In addition to his high intellectual endowments, nature had to him been profuse in external gifts. In person he was the ideal of the patrician. His features, regular and classic in their outline, would have satisfied a sculptor. The habitual expression of his face was one of blended thought, refinement and quiet will. His form was noble and commanding; cast, indeed, in nature's finest mould. These advantages were set off by a dress always scrupulously neat, and sufficiently conformed to the prevailing mode to escape observation. The advantages, thus slightly touched upon, were singularly calculated to impress favorably the mind of any audience. If we add that he appeared before every audience with the prestige of a character, which calumny itself would own to be without a blemish, the causes of his uniform success are easy to discern.
He possessed in many respects the temperament of a great commander. As difficulties thickened around him his courage seemed to rise, and his resources to develop. No man ever fought a losing cause with more courage and constancy. When in important cases the tide of testimony unexpectedly turned and flowed dead against him there was nothing in his look or manner that betrayed the change. His attention would be redoubled, but in all else there was so much of calm composure that lookers-on, inattentive to the evidence, have left the court house under the impression that he would gain the cause. He preserved, under all circumstances in the trial of causes, the lofty tenor of his bearing. He was never betrayed into an altercation with witnesses. It may be that awe of his character, and a consciousness of his practiced sagacity and penetration constrained witnesses, when in his hands, to an unwonted utterance of the truth. This impression may have been assisted, and probably was, by the fairness and integrity observable in his whole bearing. But whatever the cause, it is certain he never resorted to boisterous tones or a browbeating manner. Equally removed was his manner from all the arts of cajolery. In his examination of the most refractory witness his mien was calm, his look observant and penetrating, his voice never or but slightly raised above its ordinary tone. In such a contest, the contest between acute, disciplined reason, and cunning or obstinate knavery, the victory was always on the side of the former.
In his moral constitution he was complete on every side. All his conduct in life was regulated not only by the highest sense of honor, but by the most scrupulous sense of duty. This supreme sense of duty in everything that he did, whether great or small, was his distinguishing characteristic. From his cradle to his grave not a shadow of a shade ever rested upon him. Esteeming a stainless character as the highest of all earthly possessions, he exercised the most scrupulous caution in his judgment of others. Few men were more often in the public arena. He took part in all the political canvasses of his time; in many of which partisan feeling was inflamed to the highest pitch. Yet he never assailed the motives of his opponent and never left any feeling of personal injury rankling in his bosom. He always contended for principle, and disdained to use any argument which reason would not sanction.
In debate he was a model of candor, and whoever might be his opponent he would always accept Mr. Graham's statement of his position. In all his intellectual conflicts, whether at the bar, on the hustings or in the Senate, under no provocation was he ever excited to an unseemly exhibition of temper. "Although," said a gentleman of high distinction, who knew him long and well (Hon. S. F. Phillips), "I have been present at the bar, and upon other public occasions when he must have been greatly tried, I have never seen his countenance degraded by an expression of passion. His look may at times have been stern and high, but at all times it could with advantage have been committed to marble or canvas."
It was the opinion of that eminent lawyer, Archibald Henderson, that public men should mingle much with the people—that there is to be found the true school of common sense. Either because he held the same opinion, but more probably from inclination, his intercourse with the people was constant and cordial. When in attendance on his courts it was his custom when the day was fine to repair, after the adjournment of court, to the portico of his hotel, or the lawn in front of it, and sit for an hour or two. This was often his custom after the evening meal, usually served in his circuit at hours primitively early. Here he became the centre of a group of citizens all of whom he received with courtesy. The talk on such occasions was free and general; and, whatever the topic, he listened to their views with attention, and in turn frankly gave his own. Thus his information in regard to all matters of general interest was minute and particular. It was thus, too, that he became informed as to the current opinion in regard to public men and public measures. This intimate knowledge of the people was one of the great sources of his strength; it rendered his judgment of the probable fate of State and national questions of great value. His judgment upon such matters, in the counties in which his circuit lay, was almost infallible.
In his social relations Mr. Graham was one of the most attractive of men. Few had so wide a circle of friends, or friends so attached. His manner to all men was urbane; to his friends cordial and sincere. There was, except to a very few, and at times even to them, a shade of reserve in his manners; but there was nothing of pride; nothing expressive of conscious superiority. There was great dignity, tempered by unfailing courtesy. Perhaps this tinge of reserve made his subsequent unbending the more agreeable. In his social hours, in the long winter evenings at court, with the circle gathered around the blazing hearth—it is as he was then seen that his friends love best to recall him. For many years there met together at one of his courts a number of gentlemen of high intellectual gifts and attainments. These were Hon. Robert Gilliam, Hon. Abram W. Venable, the present Judge of the Seventh Circuit, and others less known. With such men there was no need that any limitations should be imposed on the conversation. Except in the field of exact science they were very much at home in all. The conversation ranged wide, law, cases in court, history, biography, politics—largely interspersed with anecdotes—formed the topics.
The moral dignity of man never received a higher illustration than in the life before us. We admire the pure patriot in whose thoughts the State—her weal and her glory—was ever uppermost; the learned jurist who, from his ample stores informed, moulded the laws of his own commonwealth; the eloquent advocate who stood always ready to redress the wrong, whether of the individual or the community at large; the wise statesman who swayed the destinies of his State more than any of his generation. But we render the unfeigned homage of the heart to him, who by the majesty of his moral nature, passed pure and unsullied through the wide circle of trials and conflicts embraced in his life; and who, in his death, has left a fame that will be an incentive and a standard to the generous youth of North Carolina through all the ages that are to come.
The foregoing sketch is the main body of a memorial address on the "Life and Character of Governor Graham," delivered in Raleigh before the bench and bar of the Supreme Court, June 8, 1876.
Much of it has been omitted; for, while it was a labor of love (and there is much labor in it), it is too long for the scope of this work. If Mr. McGehee's power of condensation had been equal to his zeal and to his admiration and knowledge of Governor Graham's life and work this memorial would have been monumental.