Judge Ruffin was, until superseded by the changes made in 1868, the oldest trustee of the University of the State, and always one of the most efficient and active members of the board. For more than half a century on terms of intimate intercourse with its Presidents, Caldwell and Swain, and the leading Professors, Mitchell, Phillips and their associates, he was their ready counsellor and friend in any emergency; whether in making appeals to the Legislature in behalf of the institution for support and assistance in its seasons of adversity, or in enforcing discipline and maintaining order, advancing the standard of education or cheering the labors both of the faculty and students. His criterion of a collegiate education was high, and he illustrated by his own example the rewards of diligent and faithful study. He retained a better acquaintance with the dead languages than any of his compeers we have named except Gaston, Murphy, and Taylor. In ethics, history, and the standard British classics his knowledge was profound. In science and in natural history, more especially in chemistry, and those departments pertaining to agriculture, horticulture, pomology and the like, his attainments were very considerable, as they were also in works of belles-lettres, poetry, taste and fiction, at least down to the end of the novels of Scott and Cooper. He worthily received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of North Carolina in 1834, and the like honor is believed to have been subsequently conferred by his alma mater at Princeton.
His style and manner in conversation, in which he took great delight and bore a distinguished part in all companies, abounded in pleasantry, but exhibited the same wide range of thought and information as his public performances, and was full of entertainment and instruction to the young. His temperament was mercurial, his actions quick and energetic, and his whole bearing in the farthest possible degree removed from sloth, inertness, and despondency. In political sentiment he accorded with the school of Jefferson, and for more than forty years was a constant reader of the Richmond Inquirer, the editor of which, Mr. Ritchie, was his relative, though no one entertained a more exalted reverence for the character, abilities, and patriotism of Marshall, with whom he cherished a familiar acquaintance while in practice before him at the bar, and after his own elevation to the bench. Later in life he formed a like kind and admiring acquaintance with Chancellor Kent.
In the winter of 1861 the Legislature of North Carolina, having acceded to the proposition of Virginia, on the approach of the late rupture between the States of the Union, to assemble a body of delegates in the City of Washington to consider and recommend terms of reconciliation, Judge Ruffin was appointed one of the members in the "Peace Conference," and is understood to have taken a conspicuous part in its deliberations and debates. We have the testimony of General Scott, in his autobiography, already quoted, that his counsels in that assembly were altogether pacific. President Buchanan, in his work in defense of his action in that important crisis, makes assertion of the same fact. After the failure of the efforts at adjustment, and the war, in his opinion, had become a necessity, Judge Ruffin accepted a seat in the State Convention of 1861, and threw into its support all the zeal and energy of his earnest and ardent temper; one of his sons, a grandson, and other near connections taking part in the dangers and privations of its camps and battle-fields. When defeat came he yielded an honest submission and acquiescence, and renewed in perfect good faith his allegiance to the government of the United States. Too far advanced in years to be longer active in affairs, his chief concern in regard to the public interests thenceforward was for the conservation of the public weal, and that the violent convulsion, of which we had felt the shock, and the change, might be permitted to pass without any serious disturbance of the great and essential principles of freedom and right which it had been the favorite study of his life to understand and illustrate.
With the close of the war, his farm about his mansion having experienced the desolation of an army encampment, and its system of labor being abolished, he felt unequal to the enterprise of its resuscitation and culture, and therefore disposed of his estate and again took up his abode in Hillsborough. Here, in occasional occupation as a referee of legal controversies, in directing the assiduous culture of his garden and grounds, in desultory reading, in which he now and then recurred to his old favorites among the novels of Scott, in the duties of hospitality and the converse of friends, in the bosom of his family, he passed the evening of his days. In the sense of imbecility or decrepitude he never grew old, but was blessed with the enjoyment of a remarkable intellectual vigor and fine flow of spirits almost till his dissolution. And, in anticipation of death, in his last illness he laid an injunction on his physician to administer to him no anodyne which should deprive him of consciousness, as he did not wish to die in a state of insensibility.
On the 15th of January, 1870, after an illness of but four days, though he had been an invalid from an affection of the lungs for a year or more, he breathed his last, in the eighty-third year of his age. His end was resigned and peaceful, and in the consolation of an enlightened and humble Christian faith. For more than forty years a communicant of the Protestant Episcopal Church, he was one of its most active members in the State, and more than once represented the Diocese in the Triennial Conventions of the Union.
The venerable companion of his life, a bride when not yet fifteen, a wife for more than sixty years, yet survives to receive the gratitude and affection of a numerous posterity and the reverence and esteem of troops of friends.
This imperfect offering is a memoir, not a panegyric. It contains not history, but particulas historae—scraps of history, which it is hoped may not be without their use to the future student of our annals, for the character we contemplate is destined to be historical. His life was passed in public view, in the most important public functions, in contact with the most gifted and cultivated men of the State for half a century; it ran through two generations of lawyers. It was given to a profession in which were engaged many of the first minds of other States, and I can call to recollection no judge of any State of the Union who in that period has left behind him nobler or more numerous memorials of erudition, diligence, and ability in the departments of the law he was called to administer. The study of his performances will at least serve to correct the error of opinions prevailing with many at the North, that the intellectual activity of the South delights itself only in politics.
It has been remarked by one of the British essayists, as "a saying of dunces in all ages, that men of genius are unfit for business." It is perhaps a kindred fallacy, to which pedantry and sloth have given as much countenance on the one hand as blissful ignorance upon the other, that high culture and erudition, as in the case of the learned professions, are incompatible with success in practical affairs in other departments. We have before us the life of one who demonstrated in his own person that it is possible for a great and profound lawyer to take a leading part and become a shining light in practically promoting the first and greatest of the industrial arts, and although there be no natural connection between these occupations, that the same well directed industry, patience, and energy which had achieved success in the one, was equal to a like triumph in the other; whilst in high probity, in stainless morals, in social intercourse, in the amenities of life, and the domestic affections and duties, his example will be cherished in the recollection of his friends, and may well be commended to the imitation of our youth.