services, is seen in the fact that he was unanimously elected Chairman of the Alumni Association and continued for a succession of years against his earnest protest as not being a graduate.
Mr. Cameron is a capital public speaker. He goes to the point, commands attention, and is always effective. Those who have been so fortunate as to hear his singularly neat, elegant, and impressive short speeches on various occasions at the University Commencements will remember them long as models of their kind. His frequent visits in term time to the University and short, unpremeditated addresses to the students, present him in a most amiable and interesting light. His fine ruddy complexion and bright dark eye, surrounded by an aureole of snow-white curling hair, his air of habitual command, conjoined with the fine courtesy of a through-bred gentleman of the old school afford a picture that our young people will do well to keep in mind.
One aspect of Mr. Cameron's character which should not be omitted in even a slight sketch, is his benignant interest in young people, and in their pleasures. For years he has made a point of being a spectator at the Commencement dances, giving them dignity, and endorsing their claims to public respect by his presence.
He stands now representative to the rising generation of a class of men, the like of whom will never again be seen in our country. Their faults as well as their virtues have been the product of a system of life now passed away forever. The southern slaveholders will figure in History, will adorn the pages of Romance, and will be held up alternately to the admiration, and the scorn of mankind as magnate, as despot, as tyrant or as patriarch, according as friend or foe shall depict him. We who know them well, who recall the high-toned chivalrous gentleman, the ardent and patriotic citizen, the generous friend and neighbor, the devoted husband and father, the just and humane master--we take courage when we reflect that the Final Judge of all is not a man. He alone knows through what difficulties the southern planter went forward to his duty; how fearfully weighted by his inheritance;--how blinded, how hampered, how weakened by circumstances which neither he nor his fathers could control.
Remembering what we do, we look with reverence and affection on those who remain. Their failings have vanished from our vision with the system that brought them to light, and we bid our young men take courage by the example of their virtues to go on in the path of duty, self-sustained, fearless and persevering.
Mr. Cameron married, Dec. 20th 1832, Anne, daughter of Chief Justice Ruffin at his residence on the Alamance. This union has secured his domestic happiness now for more than fifty years. Seven of their children have lived to maturity. Their home the centre for many years of a large and amiable hospitality, and interesting family connection was at Farintosh, their plantation in Orange county, but of late they reside chiefly in Hillsboro'.
Julian Shakspeare Carr was born at Chapel Hill the seat of the University of North Carolina, in the county of Orange, October 12th, 1845. His father, John W. Carr, descended from a Scotch family, is a gentleman of consideration in the county, who, before and since the war, has filled the responsible stations of Magistrate, Justice of the Inferior or county court, and County Commissioner. His mother is of the highly respectable family of Bullock, of Granville county, and a sister of Colonel Robert Bullock, a distinguished citizen of Florida.
Mr. Carr acquired the rudiments of education in the vicinity of his home, and was prepared
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