HIS COLLEGE LIFE, ETC.

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in the Freshman year are Cicero's Orations and the Odes of Horace in Latin, Xenophon's Cyropædia and Memorabilia in Greek, Adam's Roman Antiquities, Vulgar and Decimal Fractions, the Equations and Extraction of Roots, English Grammar and Rhetoric.

What youth of twelve summers, even in this day, would have passed the ordeal of such an examination, and held not only a respectable place in his class, but have led it as did young Memminger.

The writer was privileged to know, in the maturity of their lives, and to an extent was intimate with, the Hon. Mark A. Cooper and Rev. John S. Groves, citizens of Georgia, who entered college with Mr. Memminger, and during the entire course knew him as only class-mates and room-mates can know each other. From these gentlemen I have gathered all that I present of the college life of Mr. Memminger, beyond that he has preserved in the form of essays and orations which appear in the Appendix to this volume. I am especially indebted to my excellent friend, Rev. John S. Groves, of Oxford, Georgia, for the pleasure he has afforded me in going over these happy days of his youth, and for the entertainment he has given me as with that zeal which only a loving nature can manifest he would live over his college life, and with song and with story recount the inci dents that made the college boy then, as he always has been and must ever be, a peculiarly interesting character.

"Memminger," says Mr. Groves in a sketch made by him for me, "was the smallest in stature, as he was the youngest in years, of the boys who entered with me the South Carolina College in 1815. His appearance, when I first saw him, was that of a mere child. In those days boys were not permitted to assume the roll of grown men, and in dress, as well as in behavior, were less precocious than in these later days of Young America. This was especially so with the boys from our seaboard city of Charleston. With his back to you, and dressed as he was in a neat-fitting 'round-about'

24

LIFE AND TIMES OF C. G. MEMMINGER.

or jacket, you would have thought him to have been one of the children of Columbia who had wandered into the campus, so small was he and so childlike in appearance, but let him turn and face you, and then enter into conversation with him, and you would be at once undeceived. His manner was all earnestness, while his facial expression was that of a person far his senior in age. His most attractive feature was his eye-a blueish-gray-and always at perfect rest when he was speaking to you. He seemed to be looking into your mind, and if he was interested or seeking to impress you with his discourse, you would be held as if by a magnetic force. His face was lean, complexion very fair, nose very prominent, chin rather an oval termination of a strong, wellformed maxillary, with a mouth rather large, and thin, compressed lips-so much compressed at times that his mouth appeared but as a line. His hair was a dark brown, almost black. Memminger had an expression under all circumstances of earnestness; I cannot say it was an expression of melancholly, but it was more that of care, of serious deliberation. He was the student of our class. We had not been ten days on our course before he was in the lead. His recitations were prepared with the utmost care, and while at times he would enter heartily into the sports of the campus, yet I never knew him charged with an indiscretion that would necessitate an apology to a class-mate or a rebuke from a Professor.

"I soon learned not only to like him, but to have for the 'Charleston boy,' as we called him, a great respect. He was very laborious and never an idler. For some time we were room-mates. Often have I been rebuked by finding him at work with his text-books when I would come in late from some social entertainment. Mr. Memminger was born for a leader. Young as he was, in years a mere child, yet in the debating society or at our class-meetings, whenever there

was a doubt about a course of procedure, and we were, as all college boys will be, at our council board, Memminger's opinions were very apt to be our rule of action; especially was it so towards the close of our college term. He would wait until all had delivered their wisdom, and then come with a statement of the case that was clear and convincing. I cannot say that he was regarded as having a mind of flashing brilliancy in the sense that General Toombs or Ben Hill are by some regarded; but he had, in my opinion, a more judicial mind than either of them. There was no meteoric light about it, but the clear, steady light of a planet. I was much impressed with his strict adherence to rules and his devotion to principles while he was in college. These rules for the conduct of his life were prepared for him by some sincere friend, and he had them written upon a tablet, and ever before his mind as the inflexible law of his college life which no possible temptation could lead him to forget.

"While he was not a member, as I now remember, of any religious society, yet he always attended upon the services at the chapel, and was scrupulously careful in observing his morning and evening devotions.

