PUBLICATIONS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL COMMISSION 
 
 BULLETIN No. 7 
 
 ADDRESSES 
 
 AT 
 
 THE UNVEILING OF THE BUST 
 
 OF 
 
 WILLIAM A. GRAHAM 
 
 JANUARY 12. 1910 
 
BUST OF WILLIAM A. GRAHAM 
 
ADDRESSES 
 
 AT 
 
 THE UNVEILING OF THE BUST 
 
 OF 
 
 William A. Graham 
 
 BY THE 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL COMMISSION 
 
 IN 
 
 THE ROTUNDA OF THE STATE CAPITOL 
 
 Delivered in the Hall of the House of 
 Representatives, January 12, 1910 
 
 RALEIGH 
 
 EDWARDS & BROUGHTON PRINTING CO. 
 
 1910 
 
The spirit of a people is the history of a people 
 impersonated in the life of a people. If there is 
 no history of a people, there is no spirit of a 
 people. — Thomas W. Mason. 
 
The North Carolina Historical Commission 
 
 J. BRYAN GRIMES, Chairman 
 
 RALEIGH 
 
 W. J. PEELE, Raleigh M. C. S. NOBLE, Chapel Hill 
 
 D. H. HILL, Raleigh THOMAS W. BLOUNT, Roper 
 
 R. D. W. CONNOR, Secretary 
 
 RALEIGH 
 
Digitized by the Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/addressesatunvei81nort 
 
THE GRAHAM BUST 
 
 In the rotunda of the Capitol of North Carolina are eight 
 niches, designed to hold the busts and statues of eight of the 
 eminent sons of the State. Completed nearly three-quarters 
 of a century ago, these niches remained empty until 1910, 
 silently protesting against the failure of the State to perform 
 one of her highest and most important duties, the preserva- 
 tion of the memories of the founders and builders of the 
 Commonwealth. 
 
 Convinced that the State was unconsciously doing herself 
 a serious injustice by her negligence, the North Carolina 
 Historical Commission, charged with the duty of preserving 
 the history of the State, on October 23, 1907, adopted the 
 following resolution : 
 
 "Resolved, That the sum of one thousand dollars be set 
 aside out of the funds of the Commission, to be expended 
 for a marble bust of William A. Graham, to be set up in one 
 of the niches in the rotunda of the State Capitol, and that the 
 Secretary be. instructed to have the bust executed in the best 
 manner by some reputable sculptor, as soon as possible." 
 
 In accordance with this resolution a contract was made 
 with Mr. Frederick W. Ruckstuhl, of New York, who exe- 
 cuted the bust and delivered it to the North Carolina His- 
 torical Commission in December, 1909. Upon the invita- 
 tion of the Historical Commission, Messrs. Frank Nash and 
 Thomas W. Mason consented to deliver addresses upon the 
 occasion of the unveiling. On the evening of January 12, 
 1910, in the Hall of the House of Representatives, in the 
 presence of the Governor of North Carolina, the members 
 of the State Historical Commission, the members of the Gra- 
 ham family, the Grand Lodge of Masons of North Carolina, 
 and a large audience, the bust was set up in the northwestern 
 niche of the rotunda on the first floor of the Capitol, and 
 unveiled by Master William A. Graham, Junior, the Fourth. 
 The ceremonies of the occasion consisted in the delivery of 
 the addresses printed in this bulletin. 
 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS 
 
 BY J. BEYAN GEIMES 
 
 Chairman of the North Carolina Historical Commission 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 North Carolinians have been careless in preserving their 
 history, and that we have been neglected, and in some cases 
 have been misrepresented by historians of the country, has 
 been largely our own fault. We must remember that to 
 receive proper credits we must keep our own accounts. We 
 have been lacking in self-appreciation and wanting in a 
 proper State pride, which is to some extent due to the fact 
 that we were ignorant of the accomplishments and heroic 
 deeds of our own people. 
 
 The North Carolina Historical Commission is collecting 
 from every available source data and records pertaining to 
 the history of North Carolina, and stimulating and encour- 
 aging historical investigation and research in every way in 
 its power, and now our history is being more thoroughly 
 studied and written than ever before. The State Historical 
 Commission believes that one of the most powerful stimu- 
 lants in arousing State pride and proper appreciation of our 
 own great men is to be found, not merely in recording their 
 great deeds, but also in preserving their forms and features 
 in marble and in bronze. Inaugurating this movement, 
 therefore, the State Historical Commission will unveil this 
 evening a marble bust of one of the greatest of Carolinians — 
 William A. Graham. 
 
 Accordingly the Commission has invited a scholar and his- 
 torian, Mr. Frank Nash, to address you upon the life and 
 services of Governor Graham, and Capt. Thomas W. Mason, 
 who, as soldier, statesman and orator, is known and beloved 
 by all North Carolinians, to speak upon the "Value of His- 
 torical Memorials Among a Democratic People." 
 
WILLIAM ALEXANDER GRAHAM 
 
 BY FKANK NASH 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 " Office is the most natural and proper sphere of a public man's ambi- 
 tion, as that in which he can most freely use his powers for the common 
 good of his country." — Lord Palmerston. 
 
 Ill recent years it has been the endeavor of some writers to 
 strain the facts of history a little in order that JSTorth Caro- 
 lina may appear to have been first in some great political, 
 or other, movement. This not only makes our State motto 
 an hypocrisy, but it has no sound moral basis, is untrue in 
 fact, and is foolish from the standpoint of philosophy. That 
 she was first at Bethel was an accident ; that she was farthest 
 at Gettysburg and last at Appomattox, means daring, but 
 steady, courage and staunch unfailing fidelity. Indeed the 
 things in which she was last have done her more credit than 
 those in which she was first. I do not like to think of her 
 as a meretricious, volatile, impulsive figure, but as a noble, 
 steadfast one, unadorned (certainly by gewgaws and jim- 
 cracks), and like the Mother of the Gracchi pointing to her 
 sons as her jewels. Certainly she has a right to be proud of 
 them, for, at no time from the days of Glasgow to the days 
 of the Carpetbagger and from the days of the Carpetbagger 
 to the present, did any of these sons prey upon her. Pecula- 
 tion and fraud in public life may have existed elsewhere, 
 but not in North Carolina. 
 
 In this paper I try to depict one of those sons as the most 
 prominent figure amid the scenes in which he lived and 
 worked, and in the company of those who lived and worked 
 with him. I want, too, to show what he was and what he 
 stood for, as well as what he did, for it is not so much the 
 material as it is the spiritual, that gives to men real power 
 and renders them immortal. iRot that activity and energy 
 
8 North Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 are to be contemned, far from it — slothful in business can 
 never be predicated of the truly great and good — but because 
 it is the subtle and silent, but pervading, influence of char- 
 acter, only, that gives action, force and efficiency for good. 
 The story of William A. Graham's life is well worth the 
 telling for what he did, but much more for what he was. 
 The writer is very conscious that it has not been told ade- 
 quately in the following pages. The final word about him 
 can not be said until his literary remains are collected and 
 published with his correspondence. 
 
 MIS ANTECEDENTS 
 
 William A. Graham was no less fortunate in the race from 
 which he sprang than in his immediate ancestry. The Scotch 
 Presbyterians, located in Ireland by James I, and the Eng- 
 lish by Cromwell, made that composite race which has been 
 for some time known to history as the Scotch-Irish. During 
 three or four generations they lived in Ireland among a people 
 hostile in faith and differing in language, in ideals, in aims 
 and in temperament. The Saxon was the representative of a 
 stern, unyielding, but essentially uplifting Calvinism, while 
 the Celt was the representative of all the superstition and 
 ignorance of an unenlightened Romanism. The one had a 
 faith so clear, so earnest, so vital that, in his worship he dis- 
 carded nearly all symbol, while the other's faith was so 
 obscured by false conceptions that only a sensuous and sym- 
 bolic worship could appeal to his inferior nature ; the one, 
 even in his superstitions, dealing only with things supernal, 
 while the other made to himself gi-aven images, likenesses of 
 things in heaven above and in the earth beneath, and bowed 
 down to them and worshiped them ; the one industrious and 
 thrifty, doing with all his might what his hands found to do, 
 the other thriftless, industrious only by fits and starts, con- 
 tent, in the midst of degrading poverty, to live among swine 
 and fowls ; the one sensitive about his rights, and ready in the 
 fear of God to defend them with a calm, cool, unflinching 
 
William A. Guaham, 9 
 
 courage ; the other, a serf to his lord, a child to his priest, a 
 willing servant to his friend and a savage to his foe, his emo- 
 tions a sensitive harp that responded to every wind of passion,^ 
 
 What wonder that the contact of two such races should 
 result only in an antagonism which manifested itself, on 
 occasions, in murders, in riots and in relentless warfare ! 
 But all this was to the Saxon a tonic, stimulating his intel- 
 lectual, moral and physical development, making him the 
 bolder, the more watchful, the more self-reliant. He was a 
 minority of the people of Ireland, but it was a militant and 
 dominant minority. So little brought in contact with the 
 English government was he, that he was fast becoming repub- 
 lican in his political ideals. Kings and governors were kings 
 and governors to him only so long as they obeyed the laws 
 and were faithful to the rights of the people. Otherwise he 
 cared nothing for them. His liberty consisted in laws made 
 by the consent of the people, and the due execution of those 
 laws. He was free not from the law but by the law. So 
 these English and Scotch Protestants in Ireland, these Sax- 
 ons in Celt -land, were, in their dealings wdth the Irish uncon- 
 sciously fitting themselves for their greater work in America. 
 It was, so to say, a forty years sojourn in the walderness in 
 preparation for the land of Canaan, and they entered that 
 land strong; in the holv confidence that, ''the Lord, He it is 
 that doth go before thee ; He will be with thee ; He will not 
 fail thee, neither forsake thee ; fear not, neither be dismayed." 
 
 Of this sturdy and virile race w^as James Graham, who at 
 the age of nineteen years, in 1733, migrated from County 
 Down, Ireland, to Berks County, Pennsylvania. He was 
 twice married, his second wife being the widow Mary Bar- 
 ber, and died in 1763. By the last marriage there were five 
 children. In 1768 Mrs. Graham, wdth her children, coming 
 by sea to Charleston, S. C, thence across country, located in 
 Mecklenburg County, N". C. In 1771 she purchased a tract 
 
 lit must be remembered that the Irish of the 17th century had only reached a stage of 
 racial development, through which their Saxon foes had passed 200 years before. So this 
 parallel has to do only with such developments, and not at all with racial capabilities. 
 
10 NoETH Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 of land containing two hundred acres within three miles of 
 the then little harnlet of Charlotte. Most of these Scotch- 
 Irish, and there were many of them, migrated from Penn- 
 sylvania south in search of fertile lands in a milder climate. 
 It is probable that this was Mrs. Graham's motive, induced 
 thereto also by the fact that many of her neighbors and 
 friends had preceded her. She must have been a woman of 
 remarkable courage and strength of character to undertake 
 this long, tedious and dangerous journey with six young 
 children, the youngest scarcely more than four years of age. 
 !No doubt she selected the actual location with a view to the 
 religious and educational privileges convenient to it. John 
 Frohock, Abraham Alexander and Thomas Polk had already 
 laid off the town of Charlotte into 360 half-acre lots, and on 
 some of these good, habitable houses had been erected. Eighty 
 lots had been sold and must be built upon within three years, 
 under pain of forfeiture.^ So with the court-house, prison and 
 stocks there, with tradesmen and artisans plying their trades, 
 and lawyers locating to practice their profession, Charlotte at 
 the time of its incorporation, ]!!^ovember, 1768, must have 
 been attracting some attention as a place with a future. 
 Many of the settlements about the county, too, were fertile, 
 fruitful, well tended farms. The rule, however, was here, as 
 it was in all these Scotch-Irish communities, the man to the 
 plow, the woman to the distaff and the child to the school, 
 Mrs. Graham, though of limited means, after giving her chil- 
 dren such instruction as she was capable of doing, sent most 
 of them to the best school in this section. Queen's Museum, 
 afterwards Liberty Hall. She instilled into all of them a 
 love for learning and a desire to acquire knowledge. Her 
 sons were among the most prominent men of their time, and 
 probably came into public notice at an earlier age than any 
 other youths of the county. Her daughters were the heads of 
 families whose descendants are known for their virtue and 
 intelligence, and have ever been prominent in the communi- 
 
 • State Records of North Carolina, XXIII, 772-3. 
 
William A. Graham. 11 
 
 ties in which they lived on account of their worth and public 
 spirit. She was, herself a faithful Presbyterian, member of 
 Sugar Creek church, and her children were noted not only 
 for their intelligence and activity in worldly matters, but 
 were also earnest supporters of morality and religion.^ 
 
 Her third son, Joseph Graham, was born in Chester 
 County, Pennsylvania, October 13th, 1759. He assisted in 
 cultivating his mother's farm and attended school in Char- 
 lotte. He was distinguished among his fellow-students for 
 talents, industry and manly bearing. The mere schooling, 
 though, was not the most valuable training that he had at that 
 period. In the political ferment of the time, 1768-1776, the 
 minds of men were expanding. At every church gathering, at 
 every county court, they discussed the power of parliament, 
 the rights of the colonies, and how best to preserve those 
 rights. These discussions were going on throughout all the 
 colonies, making every intelligent man a politician, and caus- 
 ing the patriots in the face of threatened danger to draw 
 closer together in sympathy, thus paving the way for future 
 organization. Patrick Henry, in Virginia, was but giving 
 eloquent utterance to the aspirations and hopes and ambitions 
 of the people, unexpressed, or inadequately expressed, by 
 themselves. He was, in other words, but the mouthpiece of, 
 and interpreter for, the people. The intelligent boy or 
 youth, standing about in these crowds listening to these dis- 
 cussions among his elders, was having his own ideas enlarged, 
 his patriotism aroused and his mind trained for his future 
 work. Joseph Graham was interested in all these discus- 
 sions and attended many of these public meetings. He, as 
 a boy in the 16th year of his age, was present at the adoption 
 of the Mecklenburg Resolves of May, 1775. Pifty-five years 
 later he gives an account of this meeting and testifies that it 
 was held on May 20th. At this distance of time, without 
 any contemporary record to verify his memory, there are 
 errors in his statement which subsequently-discovered records 
 
 1 Graham : Revolutionary Papers of General Joseph Graham, 16. 
 
12 North Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 show. In several instances, he mistakes the time of events 
 that he undertakes to narrate, but he and others have so com- 
 pletely identified May 20th as the date upon which some 
 resolutions were adopted, that, in the absence of better evi- 
 dence we may assume that a meeting was held on that day, 
 in order to take some action upon the news of the Battle of 
 Lexington, which, we know, arrived that week, the 20th occur- 
 ring on Saturday. And it makes no difference whether they 
 met on Friday the 19th and continued the meeting over until 
 2 a. m. of the 20th, or met on Saturday morning the 20th, 
 so far as the essential fact is concerned, that a meeting was 
 held at that time and that certain resolutions were adopted. 
 Confining the issue to this essential fact, I have seen nothing 
 that contradicts the testimony of the many eye-witnesses on 
 that point. We can imagine the excitement and anger 
 among these descendants of the bold defenders of London- 
 derry and Enniskillen at the news of Lexington, how they 
 would hold a public meeting as soon as the crowd could 
 gather, how in the anger and excitement of the moment they 
 should adopt resolutions, which on calm second thought they 
 would realize were premature and unwise. That there were 
 two meetings, at least, is perfectly apparent from the fact 
 that the papers of which J. McKnitt x\.lexander had the cus- 
 tody were resolutions adopted at a public meeting of which 
 he was secretary, whereas those of the 31st were adopted at 
 a committee meeting, Ephraim Brevard being the secretary 
 of that committee. The resolutions of the 31st, too, neces- 
 sarily presupposes a previous meeting, or meetings. They 
 are not the product of a day or of a week. They were not 
 devised by one mind or written by one hand. They show 
 calm deliberation, and not emotional excitement or sudden 
 anger, such as that provoked by news of the Battle of Lexing- 
 ton. It seems to me, with deference, that the modern his- 
 torians have taken issue on immaterial facts and have 
 obtained a verdict on those issues alone. Captain Jack did 
 not take the resolutions of the 20th to Philadelphia ; he did 
 
William A. Gkaham. 1& 
 
 take those of the 31st. Admitted, because proven. Gover- 
 nor Martin sent those of the 31st, and not those of the 20th, 
 to London. Admitted, because proven. There was no con- 
 temporary record, or allusion to those of the 20th ; there were 
 both to those of the 31st. True, also, so far as discovered. 
 The resolutions written down from memory by J. McKnitt 
 Alexander in 1800, show in their verbiage the influence of 
 the Declaration of July 4th, 1776. This, too, is probably 
 true. We have been mistaken heretofore in regard to these 
 matters, it is true, yet after all, none of them is essential to 
 the determination of the true issue — was there a meeting held 
 on the 20th with resolutions which amounted to a Declaration 
 of Independence adopted ? And to this there are a cloud of 
 witnesses. The writer, when not more than half as old as 
 was General Graham at this time, was told of General Lee's 
 surrender by a lady, while we were near an osage orange 
 hedge, and while she was talking a raccoon came from under 
 the hedge. If he should live a thousand years he will never 
 forget the fact of the coon, the expression of his countenance, 
 and his connection with General Lee's surrender, i^ow, the 
 news of the Battle of Lexington was to Joseph Graham what 
 this coon was to myself — a fact indelibly engraved upon his 
 memory. It seems, therefore, reasonably certain, though 
 there are many conflicts in the testimony of the various wit- 
 nesses, that the resolutions of the 20th were real, but having 
 been adopted in a moment of anger and excitement, the sober 
 sense of the people prevailed in those of the 31st, and the 
 latter were published, while the former were permitted to 
 slumber undisturbed, in the possession of Alexander, as a 
 folly to be regretted rather than a matter of supreme 
 importance. 
 
 It was amid scenes such as these, among men such as these, 
 that young Graham worked and studied and thought, his 
 character under the control and guidance of a wise mother, 
 developing into an almost perfect type of the noble race to 
 which he belonged — bold, self-reliant, earnest. God-fearing. 
 
14 North Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 He was eighteen years of age when he took up arms for his 
 country and fought valiantly, successfully and faithfully, 
 until his services were no longer needed. He was just twenty- 
 two years of age at the close of the Revolutionary War. "He 
 entered the army as a private, passed through the grades of 
 orderly sergeant, quartermaster sergeant, quartermaster, 
 adjutant, captain, and major. * * * He commanded in fif- 
 teen engagements with wisdom, calmness, courage and success 
 to a degree perhaps surpassed by no other officer of the same 
 rank. Hundreds who served under his command have tes- 
 tified to the upright, faithful, prudent and undaunted man- 
 ner in which he discharged the duties of his responsible sta- 
 tions. Never was he known to shrink from any toil, however 
 painful, or quail before any dangers, however threatening, or 
 avoid any privation or sacrifice which might promote his 
 country's cause."^ 
 
 The very qualities that made him successful as a soldier — 
 courage, alertness, intelligence — made him successful in civil 
 life, as legislator, as member of two Constitutional Conven- 
 tions, as iron miner and founder. I may not pause over the 
 stirring incidents of the military service of this excellent man 
 and soldier, nor can I tell more fully of his great usefulness 
 to church and state in the quieter w^alks of his civil career. 
 Suffice it to say that he loved and served his state and church 
 faithfully and well, that in all that concerned their welfare, he 
 was not only interested, but active, not only intelligent but 
 wise. "His life was a bright and illustrious pattern of domes- 
 tic, social and public virtues. Modest, amiable, upright and 
 pious, he lived a noble ornament to his country, a faithful 
 friend to the church and a rich blessing to his family." In 
 1787 he married Miss Isabella Davidson, a daughter of Maj. 
 John Davidson, and of a family distinguished alike for intelli- 
 gence and patriotism. It was in consequence of this marriage, 
 that, forming a business connection with his father-in-law, he 
 moved to Lincoln County in 1792, and became an iron founder 
 
 I Revolutionary papers of General Joseph Graham. 
 
William A. Gkaiiam. 15 
 
 and monger. Mrs. Graham is said to have been the most beau- 
 tiful of Major Davidson's handsome daughters, and her char- 
 acter corresponded in loveliness and goodness to her personal 
 appearance. It was from her that the subject of this sketch 
 derived so much of the manly beauty that was one of his 
 distinguishing characteristics during his long life. At the 
 residence of his father near Vesuvius Furnace in Lincoln 
 County, he was born, September 5th, 1804. 
 
