Part 26

Vance put him among the distinguished men of North Carolina, and for this, if for no other reason, I could afford to put him in this book. Posterity will not lightly overrule the verdict of its greatest commoner, even though rendered in the partiality of affection.

Although no sketch of Vance is in this book (his life, in a more extended form, having been lately written), yet Bryan's estimate of him, spoken in the House of Representatives, February 25, 1895, is not an inappropriate introduction of the man who has contributed to history the foregoing sketch of Swain--if indeed there be any part of the Union where he needs an introduction, even from the lips of one who has canvassed the whole country. Besides, it would be offensive to North Carolinians if I should even begin a list of our distinguished dead without according to Vance his well-won place among the foremost.

W. J. BRYAN'S ESTIMATE OF VANCE.

MR. SPEAKER: We are called upon on these occasions to speak of the virtues of many different types of men. Sometimes one is taken from us who has spent the most of his days in private business and has come to these halls to crown with public honors a busy life. Sometimes we are called to mourn a man taken from us in the very beginning of his career, and consider what he might have accomplished had he lived. But it is seldom that, in either of these halls, we find a man whose life was so completely given to public service as was the life of Senator Vance. He began his public career when a young man barely of age, and he has been a public servant from that time, almost without pause, until his earthly life was ended. In the history of our country I think we shall find few men as remarkable. When a man is elected once or twice and disappears, we may attribute his success to circumstances; but when he begins, as Mr. Vance began, a young man, and retains the confidence of those whom he served for a generation, we must conclude that his success is due to something more than a chance or accident.

Senator Vance was a "leader among men." Few in our day, or in our history even, have better earned that distinction. He was a leader among men--and naturally so. He had those characteristics which could not fail to make him a leader, not self-appointed, but chosen by common consent. He was a wise man. He was able to estimate causes and calculate effects. He was able to foresee what would come to pass, because he understood men--that is necessary in a leader. We rely upon the Infinite because we are finite. We feel the limitations of our own knowledge, and we long to find some one who knows more and can see further than we. Among men, we naturally turn to the one who can foresee events, as a child turns to a parent for advice. It was not the experience of age which he possessed, it was a sort of intuitive judgment, an instinct for truth, that made him see in advance what others only found out afterwards.

It has been mentioned here to-day that when the late civil war was about to break out he was able to survey the whole ground and see what would be the necessary result, and that he told his people what that result would be. He did this, too, when a young man--younger than any of us who are on this floor to-day--and time proved his wisdom. So, coming on down, as each new crisis arose, as each new force began its work upon society, he seemed to be able to calculate what was coming, and every time his judgment was justified by events his hold upon popular confidence increased.

When the Fifty-third Congress was convened in extra session in August, 1893, no man in this country more clearly foresaw the course of events and more clearly predicted the results of the proposed financial policy. He talked with his associates; he wrote to his people, he told them just what the effect would be upon the party with which he was identified, and whose name he loved.

Not only was he wise, but he was courageous. And courage is a characteristic, too, in a leader of men. He had the courage to assume responsibility. He shirked no duty. What he believed he said, and he was willing to stand or fall by the correctness of his conclusions. Jefferson, in speaking of some man, said that he had not learned the sublime truth that a bold, unequivocal virtue is the best handmaid even unto ambition. Zebulon B. Vance had learned that sublime truth. He knew, while trimming one's sails to catch a passing breeze may help temporarily, there is nothing which is permanently of aid to a public man except standing by his convictions. I have no doubt he had ambition; but from what I have been able to read and learn of him, it was a laudable ambition which every man in this country may well possess, an ambition to do his duty everywhere, an ambition to deserve well, to have what he deserved and nothing more.

He had more than wisdom and courage; he had that without which wisdom and courage would have boon of no avail: he loved the people whom he would lead. And it was no condescending love either. It was no stooping down to some one beneath him. He really believed in the equality of men, and that those among whom he associated were his brethren. He shared their hopes, their aims, and their ambitions. He felt their woes and he knew their joys. He was one of them, and the people loved him because they knew that he loved them. They trusted him because they knew that he trusted them. In building upon the affections of the people he built upon the only sure foundation.

It has been said that the most sincere tribute that can be paid to a man is that which is paid at his grave. Some may fear him while he lives, and therefore show him attention; or others may desire to court his favor. When we see apparent friendship for the great we do not always know what motives may be behind it. But when a man is dead and is impotent longer to injure or to aid, when men gather round his grave and manifest their love, then we know that their affection is disinterested. And I believe it can be said that no man in this country ever enjoyed the sincere affection of a larger proportion of the people whom he served than Mr. Vance.

