xt7kkw57ds76 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7kkw57ds76/data/mets.xml Smith, William Benjamin, 1850-1934. 1891  books b92-261-31825973 English Printed at the De Vinne Press, : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Rollins, James S. (James Sidney), 1812-1888. Missouri Politics and government. University of Missouri History. United States Politics and government 1861-1865. James Sidney Rollins, memoir  / by William Benjamin Smith. text James Sidney Rollins, memoir  / by William Benjamin Smith. 1891 2002 true xt7kkw57ds76 section xt7kkw57ds76 














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JAMES SIDNEY ROLLINS








                  MEMOIR BY

WILLIAM BENJAMIN SMITH, A. M., PH. D. (GOETTINGEN)

         PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY
            UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI






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                    NEW-YORK
             PRINTED AT THE DE VINNE PRESS
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   Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year i8oi, by
J. H. ROLLINS, C. B. ROLLINS, C. B. ROLLINS, AND E. T. ROLLINS
    In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington

 

























                     TO ALL

            WHO ADMIRE PUBLIC SPIRIT

INCESSANTLY ACTIVE IN ADVANCING THE COMMON WEAL

        WHO HONOR BROAD STATESMANSHIP

          INFORMED BY LOFTY PATRIOTISM

        ATTEMPERED BY FIRM CONSERVATISM

        WHO REVERENCE A LIFE OF DEVOTION

              UNMATCHED IN ARDOR

           UNEXCELLED IN ACHIEVEMENT

       TO THE CAUSE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

    WHO ESTEEM THE JUST FAME OF THE DEAD)

         A SACRED LEGACY TO POSTERITY

            T-O BE GUARDED JEALOUSLY

  FROM ANY CORRUPTION OF PASSION OR PREJUDICE

                  THIS VOLUME

    OF RECORD OF APPRECIATION OF TESTIMONY

                  IS DEDICATED

 This page in the original text is blank.

 








                           CONTENTS

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH                                             PAGE

     ANTECEDENTS     .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .    .  .   .  I

     EARLY LIFE    .    .       .   .   .                 3

     THE LEGISLATOR           ..                           8

     THE PARTY LEADER    ..22

     IN THE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE          ..                      31

     PATER UNIVERSITATIS MISSOURIENSIS           .      .         40

     PRESIDENT OF TIIE BOARD OF CURATORS  . . .     50

     THE MAN              ..68



     NOTES             ...                                        77

Two VOICES                                                        8S

ANALECTA                                                          117

     FROM "REPLY TO MR. GOOE " . .              .       .         121

     LETTER TO MR. DUNN     .         ..124

     ON TIlE REBELLION                                            1...33

     LETTER TO ELECTORS         ..                    .          155

     FREEDOM OF SPEECH                .         .    .i6i

     ON THlE OBJECTS OF THE WAR     ..                 .         185

     ON TFIE THIIRTEENTH AMENNDMENT                               196

     THE ARMY ANiD TIlE NAVY      ..                  .          222

     TIlE GREAT STRUGGLE ENDED       ..                 .        226

     LETTER TO SENATOR MIUENCH        ..                    .    234

     VINDICATION OF BOONE COUNTY            .     .     .        239

     LETTER TO THE BOONE COUNTY COURT         ..                 244

     PLEA FOR THE FARMERS, MECHANICS, AND MINERS OF MISSOURI  252

     ADDRESS BEFORE TIlE CONGRESSIONAL CONVENTION   274

     FROM ADDRESS BEFORE THE ALUM.NI ASSOCIATION . . .287

     LETTER TO THE AMISSISSIPPI RIVER IMPROVEMENT CONVENTION  . 289



     PRESENTATION OF PORTRAIT       ..                  .        296

     PRESENTATION OF BUST.                       .    .          307

     MISCELLANEA  ...310

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            3[amco RPbney 3Rotttnz.



                     ANTECEDENTS.