 CHILDHOOD, YOUTH AND YOUNG MANHOOD 
 William Alexander Graham was the eleventh child and 
 youngest son of General Joseph Graham and Isabella David- 
 son Graham, his wife. Mrs. Graham died January 15th, 
 1808. The eldest sister, Sophia, who afterwards married 
 Dr. John Witherspoon, of South Carolina, but was then only 
 seventeen years of age, assumed the care of the younger chil- 
 dren of the family. She performed the duties with faithful- 
 ness, consideration and affection. She was regarded as a typi- 
 cal older sister and daughter and was remembered with great 
 love and pleasure by those to whom she had given her atten- 
 tion and love. Young William was, too, an object of especial 
 solicitude and care to his father. He made him his com- 
 panion by day and by night, and instilled into him lessons 
 of virtue, piety and patriotism. This constant association 
 with so excellent a man and so good a Christian as General 
 Graham was one of the strongest influences in shaping the 
 boy's life. For years he lived the happy, free life of the 
 country boy in a household where there was competence if 
 not wealth. When he was older he was sent to a neighbor- 
 hood school, very much against his will, for he hid under 
 a bed and had to be dragged out by the heels. There he ac- 
 quired the rudiments of learning. His first school away 
 from home was in Mecklenburg County, where he lived with 
 his mother's brother, Mr. Robin Davidson. The school- 
 house being three miles distant, he rode to it on horseback, 
 generally accompanied by James W. Osborne, of Charlotte, 
 who, being the younger, rode behind. His uncle became 
 
16 North Carolina Historical Commissions^ 
 
 very fond of the motherless lad, and the boy reciprocated so 
 heartily, that he later named one of his sons for this uncle. 
 From this country school he was sent to the Pleasant Re- 
 treat Academy at Lincolnton, of which his father was one of 
 the trustees. His room-mate was his cousin, Theodore W. 
 Brevard, who afterwards became disting:uished in the State 
 of Florida, where he held several important offices. Next he 
 was sent to the classical school of the Rev. Dr. Muchat at 
 Statesville. He was noted for his industry, his thirst for 
 knowledge and his aptitude to learn. One who knew him 
 well, (Rev. Dr. R. H. Morrison), testified that from his 
 childhood he Avas no less remarkable for his high sense of 
 honor and truth, than for his exemption from the levities 
 and vices common to youth. At this academy he applied 
 himself to his studies with the most exemplary diligence. 
 Judge Brevard, a classmate, said of him : "He was the only 
 boy I ever knew, who would spend his Saturdays in reviewing 
 the studies of the week."^ This habit he kept up, too, during 
 his subsequent school and college course. When he was four- 
 teen or fifteen years of age, he, for a time, probably during 
 a vacation, superintended, on the advice of his brother John, 
 Spring Hill forge. General Graham was much pleased with 
 his work in this capacity, saying that it was one of the most 
 successful seasons in the history of the works. His final prep- 
 aration for college was obtained at the Hillsboro Academy, 
 an uncommonly good classical school. The Rev. John With- 
 erspoon had the general supervision of this school, but the 
 active teacher was Mr. John Rogers, who had distinguished 
 himself in his profession at Wilmington. President Cald- 
 well induced them to agi-ee 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 faet.^ 
 
 •McGehee: Memorial Oration on Life and Services of William A. Graham. 
 2 Battle: History of the University of North Carolina, 283. 
 
William A, Geaham. 17 
 
 Mr. Rogers had been educated for the Catholic priesthood, 
 and for accurate scholarship and capacity as a teacher, had 
 few superiors.^ 
 
 Young Graham matriculated at the University in the sum- 
 mer of 1820. Says Mr. McGehee in his very admirable 
 memorial oration:" "His course throughout his college life 
 was admirable in every way. He appreciated the scheme of 
 study there established, not only as the best discipline of the 
 intellect, but as the best foundation for knowledge in its 
 widest sense. He mastered his lessons so perfectly, that each 
 lesson became a permanent addition to his stock of knowledge. 
 The professors rarely failed to testify by a smile, or some 
 other token, their approval of his efficiency. On one occasion 
 a professor (Olmstead), who has attained a world-wide rep- 
 utation in the field of science, remarked to one of young 
 Graham's classmates (John W. Norwood) that his lecture 
 on chemistry came back as perfectly from Mr. Graham as he 
 had uttered it on the previous day. Some thirty years after, 
 the same professor in a letter to Mr. Graham, (then Secre- 
 tary of the 3Sravy) says : "It has often been a source of pleas- 
 ing reflection to me, that I have been permitted to bear some 
 part in fitting you, in early life, for that elevated post of 
 honor and usefulness to which Providence has conducted 
 you." 
 
 His high sense of duty was manifested in his conscien- 
 tious deportment under the peculiar form of government 
 to which he was then subject. His observance of every law 
 and usage of the college was punctilious, while to the fac- 
 ulty he was ever scrupulously and conspicuously respectful. 
 
 His extraordinary proficiency was purchased by no labori- 
 ous drudgery. The secret of it was to be found in the precept 
 which he acted upon through life — "whatsoever thy hand 
 findeth to do, do it with thy might." His powers of concen- 
 tration were great, his perceptions quick, his memory pow- 
 
 ' McGehee: Memorial Oration. 2pages8-9. 
 
 2 
 
18 i^ORTH CAKOLIiN^A HISTORICAL COMMISSION. 
 
 erf 111, prompt and assiduously improved. By the joint force 
 of such faculties, he could accomplish much in little time. 
 Hence, notwithstanding his exemplary attention to his college 
 duties, he devoted much time to general reading. He partic- 
 ipated regularly in the debates and other exercises of the 
 Literary Society. For all such he prepared himself with 
 care; and it is asserted upon the authority of Mr. John \V. 
 Norwood — a most competent judge — that his compositions 
 were of such excellence that, in a literary point of view, they 
 would have challenged comparison with anything done by 
 him in after life. 
 
 His engaging manners brought him into pleasant relations 
 with all his fellow students. He lived with them upon tenns 
 of the frankest and most familiar intercourse. In their most 
 athletic sports he never participated, but he was a pleased 
 spectator, and evinced by his manner a hearty sympathy 
 with their enjoyments. His favorite exercise was walking, 
 and those who knew him well will recollect that this con- 
 tinued to be his favorite recreation while health was spared 
 him. With friends and chosen companions he was cordial 
 and easy, and always the life of the circle when met to- 
 gether. 
 
 He graduated in the class of 1824, he being one of the 
 four first honor men, the others being Thomas Dews, after- 
 wards a very able lawyer, but dying early, Matthias Evans 
 Manly, afterwards state senator, judge of the Superior and 
 Supreme Courts, elected United States Senator in 1866, but 
 not allowed to take his seat, and Edwin D. Sims of Virginia, 
 afterwards tutor in the University, and professor in Ran- 
 dolph-Macon College and in the University of Alabama. To 
 young Graham was assigned the classical oration. It has been 
 the privilege of the writer to see this. It is a pleasant and 
 orderly resume of the history of the preservation of the clas- 
 sics, and an argument for their continued usefulness in the 
 training of the mind and their giving breadth to one's cul- 
 ture. His style at that early period had not become Individ- 
 
William A. Graham. 19 
 
 iialistic, but was rather a reflection of his own training at the 
 University, so was a little stiff and formal. Other noted 
 graduates of 1824 were Daniel B. Baker, judge of the Supe- 
 rior Court of Florida ; John Bragg, member of Congress and 
 judge of the Superior Court of Alabama ; James W. Bryan, 
 strong lawyer, trustee of the University and state senator 
 from Craven ; A. J. DeRosset, physician and merchant of 
 Wilmington, treasurer of the Dioceses of North and East 
 Carolina and often deputy to the general conventions of the 
 Episcopal Church; Augustus Moore, judge of the Superior 
 Court ; John W. ISTorwood, able lawyer, member of the legis- 
 lature and senator from Orange; David Outlaw, member of 
 Congress, state solicitor, state senator and delegate to the 
 convention of 1836, and Bromfield L. Ridley, chancellor of 
 Tennesee.^ 
 
 After his graduation he visited his sister, Mrs. Wither- 
 spoon, at Lexington, Ky., and while there he made the ac- 
 quaintance of John J. Crittenden, and had an opportunity 
 to hear him in a great slander case. 
 
 On his return from this tour he began the study of law in 
 the office of Judge Ruffin at Hillsboro. The opinion of Judge 
 Ruffin as to the proper course to be pursued with a student 
 of law was somewhat peculiar. He held that he should have 
 little assistance beyond that of having his course of studies 
 prescribed. He must, as it were, scale the height alone, by his 
 own strength and courage ; availing himself of a guide only 
 at points otherwise inaccessible. Young Graham's brother, 
 James Graham, in a letter written at this period, made men- 
 tion of this opinion, and urged him to adopt the expedient 
 resorted to by himself: "When he would not examine me I 
 took the liberty of questioning him very frequently, and 
 by drawing him into conversation on legal subjects, my own 
 ideas were rendered more clear, correct and lasting."' 
 
 We may be sure that the contact of two such minds — the 
 
 1 Battle: History of University, 296. ^McGehee, 10 and 12. 
 
20 ]^ORTH Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 one young, ardent and acquisitive — the other mature and vig- 
 orous, the mind of a master in his particular calling, could 
 result only in good to the younger, whatever the method of 
 instruction might be. As a matter of fact young Graham 
 came to the bar remarkably well prepared. The points he 
 made were substantial and well sustained, and six years 
 afterwards he was in the full tide of a successful practice. 
 He obtained his county court license at the December term, 
 1826, of the Supreme Court, and was sworn in before the 
 county court at Hillsboro in February, 1827. His first 
 litigated case in that court was at the August term, 1827, 
 Charles Allison v, Samuel Madden, Judge ^ash, who had 
 recently resigned from the Superior Court bench, appearing 
 with him for the plaintiff.^ At the ensuing j^ovember term 
 he had two other cases on the trial docket, and three on the 
 appearance. He obtained his Superior Court license at the 
 December term, 1827, of the Supreme Court, and took the 
 oaths at the March term, 1828, of the Superior Court of 
 Orange County. His first litigated case was at the same 
 term of that court — Doe and John Dunn, executor of William 
 Keeling, v. James Keeling; A. D. Murphey and Wiley P. 
 Mangum for plaintiff, and Frederick ]^ash and W. A. Gra- 
 ham for the defendant." His first case of importance in 
 the Superior Court," says Mr. McGehee, 'Svas one which 
 from peculiar causes, excited great local iziterest. It involved 
 an intricate question of title to land. On the day of trial, 
 the court-room was crowded and the bar fully occupied by 
 lawyers — many of them men of the highest professional 
 eminence. When he came to address the jury, he spoke with 
 modesty, but with ease and self-possession. His preparation 
 of the case had been thorough, and the argument which he 
 delivered is described as admirable, both as to matter and 
 manner. When he closed, the Hon. William H. Haywood, 
 who had then risen to a high position at the bar, turned to 
 
 • County Court Records. ' Superior Court Records. 
 
William A. Graham. 21 
 
 a distinguished gentleman, still living, of the same profes- 
 sion, and inquired who had prepared the argument which 
 Mr. Graham had delivered so handsomely. The answer was, 
 'It is all his own,' to which Mr. Haywood replied, 'William 
 Gaston could have done it no better.' " 
 
 At the time he determined to locate at Hillsboro, young 
 Graham had already spent several years there ; first, as a stu- 
 dent at the Hillsboro Academy ; second, as a student of law 
 under Judge Ruffin, and third, as practitioner in the county 
 court. It was centrally located, convenient to the State capi- 
 tal. It was the county seat of a large county, with a popula- 
 tion of about 25,000, and there was much litigation. It was 
 then, as it had always been, the foster mother of great men. 
 There was no town in the State that contained so much that 
 was best of the public life of the State, though it had then only 
 about four hundred white inhabitants. There was Murphey, 
 perhaps the greatest genius in its history ; Ruffin, the greatest 
 lawyer and judge ; Mangum, one of its greatest popular ora- 
 tors and statesmen ; Norwood, the elder, able lawyer, and up- 
 right judge ;" ISTash, whose excellencies as an advocate, said 
 Mr. Abraham W. Venable, were equaled by few and surpassed 
 by none, attaining later the highest honors of his profession; 
 Dr. James Webb, distinguished physician and business man, 
 and others too numerous to mention, while Duncan Cameron, 
 George E. Badger, William H. Haywood and Bartlett 
 Yancey, were intimately associated with the place. Among 
 men of his own age, were Richard S. Clinton, Dr. Edmund 
 Strudwick and John W. Norwood, his college- and class- 
 mate. The pastor of the Presbyterian Church at that time 
 was the Rev. John Witherspoon, grandson of the signer, an 
 able man, and, though unequal, on occasion eloquent. He 
 was afterwards moderator of the Presbyterian General 
 Assembly. The rector of the Episcopal Church was the 
 Rev. William M. Green, afterwards Bishop of Mississippi 
 and chancellor of the University of the South. Mr. Dennis 
 Heartt was successfully editing and publishing the Hillsbora 
 
22 NoKTH Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 Recorder. The social advantages of the place, too, were very 
 great. It was full of cultivated men and women, none very 
 wealthy, but all having an abundance of the comforts of 
 life and many of its luxuries, and they were hospitable with- 
 out stint. This society, though somewhat formal, was wholly 
 delightful. !Nor was the competition at the bar so stringent 
 as appears on the surface. Judge Norwood was at that 
 time on the Superior Court bench, and so continued until 
 1836. Judge Ruffin was on the Superior Court bench, re- 
 signed that year, 1828, to accept the presidency of the State 
 Bank, and the following year was elevated to the Supreme 
 Court. Judge Mangum was elected to the Superior Court 
 in 1828, and to the United State Senate in 1830. Judge 
 Cameron lived out in the country, and presided occasionally 
 ^over the county court. Judge Murphey's health was failing, 
 and he died in February, 1832. Of the visiting lawyers, 
 Bartlett Yancey, who did a large business in Orange, died 
 in 1828, and to the United States Senate in 1830. Judge 
 was left, and he returned to the bench in 1836. There 
 is no wonder then that so able a young lawyer as Mr. Gra- 
 ham should locate under these favorable conditions at Hills- 
 boro. N^or is it any wonder that he should be cordially re- 
 ceived there, and in a few years should be at the head of its 
 bar, a preeminence which he maintained for forty years. 
 Few young men have commenced the practice of the law 
 with greater natural and acquired qualifications than had he„ 
 In him a remarkably handsome and dignified presence was 
 united to the highest character, excellent mental endowments, 
 untiring industry, kind, courteous and elegant, rather genial 
 manners and thorough conscientiousness. He was fully six 
 feet tall, very erect, and had hazel eyes, dark hair and clear- 
 cut features. His action in speaking was easy and graceful, 
 sometimes warming into energy and force when the subject 
 demanded it, and the tones of his voice were mellow, har- 
 monious and well modulated. He was ambitious and self- 
 reliant, so all that was best in him came at his demand. 
 
William A. Graham. 23 
 
 Success and complete success to such a character was only 
 a matter of time, and one could predict it for him with 
 absolute confidence at the outset of his career. 
 
 LEGISLATOR, 1833 TO 1841 
 
 Hillsboro, enfranchised by Governor Tryon in 17Y0, con- 
 tinued to be one of the borough towns of the State under 
 the Constitution of 1776, and until borough representation 
 v/as abolished by the Convention of 1835. The qualifications 
 for voters in these towns w^ere: First, possession of a free- 
 hold in the town, whether the proposed voter v/as a resident 
 or not; second, freedom, coupled with residence in the town 
 for twelve months, next before and at the day of election, 
 and payment of public taxes. The elections for borough 
 members were annual. Mr. Graham represented Hillsboro 
 the last three years of its existence. At that time there were 
 about 85 qualified voters in the town, and the elections were 
 generally close, and conducted amid great excitement with 
 the "free use of intoxicants. Though William Norwood, 
 Thomas Ruffin, John Scott and Frederick ISTash had at inter- 
 vals of time represented it, its member was often some tavern- 
 keeper, or one of the lesser lights of its citizens. At Mr. 
 Graham's first election he was vigorously opposed. He was 
 thereafter, however, elected with little opposition. 
 
 At the time he entered public life, i^Torth Carolina was 
 on the whole retrogi-ading. Its soil, moderately fertile, 
 yielded remunerative returns only to intelligent and per- 
 sistent labor. It contained a great variety of minerals ; gen- 
 erally enough in a single locality to attract the adventurous 
 prospector, not enough to prevent disappointment to his 
 hopes. There was vast wealth in its forests, but there was 
 little capital to exploit it, and no accessible market for it. 
 Away from the cotton section, in its midland and west, it 
 was a country of small farmers, a majority of whom had 
 their material wants well supplied from the products of 
 their farms, but again there was no adequate market for 
 
24 JSToRTH Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 any excess. Without this market, there was no hope that 
 they could improve their condition, and without this hope, 
 they toiled on, generation after generation, quite often the 
 laborious father being followed by the shiftless son. In 
 consequence of this occasional retrogression in families, 
 there were whole communities, not numerous, or large in 
 themselves, scattered here and there throughout this section, 
 plague spots upon the body politic, in which the men were 
 without God and without hope in the world, and the women 
 were without decency and quite frequently without virtue — 
 communities, whose fragmentary remains are with us to 
 this day, fast disappearing, thank God, under more hopeful 
 conditions. The opening of the West, too, with its inviting 
 opportunities for the adventurous and bold, was carrying 
 away more and more the brawn and sinew of the State. 
 Those who owned slaves might, year by year and generation 
 after generation, tend their ancestral acres on or within reach 
 of the navigable streams of the East, and live in ease and 
 comfort while they educated their children, but to the small 
 farmer of the West was lacking that contact with the world 
 which brings enlightenment and hope, and stimulates am- 
 bition and effort. What wonder then that N^orth Carolina 
 was retrograding and that the pall of ignorance, instead of 
 receding, was extending wider and wider over its people ! 
 It is natural that under such narrow conditions the people 
 themselves should become narrow, and should think that 
 the whole science of government must expend itself on a 
 pennywise pound foolish economy, and that the two great 
 evils in the world were death and taxation. There are two 
 remedies for such a condition that are perfectly obvious to 
 us and were no less obvious to the gi*eat men of that period : 
 First, bring the people in contact with the world by opening 
 highways of trade and commerce through their borders ; 
 second, place a free school within reach of every child in 
 the State. That was Murphey's program, that was Graham's 
 program, that was the program of nearly all the Whigs of 
 
William A. Graham, 25 
 
 the period. Some talk nowadays of the ante-bellum aris- 
 tocracy standing in the way of the people's enlightenment, 
 of their progi'ess. Not so. The aristocrats (if I may use 
 so false a term to desigiiate the better educated class) were 
 the progressives ; the reactionaries, with a few exceptions, 
 were the neighborhood political bosses, whose principal stock 
 in trade was an attack upon the kid-gloved aristocracy, as 
 they dubbed the Whigs of the towns. These Whigs, with 
 some notable exceptions, built the railroads of the State. 
 They, again with some notable exceptions, 'laid the founda- 
 tions of our public school system. In both these enterprises, 
 Mr. Graham was a leader. His temperament peculiarly 
 fitted him to be a pioneer in this great work. The influence 
 and training of his father, and of Dr. Joseph Caldwell, sup- 
 plemented by association with Judge Murphey, made internal 
 improvements, the education of the people and the preserva- 
 tion of the history of the State the three great ends that he set 
 himself to secure in his public life. With him it was a calm, 
 set purpose, to be worked out through the means and instru- 
 mentalities -which the times provided. Those means were 
 small, and the instrumentalities often perverse and blind 
 and stupid, yet with a self-reliance that came from self- 
 knowledge as well as knowledge of the subject, with a self- 
 control that prevented any irritation, he pursued his 
 ends with a placid, but firm persistence, which was not 
 checked by any rebuff nor daunted by any defeat. Through- 
 out his legislative career, during his incumbency of the 
 gubernatorial ofRce, he wa.s constantly stimulating the 
 ambition and State pride of the people by telling them 
 of the great deeds of their sires, constantly in season and 
 out of season, striving to enlighten them by diffusing the 
 blessings of education among them and to arouse them to 
 effort and industry by bringing the highways of commerce 
 to their doors. Early in life he learned the great lesson, 
 that in a democracy, where so many adverse minds are to 
 be convinced, the progress of any great reform is necessarily 
 
26 North Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 slow, that often it is the work of more than one generation, 
 that he and his contemporaries must be content with line 
 upon line and precept upon precept, here a little and there 
 a little, leaving to the future the fruition of their hopes. 
 Very, very, often the ideals and aspirations of the great 
 men of the past have been realized in the everyday life 
 of the commonalty of the present. To them the days that 
 were to come are the wisest witnesses. 
 
 In the Legislature of 1833-4 he was placed upon the 
 Judiciary Committee and the Committee on Education.^ 
 The House of that body was of average ability, its ablest 
 members, David Outlaw, D. M. Barringer, W. H. Battle, 
 Charles B. Shepard, J. R. J. Daniel, James Seawell, Charles 
 Fisher, Daniel W. Courts, and the Speaker, William J. 
 Alexander. It was in session fifty-five days including Sun- 
 days, enacted 184 laws, only twenty-four of which were pub- 
 lic. Nineteen academies or schools, including the predeces- 
 sors of Wake Forest College, Guilford College and St. Mary's 
 at Raleigh, two libraries, three gold mining companies, one 
 manufacturing association and twelve railroad companies 
 were incorporated. This indicates the drift of public senti- 
 ment at that time. The Bank of the Cape Fear was rechart- 
 ered, and the Bank of the State of North Carolina, the Mer- 
 chants Bank of New Bern and the Albemarle Bank of Eden- 
 ton, were chartered. Mr. Graham was the author of a bill, 
 afterwards enacted into a law, which corrected a gross in- 
 equality in the criminal laws as then administered, making 
 one guilty of grand larceny as infamous upon conviction as 
 one convicted of petty larceny.^ He was on a committee 
 to inquire into the right of Romulus M. Saunders to con- 
 tinue as Attorney-General of the State after having accepted 
 a commissionership from the Federal Government on the 
 French spoliation claims. He wrote the report in favor of 
 Mr, Saunders's right. ^ His argument is based on the word- 
 ing of the Constitution of 1776 — "No person in the State 
 
 'House Journal, 142. 2 House Journal, 182. ' House Journal, 252. 
 