But he was not only a leader of men, he was an orator of great influence. Not that, on dress parade, he was the best man to put up for a public speech, but he was one of the great orators because he possessed two of the characteristics of the orator; he knew what he was talking about when he talked, and he believed what he said. He who believes what he says will move others; and he who knows what he is talking about will convince others. Not only did he impart knowledge surcharged with earnestness, but he possessed rare ability in making the truth pleasant to receive.

He was a statesman as well as a leader of men and an orator. As a statesman he was devoted to his work and was prepared to make every sacrifice for which his position called. As a statesman he was ready to give to every call that conscientious response which duty required. As a statesman he was pecuniarily honest. There is nothing in the life of Mr. Vance that I prize more than the fact that with all his ability, with all his knowledge, with all his influence, no person can say that he ever sold his influence, his ability, or his support for money. No person can say that on any occasion he ever surrendered the interests of the people, as he understood those interests, for hope of gain.

Sometimes people speak sneeringly of legislators. Sometimes they speak as if there were no such thing as honesty among them. Some people talk as if every man has his price, as if all that is necessary is to offer enough money, and the influence of any man who is serving in official position can be purchased. I do not believe that the worst enemy that Mr. Vance ever had would say of him that any amount of money, however great, could have purchased his vote, his voice or his influence. And that a man with his commanding ability, whose official life began at the very dawn of manhood, and continued through all the conspicuous positions within the gift of his countrymen, should successfully resist all pecuniary temptation and die poor, is, I think, one of the proudest of his achievements.

Mr. Speaker, there are things in this life more valuable than money. The wise man said three thousand years ago, "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor than silver and gold." We struggle, we sacrifice, and we toil in order to leave to our children a fortune; but I believe that Senator Vance has left to his widow, and to his children a greater, a more valuable heritage than could possibly have been left had he given to them all the money which one man ever accumulated in this world. When he left to them a name untarnished, when he left to them a reputation such as he earned and bore, he left to them that which no wealth can purchase. I am not skilled in the use of obituary adjectives, and did not rise to give a review of his life, but I beg to place on record my tribute of profound respect for a public servant who at the close of his career was able to say to the people for whom he toiled, "I have lived in your presence for a lifetime; I have received all my honors at your hands; I stand before you without fear that any one can charge against me an official wrong." I say, to such a man I pay my tribute of respect.

THOMAS RUFFIN.

BY WM. A. GRAHAM.

The patriotic people of the county of Rockingham, in a public assemblage at their first Superior Court after the death of Chief Justice Ruffin, in which they were joined with cordial sympathy by the gentlemen of the bar at that court, resolved to manifest their appreciation of his talents, virtues and public usefulness, by causing to be pronounced a memorial on his life and character. Such an offering was deemed by them a fitting tribute from a people among whom his family first settled, upon their arrival in North Carolina, and with whom he had been associated as a planter and cultivator of the soil from his early manhood till his decease. The Agricultural Society of the State, of which for many years he had been a distinguished president, subsequently determined on a like offering to his memory at their annual fair. The invitation to prepare such a discourse has been by both bodies extended to the same individual. The task is undertaken with diffidence and a sense of apprehension that amid the multiplicity of other engagements its fulfillment may fail in doing justice to the subject of this memoir.

Thomas Ruffin, the eldest child of his parents, was born at Newington, the residence of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Roane, in the county of King and Queen, in Virginia, on the 17th of November, 1787.

His father, Sterling Ruffin, Esquire, was a planter in the neighboring county of Essex, who subsequently transferred his residence to North Carolina, and died in the county of Caswell. Ardent in his religious sentiments, and long attached to the Methodist Episcopal Church, he very late in life entered the ministry, and was for a few years prior to his death a preacher in that denomination.

His mother, Alice Roane, was of a family much distinguished in Virginia by the public service of many of its members, and was herself first cousin of Spencer Roane, the Chief Justice of that State, in the past generation, whose judicial course, connected as it was with questions of difficulty and importance in constitutional law, gave him high professional, as well as political, distinction; but it may well be doubted whether, in all that constitutes a great lawyer, he had preeminence over the subject of our present sketch, his junior kinsman in North Carolina, then but rising into fame, and destined to fill the like office in his own State.