THE modern School of Naturalists, having settled to its satis-
    faction the general doctrine of descent with modification, has
of late fallen into two hostile camps over the question as to how
the modification is brought about. Onl the one hand, these attach
supreme importance to heredity, and trace back to spontaneous
variations in the germ-plasm, and to natural selection therefrom,
all the peculiarities that establish themselves firmly through suc-
cessive generations; on the other hand, those accent the environ-
ment with special emphasis, and find in its steady play on the
organism the fonls et origo of every distinguishing quality, whether
of individual, or variety, or species.
  It is not for the historian to compose this strife of savants. Per-
haps both parties are right and both wrong: right in what they affirm,
wrong in what they deny. Certain it is that the biographer can not
safely leave out of account either inheritance or surroundings in
estimating the complex of influences that mold the hero into what he
is; and no less certain that while time, place, and circumstance may
often appear completely regulative of the whole life of action, yet
many a turn of conduct, many an element of character, becomes fully
intelligible only in the light that emanates from the ancestral tomb.

  TIuE subject of this memoir, James Sidney Rollins, was born at
Richmond, the county seat of Madison County, Kentucky, on the
                               I

 


JAMES SIDNEY ROLLINS.



X9th of April, 1812. His father, Dr. Anthony Wayne Rollins,
whose name, an echo from Ticonderoga and Stony Point, is resonant
of the martial achievements of the pioneers of liberty and civiliza-
tion in the New World, was a native of Westmoreland County,
Pennsylvania, whither his father's father, Henry Rollins, had immi-
grated from Tyrone County, Ireland, after the outbreak of the
Revolution, but not too late to signalize his native love of freedom
under the flag of Independence, on the field of Brandywine. His
grandmother, the wife of Henry Rollins, was a Scotch woman, nze
Carson, a lifelong Presbyterian, both in faith and in nationality a
typical character. Her own Caledonian thrift, energy, and serious-
ness, rigidity of opinion and resoluteness of purpose, she has
transmitted in ample measure, though tempered or disguised by
gentler qualities, to her remoter descendants.
  Such qualities in James Sidney were the rich legacy from his
mother, Sallie Harris, ndec Rodes, a woman whose nature was graced
and life adorned in high degree with all feminine excellence. Her
father, Robert Rodes, first as magistrate by appointment of Patrick
Henry, Governor of Virginia, then as Quarter Session Judge of
Madison County under commission from Isaac Shelby, first Gov-
ernor of Kentucky, lastly as Circuit Judge, for nearly a full genera-
tion discharged with eminent acceptance the important, difficult, and
delicate duties of criminal, civil, and equity jurisdiction, maintaining
till the end the confidence and esteem not only of the State author-
ities and of the people at large, but also of a bar distinguished for
learning and still more for native ability. He was not merely,
however, an upright judge whose well-considered rulings were sel-
dom amended by the Court of Appeals; he was conspicuously a
man of affairs, full of enterprise and fond of adventure, a natural
leader among men. Thus, in 1777, at the age of eighteen, amid the
great national travail, we find him a volunteer in a campaign against
the Indians of East Tennessee; two years later, while yet a boy, he
is chosen captain of a large company of volunteers, and marches
from Albemarle County, Virginia, to the defense of the eastern
coast; and in 1783 he is elected commandant of an expedition to
Kentucky, yet unredeemed from barbarism. His birthplace, Albe-
marle County, Virginia, tells the story of his lineage and blood.
His father was a landed proprietor in that picturesque valley, a fair



2

 


JAMES SIDNEY ROLLINS.