William A. Graham. 27 
 
 shall hold more than one lucrative office at any one time," 
 and also upon the fact that the offices were not inconsistent. 
 The constitutional prohibition seems upon its face to apply 
 only to State offices. Especially is this true when it is re- 
 membered that the Federal Government was not in exist- 
 ence when the State Constitution was adopted. The Legis- 
 lature of 1833-4 adopted the report thus made by Mr. Gra- 
 ham, but that of 1834-5, repudiating that view, passed a 
 joint resolution that the office of Attorney-General had been 
 vacated by Mr. Saunders's acceptance of the Federal Com- 
 missionership, and Mr. Saunders, to avoid controversy, but 
 protesting against the accuracy of this legal conclusion, re- 
 signed as Attorney-General. Mr. Graham adhered to his 
 opinion and voted against the resolution. 
 
 He was sent again as representative from Hillsboro to the 
 Legislature of 1834-5. By that time the demand for an 
 amendment of the Constitution of 1776 had become so in- 
 sistent that it could no longer be disregarded with safety 
 to the peace and welfare of the State. Mr. Graham sup- 
 ported the "convention bill very heartily. During its con- 
 sideration he voted against the provision allowing the con- 
 vention to submit the election of governor to the free white 
 vote of the State,^ though he afterwards voted for the bill 
 with this provision in it. This vote was afterwards remem- 
 bered to plague him in his canvass with Mr. Hoke for the 
 gubernatorial office in 1844. He explained that he was never 
 opposed to the provision, but voted against it while the 
 House was considering the bill, section by section, because 
 he was informed by Mr. Outlaw of Bertie that the easter3i 
 members, without whose vote the bill could not become a 
 law, would not vote for it with that provision in it, so he 
 voted against that to save the bill itself, but afterwards 
 finding that the bill could be passed with that provision in 
 it, he followed what was his inclination all the time by 
 voting for it. To show the attitude of some members of the 
 
 1 House Journal , 1834-5, 220. 
 
28 NoKTH Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 House on this provision and others, at first its advocates 
 could muster but thirty-five votes, while there were ninety- 
 four against it/ On the proposition to submit the election 
 of Supreme and Superior Court Judges to the popular vote, 
 there were twenty-two ayes to one hundred and three nays.^ 
 On the proposition to debar lawyers, pleading under a license, 
 from membership in the Legislature, the vote was twenty 
 ayes to one hundred and ten nays.^ At this session Mr. 
 Graham was again on the Judiciary Committee and was 
 Chairman of the Education Committee, In the latter 
 capacity he made a report January 3, 1835, on the resources 
 of the Literary Fund, and the best means of improving the 
 same, and accompanied the same by a bill to authorize the 
 Literary Board to sell certain portions of the swamp lands 
 belonging to it.* This bill passed the House, but failed in 
 the Senate. Mr. Hugh McQueen, of Chatham, at this ses- 
 sion also introduced a bill in the Senate, to provide a fund 
 for the establishment of free schools. This passed its first 
 reading, and was then laid on the table. By joint resolution 
 of the General Assembly, however, it was afterwards ordered 
 to be appended to, and published with, the laws of the ses- 
 sion. The Literary Fund amounted to about $180,000, with 
 the hope that it would enlarge at the rate of $15,000 or 
 $20,000 per annum, through the sale of swamp lands and 
 the receipt of dividends from investment of its capital. This 
 sum was wholly inadequate to establish any general system 
 of public schools, so the efforts of legislators were directed, 
 for the present, wholly toward increasing it. In the state 
 of public sentiment, thoy did not dare levy additional taxes. 
 Indeed conditions among the people were so wholly adverse 
 to increased taxation, that a plan that involved such increase 
 would have proven utterly futile. 
 
 On December 29, 1834, Mr. Graham was elected by the 
 Legislature a trustee of the Universitv,^ and he continued 
 
 I House Journal, 220. 2 Ibid., 221. 'Ibid., 221. 
 
 <Coon: Public Education in North Carolina: A Documentary History, 1790-1840, 
 II., 683 et seq. 
 
 'House Journal, 223. 
 
William A. Graham. 29 
 
 until Ifts death to be actively interested in all of the affairs 
 of that institution. An interesting political event occurred 
 at this session. Judge Wiley P. Mangum and Bedford Brown 
 v^^ere the senators from the State in the Federal Congress. 
 Mangum voted for the resolution of censure on Jackson for 
 removing the deposits, passed March 28, 1834, and refused to 
 vote for Benton's resolution to expunge the censure. The 
 Legislature of 1834-5 was Democratic, or pro- Jackson, and 
 hence opposed to Mangum. It instructed Mangum and Brown 
 to vote for the expunging resolution. While the House was 
 considering these instructions, Mr. Graham delivered a 
 speech of remarkable power against them. He had just 
 passed his thirtieth birthday, yet this speech made him a 
 leader of his party, the Whig, only second to Mr. Mangum 
 in influence and power. It had so great an effect upon his 
 fortunes and is so characteristic, that these alone would 
 justify my giving it in full, if space permitted. It, too, 
 gives a remarkably clear and just view of the conditions 
 as they were in North Carolina at that period, and of the 
 political issues that confronted the people. 
 
 Mr. Graham was again member of the House of Commons 
 from Hillsboro in the Legislature of 1835-6. Among the 
 other able members of that Legislature, were Matthias E. 
 Manly, Kenneth Rayner, Thomas L. Clingman and Michael 
 Hoke, the first three being Whigs, and the latter a Democrat. 
 Mr. Graham was his party's candidate for speaker, but was 
 defeated by William H. Haywood, the vote being fifty-four to 
 sixty-eight. He was again on the Committee on Education, 
 and was chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He intro- 
 duced a bill incorporating the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad, 
 and defended it during all the stages of its enactment into a 
 law against a vigorous opposition. It was the first railroad 
 built in the State. There was much discussion of the division 
 of the proceeds of the sale of public lands by the Federal 
 Government among the states, and a resolution was adopted 
 
 1 House Journal, 97. 
 
30 ISToRTH Carolina Histokical Commission. 
 
 by the Legislature that they ought to be so divided, the vote 
 being seventy ayes to fifty-four nays, the division being not 
 along party lines, Mr. Graham voting aye. Judge Martin, 
 having resigned as one of the judges of the Superior Court, 
 Romulus M. Saunders was elected by a vote of ninety-seven 
 to succeed him. On the last ballot Mr. Graham received 
 sixty votes, and the Register of ]Srovember 22, 1835, com- 
 menting on this, says : ''It is due to Mr. Graham to state, 
 that though strongly solicited, he refused to suffer his name 
 to be put in nomination. Had he consented, he is so de- 
 servedly a favorite, that the contest would have been a very 
 doubtful one. Mr. Graham is a young man, and the flattering 
 vote which he received, under the peculiar circumstances of 
 the case, is conclusive evidence of his elevated standing in 
 the State." 
 
 The new Constitution, having gone into effect on January 
 1, 1836, and boroughs having been thus abolished, Mr. Gra- 
 ham was a candidate before the people of Orange County 
 in the summer of 1836, to represent that county in the 
 Legislature of 1836-7. He, for the first time, canvassed the 
 county for internal improvements and for the distribution of 
 the land proceeds. He was triumphantly elected, carrying 
 with him also, two out of the other Whig candidates for the 
 House, Orange being entitled under the new Constitution, 
 to four representatives. He, however, ran one hundred and 
 twenty-one ahead of his ticket. 
 
 The House was again Democratic by a small majority; 
 Haywood received sixty votes for speaker and Graham fifty- 
 three.^ He was on the same standing committees as at the 
 last session, and was again chairman of the Committee on 
 Judiciary.^ He was also chairman of the Committee on the 
 Ee^dsed Statutes, which were then to be enacted into a law, 
 and looked carefully, painstakingly and ably after their 
 progress through the House. He was also chairman of a 
 joint committee of both houses on the funds to be received 
 
 » House Journal, 243-4. 2 House Journal, 268. 
 
William A. Gkaham. 31 
 
 under the Deposit Act of Congress, and as chairman pro tern, 
 of the committee made an able and lucid report upon the dis- 
 position of that fund, accompanied bj bills to carry the sug- 
 gestions of the committee into effect/ In pursuance of the 
 act for the distribution of the surplus revenue, nearly $28,- 
 000,000 were deposited with the states, by three equal pay- 
 ments in January, April and July of 1837. North Caro- 
 lina's share was $1,433,757.39. The Graham report con- 
 templated an equal division of this fund into two : one, to 
 constitute a fund for common schools, and the other, a fund 
 for internal improvements. It very strongly reprehended 
 the diversion of any portion of this fund to meet ordinary 
 State liabilities. The legislation, however, did not follov/ 
 this report in its entirety. $100,000 were diverted to the 
 payment of the civil contingent expenses of the State Gov- 
 ernment, $600,000 were used in purchasing bank stock, 
 $200,000 were appropriated to draining swamp lands, and 
 $533,757.39 purchased stock in the Wilming-ton and Ualeigh 
 Railroad. 
 
 The General Assembly of 1835-6 had enacted a law to 
 regulate the mode of passing private acts. After the enact- 
 ment of this law, the Constitution of 1835 went into effect. 
 A new provision was incorporated therein that the General 
 Assembly shall not pass any private law, unless it shall be 
 made to appear that thirty days notice of application to 
 pass such law, shall have been given under such directions 
 and in such manner as shall be provided by law. Upon this 
 state of things two questions were submitted by the Assem- 
 bly of 1836-7 to its Judiciary Committee, of which Mr. 
 Graham was Chairman: First, was the Act of 1835 super- 
 seded by the Constitution, which went into effect January 
 1, 1836, in such way as to render it inoperative upon the 
 present and future assemblies, without its reenactment ; sec- 
 ond, what is the line of demarkation between public and 
 private acts? Mr. Graham replied to these questions in a 
 
 1 Legislative Documents, 1S35-9, No. 15. 
 
32 North Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 very able and luminous report. Except as restricted by the 
 State and Federal constitutions, the authority of the General 
 Assembly to legislate is plenary, and its legislation binds 
 its successors until altered or repealed by them. The Act 
 of 1835 was obnoxious to no provision of the Constitution 
 of 1776, and being in entire accord with the provision of 
 the new Constitution, quoted above, it is still in full force 
 and effect. Upon this point, among other things, he said : 
 ''The convention has not only not taken away the power to 
 enact such a law, but virtually ordained that it should be 
 passed. It is supposed that the right to pass it is derived 
 from the amendment, and it could only be passed by a 
 Legislature convened under the new Constitution. It must 
 be observed, however, that the paragraph of the amendment 
 now under discussion, confers no new power on the General 
 Assembly, but forbids the exercise of an old one, except on 
 certain conditions.. The legislative power of the General 
 Assembly extends not merely to the present time and events, 
 but may prospectively embrace any future contingencies. 
 The law in question might have provided that in the event of 
 the adoption of the amendments to the Constitution, advertise- 
 ment of application for private acts should be made for thirty 
 days, much more, when it was authoritatively announced that 
 the amendments had been adopted, might it provide to give 
 them practical operation. A wise lawgiver will endeavor as 
 well to prevent grievances as to administer remedies for 
 them. To have enacted no law in reference to private acts 
 at the last session of the Legislature, would have been to 
 exclude any private bill from consideration for at least the 
 first thirty days of this session. Your committee, therefore, 
 deem the passage of the said act to have been both consti- 
 tutional and expedient." 
 
 In answer to the second question he said: "On the one 
 hand your committee have felt that by a too strict interpre- 
 tation of the term, private law, much useful legislation 
 might have been prevented at the present session, whilst on 
 
William A. Gkaham. 33 
 
 the contrary the salutary operation of this section of the Con- 
 stitution would be wholly abrogated and annulled, unless the 
 General Assembly shall affix a proper construction to this 
 term, and insist on its enforcement in every instance. It 
 can hardly be supposed that the judiciary branch of the 
 government will have either the disposition or authority to 
 look beyond the enactments of the Legislature, to ascertain 
 whether they were passed with or without legal notice of 
 their introduction. This clause of the amended Constitution 
 is binding therefore only on the conscience of the legislator, 
 and is dependent upon this alone for its observance. Its 
 true meaning is for that reason to be sought with greater 
 diligence and adhered to with more vigor. * * * In some 
 statutes special clauses have been inserted declaring that those 
 statutes shall be held and deemed public acts, but this, as your 
 committee believe, has been properly construed not to change 
 the character of the acts, but merely to determine the manner 
 in which they shall be alleged and proved in courts of justice. 
 Whether a statute be public or private must depend on its 
 nature and object. If those be private, the statute itself can 
 not be public, notwithstanding the declaration of the Legis- 
 lature to the contrary; nor should the evasion be allowed of 
 inserting provisions of a public kind for the mere purpose of 
 dispensing with the necessity of advertising, where they do 
 not belong to the general scope of the particular bill. The 
 general description of public acts is, that they relate to the 
 interests of the public at large ; and private, that they relate 
 to individuals and their interests only. This vague descrip- 
 tion which pervades all the elementary books and has by 
 many been mistaken as a definition, aifords but an uncertain 
 test for discrimination. Your committee believe that the 
 following points are settled by adjudication or by common 
 consent, to wit, that all acts are public: 
 
 "1. Which concern all persons generally. 
 
 "2. Which affect the sovereign in any of his rights of 
 
34 North Carolina IIistoeical Commission. 
 
 sovereignty or property. Hence any act which gives a penalty 
 or fine to the State is, on that acconnt, public. 
 
 ^'3. Which concern the officers of the State, whether civil 
 or military. 
 
 "4. Which concern the Legislature. 
 
 "5. Which relate to trade in general, or the public high- 
 ways or navigable rivers. 
 
 "And of the^'^e some are termed public local acts, and 
 others public general acts, according to their respective 
 spheres of operation. The foregoing summary may not 
 embrace all acts of a public nature, but is supported by 
 authority so far as it extends, and may be useful in drawing 
 the line of distinction. Private acts embrace all those not 
 falling within any of the descriptions aforesaid. An attempt 
 to define them more particularly is unnecessary. Your com- 
 mittee are aware that the precise boundary between public 
 and private acts can not in every instance be determined 
 by the rules here furnished, but they are gi-atified by the 
 reflection that in a great majority of bills there can be no 
 question as to their character, and in any particular case 
 where difficulty may arise, the foregoing classification may 
 be found useful if not decisive. To the wisdom of the 
 House it will belong to apply them -with proper discrimi- 
 nation, in each case in which the application becomes 
 necessary." 
 
 I reproduce this long exti'act, not so much because it is an 
 admirable statement of the legal principles involved, as be- 
 cause it throws light upon the stage of mental development 
 at which he had arrived when he was only thirty-two years of 
 age, and also upon his character. This constant sense of the 
 eternal fitness of things, this assumption that because power 
 is irresponsible, it is the more incumbent upon those who 
 exercise it, to exercise it with the utmost circumspection and 
 caution, characterized all his utterances and actions through- 
 out his whole career. 
 
 While on his way to one of his courts, in 1836, he was 
 so injured by an unruly horse, that he was compelled to go 
 
William A. Gkaham. 35 
 
 North for treatment in the summer of 1837. Before the 
 accident, it was understood that he or Judge Mangum 
 was to have been the Whig candidate for the Federal 
 House of Representatives. Judge Mangum, however, posi- 
 tively declined, and insisted that Mr. Graham should be 
 nominated, and he was nominated without a dissenting voice. 
 He was absent at the Worth until a few days before the 
 election. He could make no canvass. Instead he addressed 
 an open letter to the voters of the district, in which he dis- 
 cussed the issues of the day and offered himself as a candi- 
 date for their suffrages. Martin Van Buren had been Presi- 
 dent only a few months, and the country was in the throes 
 of a severe panic, largely induced by the arbitrary measures 
 of his predecessor, General Jackson. Mr. Graham, in this 
 letter, thus rapidly describes conditions as they then were : 
 "Our public moneys amounting to many million dollars 
 have been paid into banks which are unable or unwilling to 
 repay the government, and much it is feared will never be re- 
 paid at all. Bank notes which constitute by far the largest 
 portion of our currency are no longer convertible into specie. 
 Exchanges are destroyed, so that it is difficult, if not impossi- 
 ble, to make remittances from one part of our country to an- 
 other, to carry on the necessary commerce between it and for- 
 eign nations. Many of our merchants and other citizens, both 
 the judicious and prudent as well as the reckless and specu- 
 lating, have suddenly and unexpectedly, both to themselves 
 and others, become insolvent. Pecuniary confidence between 
 man and man has been greatly abridged, and in many places 
 destroyed. The gTeat staple productions of the country 
 have fallen in price, and agricultural as well as mechanical 
 labor meets with insufficient reward. Our immediate sec- 
 tion of the country irom. its interior position, as well as 
 other causes, is happily exempt in a gTeat measure from the 
 calamities which oppress others ; but no section can long 
 escape unless a remedy is speedily applied. Every section 
 is interested in the safe-keeping of the public moneys, the 
 
36 NoETH Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 soundness of the circulating medium, the facilities of do- 
 mestic trade and the prosperity of our foreign commerce." 
 His remedy was a national bank, such as that which was 
 chartered during the Washington and Madison administra- 
 tions. "I believe," said he, "that Congress has the consti- 
 tutional power to establish such bank, and I, at present per- 
 ceive no measure better calculated to relieve our distresses. 
 I am aware of the danger of moneyed power, and if such 
 a corporation can not be so restricted as to be incapable of 
 wanton injury, either to the public or individuals, it should 
 not be allowed. But the legislative power must be lamentably 
 impotent if it can not fashion the creation of its own hands 
 that it shall be accountable to the law for its conduct and 
 thus prevent its abuses." 
 
 And he concludes thus : "It is known to many of you that 
 I did not concur in the election of the present chief magis- 
 trate, and should a. competitor be presented whom I prefer, 
 I probably shall not do so at the next election. I will en- 
 deavor, nevertheless, whether in public or private life, to 
 do justice to his measures, and should deem myself altogether 
 unworthy of your confidence, were I capable of opposing 
 or supporting any measure on account of the sources from 
 which it springs. My first wish is that the country should 
 be well governed, rather that it should be governed by any 
 particular set of men." 
 
 The Raleigh Register had the following on his candidacy, 
 issue of July 17, 1837: "We do not believe there lives a 
 man who can with truth allege aught against the character 
 of Mr. Graham. We say of our own knowledge, that he is 
 as pure a public man as we ever saw, and if elected, will add 
 greatly to the learning, talent and eloquence of the House 
 of which he is a member," In the issue of July 31, 1837, 
 he is designated as follows : "A man whom even his political 
 foes respect for his acquirements, and honor for the irre- 
 proachable purity of his private character." 
 
William A. Graham. 37 
 
 The Standard of July 19, 1837, took a somewhat dif- 
 ferent view : '^In him the bank Whigs and Wall street brokers 
 will have as warm a friend and as ardent a champion as 
 they desire. * * * ^\s to Mr. Graham's private char- 
 acter we know nothing and have heard nothing against it. 
 He is a man of talents, but he can never be great among 
 great men, ^' * * Thongh he may be looked npon as 
 estimable as a man, he is dangerous as a politician." 
 
 At almost exactly the same time and in England another 
 newspaper writer wrote of Mr. Gladstone: "He is a man of 
 very considerable talent, but has nothing approaching to 
 genius. His abilities are much more the result of an ex- 
 cellent education, and of mature study, than of any prodi- 
 gality on the part of nature in the distribution of her mental 
 gifts. I have no idea he will ever acquire the reputation 
 of a great statesman.^" 
 
 Mr. William Montgomery was elected by 191 majority, 
 the only instance in Mr. Graham's long public life in which 
 he was defeated in an election before the people of North 
 Carolina. 
 
 He was again a commoner from Orange County in the 
 Legislature of 1838-9, the only Whig elected in that county, 
 all his colleagues being Democrats. The House, however, 
 was Whig, and he was elected speaker over Michael Hoke, 
 the vote being sixty-one to forty-nine. This General Assem- 
 bly is distinguished by its enactment of the first comprehen- 
 sive school law. Says Mr. Coon" : ''Early in the session of the 
 Assembly of 1838-9, Mr. Dockery repeated his resolution 
 relative to the establishment of public schools. H. G. Spruill 
 presented a resolution and a plan which contemplated divid- 
 ing the counties into school districts and holding an election 
 in each district on the question of school or no school. The 
 district was to be empowered to levy a tax to pay one-half the 
 teacher's salary, the other to be paid out of the income of the 
 
 •British Senate, Vol. II, 54. 2 Coon: Public Education in N. C, I, xliii. 
 