His father, though not affluent, had a respectable fortune, and sought for the son the best means of education. His early boyhood was passed on the farm in Essex, and in attendance on the schools of the vicinity. Thence, at a suitable age, he was sent to a classical academy in the beautiful and healthful village of Warrenton, in North Carolina, then under the management of Mr. Marcus George, an Irishman by birth and education, a fine classical scholar and most painstaking and skillful instructor, especially in elocution, as we must believe, since among his pupils who survived to our times we found the best readers of their day, within our acquaintance. His excellence in this particular was probably attributable to his experience on the theatrical stage, where he had spent a portion of his life. He made his first appearance in the State at Hillsborough, during the Convention of 1788, which rejected the Federal Constitution, and being in search of employment as a teacher, he was engaged by the Warren gentlemen then in attendance, and many years subsequently was still at the head of a flourishing school, in which our student entered. The system and discipline of Mr. George conformed to the ancient regime, and placed great faith in the rod; and he being a man of much personal prowess and spirit, did not scruple to administer it on his pupils, when sloth, delinquency or misbehavior required, without regard to age, size or other circumstances. Yet he secured the respect of his patrons and the confidence of the public, and inspired the gratitude and affection of his pupils in a remarkable degree.

This turning aside from our subject, to pay a passing tribute to his old preceptor, is deemed to be justified not only by the long and useful labors of Mr. George, in the instruction of youth in the generation in which Mr. Ruffin's lot was cast, but because he himself entertained the highest appreciation of the profession of an instructor, accustoming himself to speak of it as one of the most honorable and beneficent of human employments. Throughout his laborious and well-spent life he often acknowledged his obligations of gratitude for the early training he had received under the tuition of this faithful, but somewhat eccentric, son of Erin. And it may well be doubted whether Lord Eldon, in the maturity of his wisdom and great age, retained a more grateful and affectionate recollection of Master Moises of the High School of New Castle, than did Chief Justice Ruffin of Master George of the Warrenton Male Academy.

At this institution were assembled the sons of most of the citizens of eastern North Carolina, and of the bordering counties of Virginia, who aspired to a liberal education. And here were formed friendships which he cherished with great satisfaction throughout life. Among his companions were the late Robert Broadnax, of Rockingham, subsequently a planter of large possessions on Dan River, among the most estimable gentlemen of his time; and Cadwallader Jones, then of Halifax, but afterwards of Orange, an officer at different periods in the navy and in the army of the United States, a successful planter, and a model of the manners and virtues which give a charm to social intercourse. Here, too, he found Weldon N. Edwards, of Warren, subsequently distinguished by much public service in Congress and under the government of the State, thenceforward his lifelong friend, with whom the bonds of amity seemed to be drawn more closely as others of his contemporaries dropped from around him. Of these four youths of the Warrenton Academy, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, Mr. Edwards alone survives. Long may he live to enjoy the veneration and respect due to a life of probity, honor, and usefulness.

From the Warrenton Academy young Ruffin was transferred to the College of Nassau Hall, at Princeton, New Jersey. It is believed that his father, who was a deeply pious man, was controlled in the selection of this college in preference to that of William and Mary, in Virginia (next to Harvard University the oldest institution of learning in the United States), not only by a desire to guard his son's health, which had suffered from the malaria of tide-water Virginia, but to secure him as well against the temptations incident to college life in an institution where, as he supposed, the discipline was too lax for the sons of affluence who matriculated there. He entered the freshman class at Princeton, and graduated at the commencement in 1805, the sixteenth in a class of forty-two members, "being the first of the second division of intermediate honors." The late Governor James Iredell, of North Carolina, was in the class succeeding his own, and for nearly the whole of his college course his room-mate. Thus commenced a friendship between these gentlemen in youth which was terminated only by the death of Mr. Iredell. Among others of his college associates who became distinguished in subsequent life, there were Samuel L. Southard and Theodore Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, Joseph R. Ingersoll, of Philadelphia, the Cuthberts and Habershams, of Georgia, Christopher Hughes of Maryland, and Stephenson Archer, of Mississippi.

Returning home with his bachelor degree, Mr. Ruffin soon afterwards entered the law office of David Robertson, Esq., of Petersburg, as a student of law, and continued there through the years 1806 and 1807. Here he was associated as a fellow-student with John F. May, afterwards Judge May, of Petersburg, and Winfield Scott, afterwards so highly distinguished in arms, and the only officer, down to his time, except General Washington, who attained the rank of Lieutenant-General in the army of the United States. General Scott, in his autobiography, describes their preceptor, Mr. Robertson, as a Scotchman, a very learned scholar and barrister, who originally came to America as a classical teacher, but subsequently gained high distinction as a lawyer, and was the author of the report of the debates in the Virginia Convention which adopted the Federal Constitution, and of the report of the trial of Aaron Burr for high treason. In a note to the same work, General Scott mentions his chancing to meet Judge Ruffin in New York in 1853, while the latter was attending as a delegate the Protestant Episcopal Convention of the United States, after a separation of forty-seven years, and recurs to their association together with Judge May, as law students, and to the conversation in which they then indulged, with manifest pride and pleasure. He also refers to their subsequent intercourse in the City of Washington, in 1861, while Judge Ruffin was serving as a member of the Peace Congress, and expresses the opinion that if the sentiments of this good man, always highly conservative (the same as Crittenden's), had prevailed, the country would have escaped the sad infliction of the war, which was raging at the time he wrote.