reflection in the New World of the well-to-do English gentry, a
good liver, of imposing physique, abounding in animal spirits,
delighting in the horse as his daily companion, basking lovingly if
only half-consciously in the glories of mountain, forest, and stream
more in capacity than in achievement.
  Thus it appears that James Sidney Rollins, like so many who
have signalized themselves in history, drew the current of his life
from many fountains. On the paternal side two streams of Celtic
blood, a Scotch and an Irish, were mingled: the one contributing
the firmness, the persistence, the earnestness, the shrewdness, the
sagacity, the sense of opportunity that conquer success in every
undertaking; the other softening these rugged virtues with the
genial humor, the quick sympathy, the generous impulses, the large
benevolence that everywhere and at all times ennoble the true son
of Erin. In life and in death this inheritance in the veins of the
father, Dr. Rollins, was not divided, as his beneficent career as
physician, but still more his remarkable bequest hereafter to be
mentioned, bears ample witness. Side by side, however, with this
mingled stream there coursed through the veins of the son, James
Sidney, the full tide of Saxon blood, with its strength, its courage,
its audacity, its lust of combat and conquest, and its delight in
power. These were a mother's gift, received from her father to be
delivered to her son.
  Two distinct races contend with almost equal right in the books
of the learned for the glory of being the original Aryans and of
having sown in Europe the germs of western and modern civiliza-
tion: the Celto-Slavic, tall, brawny, broad-headed, ruddy alike of
hair and of skin ; the Teutonic, taller still, huge of limb, light of hair,
above all, however, long-headed. The brawn and brain of these
two races march forward together to the subjugation of the planet;
and it is no empty rhetoric nor fulsome laudation, but naked histor-
ical fact, that their bloods met in the veins of James Sidney Rollins,
and in just proportion.


                       EARLY LIFE.



  PERHAPS the most distinguishing feature in the character of Dr.
A. W. Rollins was the remarkably high estimate that he set upon



3

 


JAMES SIDNEY ROLLINS.



learning, especially upon scholastic attainment. Though nothimself
by profession a scholar, but dedicated to a bread-and-butter science
that of all the learned callings in this land at present most discredits
learning and makes least pretensions to scholarship among its devo-
tees, while at the same time borrowing most largely of its methods
and ideas from pure science, Dr. Rollins yet rounded his whole life
into an example of the benefit of collegiate training and into an elo-
quent and yearly more effective plea for its encouragement. The
straitened circumstances of his early youth could not deter him
from attempting, nor prevent him from at last accomplishing, the
full course of liberal study offered by Jefferson College, Pennsylva-
nia. Each new addition to his own education he at once utilized-
monetized, in fact-by teaching others and so procuring means for
his own further advancement. Thus, step by step, he conquered for
himself a -wide range not only of liberal but also of professional cul-
ture, and long after he had firmly established himself in a lucrative
practice he voluntarily surrendered this hard won vantage-ground
and betook himself, harried by the love of the best, to Philadelphia,
there to learn the most then to be known in America, at the feet of
the celebrated Dr. Benjamin Rush. It was no ladder of knowledge
that round by round he ascended, but rather a vertical wall of rock,
where each successive niche had to be painfully cut out and afforded
only a precarious foothold. These severe struggles of his early man-
hood left deep traces in the mind and heart of Dr. Rollins, and the
Aid Fund to the struggling youth of Boone County attests at once
his generous sympathy with intellectual aspiration and his far-sighted
wisdom in devising means for its encouragement.'
  It would have been strange if such a father had not availed him-
self of the best facilities then offered, in the education of his first-born
son. In fact, so early did James Sidney begin and so vigorously
did he prosecute liberal studies-the humanities, as they are finely
called-at Richmond Academy, that when only fifteen he was found
fit to enter the sophomore class in Washington College, Pennsyl-
vania-So it was in the morning; but in this noonday of intelligence
and culture the young man can scarcely enter the freshman class
at eighteen, the complaint is rife that he can not get into active life
before twenty-five or twenty-six, and it is seriously proposed to cut
off the last year of the academic course ! Do we really learn so



4

 