38 ]!^OKTH Carolina IIistoeical Commission. 
 
 literary fund. A notable feature of this plan was the sugges- 
 tion that every district refusing to establish schools should be 
 required to vote on the question every year until they were 
 established. The plan submitted by the Literary Board 
 recommended the division of the State into 1250 districts, 
 estimating the average school population for each district of 
 108 children between the ages of five and fifteen; the estab- 
 lishment of normal schools after the fashion advocated by 
 President Caldwell some years before ; the holding of an elec- 
 tion ill each county to determine whether it was willing to levy 
 a tax for schools in amount to twice the sum expected from 
 the literary fund ; and the appointment of a state superin- 
 tendent of public schools. It was estimated by the board that 
 the income of the school fund was then about $100,000. 
 This amount, added to $200,000 proposed to be raised by 
 county taxation, would pay the 1250 teachers each a salary 
 of $240 a year. The suggestions of the board were received 
 with considerable interest. Bills to carry out its plans were 
 introduced in the Senate by William W. Cherry, and in the 
 House by Frederick J. Hill. Mr. Cherry's bill did not con- 
 template establishing schools until another meeting of the 
 Assembly ; Mr. Hill's bill provided for their immediate 
 establishment. * * * The net results of the education ef- 
 forts of the Assembly of 1838-9 was the passage, on January 
 Y, 1839, of a law submitting the question of schools or no 
 schools to a vote of the i^eople of several counties in August, 
 1839. A favorable vote meant a county tax levy of one 
 dollar for each two dollars to be received from the income 
 of the literary fund. The schools established were to be 
 under the control of five to ten county superintlendents ; 
 the whole territory of the county was to be divided into no 
 more districts than one for each thirty-six square miles, and 
 the first term of the schools in each district was to be con- 
 ducted on $20 of county taxation and $40 income from the 
 literary fund." 
 
 No member of the Assemblv to(ik a more active interest 
 
William A. Graham. 39 
 
 in the enactment of this law, than did the speaker, Mr. Gra- 
 ham. Fonr out of the nine sections of the original Honse 
 bill were in his handwriting, and two of the bills finally 
 adopted by the Conference Committee were also in his hand- 
 writing.^ It is said to have been adapted from the New 
 York law^ on the same subject. 
 
 Mr. Coon very finely says of this act": ''While the school 
 law of 1839 was not a very satisfactory measure, it marked 
 the beginning of a new era. Individualism was now gradu- 
 ally to give way to community spirit ; selfishness and in- 
 tolerance, which only desired to be undisturbed, must now 
 needs give place to measures devoted to the welfare and up- 
 lift of the people ; hatred of taxation for schools must now 
 begin to disappear before the davsming of that wiser policy 
 that no taxation is oppressive which is used in giving equal 
 educational opportunities to all." 
 
 Mr. Graham was reelected a member of the House of Com- 
 mons from Orange in 1840. He was accompanied by two 
 Whig colleagues to, and Mr. Wiley P. Mangum was senator 
 in, the General Assembly of 1840-1. So fair and impartial 
 as speaker was he the preceding session that he was reelected 
 unanimously at this. The meeting of the Legislature was 
 immediately after the triumphant election of Harrison and 
 Tyler. The State, falling in line, had given the Whig ticket 
 a large majority. The Democratic Legislature of 1835-6 
 had instructed the then senators in CongTess, Bedford Brown 
 and Wiley P. Mangum, to vote for Benton's expunging reso- 
 lution. Mangum, denying the authority of the Legislature to 
 instruct him how to vote, voted against that resolution, and 
 refused to resign. In the campaign of 1836 he and Brown, 
 who took the affirmative of the right of the Legislature to 
 instruct, discussed the matter largely before the people of 
 the State. The General Assembly, elected that year, was 
 Democratic by a very small majority, and Mangum inter- 
 preting this as a rebuke of his own course, by the people 
 
 iPub. Ed. in N. C, II, 881 and 890. 2 Ibid, I, xlvii. 
 
40 North Carolina Historical CoMiMissioisr. 
 
 themselves, resigned and was succeeded by Robert Strange, 
 a Democrat. In 1838-9 conditions were reversed. The Ben- 
 ton resolution was passed by the Senate January 16, 1837, 
 both Brown and Strange voting for it. The General As- 
 sembly of 1838-9 was Whig by a substantial majority. Ken- 
 neth Rayner, on December 4, 1838, introduced in the House 
 of Commons a series of resolutions that in the aggTcgate 
 amounted to a condensed but definite statement of the Whig 
 faith, the first resolution containing a simple allegation that 
 the present senators had not truly represented the people of 
 the State in voting for Benton's expunging resolution, and 
 the last, being as follows: '^That our senators in CongTess 
 will represent the wishes of a majority of the people of the 
 State by voting to carry out the foregoing resolutions." There 
 is no doubt that these resolutions were drawn up at a confer- 
 ence of the Whig leaders, for the Register, in its issue of 
 N'ovember 26, 1838, said: ''That course is not to instruct 
 them as their party instructed Mangum to do a particular 
 act or resign, but to give so decided and unequivocal an ex- 
 pression of the opinions of their constituents, that they can 
 not disregard it, unless they are determined to set at naught 
 the popular will and practically assert their independence 
 of it." So every amendment in the House and in the Senate 
 was voted down, and the resolution passed the former body, 
 without dotting an i or crossing a t, December 25th, and the 
 latter, December 27, 1838, in each instance by a strict party 
 vote, so far as their essential features were concerned. Sena- 
 tors Brown and Strange, protesting that when positive in- 
 structions were given them they would either vote as the 
 General Assembly commanded them, or resign, by a letter 
 to that body, dated December 31, 1838, asked for more au- 
 thoritative instructions. These the Legislature never gave. 
 Messrs Brown and Strange, still treating these resolutions 
 as an expression of opinion on the part of the Legislature, 
 which did not concern them, refused to resign until June 
 
William A. Graham. 41 
 
 30, 1840. Their resignations were accompanied by long 
 ex2:)lanations, the gist of which may be found in the follow- 
 ing: "My resignation is not prompted by a belief that the 
 resolutions imposed on me any such obligation, but from an 
 anxious desire to submit my public course to the decision 
 of the people of the State, which would have been done 
 sooner, if an election had sooner intervened." As I have 
 already said, the General Assembly, elected the second Thurs- 
 day in August, 1840, was Whig by a large majority. These 
 vacancies were to be filled by it at its coming ISTovember ses- 
 sion. Bedford Brown's term was to expire March 4, 1841, 
 Wiley P. Mangum was elected to fill the unexpired term, 
 and also for a full term commencing at that date. Robert 
 Strange's term was to expire on March 4, 1843, and William 
 A. Graham was, on ISTovember 24, 1840, elected to fill this 
 by a vote of ninety-eight for himself and sixty-four for 
 Strange. Both candidates were selected by the Whigs 
 in . caucus, out of some five or six names. Mr. Mangum 
 was at the time the leader of the Whig party in the 
 State. By general consent of the Whigs at large he was 
 to be Mr. Brown's successor, and he was unanimously 
 so named by the caucus. It was a very gTcat and un- 
 usual honor that the Whigs conferred on so young a man 
 as Mr. Graham to choose him out of five candidates as 
 United States Senator, when he was a resident of the same 
 county as Mr. Mangum. It is, too, the strongest testi- 
 mony to his ability and his private and public worth. His 
 selection was received with great satisfaction by the Whigs. 
 Said the Register of November 27, 1840: "He is a states- 
 man of high order, is a powerful debater, and combined with 
 these qualifications has indefatigable application. His vir- 
 tues and amiable qualities endear him to all who know him." 
 The Democratic comment, however, was rather caustic, on 
 his age, his lack of experience and his geographical situation. 
 
42 NoKTH Carolixa Historical Commission. 
 
 UNITED STATES SENATOR 
 
 It was the second session of the Twenty-sixth Congress 
 that the new senators first attended. Mr. Mangiim wa» 
 sworn in on December 9th, and Mr. Graham, December 10, 
 1840.^ That Congi'ess was Democratic, both in the House 
 and in the Senate. The Senate was composed, then, of the 
 ablest men in pnblic life throughout the country. From 
 Alabama there were AVilliam R. King and Clement C. Clay ; 
 from Delaware, Thomas Clayton ; from New Jersey, Samuel 
 L. Southard ; from Kentucky, Henry Clay and John J. 
 Crittenden ; from Missouri, Thomas Benton ; from Georgia, 
 Wilson Lumpkin ; from New York, Silas Wright and Na- 
 thaniel P. Tallmadge ; from Massachusetts, Daniel Webster 
 and John Davis ; from South Carolina, John C. Calhoun 
 and William C. Preston ; from New Hampshire, Franklin 
 Pierce ; from Vermont, Samuel Prentiss, and from Virginia, 
 William H. Roane. ■ Martin Van Buren's term as president 
 was expiring, and his last annual message was a defense of the 
 policy of his administration.^ Especially did he congi*atu- 
 late the country that in the midst of the very trying con- 
 ditions which confronted it at the outstart, a panic and the 
 stoppage of specie payments by the banks and the consequent 
 loss of revenue from such a condition, complicated by large 
 expenditures in the removal of the eastern Indians, appro- 
 priations for which had already been made, every demand 
 upon it at home or abroad, had been promptly met. "This 
 has been done not only without creating a permanent debt, 
 or resort to additional taxation in any form, but in the 
 midst of a steadily progressing reduction of existing burdens 
 upon the people, leaving still a considerable balance of avail- 
 able funds which will remain in the treasury at the end 
 of the year. * * * The policy of the Federal Government, 
 in extinguishing as rapidly as possible the national debt, and 
 subsequently in resisting every temptation to create a new 
 one, deserves to be regarded in the same favorable light. 
 
 1 Senate Journal, 1840-1, 22. 2 Senate Journal, 6, et seq. 
 
William A. Graham. 43 
 
 Coming into office the declared enemy of both (a national 
 debt and a national bank), I have earnestly endeavored to 
 prevent a resort to either." Mr. Graham was placed on the 
 Standing Committee on Revolutionary Claims at this ses- 
 sion.^ From that committee, on January 13, 1841, he re- 
 ported a bill to cause monuments to be erected in honor of 
 Brigadier-Generals Francis Nash and William Davidson, 
 favorably.^ He accompanied the bill with a special report 
 which was ordered printed. It being his first attendance, 
 and at a short session when the Democrats had a majority, he 
 does not appear to have taken any part in the larger debates, 
 contenting himself with a constant attendance, voting gen- 
 erally with his party. 
 
 The Senate of the Twenty-seventh Congress, at the call 
 of the President, met in special session on March 4, 1841. 
 Mr. Webster, having been nominated as Secretary of State 
 by Mr-. Harrison, had resigned and was succeeded by Rufus 
 Choate. Levi Woodbury, who had been Secretary of the 
 Treasury under Van Buren, appeared as one of the senators 
 from Verinont. John J. Crittenden, who had been appointed 
 Attorney-General, was succeeded by James T. Morehead. 
 John McPhersou Berrien appeared from Georgia, and Rich- 
 ard H. Bayard from Delaware. The leaders of the Demo- 
 crats were Thomas H. Benton, William R. King, James 
 Buchanan, Silas Wright and Levi Woodbury ; of the Whigs, 
 Henry Clay, Thomas Clayton, Samuel Prentiss, William C. 
 Rives and Wiley P. Mangum. The AYhigs had a majority of 
 seven. This, however, was merely an executive session to 
 confirm the nominations of the new president, Harrison. 
 The new cabinet was : Daniel Webster, Secretary of State ; 
 Thomas Ewing, Secretary of the Treasury ; John Bell, Secre- 
 tary of War ; George E. Badger, Secretary of the ISTavy ; 
 John J. Crittenden, Attorney-General, and Caleb Grainger, 
 Postmaster-General — a very able company of counselors. 
 At Mr. Clav's sua:gestion. President Harrison called the 
 
 1 Senate Journal, 23. = ggnate Journal, 101. 
 
44 IToRTH Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 Twenty-seventh CongTess to meet in extra session on May 
 31, 1841. Unfortunately for the country and fatally for 
 the Whig party, Mr. Harrison died, after a short illness, 
 on April 4, 1841, and was succeeded by John Tyler, the 
 Vice-President, a Democrat, misplaced in the Whig party, to 
 the confusion and dismay of all who wished it well. The 
 extra session began at the time appointed, the House being 
 also Whig by nearly fifty majority. The progTam of the 
 Whigs as announced by their leader, Mr. Clay, was:^ 
 
 1. The repeal of the sub-treasury law. 
 
 2. The incorporation of a bank ada])ted to the wants of 
 the people. 
 
 3. The provision of an adequate revenue (there was a 
 deficit at the time, estimated, of $14,000,000), by the impo- 
 sition of tariif duties, and a temporary loan. 
 
 4. The passage of the necessary appropriations. 
 
 5. The prospective distribution of the proceeds of public 
 land sales. 
 
 6. Some modification of the banking system of the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia. 
 
 Of the general legislation involved in this program, all 
 was frustrated by the veto of President Tyler, except the 
 repeal of the sub-treasury law and the temporary loan. 
 
 The chairmen of the standing committees of the Senate 
 were chosen by the ballot of the senators. Mr. Graham was 
 elected chairman of the Committee on Claims,^ a very im- 
 portant position for so new and so young a senator. He 
 was also a member of the Committee on Revolutionary 
 Claims,^ and was appointed a member of a select com- 
 mittee on so much of the President's message as related to 
 a uniform currency, and a suitable fiscal agent, by Mr. South- 
 ard, president pro tem. of the Senate.* Remembering that 
 one of the greatest evils of the times was the wholly inade- 
 quate currency system, this was one of the most important 
 
 > Senate Journal, 1841, 24. * Senate Journal, 18. ' Senate Journal, 20. «Senate 
 Journal, 20. 
 
William A. Gkaham. 45 
 
 committees of the Congress, and it was composed of very 
 able senators, — Mr. Clay, chairman ; Mr. Choate, Mr. 
 Wright, Mr. Berrien, Mr. King, Mr. Talhnadge, Mr. Bay- 
 ard, Mr. Graham and Mr. Huntington. As above said, how- 
 ever, all the measures of this committee were made futile by 
 the veto of the President. 
 
 At the second session of the Twenty-seventh Congress, 
 Mr. Graham was continued as chairman of the Committee 
 on Claims, but was transferred from the Committee on 
 Revolutionary Claims to that on Pensions.^ He presided 
 over the Senate as president pro tempore on February lY, 
 1842." He was appointed second on the special Committee 
 on Retrenchment, on February 28th.^ On March 31st* Mr. 
 Clay retired from the Senate, and was succeeded by his 
 friend and follower, John J. Crittenden, who, with all the 
 rest of the original cabinet except Mr. Webster, had resigned 
 the preceding September. ''I want rest," wrote Mr. Clay, 
 '^aijd my private affairs want attention. jSTevertheless I would 
 make any personal sacrifice, if by remaining here I could 
 do any good ; but my belief is, I can effect nothing, and per- 
 haps my absence may remove an obstacle to something being 
 done by others." 
 
 As I have said, the administration of Mr. Van Buren had 
 left to the administration of Mr. Tyler an inheritance of 
 debt, and the compromise tariff measure of 1833, working 
 automatically, had reduced the revenues below the necessary 
 expenses of the government. There was an annually increas- 
 ing deficit. The special session of 1841 had authorized a 
 temporary loan of $12,000,000, to tide over immediate 
 embarrassments. Coupled with that measure was one re- 
 quiring the distribution of the proceeds of the sale of public 
 lands among the states, this distribution, however, to be sus- 
 pended whenever the necessities of the treasury required an 
 increase of the tariff duties above the twenty per cent fixed 
 by the compromise of 1833. To raise the duties above this 
 
 1 Senate Journal, 1841-2, 22. 2 Senate Journal, 173. 3 Senate Journal, 188. « Senate 
 Journal, 262. 
 
46 XoETH Cakolina Historical Commission. 
 
 twenty per cent level was absolutely necessary to secure an 
 adequate revenue for the expenses of the government. Thus 
 any further distribution of these funds among the states 
 could not be made. Indeed such was the condition of the 
 treasury, that Congress was compelled at the ensuing session 
 to extend the loan of 1841 and add $5,000,000 thereto. The 
 Democrats wished to devote the proceeds of the sale of the 
 public lands to the gradual liquidation of this temporary 
 loan. This the Whigs opposed, and, having a majority, de- 
 feated. It was while the bill authorizing this loan was pend- 
 ing that Mr. Graham made his first set speech, April 13, 
 1842. He first shows that during the four years of the Van 
 Buren administration, the expenses of the government ex- 
 ceeded its revenue by $31,000,000 ; that this deficit was re- 
 duced to $5,500,000, by the application of $26,000,000 of 
 extraordinary funds, $17,000,000 of surplus at the begin- 
 ning of the administration, $9,000,000 of which should have 
 been the fourth installment of the deposit ■of land pro- 
 ceeds with the states, and $9,000,000 were received from 
 debts due the United States, principally for the sale of its 
 stock in the late Bank of the United States ; that they not 
 only diverted this capital to the payment of the ordinary 
 expenses of the government, but they were compelled to 
 borrow $5,500,000 more by the issue of treasury notes to 
 meet their extravagant expenditures, and this legacy of debt 
 they have left to the Tyler administration. ''To meet this 
 deficiency, what have we ? Instead of surplus, we have debt. 
 Instead of extraordinary means falling in, we have a daily 
 increasing charge of interest. Instead of a tariff of forty 
 per cent, we have one nearly approaching 20 per cent, and 
 that upon little more than half the imports. What then is 
 to be done? * * * Mr. President, our whole duty in 
 this emergency seems to be comprehended in three propo- 
 sitions : 
 
 "1. Borrow such sum, upon the best terms we can obtain. 
 
William A. Graham. 47 
 
 as will relieve our present necessities, and save the public 
 honor from disgrace. 
 
 "2. Reduce our expenses to the lowest point which is con- 
 sistent with an efficient public service. 
 
 "3. Levy such duties upon imports as are necessary for an 
 economical administration of the government, and no more." 
 
 The Democrats had suggested that the Tyler administra- 
 tion could relieve itself of all its financial difficulties by de- 
 manding the return of the $28,000,000 of land proceeds al- 
 ready distributed among the states. Mr. Graham proceeds 
 in a calm, courteous and well-reasoned argument to show- 
 that such extraordinary funds were not to be devoted to the 
 ordinary expenses of the government, according to the scheme 
 of the Constitution itself, even if thev could surmount the 
 impracticableness and injustice of the scheme of taking back 
 from the states the money w^hich had been so recently de- 
 posited with them. "I have said, Mr. President, that the 
 authors of the Constitution did not rely upon the public 
 lands as a means for the ordinary maintenance of govern- 
 ment, and, in my humble opinion, to eifectuate their design 
 to make this a government of limited powx^rs, confined to 
 comparatively few objects, it ought to be restricted to those 
 modes of supply pointed out in the Constitution. All history 
 will verify the fact, that those nations have been most re- 
 markable for purity and correctness of administration, for 
 the strictest accountability of public agents, and have longest 
 preserved their liberties, who have kept their ruling powers 
 constantly dependent upon the contributions, direct or in- 
 direct, annually levied upon the people. As a certain writer 
 has remarked, 'They who would trample on their rights are 
 restrained by the want of their money.' This general truth 
 applies with tenfold force to a government like that of the 
 United States, far distant from the great mass of the people 
 whom it aifects, and so complicated in its structure and so 
 diversified in its operations, that, to keep up a minute know!- 
 
48 North Carolina Historical CoMMissioi«r. 
 
 edge of its details of administration, federal politics must 
 be made, to a great extent, an exclusive profession. That 
 period of our history, when peculation and embezzlement 
 were most rife, when the responsibility of pul)lic officers was 
 least rigid, when salaries were unregulated and the gains 
 in many offices were almost what their holders desired, and 
 when appropriations were most extravagant, was the period 
 which I have reviewed in the first part of these remarks 
 (Van Buren's administration), when revenue was not re- 
 dundant but grossly deficient, but there were surpluses and 
 extraordinary means in your coffers, which the administra- 
 tion had nothing to do with, but to expand. Think you, 
 sir, that in any other state of the treasury, a district attorney 
 would have been allowed to receive emoluments gi'eater, by 
 more than one-half, than the salary of the President of the 
 United States— greater according to his own declaration 
 when about to leave office, 'than any citizen of a free re- 
 public ought to receive' ; that marshals, collectors of customs 
 and postmasters, would have been permitted, like Roman 
 proconsuls, to enrich themselves to immense fortunes out 
 of the offices created for public benefit alone, and oftentimes, 
 by like instances of official abuses — abuses to which no cor- 
 rective was applied until the third of March, 1841, the very 
 last day of the late administration, when a clause was in- 
 serted in the appropriation bill — a kind of bequest to pious 
 uses upon the deathbed repentance, spoken of by the sena- 
 tor from South Carolina (Mr. Preston), restraining the com- 
 pensation of these functionaries to $0,000 per annum, for 
 the future." 
 
