The Civil War in North Carolina



Reminiscences and Memoirs of North Carolina and Eminent North Carolinians

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North Carolina, now Judge of the District Court of the United States for Florida. The Secretary was Washington C. Kerr, the State Geologist, one of the most eminent scientific men this University or the State has produced. The President of the Society, a marked contrast to the President of 1795, sat on the same platform, on his right. While the old President's weight was near 230, the new balanced about 100 pounds. He was thin even to cadaverousness. He was conspicuous as one of the smallest boys in college. Whatever dignity he had was borrowed for the occasion. He was a hard student, but jokes and laughter were more natural to him in those days than severity or even gravity of demeanor.

        Having thus presided over the Dialectic Society, jointly with the first President, I feel that I have a kind of Apostolic succession in that body.

        Having finished the story of the Old East and West buildings, I return to my starting point.

        The lots of the village of Chapel Hill were sold on the same 12th of October, 1793, the price for all, about $3,000, being considered highly satisfactory. It was pressingly necessary to provide a residence for the President, or presiding Professor, and also a Steward's Hall, wherein the hungry students of the period might turn hog and hominy, beef and potatoes and the juicy "collards" into muscle and bones and brains and nerves. The President's Mansion is the house on the Avenue west of the New West Building, which we are now getting ready for the occupancy of our Professor of Physics and any company which he may bring with him from Bonny Maryland. In that house were sheltered David Kerr and Joseph Caldwell and Dr. Chapman, then it passed into the possession of Dr. Elisha Mitchell, who fell a martyr to his love of scientific accuracy on the loftiest srmmit of the Black Mountains. President Caldwell preferred to rest under his own vine and fig tree, the present residence of Prof. Hooper, which was purchased by the University after Caldwell's death. The old President's house contained in the small room at the head of the stairs, the library of the institution.

        The Steward's Hall was situate nearly opposite the New East Building in the centre of Cameron Avenue. It was there that most of the students for many years boarded at Commons, paying for the first year $30, or $3 per month, for the next four years $40 per year or $4 per month, in 1800 rising to $57 per year, in 1805 to $60, in 1814, under the inflated war prices to $66.50, in 1818 to $95, or $9.50 per month, in 1839 to $76, when the system was abandoned and every man made his own contracts for the supplies of life. It was in this building that the "Balls" of the old days were given, at which tradition hath it, venerable Trustees and Faculty, even the great President himself, together with their pupils, with hair powdered and plaited into "pigtails", and legs encased in tight stockings and knees resplendent with buckles, mingled in the mazy dance with the beauteous damsels of the day, whose brilliant dresses and angelic beauty far be it from me to describe. I must for that purpose call into my service the scientific pens of my unmarried professors, glowing with electric energy and chemical forces, or of Dr. Manning's students, so well qualified by researches into the ancient laws, to give information on such antiquarian matters.

        At the Commencement of 1881 we had a most eloquent and instructive address to the students by an excellent specimen of the old school, an octogenarian, Gen. Mallett, of New York, lately called to his final home. I introduced him as having received his diploma 63 years before that day, and stated that for 70 years he had never taken a glass of ardent spirits,
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