                    JAMES SIDNEY ROLLINS.                   5

much more in high school and college now than then, and have we
improved so little in methods that our knowvledge by three years
outruns our wisdom  Or, perchance, are we bound hand and foot
with red tape, sepulchred in " grades," and overwhelmed with the
frills and furbelows of learning -Trio years after his matriculation
at Washington the young Rollins, now a senior, followed his Pres-
ident, Dr. Wylie, to the State University of Indiana, at Blooming-
ton, where he graduated at the age of eighteen and with the honors
of his clas. Insufficient induction has led some to maintain that
academic leaders are seldom heard of afterwards, being content to
rest upon their collegiate laurels. At least, such was not the case
with young Rollins. Following his father to Missouri, whither the
latter had already gone partly at the suasion of paternal affection,
his daughter having formed an alliance with Dr. James H. Bennett
of Columbia, Missouri, partly at the instance of failing health, which
might find recruit or restoration under new climatic conditions, and
partly doubtless at the suggestion of the pioneer's love of adven-
ture and the unknown, which is also the vonderful, the young man
spent one year in caring for the large farm of his father, two years
in the private study of the law in the office of Abiel Leonard, after-
wsards a Supreme Judge of Missouri, and then, returning to Kentucky,
he completed the lawv course at Transylvania, Lexington, gradua-
ting in the spring of 1834 at the age of t-wenty-two. A life of unre-
mittent, arduous, and exhaustive labor prolonged in full activity
beyond seventy years, no less than his commanding physique,
attests sufficiently the general strength and hardihood of young
Rollins's bodily constitution; yet it is likely that his health had felt
unfavorably the protracted application of so many years, and still
more probable that his alert, vigorous, adventurous spirit, rejoicing
in action rather than in reflection, was cramped and sicklied in the
close atmosphere of the law-office; certain it is that, though the
young Rollins, having now gathered together and marshalled his
forces for the battle of life, began successfullythe practice of the lawv
in Columbia, yet his insecure health forbade complete devotion to
his profession. At first he sought partial relaxation and diversion
in husbandry in the suburbs of Columbia; btit with the outbreak of
the Black Hawk war his restless spirit eagerly embraced an oppor-
tunity for action, and having enlisted as a volunteer he served as

 


JAMES SIDNEY ROLLINS.



aide-de-camp on the staffof Major-General Richard Gentry. There
was little glory to be won by the Missouri troops in this campaign
in defence of their northeastern border, save from the faithful dis-
charge of monotonous duty, and on its close Major Rollins, as he
was henceforth called, resumed actively his profession. Still his
restive nature sought other outlet for its energies, and in connection
with his law-partner, Thomas Miller, he began and for many years
continued to edit the Columbia Patriot, devoted to the principles
and interests of the Whig party. The organ was most fitly named,
for pride in his country, glory in his country, and love of his coun-
try were always the regnant emotions in the soul of Rollins. And
now he began to liberate himself more and more from the drudgery
of the law and to emerge into notice conspicuously in his true un-
taught and unlearned character as an hommne d'affaires, the creator
of ideas, the originator of enterprises, the leader of men. It was
April the 26th, 1836, when the first railroad convention ever held
west of the Mississippi assembled in St. Louis. It was an unusual
and striking tribute to the ability and enthusiasm, but not less, we
suspect, to the recognized scholarship and literary skill, of the young
man of twenty-four, that he should have received respectful hearing,
even, in a council where the cautious wisdom of age and experience
rather than the ardor of youth would naturally have been directive;
much more that he should have guided its deliberations and in fact
moulded its decisions.  He was appointed chairman-with such
able associates, afterward highly distinguished, as Edward Bates and
Hamilton R. Gamble-of the committee to memorialize Congress,
and he drafted the first petition asking the national legislature for
a grant of public lands in aid of the system of internal improvement
projected by the convention. How extensively this idea has since
been adopted by that body, and with what far reaching and mo-
mentous consequences to our whole commercial and even govern-
mental polity, is long since a matter of history.