 On May 31, 1842, Mr. Mangum was elected president 
 pro tern, of the Senate in the place of Mr. Southard, of 
 ISTew Jersey, who had resigned, thus making a vacancy on 
 the Finance Committee.^ Mr. Graham was appointed to 
 fill this vacancy.^ A question about which there was much 
 discussion at this session was the redistricting of the country 
 
 1 Senate Journal, 1841-2, 366. 2 Ibid, 377. 
 
William A. Graham. 49 
 
 according to the census of 1840. The Democrats were in 
 favor of leaving the matter of electing members of the House 
 of Representatives by districts or by a general ticket to the 
 legislatures of the various states. Mr. Graham v^as in favor 
 of Congress determining this question for itself and of its re- 
 quiring the legislatures to lay off contiguous districts con- 
 taining a certain number (70,680) of voters, thus in effect 
 prohibiting the election of representatives by general ticket. 
 On June 3, 1842, he made a very able speech sustaining this 
 view. He discusses it, first, from the standpoint of expedi- 
 ency and, second, from the standpoint of its constitutionality. 
 In concluding the latter branch of the discussion, he said: 
 ''But we are told we have no power to pass this law, because 
 we can not enforce its execution by penal sanctions ; and an 
 urgent appeal is made to us by the senator from Kew Hamp- 
 shire (Mr. Woodbury) to know whether an armed force or 
 a writ of mandamus is to be sent to the state legislatures to 
 compel them to lay off the districts. ISTo, sir, neither. ]N^o 
 one ever conceived the idea of compelling a free legislative 
 assembly to do, or not to do, anything by physical force, 
 or the precept of a court of justice. The crime of omission 
 or commission in their constitutional duty, like that of 
 parenticide among the Athenians, is provided with no legal 
 sanction, but left to the oaths and consciences of men, to an 
 accountability to public opinion, and to that constituency 
 whose rights have been outraged or neglected. The preserv- 
 ation of this government greatly depends on the faithful 
 fulfillment of the duties imposed by the Constitution on the 
 state legislatures. If a majority of them shall fail to elect 
 senators (as one has done), if five or six of those in the 
 largest states shall fail to make regulations for choosing 
 electors of president and vice-president, in conformity to the 
 laws of Congress, the IJuion would be as effectually dissolved 
 as if we who are sent to the legislative halls of the capitol 
 should obstinately refuse to attend in our places and pass 
 
50 XoKTH Cakolixa Histoeical Commission. 
 
 the laws annually necessary for the support of the govern- 
 ment. It is faith, honor, conscience, and not the hangman's 
 whip, on which at last rest the blessings of this noblest human 
 institution which has ever been devised for the security, the 
 welfare and the happiness of man. The duties of the states, 
 under our Constitution, are not to be determined by their 
 liability to punishment, but by the covenants into which they 
 entered by that instrument." 
 
 At this session of Congress a tariff bill was passed.^ It 
 represented fairly the Whig idea of a tariff, i. e. for revenue 
 with incidental protection. The President had already stated 
 his objection to a bilP that contained a provision continuing 
 the distribution of the public land sales. Mr. Graham was 
 with the Democrats in nearly all the reductions proposed 
 by them during the consideration of the bill, and voted 
 against it on its third and final reading. He was very 
 earnestly in favor of continuing the distribution of the pro- 
 ceeds of the sale of public lands, and this bill being a sur- 
 render to the President on this subject, he could not vote for 
 it without stultifying his o^vn record. Compared with the 
 present it was an exceedingly moderate protection measure, 
 not averaging more than thirty per cent. Moderate, however, 
 as protection was at that period, he, being a southerner, was 
 even more moderate. He said himself in his letter accept- 
 ing the Whig nomination for governor, December 18, 1843: 
 ''I have no hesitation in saying, that whilst I think the govern- 
 ment should collect the least amount of money, which may be 
 necessary for an efficient public service, in laying duties to 
 raise such sum, I would incidentally afford protection to 
 American interests, w^hen they were deemed of sufficient im- 
 portance to deserve it, as well as counteract the effects of 
 restrictive regulations on our trade by foreign nations 
 wherever it should appear expedient to do so. * * * I 
 did not vote for the tariff now existing. Some of its duties 
 were higher than I approved, but in the vacant condition of 
 
 'Senate Journal, 1841, 251. 2 Ibid, 643. 
 
William A. Gkaham. 51 
 
 the treasury, I would not have withheld from it my support 
 had an amendment which I offered, proposing a distribution 
 of the proceeds of the public lands among the states, been 
 incorporated in the bill." 
 
 At the third session of the Twenty-seventh Congress, 
 1842-3, he was again Chairman of the Committee on Claims, 
 second on the Committee on Finance, and second on the 
 Special Committee on Retrenchment. 
 
 When it is remembered that Mr, Graham w^as only thirty- 
 eight years and five months old when his term as United 
 States Senator expired in March, 1843, and consider the 
 influential position he had taken in that august body, we 
 need no stronger evidence of his ability, his faithfulness 
 and his industry. The functions of the chairman of the 
 Committee on Claims, at that time when there was no court 
 of claims, were very much like that of a chancellor presid- 
 ing over a court of equity. Many important matters were 
 presented to that committee while Mr. Graham was chair- 
 man, matters which involved the reading and digesting of a 
 great mass" of written evidence, the application of the prin- 
 ciples of law and of justice to the case under consideration, 
 and finally the rendering of the written opinion in such form 
 as to carry conviction to the minds of the great lawyers and 
 eminent statesmen, who constituted the body to which the 
 report was made. ISTone of his reports was perfunctory, and 
 some of them show such industrious mastery of detail, such 
 capacity for sifting out the strong from the weak, the true 
 from the false, from a great mass of conflicting, or obscure, 
 or false testimony, such clearness in statement of conclu- 
 sions of fact and enunciation of legal and constitutional 
 principles applicable to them, that we are convinced he would 
 have made a great chancellor as well as a great senator, if 
 fair opportunity had presented itself.^ 
 
 The Legislature elected in North Carolina, in 1842, was 
 largely Democratic in both branches. Mr. Romulus M. 
 
 1 See his Report, Harris-Farrow Claim, 3 Senate Doc, 27th Con., 3d Session, No. 157. 
 
52 KoRTH Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 Saunders and Mr. Bedford Brown, both Democrats, were 
 candidates to succeed Mr. Graham, and divided the votes of 
 that party between them, while the Whigs voted to a man 
 for Mr. Graham. On December 20, 1842, Mr. Graham's 
 name was withdrawn from the ballotting, and the next day 
 Mr. William H. Haywood, Jr., was elected senator. Says 
 the Raleigh Register of December 23, 1842 : "The elevation 
 of this gentleman over the head of all of the leaders of the 
 genuine Democracy is a strong exhibition of political leger- 
 demain, in which, however, we believe he, himself, had no 
 hand. (As a matter of fact he was not in Raleigh at the 
 time.) * * * At the beginning of the session, Judge 
 Saunders was taken up as a representative of the Calhoun 
 wing of the party, while the Hon. Bedford Brown, being 
 the beau ideal of pure locofocoism, was the nucleus about 
 which the elements of Van Burenism rallied. It was in vain 
 that caucus after caucus was held. The friends of Saunders, 
 regarding his success as a matter of vital importance to Mr. 
 Calhoun, would not give way, though in a minority. On the 
 other hand, many of Brown's friends at an early period de- 
 clared that they would prefer Mr. Graham to Judge Saunders, 
 and some of them affirmed that in no event could they be 
 brought to the support of any man tainted with nullification." 
 After Mr. Graham's withdrawal on the 19th, the Whigs 
 had no candidate, but voted, some for Saunders, and others, 
 scattering. When the Democrats, however, centered upon 
 Mr. Haywood, they again voted as a body for him, the final 
 ballot standing Haywood ninety-five and Graham sixty-nine, 
 with two scattering. 
 
 FIRST TERM AS GOVERNOR 
 
 At the end of his term of service in the United States 
 Senate, Mr. Graham returned to the practice of the law at 
 Hillsboro. But the people of jSTorth Carolina were not ml- 
 ling that he should remain long out of their service. 
 
 The Whigs throughout the State, while they were intensely 
 
William A. Graham. 53 
 
 indiguaiit at what they regarded as Mr. Tyler's treason to 
 their party, were not discouraged by it. They turned as 
 one man to Mr. Clay, as their candidate for the presi- 
 dency in 1844, and to Mr. Graham as their candidate for 
 governor. The Whig State Convention was held in Raleigh 
 December 7, 1843, and Mr. Graham was unanimously and 
 with great enthusiasm chosen as its candidate for governor. 
 It was with some sacrifice of his financial interests that he 
 accepted this nomination. He said in his letter of accept- 
 ance, December 18, 1843: "But, however gratifying to an 
 honorable pride, your communication awakens feelings also 
 of a different character. It breaks in upon my plans of 
 life, my professional and agricultural pursuits, and demands 
 a sacrifice of interests which can not well be spared from my 
 family. I had therefore most earnestly and anxiously hoped 
 that the choice of the convention would have fallen on some 
 one of those able and virtuous citizens, whose names have 
 been connected with this subject and whose disinterestedness 
 and zeal in the Whig cause, is only equaled by their devotion 
 to its principles. Nevertheless, with my conceptions of duty 
 (however much I had wished it otherwise) I have no alter- 
 native but to accept the nomination. Without stronger rea- 
 sons than any I have to urge, I could not hold any other per- 
 son justified in refusing a call from such a source, to lend 
 his name and his efforts to the support of principles, which, 
 I verily believe, lie at the foundation of the enduring pros- 
 perity and happiness of the country."^ 
 
 Mr. Graham's opponent was a personal friend and fellow 
 county-man, Michael Hoke, of Lincoln. Mr. Hoke was 
 young (only thirty-four years of age), ardent and able. He 
 was considered the most promising of the younger Democrats 
 of the State, had great personal magnetism, was a fine de- 
 bater and universally popular. He was a man of irreproach- 
 able character and had a great deal of humor, but it was a 
 
 1 Note. — He was urged very strongly by Senator Mangum and Mr. James W. Osborne 
 not to accept this nomination, that his proper place was in the U. S. Senate, and this 
 would prevent his being considered for that place. 
 
54 North Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 kindly, genial humor that left little sting behind it. His 
 death, on September 9, 1844, from a fever contracted in the 
 eastern part of the State during this campaign, was a gTeat 
 loss to the State, and it was deplored scarcely less by his 
 political opponents than by his party associates. The cam- 
 paign was arduous, the candidates occasionally meeting in 
 joint discussion. Graham, more learned, more experienced, 
 calmer, more dignified and impressive ; Hoke, more nimble, 
 quicker, brighter and more entertaining. The Graham-Hoke 
 campaign was long spoken of in the State in very much the 
 same terms that we speak of the Vance-Settle campaign of 
 1876, as one of the most remarkable in the history of the 
 State. Mr. Graham was elected by 3,153 majority. 
 
 Here is a contemporary estimate of Mr. Graham which I 
 give. It is that of a political follower, but allowing some- 
 thing for natural partiality and exaggeration, its essential 
 features present him very near as he was: '^Governor Gra- 
 ham dignifies and adorns everything he touches. Such grace, 
 such elegance, such ease, such candor and so much placid 
 eloquence, were never seen before concentrated in one man. 
 He can not fail to acquire the attention of his audience, and 
 when acquired, he keeps it chained with a magic spell. We 
 have seen speakers who seemed as if they snatched the very 
 lightnings and thunders of heaven to assist them in over- 
 powering the senses and arousing the passions of their 
 hearers ; we have seen those who appeared to make the very 
 walls laugh with ancedote and the air boisterous with mirth ; 
 we have seen those whose plain, matter-of-fact statements fell 
 with convincing force upon the judgTiient, but in so cold and 
 formal a manner that, although we were compelled to ac- 
 knowledge the force of the argument and the solidity of the 
 facts, we could not forget the repulsive manner of the 
 speaker ; but never have we seen so due a degree of the excel- 
 lences of a public speaker united in one man as in Governor 
 Graham. He is possessed of a lofty dignity without haughti- 
 ness, ease without affectation, talent without vanitv, and 
 
William A. GKAHA:\r. ■ 55 
 
 principles which have the respect of even those who enter- 
 tain others." Of course the tone of this is exaggerated, but 
 after all it is simply truth somewhat colored. Governor 
 Graham had a very fine and noble presence. He was at this 
 time the handsomest man in public life in North Carolina. 
 The tones of his voice were mellow and harmonious, and, 
 though not strong, well modulated. His action was free, 
 easy and graceful, on occasion warming into energy. His 
 matter was carefully arranged so as to give his argument 
 the effect of cumulation. He was fair in statement, and 
 perfectly honest and sincere in the positions he took. His 
 public addresses, though always orderly arranged, are never 
 closely reasoned. He knew the danger of the logical short 
 cut in dealing with public questions. Its beauty and force 
 could be appreciated only by the initiated, and such were 
 not his fellow-citizens whom he was addressing. He very 
 seldom dealt in sophistry. Indeed so practical a mind as his 
 could rarely do so. In short the matter of his public speeches 
 was interesting and instructive, while his manner was always 
 attractive; 
 
 On January 1, 1845, he was installed as governor, the 
 oaths of office being administered by the Chief Justice, 
 Ruffin, in the Commons Hall, in the presence of both houses. 
 He then delivered his inaugural address. After a merely 
 cursory glance at the relations of the State to the Federal 
 Government, in which he condemned the practice of devoting 
 so much of our public discussions to Federal topics, he con- 
 fines himself to the problems which were to confront him in 
 his coming administration. ''That these important concerns 
 of the nation should be objects of constant observation and 
 active vigilance is to be expected and desired; but that they 
 should be so to the exclusion of those immediate interests 
 which come to our homes and our firesides, and which are 
 wisely retained under state jurisdiction, is a misfortune to 
 be deprecated. If we glory in the name of American citizens, 
 it should be with feelings akin to filial afi^cction and ffrati- 
 
56 ISToKTH Carolina Histokical Commission. 
 
 tude, that we remember we are North Carolinians ; and that 
 the preservation and prosperity of our system and its ability 
 to secure the permanent and habitual attachment of the 
 people, depend quite as much, nay much more, upon an en- 
 lightened policy and a correct administration in the state 
 governments than in that of the union. * - * ]^orth 
 Carolina, possessing a soil, upon the average not above the 
 medium grade of fertility, but yielding fruitful returns to 
 patient toil in our generally salubrious climate ; excluded by 
 the nature of our sea coast from any enlarged share in the 
 commerce of the world, her people have been inured to self- 
 reliance, industry and economy. The natural fruits of this 
 situation have been personal independence, unostentatious 
 self-respect, habits in general of morality, obedience to the 
 law, fidelity to engagements, public and private, frugality 
 in expenditures and loyalty to the government, the offspring 
 of the simple manners and honest and manly character of its 
 citizens." He then proceeds to show the necessity for con- 
 tinued efforts to provide an adequate common school system, 
 and the means for creating an adequate market for the pro- 
 ducts of the people: ''If we can not, without too great a 
 loss of profits, send our staples to existing markets, we must 
 endeavor to bring a market nearer to them, by inducing 
 capital to come to the State, by utilizing local capital in the 
 establishment of various industries for which the State could 
 provide so much raw material, by the building of more rail- 
 roads and better local highways. Our country must be made 
 to hold out the hope and expectation of acquiring the means 
 of comfortable livelihood and a reasonable accumulation, or 
 its population can not be expected to remain, nor its resources 
 to increase. While labor is the true foundation of national 
 wealth, it may be, much aided in its efforts by the kind and 
 upholding hand of government." He concludes thus: "In 
 our past history we have gained a high character for the 
 virtues of honesty and fidelity. Thus far our escutcheon 
 is unstained, the public faith has been kept, the public honor 
 
William A. Gkaham. 57 
 
 is inviolate. And whatever tests may await us in the future, 
 let us fervently unite our invocations to that good Providence. 
 who has so signally upheld and preserved us heretofore, that 
 our beloved North Carolina may still be permitted to walk 
 in her integrity, the object of our loyalty and pride, as she 
 is the home of our hearts and affections." 
 
 The Register of January 8, 1845, commented on this ad- 
 dress as follows: "We have never seen a larger or more 
 intelligent assemblage on a similar occasion in our State ; 
 and we can say without disparagement to others that the ad- 
 dress of Governor Graham on the occasion was decidedly the 
 best inaugural we have ever heard, or have ever seen from 
 any of the state executives of the union. It speaks the words 
 of truth and soberness to our sister states and counsels our 
 own in a language of the soundest wisdom." 
 
 One of the iirst problems with which Governor Graham 
 had to deal was the foreclosure of the State's mortgage on the 
 Raleigh & Gaston Railroad. The building of railroads was, 
 of course, a new thing in ITorth Carolina. The lack of ex- 
 perience in such work, as usual, wrought its own penalty. 
 It cost more than it should, and was operated badly — ex- 
 pensively and inefficiently. The State had made itself liable 
 as surety on $787,000 of its bonds. The company had failed 
 to pay even the annual interest on these bonds, and the 
 State was forced to pay both interest and a part of the prin- 
 cipal. Legal proceedings were instituted for the foreclosure 
 of all the mortgages on all of the property of that company 
 at the Spring term, 1845, of the Wake County Court of 
 Equity. But owing to the resistance made by the company, 
 and the decision of the Superior Court in their favor, an 
 appeal was rendered necessary to the Supreme Court, and 
 the decree of foreclosure was postponed to the fall term of 
 that year. The cost of the road was $1,500,000, and it 
 brought at the foreclosure sale, on the bid of the State, 
 through Governor Graham, $363,000. 
 
 The Le2,"islature of 1844-5, also, made it the dutv of the 
 
58 NoETH Carolina Histosical Co:mmission'. 
 
 Governor to collect the memorials of the Revolutionary his- 
 tory of the State. In pursuance of this, Governor Graham 
 wrote to Judge Francis Xavier Martin, of Louisiana, on 
 February 8, 1845: "Presuming that your researches when 
 engaged in writing the history of the State put you in pos- 
 session of many of the letters of these early governors (Cas- 
 well, Nash and Burke), as well as other documents of great 
 interest to our people, I have to request as a special favor 
 to I^orth Carolina that you will be kind enough to communi- 
 cate to me any of our public documents of the description 
 desired, which may be under your control ; or that you will 
 inform me as early as your convenience will permit, where 
 copies of them may be procured." But Judge Martin, as he 
 wrote Governor Graham on March 29, 1845, had collected 
 no material so late as the administrations of early governors. 
 He corresponded also with Miss Mary Burke, the only sur- 
 viving child of Governor Burke, and it was by her consent 
 that the Burke papers, then in the possession of Dr. James 
 Webb, of Hillsboro, were turned over to Governor Swain. 
 On March 5, 1845, he issued a circular letter to the people 
 of the State, reciting the resolution of the Legislature and 
 giving in detail the public documents already discovered in 
 the capitol and describing those missing and desired, and 
 requesting them to cooperate with him in the preservation of 
 the memorials of the Revolutionary period. The early part 
 of his first administration, too, was much occupied with the 
 preliminaries to the establishment of a school in Raleigh for 
 the deaf, dumb and blind. 
 
 He met his first Legislature in I^ovember, 184G, with an 
 elaborate and very able message, dealing largely with the 
 finances of the State. The average expenditure for the ordi- 
 nary support of the government at that time was $67,500 
 per annum. At the same time the income from ordinary 
 sources of revenue averaged $83,000, the excess of which, 
 over and above ordinary expenses, was devoted to the account 
 of rebuildino" the capitol. interest on the State's debt until 
 
William A. Graham, 59 
 
 it was liquidated in full and to liabilities of the railroad 
 companies. After showing that the income could be largely 
 increased by an adequate assessment of the lands and polls 
 in the State (there had been no reassessment of lands in ten 
 years), he proceeds: '^l^o valuation can continue to be a 
 just criterion of worth for any considerable period, and a 
 reassessment should be provided for once at least in five 
 years, if it be not annually. By adopting these measures of 
 fairness and justice, to collect what is now imposed without 
 increase of taxes, it may reasonably be expected that the 
 public revenue from present sources, now equal to about 
 $86,000, may be raised to $100,000 per annum." He then 
 recommends a specific tax upon pleasure carriages, gold 
 watches kept for use and other articles of luxury, to go into 
 operation at once, and to continue in force until the ex- 
 piration of the next session of the General Assembly. ''In 
 advising therefore but a temporary provision for extra tax- 
 ation, I am influenced by the consideration, that possibly 
 it may not longer be required, rather than a fear of any 
 aversion of our constituents to contribute whatever may be 
 needed to redeem the public obligations, however incautiously 
 or unfortunately entered into. The odious doctrine that a 
 State may refuse or postpone the fulfillment of contracts 
 guaranteed by her public faith and sovereign honor, has no 
 resting place in all our borders, and I am yet to hear of a 
 single exception to the unanimity of our people upon this 
 subject." 
 
 There were at the time many railroad schemes. Among 
 others were two proposed railroads into South Carolina, one 
 from Wilmington, which was by this Legislature incorpo- 
 rated as the Wilmington and Manchester, and one from 
 Fayetteville. Governor Graham, while not opposing these 
 projects, was very much in favor of a railroad from Fay- 
 etteville to Salisbury or Charlotte, and thence into South 
 Carolina. And the Legislature did grant a charter to the 
 Charlotte and South Carolina Railroad. 
 