"After graduation our lives diverged. He remained in his loved Carolina while I moved elsewhere. I have followed his course in public life with much pleasure, and would only have been surprised if he had not made the record he has among the great men of the country. His orations in the Junior class, and one while he was a Senior in 1819, on the 'Influence of Popular Opinion,' were well received at the time and gave evidences then of a fact, now assured, that nature had cast his mind in no ordinary mould. He possessed to a degree I have never known surpassed the faculty of concentration. I have known him when surrounded by a troup of boisterous college boys to continue his studies amid every kind of interruption."

I extract from a letter written by the Hon. Mark A. Cooper, a United States Senator, and among the ablest and most honored citizen of Georgia, the following:

I am not unmindful of my promise to you, made some time ago, to prepare a sketch of the college days of my old friend, Mr. Memminger, of South Carolina. I have only delayed because at my advanced age I find it by no means as easy to handle a pen as in the days gone byalas, gone by forever! . . . My delay has at least given me the pleasure of reading a letter from you which be assured is highly appreciated. ... From the first time I met him, a mere boy, when we matriculated at the South Carolina College, to this moment, I have had for C. G. Memminger the utmost respect. I well remember him, a delicately framed boy, who appeared to be too young to be away from home influences, and by several years the youngest of those who entered the Freshman class of 1815. There was in his childish appearance that which to a stranger might have detracted from the dignified personnel of a collegiate, yet there was in his intellectual eye and impressive face the undoubted expression of a mind that would command respect from those who were larger in physical proportion or who were older in years.

At college he was very attentive to his duties, a close and critical student, and in every sense of the term a clever youth. There were others in our class who were thought to possess more brilliant intellects, but none who were more earnest in their labors or more direct in their methods. I can recall several who have never reached a place of note, or became at all distinguished, who were regarded in their college days as being more talented than Memminger; . . . but none who were superior to him in that painstaking labor and thorough analysis so essential to the acquisition of knowledge, and to its judicious application in the affairs of life. We were members of the same debating societythe Clariosophic. I have often listened to him in debate with great satisfaction, and have found him by no means an antagonist to be lightly considered. Mr. Memminger's success in life was all foreshadowed in his college days. That he should have reached the eminent position among our great men that now renders his name distinguished is no matter of surprise to me.

Some of the orations referred to by Mr. Groves are printed in the Appendix to this volume. They plainly indicate the strength of the youth's mind. For these papers I am indebted to Mr. Edward Memminger, of Flat Rock, a worthy son, as I am for others that have been long treasured as family heirlooms.

The prescribed college course has been finished, and the time comes when the Freshman has matured into the dignified Senior, who, in the presence of the august guardians of his alma mater and before the assembled populace, is to receive the official certificate of his proficiency and be ushered into the arena of life to meet its duties and to engage in its combats; to go down before these in the ignominy of failure, or to acquire fame and the emoluments of victory, the honors of men, and more than all the approval of his own conscious manhood, and the esteem of his fellow-citizens. The merit and demerit marks have all been counted by the professors, when it is announced that the gray-eyed boy from Charleston has by his proficiency won the second place of distinction in a large and talented class, and has been awarded the honor of delivering the salutatory address at the "Commencement " exercises. The young gentleman who contended with Mr. Memminger for the "First Honor" was Mr. Thomas House Taylor, who won it by so small an advantage that the Faculty were for some time in doubt. A few years later brought about a change in the rules of the college, making the "First Honor" graduate the salutatorian, and awarding to the "Second Honor" the valedictory address, and such is the custom to-day. When young Memminger, proud of his triumph, was presented by the venerable president, there was not before him in that happy audience the beating heart of a father, or was there awaiting him the loving embrace of a mother. The gallant officer of the Prince-Elector's battalion and the patient, proud-spirited mother could only have been near their loved boy in some spirit form, some sweet relation of affinities, that some tell us bring, even from the infinite world, the loves that have left us in this world. Who shall say that it was not so! There was one there, however, to press the hand of his boy, whom he had taken into his own household and to whom he