Sterling Ruffin, the father, having suffered some reverses of fortune, determined to change his home, and removed to Rockingham county, North Carolina, in 1807. His son soon followed, a willing emigrant. It was in North Carolina he had received his first training for useful life: here was the home of most of his early friends, and here he confidently hoped to renew his associations with Broadnax, Jones, Edwards, Iredell, and other kindred spirits.

He doubtless brought with him a considerable store of professional learning from the office of Mr. Robertson, in which he had been more than two years a student, but on his arrival in North Carolina he pursued his further studies under the direction of Hon. A. D. Murphy, until his admission to the bar, in 1808. Early in 1809, he established his home in the town of Hillsborough, and on the 9th of December in that year he was united in marriage to Miss Ann Kirkland, eldest daughter of the late William Kirkland, of that place, a prominent merchant and leading citizen.

The twenty years next ensuing, during which his residence was continually in Hillsborough, comprehends his career at the bar and on the bench of the Superior Courts. In 1813, 1815 and 1816 he served as a member of the Legislature in the House of Commons from this town, under the old Constitution and filled the office of Speaker of the House at the last mentioned session, when first elected a judge, upon the resignation of Duncan Cameron. He was also a candidate on the electoral ticket in favor of William H. Crawford for the Presidency of the United States in 1824. But his aspirations, tastes, and interests inclined him not to political honors, but to a steady adherence to the profession to which his life was devoted. He found at the bar in Orange and the neighboring counties several gentlemen, his seniors in years, who were no ordinary competitors for forensic fame and patronage, of whom it may be sufficient to name Archibald D. Murphy, Frederick Nash, William Norwood, Duncan Cameron, Henry Seawell, Leonard Henderson, William Robards, Nicholas P. Smith, of Chatham, and later of Tennessee. His first essays in argument are said not to have been very fortunate. His manner was diffident and his speech hesitating and embarrassed. But these difficulties being soon overcome, the vigor of his understanding, the extent and accuracy of his learning, and the perfect mastery of his causes by diligent preparation, in a short time gave him position among these veterans of the profession, secured him a general and lucrative practice, and an easy accession to the bench in seven years from his initiation at the bar.

His reputation was greatly advanced and extended by the manner in which he acquitted himself in this office. The wants, however, of an increasing family and an unfortunate involvement by suretyship forbade his continuance in a situation of no better income than the salary which was its compensation. He resigned to the Legislature of 1818, and immediately returned to the practice. Mr. Ruffin had kept up habits of close study of his profession before his promotion to the bench, and he eagerly availed himself of the leisure afforded by the vacations of the office for the same object. He came back to the bar not only with his health renovated, which had never been very robust, but with a brightness in his learning and an increase of fame which, in the Supreme Court, then recently established on its present basis, and in the Circuit Court of the United States, as well as on the ridings in the State courts, brought to him a practice and an income which has hardly ever been equaled by any other practitioner in North Carolina. For forty-three weeks in the year he had engagements in court, and despite all conditions of the weather or other impediments to traveling in the then state of the country, rarely failed to fulfill them. He held the appointment of Reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Court for one or two terms, but relinquished it on account of the engrossment of his time by his practice; and his labors are embraced in the first volume of Hawks. Mr. Archibald Henderson, Mr. Gaston, Mr. Seawell, Mr. Murphy, Mr. Moses Mordecai, Mr. Gavin Hogg, and Mr. Joseph Wilson, all men of renown, were, with Mr. Ruffin, the chief advocates in the Supreme Court at that period, Mr. Nash and Mr. Badger being then upon the bench; and according to tradition, at no time have the arguments before it been more thorough and exhaustive. The late Governor Swain being, part of this period, a student of the law in the office of Chief Justice Taylor, in a public address at the opening of Tucker Hall, mentions a prediction in his hearing by Mr. Gaston to one of his clients in 1822, that if Mr. Ruffin should live ten years longer he would be at the head of the profession in North Carolina. By the same authority we are informed that only a year or two later Judge Henderson declared that he had then attained this position of eminence.