60 IJ^ORTH Carolina Histokical Commission. 
 
 At that time our common school system was in its infancy, 
 only $95,578 being distributed by the State for its support. 
 Governor Graham recommended that the office of Commis- 
 sioner of Common Schools be created, and that it be filled 
 by one charged with the superintendence of the system 
 throughout the State, and devoting his whole time and at- 
 tention in imparting to it vigor and usefulness. ''The sub- 
 ject is of sufficient weight, especially in the infantile stage 
 of these institutions, to engage the best talents and most 
 exalted patriotism of the country." 
 
 In May, 1840, the President, Polk, called for one regi- 
 ment of volunteer infantry, to be enrolled and held in readi- 
 ness to aid in the prosecution of the existing war with the 
 Republic of Mexico. Governor Graham, in response, issued 
 his proclamation, and with a most commendable prompti- 
 tude, said he, more than three times the number required 
 tendered thieir service. Capt. S. L. Fremont, the army of- 
 ficer appointed by the Federal Government to muster this 
 regiment into service, wrote, after he had performed this 
 service and was leaving the State: "Public men may differ 
 about the justice of the war, but the good people of the Old 
 ISTorth State have shown that in a foreign war, they know 
 no party but their country, and no country but their own." 
 Governor Graham's attitude toward the Mexican War was 
 that held by most of the leading Whigs of the period, i. e. 
 it was unnecessary, if not criminal, and was brought on not 
 by the annexation of Texas, but by President Polk's pre- 
 cipitancy in sending General Taylor to take possession of the 
 territory in dispute between the State of Texas and the 
 Republic of Mexico. War being flagrant, however, every- 
 thing must be done to make the arms of the United States 
 successful. 
 
 To some degree Mr. Graham's first term as governor was 
 devoted to carrying out the plans of the previous adminis- 
 tration (Morehead's) or that had been inaugurated by the 
 General Assembly of 1844-5, such as, for instance, saving 
 
William A. Geaham. 61 
 
 the State harmless from the bankruptcy of the Raleigh and 
 Gaston Railroad and the Clubfoot and Harlows Creek Canal, 
 and directing the settlement of the accounts between the 
 State and insolvent purchasers of the Cherokee lauds and 
 their bondsmen. In all these matters he demonstrated his 
 very superior ability as an administrator. Especially was 
 this the case in his management of the Raleigh and Gaston 
 Railroad. Had it not been for a fire in February, 1848, by 
 which the machine shops and engine house were destroyed 
 and its stationary engine and four locomotives were seriously 
 damaged, it would in the course of a few years have been 
 made a profitable investment. There had been occasional 
 discussions of amendment to our penal code which would 
 moderate in harshness and provide a penitentiary for a cer- 
 tain class of offenders from 1791 on, notably so in 1817 and 
 in 1822, but nothing definite had been done until the Gen- 
 eral Assembly of 1841-5. The governor was directed to 
 secure statistics from states in which the penitentiary system 
 then prevailed and submit the same to the people before an 
 election to be held under the Act. Governor Graham, 
 through an extensive correspondence, did collect the data 
 desired and published the same in the newspapers of the 
 State in the early summer of 1846. Under the act, the 
 question of a penitentiary or no penitentiary was submitted 
 to the joeople at the time of the election for goveruor in 
 August of that year. The election seems to have gone by 
 default against any change, the vote for it being very small. 
 So satisfactory to his own party and to the people of the 
 State was his first term as governor, that in January, 1846, 
 Governor Graham w^as nominated for a second, by a largely 
 attended and very enthusiastic Whig convention, and the 
 following August was reelected by a great majority (7,850), 
 over his Democratic opponent, James B. Shepard. Mr. 
 Shepard was a man of fine ability and w^as a good speaker, 
 but he had inherited wealth, so was disinclined to the drudg- 
 ery of politics and of the bar. His candidacy and canvass 
 
62 NoETH Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 against so popular and efficient a governor as Mr. Graham 
 was, of course, a forlorn hope. Mr. Graham, had, by this 
 time, become unquestionably the leader of the Whig party 
 in the State. He practically dictated the policy of that 
 party. I do not use the term dictate in an offensive sense, 
 for he was too courteous a gentleman and too wise a public 
 man ever to assume a dictatorial manner. His knowledge 
 of the people was so extensive and so accurate, that his party 
 associates had the utmost confidence in the soundness of his 
 judgment in all matters of policy, and so almost invariably 
 adopted his views after a conference, or if on rare occasions 
 they overruled him, had cause to regret it, as subsequent 
 events showed their wisdom. As a party leader, it is quite 
 probable that he was never excelled by any man in the his- 
 tory of the State. 
 
 In the General Assembly of 1848-9, the two parties were 
 tied in both House and Senate, so a compromise was made 
 by which R. B. Gilliam, Whig, was elected Speaker of the 
 House and Calvin Graves, Democrat, was elected Speaker of 
 the Senate. The principal subjects for consideration by this 
 Legislature were the establishment of a State Hospital for 
 the Insane at Raleigh, the disposition of the Raleigh and 
 Gaston Railroad and the charter of the I^orth Carolina Rail- 
 road. Governor Graham gives his views at large on all these 
 topics in his last biennial message. He concludes his recom- 
 mendation of a State Hospital as follows "A distinguished 
 person of the gentler sex,^ who has devoted much of her life 
 to the pious duty of pleading the cause of the lunatic before 
 States and communities, has recently traversed a considerable 
 part of this State in search of information respecting these 
 unfortunates among us, and will probably ask leave to pre- 
 sent their cause to you at an early day. I can not too ear- 
 nestly commend the cause itself, or the disinterested benevo- 
 lence of its advocate." 
 
 There is no more dramatic incident in the history of the 
 State than Miss Dix's appeal to this Legislature, Mr, Dob- 
 
 1 Dorothea L. Dix. 
 
William A. Gkaha.m. 63 
 
 bins's great speech, and the passage of the act on January 
 29th, 1849, but it is without the scope of this paper. 
 
 Governor Graham's views in regard to the disposition of 
 the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad were so interwoven with 
 those on the charter of the North Carolina Railroad, that I 
 discuss them together. He said in his message that there 
 were only three modes of disposing of the former road: 1st, 
 a resale to existing stockholders by compromise of the suits 
 now pending, if suitable terms be offered ; 2d, retain it as a 
 permanent property of the State after repairing it in the best 
 manner ; and, 3d, to unite it with another work through the 
 interior of the State. The last was the plan which he 
 urged very forcibly upon the Legislature in his regular mes- 
 sage and in two special messages sent to the Senate. His 
 idea was to fill in the missing link between Raleigh and 
 Columbia, S. C, in the great chain of railways from I^ew 
 York to N'ew Orleans by incorporating and building a rail- 
 road to be called the I^orth Carolina Railroad, from Raleigh 
 to Salisbury, and thence on to Charlotte, where it would con- 
 nect with 'the Charlotte and Columbia road, already char- 
 tered and then being built. The details of his plan may be 
 summarized thus : Private individuals to subscribe $500,000. 
 As soon as the Board of Internal Improvements should be 
 satisfied that these subscriptions were in good faith and sol- 
 vent, the suits then pending against delinquent subscribers 
 to the stock of the Raleigh and Gaston road should abate, the 
 new corporation was to be formed and the State to convey that 
 road to it. He estimated that the cost of the new road would 
 be not more than $2,500,000, and of this the State was to 
 assume half, but the conveyance of the Raleigh and Gaston 
 road was to be in lieu of $500,000 of the State's subscrip- 
 tion. The $500,000, subscribed privately as above said, were 
 to be used first in putting the Raleigh and Gaston road in 
 thorough repair and good condition, and the balance was to 
 be expended in building the new road toward Salisbury from 
 Raleigh. He estimated that there would be about forty miles 
 
64 North Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 thus completed. After so much of the work should be done, 
 then the State was to advance such further sum as might be 
 necessary to complete the road, the amount paid by the State, 
 however, to be always in equal proportion to those paid by 
 private stockholders. His scheme also comprehended the 
 building later a railroad from Raleigh to Goldsboro and 
 one from some point east of the Yadkin to Fayetteville, and 
 still later one from Goldsboro to Beaufort. As is well known 
 this scheme was not adopted in its entirety. As a matter of 
 fact, it was only through many concessions and compromises 
 in the face of very determined opposition that the North 
 Carolina Railroad was chartered. The Democratic speaker 
 of the Senate, Calvin Graves, fully aware of the conse- 
 quences of his act, committed political suicide when he broke 
 the tie in the Senate in favor of the railroad. Governor 
 Graham supported this measure sincerely, though it was 
 some modification of his own. He is said to have drawn the 
 whole bill, which was introduced in the Senate by Mr. Wil- 
 liam S. Ashe, of New Hanover, and was certainly the author 
 of section 45 to the end of the act. (Laws 1849-9, chapter 
 82.) If any one could be said to have been the father of the 
 North Carolina Railroad, where there were so many taking 
 an active and efficient part in its inception, certainly it was 
 Governor Graham. Ground was broken for the new railroad 
 by Calvin Graves in the presence of a large crowd at Greens- 
 boro, on July 11th, 1851. Governor Graham was then in 
 Washington City, as Secretary of the Navy, so could not 
 attend this meeting, but he wrote a letter, which was read to 
 the assembly and from which I extract the following: "To 
 the friends of this enterprise, with whom I have been proud 
 to cooperate in the darkest hours of its fate, as well as to all 
 the good citizens of the State, who shall participate in the 
 celebration of its happy commencement, I offer my hearty 
 congratulations and good wishes. * * * I look forward to 
 the day of its final completion, as a time of deliverance not 
 merely from the shackles of commercial bondage, but from 
 
William A. Graham, 65 
 
 the domiuioii of prejudice and error, which, however hon- 
 estly entertained, have been the bane of our prosperity." 
 
 There were three measures that he repeatedly urged upon 
 both of his Legislatures, but in vain : 1st, the appointment 
 of a state commissioner of education ; 2d, the abolition of 
 the jurisdiction of county courts over pleas ; and, 3d, a more 
 modern and more efficient system for the maintenance of 
 public roads. 
 
 This summary of the leading events and measures of Gov- 
 ernor Graham's two administrations shows how wise and 
 practical he was in dealing with the affairs of the State. 
 Adopting a phrase of his own, ''he devoted himself to those 
 noble studies, by which States are made prosperous and their 
 people happy," and the knowledge thus acquired he applied 
 wisely to the service of his native State. His messages, 
 addresses and other state papers were systematically ar- 
 ranged, businesslike and practical, indicating hard, intelli- 
 gent, apprehending and appreciative labor. Their style was 
 pellucid, flowing and attractive, yet dignified and impressive 
 In the weight of their matter, in the orderliness of its 
 arrangement and in the attractiveness of their vehicle, they 
 compare well with the state papers of any man at any period. 
 
 TO THE CIVIL WAR 
 
 At the end of his last term as Governor, in January, 1849, 
 Mr. Graham returned to the practice of his profession at 
 Hillsboro and in the adjoining counties. 
 
 General Taylor was inaugurated as President in March of 
 that year. The end of the Mexican War, with the cession of 
 a vast territory to the United States, presented many serious 
 problems to the Taylor administration. That, however, 
 which assumed an exceedingly threatening aspect and ab- 
 sorbed most painfully the attention of the whole country, was 
 what was and should l>e the legal and constitutional status 
 of slavery in the newly acquired territory. The i^orth, 
 speaking generally, was determined that there should be no 
 5 
 
66 j^oRTH Carolij^a Historical Commission. 
 
 extension of slave territory, while the South, standing npon 
 its clear rights under the Constitution, was equally deter- 
 mined that the new territory should be open to settlement by 
 slaveholders if they so desired, without any interference 
 with their slave property. iNTever in the history of this 
 country has there appeared in the Senate of the United 
 States so splendid an array of talent, of statesmanship and 
 ardent patriotism as in the Senate of the Thirty-first Congress 
 at its first session, yet never was there so plain an illustration 
 of the futility of all the wisdom of the wisest of men when set 
 in opposition to that march of events, which is controlled only 
 by the infinite wisdom of Providence. These wise men could 
 bring about a compromise which could postpone for a 
 moment the final catastrophe, — that is all. 
 
 Mr. Graham was a very much interested and sympathetic 
 observer of all the events which led up to Mr. Clay's famous 
 compromise, and was in frequent communication with the 
 senators from I^orth Carolina, Messrs. Badger and Mangmm. 
 He, himself, supported that measure without reserve. In 
 the summer of 1849, President Taylor offered him his choice 
 of the missions to Russia and to Spain. Fortunately for his 
 State and country, he had no inclination to a foreign appoint- 
 ment. On July 4th, 1850, the President was much exposed 
 to a hot sun, and contracted a fever from which he died on 
 the 9th. The Vice-President, Millard Fillmore, qualified 
 the next day as President. It has been the habit to speak 
 of Mr. Fillmore as a man of only moderate ability, domi- 
 nated and controlled by his very able and experienced cabi- 
 net. The truth is, he had already as chairman of the Ways 
 and Means (then also Appropriations) Committee of the 
 Twenty-seventh CongTess, shown his unusual ability as a 
 practical, conservative, laborious legislator. Without being at 
 all brilliant, he had in full measure the capacity for labor, for 
 calm, sane, unimpassioned investigation, and for firm, con- 
 sistent action, when once his course of action had been deter- 
 mined upon. He was a man of high character and indubi- 
 
William A. Graham. 6Y 
 
 table patriotism. Had not the majority of both Houses of 
 Congress been adverse to him during the less than three years 
 of his administration, that administration would have been 
 noted for its constructive statesmanship. Many useful and 
 salutary measures advocated by him were disregarded by 
 CongTess, but his administration has to its credit cheap post- 
 age, the extension of the Capitol, the Perry Expedition, the 
 exploration of the Amazon and, to some extent, (he and his 
 advisers being in sympathy with it, whereas General Taylor 
 was lukewarm, if not opposed to it), the compromise of 1850. 
 
 Soon after General Taylor's death his cabinet resigned. 
 Mr. Fillmore selected as their successors : Daniel Webster, 
 Secretary of State ; Thomas Corwin, Secretary of the Treas- 
 ury; Charles M. Conrad, Secretary of War; William A. 
 Graham, Secretary of the iJ^avy ; James A. Pearce, Secretary 
 of the Interior ; i^Tathan K. Hall, Postmaster-General, and 
 John J. Crittenden, Attorney-General. 
 
 To this important office, Mr, Graham, though compara- 
 tively a young man, only 46 years of age, came in the full 
 maturity of his powers. His diligence in mastering detail, 
 his capacity for labor, his accessibility and courtesy to com- 
 petent advisers and his sound and well-balanced judgment, 
 soon made him an exceptionally efficient secretary. The 
 measures with which he was especially identified were four : 
 
 1st. Reorganization of the coast survey, making it more 
 practical and useful. 
 
 2d. Reorganization of the personnel of the navy, providing 
 for the retirement of officers, etc. 
 
 3d. The exploration of the Amazon. 
 
 4th. The expedition to Japan. 
 
 On the first of these measures Mr. Benton commented as 
 follows in a letter to him, dated Pebruary 19th, 1851: "T 
 have just read a second time your report on the coast survey 
 subject. I consider it one of the most perfect reports I ever 
 read — a model of a business report, and one which should 
 carry conviction to every candid, inquiring mind. I deem 
 
68 !N^OKTH Cakolina Historical Commission. 
 
 it one of the largest reforms, both in an economical and 
 administrative point of view, which the state of our affairs 
 admits of."^ 
 
 A gentleman, still living and who has a very accurate 
 memory, reports a conversation had with Com. M. F. Maury 
 long after this period, in which he spoke in the highest terms 
 of Secretary Graham's efficiency, and his own sense of grati- 
 tude to him for giving him opportunities to set out on his 
 own distinguished career. 
 
 On the second of these measures, Mr. McGehee, (Memorial 
 Oration, pages 25-6) quotes a letter of another distinguished 
 senator : "You had a new field opened to you, and well and 
 ably have you occupied every portion of it. The report is 
 to be properly characterized by a bold originality of con- 
 ception and a fearlessness of responsibility too rare in that 
 class of state papers. You have had to grapple with a sys- 
 tem built up by a series of abuses, and to use the knife — that 
 fearful and unpopular instrument — somewhat unsparingly. 
 If I do not greatly err, it will give you more reputation in 
 the country than anything you have heretofore produced 
 before the public." The third great measure of his secre- 
 taryship was the exploration of the valley of the Amazon by 
 Lieutenants Herndon and Gibbon. This was suggested by 
 Lieut. M. F. Maury. Seeing the importance of this venture, 
 both as adding to the world's knowledge of that remote and 
 little kno^vn country, as well as the possibilities for trade 
 with its inhabitants, Secretary Graham readily adopted the 
 suggestion. His letter of instruction to Lieutenant Hern- 
 don, February 15th, 1851, is characterized by that famil- 
 iarity with the details of the project and that clearness as 
 well as largeness of view which are found in all his impor- 
 tant papers. 
 
 Of all the great measures with which he was identified as 
 cabinet official, that which was most fruitful in results was 
 the Perry Expedition to Japan. There had been many dis- 
 
 J McGehee, 26. 
 
William A. Graham. 69 
 
 asters among the fishing vessels of the United States on the 
 uncharted, or insufficiently charted, seas of the northeast 
 coast of Asia. A fishing vessel had been cast away on the 
 coast of Formosa, and all its survivors had been massacred. 
 Another vessel had been wrecked off the coast of Japan, and 
 the fifteen survivors had been cast into prison and treated 
 with great cruelty. The settlement of the Oregon boundary 
 dispute, the cession of California by Mexico, the discovery 
 of gold there and the completion of the Panama Railroad, 
 had aroused the people of the United States to the promising 
 aspect of trade on the Pacific coast and to the far East. 
 Japan was at that period one of the hermit nations of the 
 world. As early as December, 1850, Commodore Perry 
 suggested to Secretary Graham the project of an expedition 
 to Japan. Mr. Graham, at once impressed with the hope- 
 fulness of the scheme and its far-reaching consequences if 
 successful, encouraged the commodore to confer confiden- 
 tially with Mr. Aspinwall, of iTew York, who had experience 
 in trade to the East and had recently completed the Panama 
 Railroad, and certain mariners in Boston, and collect such 
 facts and statistics as might throw light upon the subject, 
 and report to him. At this time the discussion was kept 
 from the public, because it was feared that England or 
 Erance might forestall this country, if information of these 
 proposals should reach either of those powers. Mr. Graham, 
 upon receipt of the information desired, seems to have laid 
 the matter before the cabinet, but without their coming to 
 any definite conclusion at that time. Soon after it was the 
 fortune of an American vessel to rescue a number of Jap- 
 anese in the Pacific about six hundred miles from Japan, and 
 to bring them into the port of San Erancisco. The admin- 
 istration, upon hearing of this, quickly realized its import- 
 ance as giving an opportunity to establish friendly relations 
 with Japan. Preparations were immediately made to return 
 these Japanese to their home on a man-of-war, which, leaving 
 San Erancisco, was to join the Eastern Squadron at Macao 
 
70 North Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 or Hong Kong. Meantime Com. John H. Aulick was dis- 
 patched, with additional vessels, to take command of the 
 Eastern Squadron, bearing with him from President Fill- 
 more a letter to the Emperor of Japan. The instructions to 
 Aulick, May 31st, 1851, drawn by Secretary Graham, do 
 not on their face contemplate a special mission to Japan. 
 When the shipwrecked Japanese reached their home escorted 
 by the American war vessels, the natives refused to permit 
 them to land, or to supply the American vessels with food or 
 water. Early in the year 1852, no doubt under the urging 
 of Commodore Perry and Mr. Graham, the plans of the 
 administration underwent a change. It was then deter- 
 mined that Perry should be given the command of the East- 
 ern Squadron and that he should go with very considerable 
 reenforcement of vessels upon a special mission to Japan. 
 He was commissioned on March 21th, 1852, preparations 
 were begam immediately to fit out his squadron, and he 
 sailed on ISTovember 24th, 1852, Aulick having in the mean- 
 time, July 10th, been relieved of the command of the East- 
 ern Squadron. The results of this expedition are before the 
 world. There can be no doubt that Governor Graham was 
 the prime mover, in the cabinet, of this epoch-making 
 adventure. 
 
 His services as Secretary of the Xavy showed the country 
 that lie was a fine administrator as well as an able statesman, 
 as much master of detail, as he was capable of taking whole 
 views of great public questions. The Whig l^ational Con- 
 vention met in June, 1852. President Fillmore, who was 
 supported very earnestly by Mr. Graham and who, accord- 
 ing to all the rules of the game, should have been nominated, 
 led on the first ballot, but Mr. Clay, who was still all- 
 powerful, threw his influence to General Scott, and nomi- 
 nated him. Mr. Graham was nominated for the Vice- 
 Presidency on the second ballot, receiving 232 votes against 
 52 for Bates, of Missouri. 
 
 ISTever was a weaker nomination made for an exalted office 
 
William A. Gkaham. 71 
 
 by any party than that of General Scott by the Whigs. He 
 was an able and virtuous man, but many of the salient fea- 
 tures of his character approached so near being ridiculous in 
 themselves and lent themselves so readily to caricature, that 
 his candidacy, though a tragedy to the Whig party, became 
 a comedy to a large majority of his fellow-citizens. There 
 was defection, too, among the Whigs of the South, because 
 he was thought to be tainted with frec-soilism, and among the 
 Whigs of the North, because he was thought to be under 
 Southern influence. The result, of course, was foredoomed. 
 He received only 42 out of a total of 296 electoral votes. 
 
