himself--but let us never forget him.

If Murphy had lived to write, as he intended, the history of North Carolina, he would have made all the world know and acknowledge that some of her people began the Revolution against British tyranny four years before the battle of Lexington. Perhaps he would have made it too plain for cavil that more than a year before Jefferson penned his immortal document, the spirit that resisted Tryon had formed a government at Charlotte independent of British rule, and that, in the strongest probability, the authors of that government had prepared the way for it by a declaration of independence.

Leavened by that spirit, the people of the whole State, through their convention at Halifax, on May 12, 1776, proposed, and on May 22 adopted, a resolution providing for "declaring independence" in concurrence with the "other colonies"--the first step taken in that direction by any of the colonies.

Perhaps his clear voice could have been heard above the conflicting jargon about the Regulators' War. The threadbare statement that the spirit of these people was so thoroughly crushed by Tryon's dress-parade campaign that they all took sides with the British in the Revolutionary war might have been thrashed a little thinner. Perhaps he would have found at King's Mountain some of the fifteen hundred families who fled west after the battle of Alamance.

Mrs. E. E. Moffitt of this city (a granddaughter of Judge Murphy's sister, Mrs. John Daniel) is my authority for the statement that Peter S. Ney--whom some believe to have been none other than the great Marshal Ney--was Murphy's amanuensis. It was a singular fate which drew these two peculiar men of genius together.

There is grim humor in his pathetic attempt to enkindle a love of history and education in this State by appealing to the love of gain. His other scheme, internal improvements, was equally chimerical; not because it lacked intrinsic merit, but because the times and people had changed. He had not calculated on the soporific effect of indirect taxes upon the unpreferred States. It was too early for any but a prophet to fully see that the States had dug the graves of their ultimate autonomy by adopting a Constitution which forbade them "to emit bills of credit"--a power of which they never stood in dire need until the General Government had monopolized all control of banking and currency.

No State, since the Union was formed, has, without Federal aid, direct or indirect, made any material progress in developing its resources!

ADDRESS AT THE UNIVERSITY.

BY ARCHIBALD D. MURPHY.

The Literary Societies of this institution have resolved that an address be delivered before them annually by some one of their members. This resolution, if carried into effect in the spirit in which it has been adopted, will be creditable to the Societies and favorable to the general literature of the State. It is now more than thirty years since these Societies were established, and all the _alumni_ of this University have been members of one or the other of them. Upon these _alumni_, and upon others who shall go forth from this University, our hopes must chiefly rest for improvement in our literary character; and their zeal for such improvement cannot fail to be excited by being annually called together, and one of them selected to deliver a public discourse upon the progress and state of our literature, or some subject connected therewith. The Societies have conferred on me an unmerited honor by appointing me to deliver the first of these discourses. I accepted the appointment with pride, as it was an evidence of their esteem; yet with humility, from a conviction of my inability to meet public expectation--an inability of which I am conscious at all times, but particularly so after a painful and tedious illness.

Little that is interesting in the history of literature can be expected in the infancy of a colony planted on a continent three thousand miles distant from the mother-country, in the midst of a wilderness and surrounded by savages. Under such circumstances civilization declines, and manners and language degenerate. When the first patent was granted to Sir Walter Raleigh, in 1584, the English language had received considerable improvement. Spenser had published his _Faerie Queene_, Shakespeare his _Plays_, Sir Philip Sidney his _Arcadia_, Knolles his _General History of the Turks_, and our theology had been enriched by the eloquent writings of Hooker. This improvement was not confined to the learned; it had already extended itself to the common people, particularly in the towns and villages, and the language of the first colonists no doubt partook of this improvement. But these colonists were all adventurers; they joined in Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition only for the purpose of making fortunes, and their chief hope was that they would quickly find gold in abundance and return home to enjoy their wealth. This delusive hope continued for many years to beguile adventurers; who, not finding the treasure they came in quest of, became idle and profligate, and abandoned a country in which they had met with nothing but disappointment. Sir Walter Raleigh, after expending a large part of his estate in attempts to settle a colony, assigned to Thomas Smith, of London, and his associates, the privilege of trading to Virginia and of continuing the colony. Under the advice of Raleigh he directed his efforts to the waters of the Chesapeake, and there caused to be planted a colony which became permanent, and from which Virginia and Carolina were peopled. A new charter was granted to Thomas Smith and his associates in 1606, and enlarged in 1609. Their company continued with many vicissitudes of fortune until the year 1626, when it was dissolved. The history of the colony to the time of this dissolution was written by John Smith and also by Stith. They were contemporary with Lord Clarendon, who wrote the _History of the Great Rebellion_ in England. Their style and manner of writing, and the public papers published by the President and Council of the Colony, during this period, evidence great improvement in our language. The chaos in which it lay in the early part of the reign of Elizabeth gradually gave way to the order and method which good sense introduced into every pursuit; the pedantry and conceits which disfigured our literature in the reign of James I. yielded to the influence of good taste. Sir Walter Raleigh published his _History of the World_, Lord Bacon his historical and philosophical works and moral essays, and our poetry was adorned by the writings of Milton, Dryden, Butler, and Otway. Shortly afterwards came Sir William Temple, Archbishop Tillotson and others, who gave facility and grace to composition. These were new beauties and pleased the nation more as they gave to style the charm of polished conversation.

Whilst the literary taste of the nation was thus improving, religious intolerance drove from England a great number of Quakers, Presbyterians and other sectarians, who sought refuge in the Virginia colony. They there soon met with the same persecution which had driven them from their native country. They were compelled to leave the colony; and Providence directing their course through the wilderness, they settled near Pasquotank and Perquimans, and formed the germ of the Carolina colony. Many of them were Quakers, and their descendants continue to occupy that district of country to this day.