The Civil War in North Carolina



Reminiscences and Memoirs of North Carolina and Eminent North Carolinians

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which may be mentioned "The Home Altar;" "What Now"; "Annals of Southern Methodism"; "Weights and Wings" and "Who was Jesus?"

        He is one of the Council of the University of New York, a Director of the American Tract Society and a life member of the New York Historical Society founded by another North Carolinian, Rev. Dr. F. L. Hawks. Dr. Deems is the president of the American Institute of Christian Philosophy, of which he was the chief founder.

        In Patton's "Lives of the Clergy," we find the following, touching this eminent divine: "He is impassioned even in argument, and there is in all that he writes and says the glow of earnest and sincere feeling. In his preaching there is a display of the finest powers of the national orator and thorough scholar. His thoughts are rapid and are all aglow with beautiful sentiment and tender emotion, which can only be imparted by extensive learning.

        Dr. Deems enjoys great popularity at the South, and was esteemed one of the foremost theologians and public men in the Methodist Episcopal Church.

        Dr. Deems has shown his love of North Carolina by founding a fund for the help of young men pursuing their education in the University of North Carolina. It is a memorial to his son, Lieutenant Theodore D. Deems, who fell in our civil war. Mr. William H. Vanderbilt's munificence and the accrued interest has carried the "Deems' Fund" to over twelve thousand dollars.

        Paul Carrington Cameron, of Orange County North Carolina, the second son of Hon. Duncan Cameron and his wife Rebecca Bennehan, was born Sept. 25th, 1808 at Stagville, Orange County, the residence of his gradfather, Richard Bennehan.

        He received his education partly at the University of North Carolina 1823-24 and partly at what is now Trinity College, Hartford, Conn. At this latter Institution he graduated, July 1829. He read law in Raleigh in the office of his father Judge Cameron, looking forward to the practice of that profession with eager ambition. Like many other southern gentlemen, however, he was heavily weighted at the start by circumstances and responsibilities that could neither be delegated nor ignored, and found himself compelled to turn his energies and abilities into channels where the sense of duty fulfilled alone must be his reward, where no hopes of laurels to be achieved, or the enjoyments that are found in congenial studies would stimulate his effort. A large landed interest, and the guardianship of numerous slaves demanded his care, and he became of necessity a planter, managing not only his own estate, but his fathers, and those of various near relatives committed to his charge in the States of North Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi.

        Mr. Cameron has exhibited in the conduct of these responsibilities for more than fifty years, an administrative and financial ability, an energy and an integrity which would have secured him high honors on any field of action. His career has been characterized by the simple straight-forward devotion to what he conceived duty in every relation of life. As a son, as the head of a family, as a citizen, and as the guardian of nineteen hundred slaves, his course may challenge inquiry, and would doubtless repay it. The very mistakes of such men are instructive. That Mr. Cameron has never erred, no one will affirm; that he has been able to please every body in the conduct of his wide and multifarious interests is equally doubtful; but his strict sense of honor, of justice, and his unflinching adherence to what appeared to him right, at the time, have never been called in question.

        He engaged with great earnestness in all agricultural improvements, advocated the early introduction
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