 Whatever expression of dissatisfaction there may have 
 been at the head of the ticket, there was none at the nomina- 
 tion of Governor Graham. His personal worth, his ability 
 and his usefulness were freely admitted by every one. In 
 Pennsylvania, however, party capital was made against him 
 on account of his votes on the Whig tariff bill of 1842. He 
 generally voted with the Democrats for lower rates when the 
 measure was up in the Senate and against the bill, when com- 
 pleted, because provision for the distribution of the proceeds 
 of the sales of public lands was omitted. Notwithstanding 
 the evident failure of the Scott campaigii, Pierce and King 
 carried the State of North Carolina by only 603 majority. 
 This, under the discouraging conditions for that party then 
 existing in the State, was a Whig victory, or rather a Gra- 
 ham victory, for it was his popularity and influence only 
 that reduced the Democratic majority of a few months before 
 of 5,564 to 603. The disintegration of the Whig party, the 
 symptoms of which were very marked in most of the other 
 States, had also begim in North Carolina. David S. Eeid, 
 Democrat, had been elected Governor in 1850. Renomi- 
 nated by his party in 1852, he and the very eloquent and 
 accomplished John Kerr, the candidate of the Whigs, had 
 canvassed the State on Governor Reid's proposition to 
 remove the freehold qualification from voters for State Sena- 
 tors, and in August of that vear Governor Peid had been 
 
72 North Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 reelected by the largely increased majority stated above. 
 This free suffrage program was not alone in nndermining 
 the Whig strength in the State, for voters were coming more 
 and more to realize that the only safety for slavery was the 
 continued ascendancy of the Democratic party in national 
 affairs. 
 
 Governor Graham seems to have had no substantial objec- 
 tion to the extension of the suffrage. He was so much absent 
 from the State after the subject was introduced in the Gen- 
 eral Assembly of 1850, that he gave the matter only casual 
 consideration until 1853. Then he was opposed, not so much 
 to the policy as to the method of incorporating it in our 
 fundamental law. "A constitution of government for a 
 free people," said he, ''is a complicated machine, like a steam 
 engine or the human frame. It consists of various parts 
 adjusted to one harmonious whole. * * * In other and 
 more familiar language, it is a system of checks and bal- 
 ances, one article of which would not have been inserted 
 without another on kindred subjects, and one of which can 
 not be removed without carrying with it others, or deranging 
 and destroying the balance of the whole." He happily illus- 
 trated this idea, as follows : "It might be supposed by a 
 superficial observer that the human hand would be improved 
 by cutting off the lingers to equal lengths, and the operation 
 would be so simple that any child who could handle an ax 
 could perform it. And yet we know that the curtailment of 
 an extremity would wound nerves and blood vessels connect- 
 ing with the brain and heart, the very vitals of the system." 
 The freehold qualification for voters for Senators was incor- 
 porated in the Constitution of 1776 and retained in that of 
 1835, as a measure of protection to the landed interest against 
 those who owned no land, yet as free men voted for members 
 of the House of Commons and so were represented there. 
 Land was much the more valuable part of the possessions of 
 the citizens of the State who lived in its midland and its 
 west, whereas slaves constituted a large part of the wealth of 
 
William A. Gkaham. 73 
 
 the east. By a compromise between these conflicting inter- 
 ests, the land was given this measure of protection in return 
 for that given slave property by forbidding any other taxa- 
 tion than the poll tax, (the same as that of the whites), on all 
 slaves between twelve and fifty years of age, — much less than 
 this property would yield if taxed ad valorem, as land was. 
 Yet the Democrats proposed to strike down the protection to 
 land, while leaving slave property still protected, and pay- 
 ing an inadequate tax. He, then, met the plan to enact the 
 suffrage amendment only, by a bill to submit to the people 
 the question of a convention to amend the Constitution, not 
 only in this regard, but in others where it required amend- 
 ment.^ As a sort of forlorn hope that he might stem the 
 tide setting so strongly against the Whig party, he was 
 elected to the Senate from Orange County in 185-i. On 
 December 14th of that year he made a very able speech in 
 the Senate elaborating the above ideas. That the Democrats, 
 themselves, split a few years later on the question of ad 
 valorem taxation of slaves, and were finally forced to adopt 
 it as a party measure, is very strong evidence of Governor 
 Graham's political acumen. 
 
 The immediate effect upon the South of the compromise of 
 1850, was quieting. The love of the Union, that had been 
 weakened by the agitation which induced that measure, 
 became once more an active principle in that section. The 
 failure of some States in the Korth to enforce, or permit 
 to be enforced, in their borders, the fugitive slave law, 
 (the only thing which they yielded in the so-called com- 
 promise), in good faith, the Kansas-!N"ebraska agitation and 
 the Dred Scott decision, however, soon aroused both Xorth 
 and South as they had never been aroused before. It 
 became daily more and more evident that Mr. Seward's 
 irrepressible conflict was not an oratorical exaggeration, but 
 a stern reality. Men, wise men, patriotic men, continued 
 in the midst of the turmoil to cry peace, when there was no 
 peace and could be no peace. We, from the vantage ground 
 
 > Senate Journal, 1834, 70. 
 
74 NoKTH Carolina Historical CoMiiissiox. 
 
 of the present looking back upon the past, can only M^onder 
 that the final catastrophe was postponed so long. That it 
 was, is due in large degree to the wisdom and moderation and 
 patriotism of the dwindling band of "Whig leaders in the 
 South and of their sympathizers in the ISTorth. There is 
 something very admirable in the character and pathetic in 
 the history of the Old Line Whigs of the South. In politics 
 they were conservative, but in all that concerned the indus- 
 trial interests of the country they were progressives. They 
 were as incorruptible as a Roman senator in the palmiest 
 days of Rome. Their public life was as clean and immacu- 
 late and as far above suspicion as Csesar would have had his 
 wife. To them patriotism was more than a sentiment, it 
 was almost a passion. To them the Federal Constitution 
 was not a compact, but the great charter of an indestructible 
 Union, the repository of the political wisdom of the ages, by 
 which America was to be made great and kept great through- 
 out all time. Patriotism to them, then, assumed a twofold 
 aspect — love for their native State and love for the Union. 
 This blinded them to that fact of facts, which is written all 
 across the history of the period immediately preceding the 
 Civil War, namely, that it was either slavery or the Union. 
 There was no other alternative. If slavery was to continue, 
 then the Union must go ; if the Union was to continue, then 
 slavery must go. The vision of the secessionist was clearer. 
 He saw that he could not long hold on to his slave property 
 in the Union, so he prepared himself to hold on to it out of 
 the Union. To him, to use the sharp and cutting charac- 
 terization of Henry A. W^ise, there were only three parties — 
 the Whites, the Blacks and the Mulattoes: the Whites, the 
 secessionists ; the Blacks, the Republican party ISTorth ; and 
 the Mulattoes, the union men of the South. It was the day 
 of the extremist. Events moved too rapidly for the moder- 
 ates. They could not stem the tide ; they must move with it 
 or be overwhelmed. It was a choice between loves, and, in 
 agony of soul, they chose the greater, their homes, their fire- 
 
William A. Graham. 75 
 
 sides and their neighbors, and ever after their faces were to 
 the foe. Governor Graham was one of the wisest and noblest 
 of the moderates. He loved the Union scarcely less than he 
 did his native State. He thought the southern agitator only 
 less to blame than the northern abolitionist. He condemned 
 secession with all the earnestness of his nature, not only as a 
 political heresy, but as essentially suicidal to the best inter- 
 ests of the South. So strong was his position before the 
 country at large, so great was the confidence in his ability, 
 his moderation, his probity and his patriotism that he was 
 supported by ITorth CaroJina, Georgia and several district 
 delegates for the nomination for the presidency by the Con- 
 stitutional Union party in 1860, and after the popular elec- 
 tion of Mr. Lincoln in the fall of that year, the ISTew York 
 and Pennsylvania electors were strongly urged to cast their 
 ballots for him in the electoral college, as the only means 
 to avert the impending dissolution of the Union. 
 
 Even after the secession of South Carolina and the Gulf 
 States, Union sentiment in North Carolina continued very 
 strong. Governor Graham could see no reason for secession, 
 (or revolution, as he preferred to call it), in the bare fact 
 of Mr. Lincoln's election. He regarded the strong expres- 
 sions of the campaign used by Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Seward and 
 others, (i. e., that the government could not endure half slave 
 and half free, that the question was whether freemen should 
 cultivate the fields of the ISTorth or slaves those of the South, 
 etc.), as mere oratorical exaggeration, rhetoric of the hustings 
 on which they were convassing for free-soil votes. He, there- 
 fore, very consistently opposed the calling of a convention 
 in February, 1861, and his course therein was sustained 
 by a majority of the people of the State. After Mr. Lin- 
 coln's inauguration, he hoped that he might let the seven 
 "erring sisters go in peace," that he would convene Congress 
 in extra session, acknowledge the independence of these 
 States, grant guarantees to the other slave States, which had 
 adhered to the Union, that slaverv would not be interfered 
 
76 I^OKTH Caroli]N"a Historical Commission. 
 
 with within their borders, and thus miaintain a happy and 
 contented Union of twenty-seven States, instead of precipi- 
 tating the country into a bloody and destructive civil war. 
 This seems to have been Mr. Lincoln's program at the time he 
 offered a seat in his Cabinet to Mr. John A. Gilmer, but 
 later, his views no doubt modified as well by the current of 
 events as by the urging of more bloody-minded advisers, he 
 adopted what historians now call the bolder policy; he called 
 for troops to crush the rebellion, as he called it. Thencefor- 
 ward Governor Graham saw clearly that there was no other 
 alternative but civil war, and that l^orth Carolina must take 
 part with the other Southern States. He had no illusions 
 about its extent. He knew that it was to be long drawn 
 out, destructive and agonizing, with the South's only hope a 
 desire for peace at the Korth, or interference from abroad. 
 He was sent as a delegate from Orange County to the seces- 
 sion convention of May, 1861, and after strenuous efforts to 
 change its phraseology so as to make it an appeal to the ulti- 
 mate right of revolution, instead of to the constitutional 
 theory of secession, he, with all other members, signed the 
 secession ordinance, after it had been adopted by the 
 convention. 
 
 THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER 
 
 Governor Graham's training, his temperament and his 
 habit of thought, would necessarily make him a moderate in 
 any acute crisis, so though he sincerely desired the success 
 of the arms of the Confederacy, (he devoted five of his seven 
 sons to the cause, all that were old enough to bear arms), he 
 was in opposition to its government. In the State Legisla- 
 ture, in 1863-4, when he was Senator from Orange, in the 
 State Convention and in the Senate of the Confederate 
 States, he uniformly opposed all propositions to abridge the 
 freedom of the press or of speech, to suspend the privilege of 
 the writ of habeas corpus, to substitute military for civil 
 tribunals, or otherwise impair the common rights of the 
 people. The disastrous defeats of Vicksburg and Gettys- 
 
William A. Geaham. 77 
 
 burg, and the consequent declension of the fortunes of the 
 Confederacy, made the people of North Carolina turn more 
 and more to the original union men. Governor Graham 
 was elected to the Confederate States Senate by a more than 
 three-fourths majority in February, 1864, and took his seat 
 in May of that year. At this session he, in conjunction with 
 other members of CongTess, labored to procure the opening 
 of negotiations looking to peace, but unsuccessfully. For 
 the same object he labored at the ensuing session, and the 
 Hampton Roads Conference was, to some extent, due to his 
 counsels. After the failure of that conference, he insisted 
 that a new commission should be sent without limitation of 
 powers ; for the independence of the Southern States it was 
 evident was not attainable, and if the administration scrupled 
 to treat on the basis of the annihilation of their o^vn govern- 
 ment, that commission might, nevertheless, ascertain what 
 terms would be yielded by the United States to the States 
 concerned, and communicate the same to them for their 
 action ; but his exertions in this behalf were of none effect. 
 When he became satisfied that it was the fixed purpose of 
 the administration to make the recognition of independence 
 the basis of any peace, he lost no time in counseling the Gov- 
 ernor of ISTorth Carolina (Vance) to interpose promtly for 
 the termination of the war. The rapidity of military opera- 
 tions on the part of the troops of the United States did not 
 allow adequate time to render such interposition effective, 
 had Governor Vance been complaisant, as he was not, 
 and it is perhaps fortunate that such was the fact and that 
 the war closed when and in the manner it did. Had the 
 State intervened at this, or some former period, the disaster 
 to the cause would have been imputed solely to that reason, 
 and ill blood and angry feeling, crimination and recrimina- 
 tion, would have been the consequence. As it is all are con- 
 vinced that the result is to be ascribed to the exhausted 
 resources of the country and its entire inability longer to 
 maintain the struggle against such fearful odds. There was 
 
78 North Carolina Historical, Commission. 
 
 left, therefore, no jealousy or controversy among States or 
 individuals, but a general disposition to submit as to a decree 
 of fate. This is, substantially, Governor Graham's own 
 account of these transactions in his petition to Andrew John- 
 son for pardon, dated Kaleigh, July 25th, 1865/ His 
 course shows his calm, unimpassioned wisdom in the midst 
 of the most exciting circumstances in a very remarkable 
 light. If his course at the end of the war, set out above, 
 was erroneous, it was a virtuous error, founded upon the 
 highest of motives, the desire to stop the further eifusion 
 of blood and to save the people of his own State from the 
 horrors which marked the course of General Sherman's army 
 through the other states of the South ; this too when there 
 was not the slightest hope for a successful issue to the con- 
 test. 
 
 He was elected to the United States Senate by the Gen- 
 eral Assembly of 1866, but was not allowed to take his seat. 
 For the remainder of his life he was a loved and trusted 
 adviser and leader of the people, without being allowed to 
 serve them in any public office, for rancorous politicians in 
 J^orth Carolina prevented the removal of his disabilities 
 before his health had failed — a very marked instance of the 
 small things of this world confounding the great. 
 
 In 1867 George Peabody established a fund of $2,100,000, 
 increased in 1869 to $3,500,000, to be devoted to education 
 in the Southern states. This fund was placed under the 
 control of fifteen trustees, of whom Robert C. Winthrop of 
 Massachusetts was chairman, and they were to meet annually. 
 At the suggestion of Mr. Winthrop, Governor Graham was 
 selected by Mr. Peabody as one of the original trustees. 
 Among his associates in the management of this fund were, 
 besides Mr. Winthrop, Hamilton Fish, General Grant, Ad- 
 miral Farragut, Bishop Mcllvaine, of Ohio, W. M. Evarts 
 and William C. Rives, and later, to fill vacancies. Bishop 
 Whipple, A. H. H. Stuart and Chief Justice Waite. 
 
 1 See also hia letters in Spencer's "Last Ninety Days of the War in North Carolina," 
 pp. 112-120. 
 
WiLLiAj.1 A. Gkaham. 79 
 
 Governor Graham was wholly in sympathy with the at- 
 tempt to reorganize as a political force the better element 
 among the white voters of the State, regardless of their 
 former political affiliations. He was one of the fathers of 
 the Conservative-Democratic party — a flexible and convenient 
 designation, which could be reversed in Democratic com- 
 munities, while it remained steadfast in Whig. He presided 
 over the political convention that met in Raleigh, February 
 6, 1868, and made a notable speech defining his position, 
 and later canvassed the State for Ashe against Holden. 
 
 He recognized fully the brutal folly, if not criminality, 
 of the reconstruction program of Congress ; he was opposed 
 to negro suffrage, because he knew the negro was not fitted 
 for the ballot, yet he believed in strict obedience to the law 
 and a patient biding the time when the extent of the evil 
 should, itself, work its owii remedy in the awakening of 
 the public conscience l^orth, and the arousing of the people 
 of the South to the necessity for firm, consistent, united 
 action against the vandals and corruptionists who were prey- 
 ing upon them. He condemned the Ku Klux organization, 
 not only as unwise, but as criminal, as a resort to extra-legal 
 remedies, that could be justified by no concatenation of cir- 
 cumstances. Applying Bacon's definition of revenge, a 
 species of wild justice, to their deeds, he did not hesitate 
 in his great speech as leading counsel for the managers in 
 the impeachment trial of Governor Holden, to describe the 
 hanging of Wyatt Outlaw "as an atrocious act of assassina- 
 tion." It is difficult, if not impossible, for human wisdom to 
 devise a formula beforehand, that will fit abnormal and un- 
 foreseen conditions, which may arise in the future. In this 
 assertion. Governor Graham was applying this formula in all 
 its damning quality, disregarding the abnormal conditions 
 which rendered it not strictly applicable. But this illustrates 
 his remarkable moral courage. ISTever in his long public life 
 did he hesitate to do or say anything, which he thought wise 
 or true, on account of any supposed bad consequences to 
 himself. 
 
80 x^ORTH Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 His health commenced to fail the latter part of 1872, and 
 ill 1873 it was apparent to his physicians that he was suffer- 
 ing from a heart disease that might end his life at any time. 
 In 1874 he was selected by Virginia as one of the arbitrators 
 between that State and Maryland. He concurred fully with 
 the public sentiment in Korth Carolina, which enabled the 
 Legislature of 1874-5 to call a convention to amend the Con- 
 stitution of 1868. He thought that Constitution too cumber- 
 some, too minute in its provisions and too restrictive upon 
 the Legislature while placing too much patronage in the 
 hands of the governor. Orange County elected him its dele- 
 gate to the convention of 1875, but on August 11, 1875, 
 while at Saratoga Springs, New York, in the performance 
 of his duty as one of the arbitrators of the boundary dispute, 
 he expired in the 71st year of his age. 
 
 "The intelligence of his death was transmitted by tele- 
 graph to every part of the country. All the great journals 
 responded with leading articles expressive of the national 
 bereavement."^ In Xorth Carolina all the people grieved 
 at the death of its greatest and most honored citizen. At 
 the border of the State his remains were met by many of its 
 prominent men, and escorted to Raleigh where they lay in 
 state in the rotunda of the Capitol, guarded by state and 
 national troops, for hours as they were viewed by crowds. 
 Late that afternoon they were conveyed to Hillsboro, attended 
 by the militia and special g-uards of honor from the towns 
 of the State, where they lay in state at his own house until 
 the noon of Sunday, August 15th, when funeral services 
 were held over them at the Presbyterian Church, and in the 
 presence of an enormous concourse, collected from many 
 counties. They were interred in the graveyard of that church. 
 
 There has lived in N^orth Carolina no public man, whose 
 life was a greater force for good than was that of Governor 
 Graham. It was, and is, an exemplification of all the vir- 
 tues that a public man should have — intelligence, industry, 
 
 iMcGehee, 75. 
 
William A. Geaham. 81 
 
 courage, unselfisliiiess, devotion to the public welfare and to 
 duty. Ingrained into his nature too was that respect for 
 religion, without which no man can be good, as well as a 
 definite faith in Christ, not only as a great moral teacher, 
 but as the Redeemer of mankind. He was a Presbyterian 
 by inheritance and by choice, though for reasons satisfactory 
 to himself, he did not enroll himself as a member of that 
 church. During the last few years of his life (the writer, 
 as a boy had personal knowledge of this), no one in the com- 
 munity in which he lived, ever spoke of him without the 
 very tones and inflection of his voice showing the deep 
 respect and admiration and regard he had for him. The 
 feeling with which a ISTorth Carolina Episcopalian thirty 
 years ago spoke of Bishop Atkinson, more nearly expresses 
 the regard of the people of Hillsboro and Orange County 
 for Governor Graham, at that period, than anything else. 
 He was endowed by nature with an excellent mind, and a 
 noble and very handsome presence. His mind was assidu- 
 ously cultivated and trained. He had the religious and 
 moral instincts by inheritance, and these gTcw and strength- 
 ened in the environment in which his life was placed. He 
 had no bad habits as a boy, none as a youth and none as a 
 man. Instead the habits of thrift, of industry and thorough- 
 ness became a second nature to him. He was ambitious, but 
 it was with a guided and controlled ambition, which sought 
 place and power for larger spheres of usefulness. All these 
 when he came to face the world enabled him to conquer a 
 place for himself second to no JSTorth Carolinian. Judge 
 Murphey was a gi-eater genius, but he was not so practical ; 
 Judge Badger had greater intellectual endowments, but he 
 was not so industrious ; Judge Mangum was a greater popular 
 orator, but he was self indulgent ; Judge Ruffin was a greater 
 lawyer, but his life ran in a narrower channel ; Judge Gas- 
 ton was a greater lawyer and orator, and as pure in heart 
 and life and conduct as he, but he was not ambitious. 
 
82 JiToKTH Carolina Histoeical Commission. 
 
 Yet if the capacity for taking pains should be the test for 
 one's gi'eatness, Governor Graham was greater than any of 
 these. He was many sided, and a gTeat deal of his work 
 remains, and there is none of it that is not far above the 
 average. He is entitled to very high rank as a lawyer, as a 
 public speaker, as a statesman and as a writer, and the high- 
 est rank as a faithful, as a thorough and as a conscientious 
 public official. There was never a more diligent and faith- 
 ful legislator, never a more diligent and faithful governor. 
 