   From this point on it is affairs of great public import, rather than
the concerns of private clients, that engage the attention and fas-
cinate the regard of Rollins. Not that he abandoned the practice
of the law, nor that he ever neglected or failed to serve diligently
the interest of a client; far from it, his practice became extensive



6

 


                    JAMES SIDNEY ROLLINS.                   7

and remunerative, and was successful; but he came more and more
to deal en g;ros with legal questions, the technical details of the pro-
fession had little attraction for him, and he willingly resigned their
care to otlhers. The question will naturally arise, whether this par-
tial divorce from his own chosen calling, and this increasing devo-
tion to alien pursuits, were wise in motive or justified in issue. It
is out of question that he thereby deliberately renounced the high-
est eminence in his profession. Themis no more than any other
goddess will tolerate a divided worship; her especial favors she
reserves for her exclusive adorers. But the preliminary question
is, weas Rollins formed by nature to excel greatly at the bar  The
answer would seem to be that he had been endowed with a capacious
and flexible intellect actuated by uncommon zeal and energy; that
he had attained a broad and generous culture, a large and sufficiently
accurate comprehension of the principles of jurisprudence; that he
was fertile of resource and unusually ready and persuasive of speech.
It is hardly possible, then, that such a combination of qualities set
and kept in motion by ambitious and steadily directed industry
should not have carried him forward to eminence in any walk of
public life. In particular, as an advocate in criminal courts he could
not have failed of great distinction. Nevertheless, all these endow-
ments were of a very general nature, adaptable rather than adapted
to the specific work of the lawyer, while the distinctive features of
the born barrister were not prominent in his character. The patient
assiduity in research, the loving delight in endless details, the wide
and ready mastery of precedent, the microscopic keenness of intel-
lectual vision, the dogged persistence in attack, the unyielding
obstinacy in defense-all these qualities, the seal and stamp of
nature's attorney, were not preeminently his. In the arena of the
law his triumphs were feats of strength rather than of agility. On
the other hand, in the world of action, of politics and economics,
of commerce and enterprise, of legislation and of education, he
brought to the matters in hand not only all the qualities usually
and naturally called into requisition, but a largeness of intelligence,
a height and breadth of conception, a liberality and idealism of
spirit, and a sense of the future, that made him not only a con-
spicuous actor in one generation, but a memorable benefactor of
many.

 


x



JANIES SIDNEY ROLLINS.



                    THE LEGISLATOR.

  AT the outset of his political career Mr. Rollins was called on
to make choice between the two great political parties, Whig and
Democratic, that for so many years divided the suffrages and alter-
nately directed the destinies of the American people. This is not
the place either to criticize or to characterize the tenets of those
organizations, now become historic. At that time the " American
idea" (so called by Henry Clay) of protection to manufactures,
especially " infant" ones, dominated the Whig councils; though
remarkably enough the ablest lawyer, the most eloquent orator,
the adroitest diplomat, the most skillful financier of the party
and of the Union, the illustrious Webster, was a pronounced Free
Trader. In 1824 he had riddled Protectionism with resistless logic
and merciless sarcasm; that policy having been adopted, however,
against his vehement protest, he thenceforward lent it, as a fait
accomnip/i, a half-hearted support at the demand of his constituents.
The Democratic party was regarded as the bulwark of the slave
power. At a later period its extreme southern wing developed a
social faction of slaveholders, bent on disunion and their own de-
struction ; even as the extreme northern wing of the Whig developed
a faction equally bent on disunion and the ruin of somebody else,
far wiser, however, in its own generation. But then and ever since,
albeit blindly led and grossly compromised by their chieftains, the
masses of both parties, North and South, have been devoted, and
perhaps equally devoted, to the Union. Born in Kentucky, his
father an ardent Whig and admirer of Clay, it was natural that
Rollins should range himself under the banner of the " great com-
moner," and honorable that he should follow it to the end. By so
doing, however, he made a large, though perhaps not conscious,
sacrifice of political ambition. He cast his fortune with a minority
that became gradually more and more hopeless, and condemned
himself finally to political insulation. The misfortune of his choice,
judged by the standard of official preferment, did not display itself
in his earlier and merely local canvasses, where personal quality is
wont to be a more significant factor. In the first of these, at the

