In compliance with this opinion, the Conscript Act was finally enforced at the University; the classes were still further reduced by the withdrawal of such as came within the requirements of the act, or who were determined to share at all hazards the fate of their comrades in the army. The University, however, still struggled on; and when General Sherman's forces entered the place, there were some ten or twelve boys still keeping up the name of a college. The bell was rung by one of the professors, and morning and evening prayers attended to during the stay of the United States forces. The students present, with two or three exceptions, were those whose homes were in the village. The two or three who were from a distance, left on the advent of the Federals, walking to their homes in neighboring counties, there being no other means of locomotion in those days. But one Senior, Mr. W.C. Prout, graduated at the ensuing commencement, having taken the whole course. There were three others who received diplomas at the same time. For the first time in thirty years, the President was absent from these exercises, having been summoned by President Johnson to Washington City, to confer with him and with other North-Carolina gentlemen on the condition of affairs in the State. Not a single visitor from abroad attended the commencement, with the exception of some thirty gentlemen dressed in blue, who had been delegated to remain here and keep order. The residents of the village were the only audience to hear the valedictory pronounced by the sole remaining representative of his class. Where were the hundreds who had thronged these halls four years before? Virginia, and Maryland, and Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, and Georgia were heaving with their graves! In every State that had felt the tread of armies, and wherever the rough edge of the battle had joined, there had been found the foster-children of North-Carolina's University;[22] and now, sitting discrowned and childless, she might well have taken up the old lamentations which come to us in these later days more and more audibly across the centuries, "Oh! that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!"
There is not a prettier village in the South than that which lies around the University, and has grown up with it and has been sustained and elevated by it. And not a village in the South gave more freely of its best blood in the war, not one suffered more severely in proportion to its population. Thirty-five of our young men died in the service. Some of them left wives and little ones; some were the only support and blessing of aged parents; all were, with very few exceptions, the very flower of our families, and were representatives of every walk and condition of life. The first company that left the place in May, 1861, commanded by Captain R.J. Ashe, was attached to the famous First North-Carolina regiment, which so distinguished itself at the memorable battle of Bethel, June tenth of that year. Upon the disbanding of this regiment, the members of the Orange Light Infantry attached themselves to other companies—for no fewer than four were raised here and in the vicinity—and many of them were among those who dragged themselves home on foot from Lee's last field.
The decline of the University threw many of our citizens out of employment, and the privations endured here tell as sad a story as can be met with anywhere. There was some alleviation of the general distress for those who had houses or furniture to rent; for every vacant room was crowded at one time by refugee families from the eastern part of the State, from Norfolk, and latterly from Petersburg. And this was the case with every town in the interior of the State. Some of these settled here permanently during the war, attracted by the beauty and secluded quiet of the place, and by the libraries—best society of all! Some of them merely alighted here in the first hurry of their flight, and afterward sought other homes, as birds flit uneasily from bough to bough when driven from their nests. These families were generally representatives of the best and most highly cultivated of our Southern aristocracy. They fled hither stripped of all their earthly possessions, except a few of their negroes. Many came not only having left their beautiful homes in the hands of invaders, but with heads bowed down with mourning; for gallant sons who had fallen in vain defense of those homes. Some of them, the elders among them, closed their wearied eyes here, and were laid to rest among strangers, glad to die and exchange their uncertain citizenship in a torn and distracted country for that city which hath foundations.
The benefits of the war in our State should not be overlooked in summing up even a slight record concerning it. It brought all classes nearer to each other. The rich and the poor met together. A common cause became a common bond of sympathy and kind feeling. Charity was more freely dispensed, pride of station was forgotten. The Supreme Court judges and the ex-governors, whose sons had marched away in the ranks side by side with those of the day-laborer, felt a closer tie henceforth to their neighbor. When a whole village poured in and around one church building to hear the ministers of every denomination pray the parting prayers and invoke the farewell blessings in unison on the village boys, there was little room for sectarian feeling. Christians of every name drew nearer to each other. People who wept, and prayed, and rejoiced together as we did for four years, learned to love each other more. The higher and nobler and more generous impulses of our nature were brought constantly into action, stimulated by the heroic endurance and splendid gallantry of our soldiers, and the general enthusiasm which prevailed among us. Heaven forbid we should forget the good which the war brought us, amid such incalculable evils; and Heaven forbid we should ever forget its lessons—industry, economy, ingenuity, patience, faith, charity, and above all, and finally, humility, and a firm resolve henceforth to let well alone.
That North-Carolina has within herself all the elements of a larger life and hope, and a more diffused prosperity than she has ever known, is not to be doubted by those who are acquainted with the wealth of her internal resources and the consummate honesty, industry, and resolution of her people. Time will heal these wounds yet raw and bleeding; the tide of a new and nobler life will yet fill her veins and throb in all her pulses; and taught in the school of adversity the noblest of all lessons, our people will rise from their present dejection when their civil rights have been restored them, and with renewed hope in God will go on to do their whole duty as heretofore. Silently they will help to clear the wreck and right the ship; silently they will do their duty to the dead and to the living, and to those who shall come after them; silently and with the modesty of all true heroism they will do great things, and leave it to others to publish them. Remarkable as North-Carolinians have ever been for reticence and sobriety of speech and action, it is reserved for such epochs as those of May twentieth, 1776, and May twentieth, 1861, and for such great conflicts as succeeded them, to show what a fire can leap forth from this grave, impassive people—what a flame is kindled in generous sympathy, what ardor burns in defense of right and liberty. They are now to show the world what true and ennobling dignity may accompany defeat, surrender, and submission.
I close these slight and inadequate sketches of a memorable time with the words of my first sentence. The history of the great war is yet to be written, and can scarcely be fairly and impartially written by this generation. But it is our imperative duty to ourselves and to our dead to begin at once to lay up the costly material for the great work. Every man should contribute freely according to his ability, gold and silver, precious stones, iron and wood; and with this motive, I have ventured to present such an outline of events in the last ninety days as circumstances would permit me to gather.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] There was then, as now, no money in the country, and this was the largest cash donation ever received by the University.
[22] It is stated upon good authority, and is confidently believed, that there was not a single regiment in the entire Confederate service in which could not be found one or more old students of Chapel Hill.