 He labored, day and night, in little things, 
 ISTo less than large, for the loved country's sake. 
 With patient hands that plodded while others slept, 
 * * -x- * * * * 
 
 Doing each day the best he might, with vision 
 Firm fixed above, kept pure by pure intent. 
 
 His addresses on subjects connected with the history of 
 North Carolina, have the same qualities of accuracy and 
 thoroughness that all his work has, and his memorial orations 
 on Murphey, Badger and Ruffin are classics in their per- 
 fection of form and taste, and in their combination of ease 
 and grace with accuracy, strength and dignity. 
 
 On June 8, 1836, he married Susannah Sarah, daughter of 
 John Washington, Esq., of ]^ew Bern, and by her had ten 
 children. She was a lady of rare beauty and accomplish- 
 ments, and the union brought to him as much of happiness 
 as it is the lot of man to know. Mrs. Graham survived her 
 husband fifteen years, and their descendants, as well said 
 Governor Kitchin, "in the State to-day, represent the highest 
 type of culture, patriotism and citizenship in the records 
 of both their private and their public life, having the same 
 devotion to their country and fidelity to their country's call 
 as the illustrious William A. Graham." 
 
 As a fitting close to this paper, I give the estimates of 
 Governor Graham by others, most capable judges, residents 
 
William A. Gkaham. 83 
 
 of other States and associates with him in the management 
 of the Peabody Fund. In the resolutions reported by Mr. 
 W. M. Evarts, and evidently written by him, occur the 
 following : 
 
 ''The distinguished public character of Governor Graham, 
 and his strong hold upon the confidence of the people of the 
 North and of the South alike, have been of the greatest value 
 and importance to this board in securing the sympathy and 
 cooperation of men of credit and of influence in the country, 
 in furtherance of the beneficial system of education at the 
 South which Mr. Peabody's munificent endowment has so 
 greatly aided in developing. That our personal intercourse 
 with Governor Graham, in the discharge of our common 
 duties, has shown to us his admirable qualities of mind and 
 character ; and we lament his loss, as of a near friend 
 and associate, as well as an eminent public servant and 
 benefactor." 
 
 Hon. John H. Clifford, of Massachusetts, wrote : "I 
 should not.fail to bear my testimony to his thorough fidelity, 
 his manly frankness and his amiable temper, which had made 
 him one of the most agreeable, as he was one of the most 
 useful, members of the board." 
 
 Said the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, of the same State: 
 "He has held, as you all know, many distinguished offices in 
 the service of his State and country. In all these relations 
 he had won for himself a widespread reputation and regard, 
 which any man, iS^orth or South, might have envied. I knew 
 him intimately, and have always cherished his friendship as 
 one of the privileges of my Washington life. * * * JSTo one 
 of us has been more punctual in his attendance on our meet- 
 ings, or has exhibited a more earnest and intelligent interest 
 in all our proceedings, while his digmified and genial presence 
 has given him a warm hold on all our hearts." 
 
 Said Mr. A. H. H. Stuart, of Virginia : "He possessed a 
 sound and vigorous intellect, which enabled him to grapple 
 with the most difficult questions ; and he was singularly free 
 
84 NoETH Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 from all those influences of passion and excitement, which too 
 often disturb the judgment. His views of every subject 
 were clear, calm and well considered. He possessed that 
 happy balance of the intellectual faculties, which is the 
 parent of wisdom. Although he has for more than forty 
 years occupied a prominent position in public life, and has 
 filled many important offices during times of high party 
 excitement, no man has ever ventured to question the integ- 
 rity of his motives or conduct ; and up to the hour of his 
 death he enjoyed the unlimited confidence of all who had the 
 happiness to know him. * * * I have rarely met a wiser 
 man, and never a better man, than William A. Graham." 
 
THE VALUE OF HISTORICAL MEMORIALS IN A 
 DEMOCRATIC STATE 
 
 BY THOMAS W. MASON 
 
 Ladies and Gentlenwn: 
 
 Our Historical Commission presents to our beloved State 
 at this hour the marble form of William Alexander Graham, 
 that it may stand forever under the dome of our Capitol, 
 
 One who is worthy to speak of him, his townsman and his 
 peer,^ has just now told us of this servant of the people, with 
 the simplicity and beauty of unadorned truth, the story of his 
 life and service. JSTor does this story delight us less because 
 it is a familiar part of our later history. I^ot a few of us 
 have seen this majestic man moving among us and leading 
 us along the higher walks of life. We saw him as he came 
 out from the storm of war between the N^orth and the South, 
 serene, undaunted, pointing the way of peace and safety 
 and honor. 
 
 It all seems clear enough to us now. We look back along 
 the way we have come, and we do not see now how we could 
 have gone any other way. But we are forgetting how dark 
 it was. l^ever, in all history, did thicker darkness descend 
 upon a people, and so suddenly. A President had been slain ; 
 another, his successor, stood before us impeached, distrusted 
 and despised by those who had placed him in office. Our 
 State governments were dismantled and our States became 
 military provinces. Our leading citizens were in prison or 
 their rights of citizenship denied them. Our emancipated 
 slaves were appealing to us, as never before, to care for them 
 in their new relation to us. Our wasted fields and homes 
 remained to us, only to remind us of our former estate and 
 our wretched poverty. The soldiers of the blue and the gTay 
 looked into each other's faces, aghast at the ruin thev had 
 
 » Mr. Frank Nash, of Hillsboro. 
 
86 I^ORTH Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 wrought, willing and ready to be friends, while the founda- 
 tions of the Union shook beneath their feet with a tremor 
 more ominous than the shock of battle. One false step, and 
 the ruined South with blinded rage might pull down the 
 pillars of our government in the very strength of its agony. 
 We have called these dark days our era of reconstruction. 
 History will be true if it shall write above this chapter, as its 
 title, the words of Thomas de Celano's hymn of the judg- 
 ment, "Dies irse, dies ilia." 
 
 In these dark days, this servant of the people of whom we 
 are thinking now, with love and gratitude, was of those who 
 saved us and led us along the way we have come. He was 
 of those who have given their lives to the service of the 
 people. He was of those who loved the Union of these States, 
 and who gave to it its hold upon our hearts. He was of 
 those who led its navies into far distant seas and made its 
 flag, not the ensign of a world power of conquest, but a mis- 
 sion of peace and good will to men. He was of those who 
 sought always to compose the quarrel of the sections that its 
 angry contentions might not drive us apart, and he was of 
 those who loved our Old i>[orth State with an unspeakable 
 love, as the apple of his eye. Gaston's hymn of devotion 
 rang through his heart always. It was the refrain of his 
 life and the inheritance of his blood from Mecklenburg. 
 And so it was that when he heard the voice calling him which 
 he had heeded always as the voice of his own mother, not 
 doubting, he led his sons, one by one, to the altar of sacrifice, 
 and bowed his own good, gray head under the burdens that 
 were laid upon him. 
 
 Can we ever think unmoved of these men of the South 
 who turned, with sorrowing hearts, from the old flag to the 
 defense of their homes ? Is there a heart so hard that it does 
 not burn with sympathy, when Lee is bidding good-bye to his 
 old regiment and coming home to Virginia ? He had grown 
 old in the service which he adorned as few have done and 
 which honored him above all others. What power could 
 
William A. Gkaham. 87 
 
 break the tics that bound him? We know that no political 
 creed, no party faction moved him. It was the spirit of the 
 South ; the voice of Virginia calling him to her, and he could 
 not disobey. Like him was he, whose lineaments the divin- 
 ity of art has now shaped for us, with unerring finger, and 
 whose heroic spirit speaks to us again from the heart of the 
 everlasting rock, lighted by the genius of the true artist^ 
 whose soul it has inspired. 
 
 These men of the South differed in their political creeds 
 as the billows, but in their sense of duty, each to his own 
 State, they were one as the sea. They were pleading with 
 each other earnestly and anxiously for the cause of the Union 
 when the war burst upon them. In no school of politics had 
 they ever learned that a State could be coerced and the Union 
 maintained by force. They could not bear to see their neigh- 
 bors trampled under foot, and they took up arms. All party 
 lines were forgotten. They were no longer Whigs or Demo- 
 crats, but henceforth they were the men of the South. What 
 followed we know. 
 
 They suffered defeat in battle, but here and everywhere, 
 fair women and brave men listen with warm hearts to the 
 story of the part they acted under the stars and bars. ]^ot 
 the ISTorth only, but the world now knows the moral of their 
 endeavor. Their peerless captain has taken his place in our 
 Pantheon at Washington. The name of their honored Presi- 
 dent, who suffered in their stead as none other could suffer, 
 has been recarved upon our national tablets. In town and 
 village and neighborhood, the image of their brother in arms, 
 in stone, or bronze, with silent lips, invokes the homage of 
 him who passes by and gives assurance to his living comrades 
 that they shall never be forgotten. Their struggle has ended. 
 Let us believe and be thankful that in the providence of God 
 it has ended well and with honor and good to us all. 
 
 And so, too, has ended our era of reconstruction. We 
 have rebuilt our Union, and we pray that, when the rain 
 
 iMr. F. W. Ruckstuhl, sculptor, formerly of Alsace, Germany, present address: The 
 Arts Club, New York. 
 
88 KoRTH CAROLiisrA Historical Commission. 
 
 descends, and the floods come, and the winds blow and beat 
 upon it, it may not fall, for it is founded upon a rock. Slav- 
 ery no longer mars our structure. 
 
 Once before, in our earlier history, we had our era of 
 reconstruction. It began four years after the treaty of Paris 
 of the 20th of January, 1783, which declared the thirteen 
 original States "to be free, sovereign and independent." It 
 lasted until our own State, last of them but one, entered the 
 Union, November 21st, 1789. It was then that the great 
 convention assembled at Philadelphia on May 25th, 1787, 
 which was presided over by Washington, and which, on Sep- 
 tember 17th, 1787, presented our first Constitution to these 
 thirteen States for their acceptance, declaring its purpose 
 "to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure 
 domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, pro- 
 mote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty 
 to ourselves and our posterity." It was then that Madison 
 and Hamilton and Jay put forth those wonderful arguments, 
 urging its acceptance, which have become a text-book of our 
 constitutional law. It was then that our people, assembled 
 in convention at Hillsboro, in the Presbyterian Church, on 
 July 21st, 1788, hesitated, halted and adjourned, without 
 accepting the Constitution, demanding further and fuller 
 safeguards of liberty. It was then that, in response to this 
 demand, these safeguards were given and the ten amendments 
 were written into our first Constitution. And it was then 
 that our people assembled again in convention, at Fayette- 
 ville, adopted the Constitution, entered the Union and our 
 first era of reconstruction ended. 
 
 This is all very famiilar learning. So, too, the air that 
 fills our lungs and gives us life is very familiar. But we 
 ought to repeat this familiar learning, because it expresses 
 that spirit of independence Avhich first declared itself in 
 Mecklenburg, in May, 1775, and again in Halifax, in April, 
 1776, and which has been always the inspiration of the 
 higher life of our people. We ought to repeat it, that he who 
 
William A. Graham, 89 
 
 may write of us in the war between the North and South 
 may know us and our motives ; and how it was that these 
 men of the South, who loved the Union, yet sought to form 
 a Confederacy of their own ; and when they could not, have 
 striven, as never men strove before, to rebuild our walls and 
 to form again a more perfect Union of these States. It 
 ought to be repeated that he who writes of us may understand 
 how it is that these men of the South, who rejoice in the 
 growth and strength of our national government and who will 
 uphold the honor of our flag in peace and in war, are yet 
 sensitive to any encroachment of Federal power upon the 
 rights of the State ; and that this sensitive regard is a sen- 
 timent of political virtue and the safest guardian of our 
 form of government. 
 
 It is well for us that we have begTin a closer study of the 
 forces which have been moving and are still moving the life 
 of our people ; that in the midst of our industry, thrilling us 
 with the enthusiasm of its progress, our thoughts are turning 
 to the higher things of life ; that our women and men of let- 
 ters have associated themselves to re-read and re-write our 
 history ; that they have moved our General Assembly to 
 institute our Historical Commission, as a part of our higher 
 education ; that it may find and preserve the records which 
 mark our progress and point out to us those who have been 
 leading and are still leading us along the pathway of ser- 
 vice and of honor and whom we ought to follow. It is well 
 for us that our Historical Commission, in this high service, 
 has reminded us that the niches provided in our capitol for 
 our good and faithful servants who are worthy of them are 
 still empty ; and that in all our midst we, as a people, have 
 placed but one statue of our illustrious dead. It is well for 
 us to be reminded that in our educational progress, great as it 
 is, we have left far behind this school of higher learning. 
 Who of us, coming northward into our capitol grounds and 
 looking into the face of Washington, is not lifted up into a 
 higher realm of thought and patriotism ? Or who of us. 
 
90 North Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 coining westward and looking into the face of Vance, does 
 not love our State with a deeper love ? Or who of us, com- 
 ing eastward and looking into the face of the Confederate 
 soldier, does not feel that it is beautiful to die for one's 
 country ? Or who of us, looking into the face of our brave 
 sailor lad, Bagley, standing midway between the Father of 
 our Country and the soldier of the Confederacy, does not 
 rejoice that we, too, have reconsecrated the flag of the stars 
 and stripes ? 
 
 IsTor is this school of higher learning only a school of art, 
 or of ancestral worship, or of State pride, or of polite letters ; 
 nor will our Historical Commission be content only to sweep 
 the dust from our records and to clear away the moss that 
 has gathered upon our gravestones. This it will do, but 
 more. In its best service, it will minister to the spirit of our 
 people ; that which brought us together about our first shrines 
 of worship ; that which was ours when we were building these 
 States into the fabric of our Union ; that which drew us 
 together in the gTcat contest of the North and the South ; 
 and that which will be needed more and more as our minis- 
 try to the beauty and strength and worldwide beneficence of 
 our republic. It is not idle boast or foolish pride to say that 
 the South will grow great and strong in numbers and in 
 riches, and that the men of the South will yet take the places 
 which they ought to take in directing the course of our 
 National Government and in preserving the life of our 
 republic. Let us prepare ourselves for our ministry and our 
 duty. Let us be full-panoplied and armed with the sword 
 of the spirit of our people ; and let it be stainless like the 
 sword Excalibur of King Arthur ; aye, let it be stainless like 
 the sword of Robert E. Lee. 
 
 What is the spirit of a people ? May we not answer : 
 the spirit of a people is the history of a people impersonated 
 in the life of a people. If there is no history of a people, 
 there is no spirit of a people. 
 
 It has been asked, Can Africa be civilized ? Whv not ? 
 
William A. Graham. 91 
 
 Because, in all that vast, dark continent, with rich soil and 
 teeming- millions, save along the shores of the Mediterranean, 
 there is neither history, nor tradition, nor a memorial stone 
 to tell where some gTeat deed was done. There is no his- 
 tory of the people and no spirit of the people upon which to 
 build their social structure. All effort in their behalf has 
 been in vain. They are still naked, and the lion of the 
 jungle is the ruler of their land. The spirit of England, 
 carrying her drum-beat around the world, is the story and 
 the song, not of Briton only, but of adventurous Saxon and 
 Dane, and Boman and ITorman ; the great composite race 
 fitted to sweep over every sea and to rule under every sky. 
 The spirit of China is the history of a people who have built 
 about themselves a wall, over which others must climb to be 
 their neighbors. The spirit of our people is the history of 
 a people from whose loins has sprung our ever widening 
 confederacy of States ; who have instituted forms of govern- 
 ment based upon the consent of the governed, kindly and 
 gentle and easy to be entreated, but firm and strong to pro- 
 vide for the common defense and to promote the general wel- 
 fare and fitted, as we believe, to become the final form and 
 pattern of all nations. 
 
 What saved us in our dark era of reconstruction ? It was 
 the memory of Moore's Creek Bridge, of Kings Mountain, 
 of Guilford Court House, and of later fields yet red with 
 blood ; it was the memory of those who had subdued our for- 
 ests and tilled our fields; of those who had written and 
 administered our laws ; of those who had founded and fos- 
 tered our schools ; of those who had built our churches and 
 kept alive our love of God and our neighbor ; these memories, 
 rekindling the spirit of our people, saved us. Our history 
 was still our own ; its light was still upon our pathway. 
 After the din of arms had ceased, our laws were no longer 
 silent ; the plow moved in the furrow ; we rebuilt our work- 
 shops and reopened our schools; we restored our fields and 
 homes and our altars of worship ; we took our emancipated 
 
92 North Caeolina Historical Commission. 
 
 slave by the hand, and taught him his duty to the State, and 
 how to share with us our history and our spirit. And thus 
 we moved forward with our ministry and our duty, until the 
 world wonders how, from the ashes of war, we have grown 
 so great. We have won our victories of peace with the 
 sword of the spirit of our people. 
 
 And of such spirit was he who comes to his place in our 
 capitol to-day, first of his peers because he was their most 
 flawless type; because he was of the best in the life of our 
 older Union, and of our brave young Confederacy, and of 
 our later and more perfect Union ; because the history of our 
 people was impersonated in his full and rounded life. In all 
 the movement of that full life there was no false note to mar 
 its harmony. Among all her sons there is no clearer ideal 
 of our mother State than he whom we now lift up before us 
 that we may follow where he leads. 
 
 And they, too, will come apace and with cheerful accord 
 to their places at his side ; his co-workers, who have kept the 
 spirit of our people unbroken and unspoiled through bad for- 
 tune and good fortune alike. 
 
 Let them gather to our capitol, these good and faithful 
 servants of our people, seeing whom, enraptured with the 
 story of their lives, our children's children shall cry out 
 "We can make our lives sublime !" 
 
PRESENTATION OF THE BUST ON BEHALF OF 
 
 THE NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL 
 
 COMMISSION 
 
 BY J. BRYAN GRIMES, CHAIRMAN 
 
 Your Excellency: 
 
 This evening marks a new departure in historical activi- 
 ties in North Carolina. The Historical Commission, in 
 addition to the work of collecting and preserving the histori- 
 cal records of North Carolina, is endeavoring to arouse our 
 people to the necessity of erecting memorials to great men 
 and great events in our history. To the traveler or visitor 
 here, there must be a feeling of disappointment when he 
 enters our capitol. There are nowhere visible reminders of 
 those men who have made our history and brought fame and 
 glory to North Carolina — our State builders. Among his- 
 torians, scholars and sight-seers accustomed to read the his- 
 tory and study the life of other States and nations in monu- 
 ments and" marble busts, the absence of such memorials inva- 
 riably provokes comment. 
 
 In this rotunda are eight empty niches that misrepresent 
 our State, as it leaves the impression that we have had no 
 sons sufficiently great to be commemorated in marble or 
 bronze. 
 
 Eealizing the injustice that the State does itself and appre- 
 ciating the importance of such memorials, the Historical 
 Commission, as agent for the State, has had executed a bust 
 of that great North Carolinian, who it believes most perfectly 
 typifies the highest ideals of democratic citizenship — William 
 A. Graham. And I have the honor to present to the State of 
 North Carolina this bust of that great Carolinian whose 
 character was as spotless and clean as the Carrara marble 
 from which this image is carved. 
 
 We trust this is but a beginning and that the people of 
 North Carolina will soon show enough appreciation of her 
 other great sons to fill the other seven niches in this rotunda. 
 
94 North Carolina Historical Commission. 
 
 ACCEPTANCE BY THE GOVERNOR Of NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 Mr. Chairman: 
 
 With all others in this magnificent audience, I listened 
 with great interest to the appropriate addresses of the gifted 
 historian from Orange and the distinguished orator from 
 iSTorthampton, delivered in the Hall of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives, and we have now heard with pleasure your own 
 eloquent words of presentation. 
 
 I congratulate you and through you the Historical Com- 
 mission upon the excellence of your choice for the first bust 
 for this rotunda of our capitol. I share with you the hope 
 that other similar occasions shall soon follow when other busts 
 of our gi'eat Carolinians shall take their places in the other 
 niches. 
 
 If the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children to 
 the third and fourth generation, I am happy to believe that 
 there is truth in its counterpart, and that the virtues of the 
 fathers are likewise visited upon the children to the third 
 and fourth generation. No family in our commonwealth, 
 through so long a period, through so many generations, has 
 rendered the State more significant, faithful, honorable and 
 effective service than the Graham family. From the Revo- 
 lutionary period to this good day, its part in our military and 
 civil life has been nobly performed. Its members, repre- 
 senting the highest type of cultured and patriotic citizenship, 
 worthily exemplify in their records, in both public and pri- 
 vate life, Governor Graham's illustrious devotion to the State, 
 and with dignity rejoice in his useful and eminent career. 
 Their race is not yet run, and their pledges to fortune and 
 futurity are all that worthy veneration for ancestry, moral 
 integrity, intellectual strength, and love of right, purity and 
 country can suggest. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, it is with pleasure that in behalf of North 
 Carolina, I accept from the Historical Commission this mar- 
 ble bust of Governor William Alexander Graham. Permit 
 me to express the hope that the selections for the remaining 
 niches will be as wiselv and as fittinfflv made as this one.