 


JAMES SIDNEY ROLLINS.



age of twenty-six, he was easily elected to represent Boone County
in the State Legislature. The session of 1838-39 was an important
one, and offered him ample opportunity, which he was not slow in
seizing, to "make by force his merit known.' Here it was, in
fact, that he met and learned to know his ideal love, the Higher
Education, and pledged himself her champion zealously and for
life. The-germ, shall we call it -nay, rather the gemmule, of a
seminary of higher learning, the mere suggestion of a university
as a desideratum of the future, had long lain dead or dormant in the
organic law of the State. In the famous ordinance of 1787, by which
Virginia ceded the great Northwest Territory to the General Gov-
ernment, Thomas Jefferson had expressly stipulated on behalf of
one of the high contracting parties that-" Art. 3. Religion, morality,
and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happi-
ness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever
be encouraged." In organizing the Territory of Missouri, part of
another splendid gift of Jeffersonian diplomacy to the Federal Union,
in 1812, Congress had adopted literally this provision, and defined
it more precisely by the clause added -" and provided for from the
public lands of the United States in said Territory, in such man-
ner as Congress may deem expedient." The ample provision
" deemed expedient " by the wisdom of Congress, for the establish-
ment and maintenance of a " university, or seminary of learning,"
consisted of two townships of land, 46,030 acres, from which was
realized on a hasty and inconsiderate sale the munificent sum of
78,000! ! Thus far the Congressional Act of February 17, 1818,
and the Enabling Act of March 6, 1820; herein the State, of course,
acquiesced, both by the ordinance of July 19, 1820, and in the Con-
stitution of like date. This instrument declares that there shall be
a " university for the promotion of literature and the arts and
sciences." The Constitution of 1865 declares that "The General
Assembly shall establish and maintain a State University, with de-
partments for instruction in teaching, in agriculture, and in natural
science, as soon as the public school fund will permit." It would
appear that the author, the Hon. C. 1). Drake, cared for no other
" departments for instruction " than the three mentioned, or that he
apprehended that these might be left out in the organization of the
University; but what college even, not to say university, ever
      2



9

 


JAMES' SII)NEY ROLLI.XS.



omitted "natural science" from its curriculum Thc new Con-
stitution of 1875 is more and less explicit:
  " The annual income of the public school fund, together with so
much of the ordinary revenue of the State as may be by law set
apart for that purpose, shall be faithfully appropriated for establish-
ing and maintaining the free public schools and the State University,
and for no other uses or purposes whatsoever.
  ' The General Assembly shall, whenever the public school fund
will permit and the actual necessity of the same may require, aid and
maintain the State University now established with its present
departments."
  In such a gingerly, inadequate, perfunctory. and sometimes unin-
telligible manner (witness the obscure reference of " the same ") do
our constitutions acknowledge and provide for the supreme intel-
lectual interests of the State !
  Far be it from us to depreciate the wisdom that indeed recognized
the rights of mind and the necessity of higher education in the
early legislation already quoted. But to speak of such vague pro-
visions as in any proper sense founding the University now in our
midst is to misread the facts of history or to use words with slight
regard to exactness of meaning. These provisions contain at best
and at most but a prophecy of a university. All that any one
could safely infer from any or all of the enactments in question
would be that sometime in the indefinite future, if the State Legisla-
ture s/hould fulfil its obligations, there would be in some wise founded
and somehow maintained a State University. But how often has
such a body been known to fulfil its obligations Assuredly- a
scrupulous regard for them is not one of its noteworthy frailties.
As a matter of fact the General Assembly has never discharged the
whole duty thus imposed on it, nor until comparatively recent years
any very considerable measure thereof. Not until 1827 were the
townships set apart for the " seminary of learning," and even under
far wiser administration the amount realizable from them would
have been ridiculously inadequate to the establishment and main-
tenance of a college, much more of a university. Granted, then,
that far-sighted early legislation contained the promise and potency
of a higher educational life, there was yet needed the long and
patient brooding of wise statesmanship to quicken it; granted that



10

 


JAMES SIDNEY ROLLINS.



the framers of our Constitution had cherished the imagination of a
seminary of Icarning, it remained for some later lawgiver to embody
their fancy in a positive statute, to give it form and substance, " a
local habitation and a name."
  It was no mere accident, but a part of the eternal fitness of things,
that this high privilege and sacred duty fell to the lot of James
Sidney Rollins. No more than his father devoted to purely intcl-
lectual pursuits, he had inherited allthatfather's deep reverence for
learning, and thereto he added an extraordinary and unflagging zeal
for its advancement. A slaveholder himself by an accident of lat-
itude, he had been educated on the soil, and was familiar with the
traditions, of freedom. His father had been born and reared in the
atmosphere of a respectable college, and almost in sight of his
maternal grandfather's home there had welled forth at the touch of
Jefferson that copious fountain of knowledge which beyond all others
has ennobled and invigorated our southern civilization. He xvas
only nmore exceedingly' zealous of the traditions of the fathers, then,
when he laid before the House of Representatives at Jefferson City
a bill - which was passed the 8th of February, 1839, the first he ever
drafted and the first that advanced the pledge of the Constitution one
step towards fulfilment- for fixing the site of the State University.
By the introduction, by the eloquent, effective, and successful advo-
cacy, of this measure young Rollins declared and constituted himself
the especial protagonist of the higher education. It was no popu-
lar cause that he thus openly espoused. No system of common
schools, even, was then nor for many years afterwards known in the
State. Massachusetts, even though in the third century of her ex-
istence, rich with Old World culture, a land of scholars and authors,
men of letters and men of science, was just then, under the guidance
and urgence of Horace Mann, beginning to bring her schools into
order. Missouri was still given over to illiteracy. After making
all proper discount, then, for the enthusiasm of youth flown with
professional degrees and academic honors, we must still yield
admiration and gratitude without reserve to the high-hearted,
wide-minded, far-sighted statesmanship that boldly allied itself
under such conditions indissolubly with an abstraction, with an in-
tellectual interest that even now, at the remove of half a century,
one-third of our populace regard with distrust or disfavor, and whose



I I

 


JAMES SIDNEY ROLLINS.



just prerogatives it is even yet the part of policy to let rest largely
in abeyance.
  With the passage of the Rollins bill for fixing its site, the drama
of the University's history was opened. The following scene was
one of unique and even thrilling interest, and in it the hero was
again the principal actor. It was the intent of the bill to secure a
central seat for the great seminary, and its location was offered
openly as a prize to the " place presenting the most advantages to
be derived to the said University, keeping in view the amount
subscribed, and locality and general advantages "; but this generous
competition was restricted expressly to the six river-counties of
Cole, Cooper, Howard, Boone, Callaway, and Saline.  And now
began a contest that for animation might remind one of a steam-
boat race on the lower Mississippi, and that might have appeared
to an outsider as almost ludicrous in its intensity, if the dignity and
ideal character of the stakes had not lent it gravity and importance.
Never in the days of chivalry was a lady wooed by knights or trou-
badours with more romantic devotion than the future University
by the rival counties. A distinguished citizen of victorious Boone,
of large reputation and of great abilities, Gen. Odon Guitar, in a
happier portion of his address commemorating the Semi-Centennial
of the University and published in the August number of the Uni-
zersity Mfagaz-ie (New York), has set forth the struggle in bold and
striking relief. From the account given by this eye-witness it would
seem that emulation glowed with a fervor far beyond that of even
political animosity. Meetings were held in every church, at every
crossroads, in every school-house; subscriptions were pledged and
doubled and raised again ; the air resounded with stirring appeals
to pride of county, to glory in learning, to commercial ambition.
Very eloquent, too, they must have been-at least very effective, for
the people were aroused, rich and poor alike, to a veritable frenzy
of liberality. Some attained and even surpassed the high-water
mark se