Hampden Sydney College - Kaleidoscope Yearbook (Hampden Sydney, VA)

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In the autumn of 1845, he went to the University of Virginia and combined with other courses the study of law under Professor John B. Minor. He married there Miss Sara A. Rice, a brilliant and beautiful woman, November 8th, 1848, when himself just twenty years of age. A rash act for a young man without an inheritance? lint Pryor will be rash. It was election day, a coincidence that takes the color of an omen in the light of after years. Their Golden XVedding is now nearly tive years past, and she has been a helpmeet for him, through struggles and triumphs, and can be called the weaker vessel only frm furnza. The felicity of his married life is rellected in a court utterance when this event was approaching: My observation is, that disagreements are most frequent at first in married life: with time the yoke wears easier, and the true honeymoon is from the twenty-fifth to the fiftieth year. After offering for the practise of law for a short time at Charlottesville, his predilection for politics and equipment in miscellaneous reading led him to turn to editorial work, and he founded the Sdllffljlldt' Dvllzocrat, Petersburg, Virginia, in 1850. He was in XVashington City in 1851-5.2, with John NV. Forney on the XVash- ington C7lII'UII, the administration organ of the Democratic party at the time, but returned to Virginia in 1855, and was associated for several years with the Ritchies on the Richmond E11q111'rcr. His journalistic career, begun at twenty-two, was phenomenal, and he became eminent, when almost a boy, as an editor upon these papers, which were leaders in forming the policies of the Democratic party during that most stirring decade of United States political history. An editorial in the Washington Union, on the Crimean XVar then in progress, favorable to Russia, won him distinction abroad. It received attention in England, and was copied and translated into European papers of several languages. His editorials in T110 Ellf11llil't'I' during the Virginia campaign of 1855 against the Know-Nothing party furnished the campaign thunder of the canvassers of the State. They were the argument and text of the Democratic party. He also him- self appeared frequently on the stump. VVhen Governor W'ise was elected as the result and the Know-Nothing party, which had had a great run, was broken, Governor VVise wrote him that he owed him more than any man in Virginia, and the Democracy of the State presented him with a silver service as a public testi- monial of appreciation of his services. His work on the XVashington Union, especially the editorial on the Crimean XfVar, led to his appointment by President Pierce, as special commissioner to Greece, in 1884, to adjust a controversy relating to the status of missionaries and American citizens residing in that country: which mission he executed with diplomatic credit, recognized at home and abroad. I2

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terian pastor, eminent for piety, eloquence, and usefulness. His mother was Lucy Eppes Atkinson, a name borne by many men and women distinguished in church, law, literature, and education. Through his grandmother Pryor, who was Ann Bland, he traces back lineally, collaterally, or connectively, to all the Lllands and Randolphs who figured so actively in the Colonial and early State history of Yirginia and of the Cnited Statesg to Thomas Jefferson, to Chief justice Marshall, and to many others whom an admiring people have declared on Fame's eternall bead-roll worthie to be fyledf' There were: The original Theodorick Bland, of XYestover, who came to Yirginia as early as 1650: the brothers Theodorick and Richard Bland of Revolu- tionary fameq Peyton Randolph, president of the hrst Colonial Congress: Edmund J. Randolph, first Attorney-General of the United States: later, john Randolph of Roanoke, the incomparable. All of these, who lived at the time, were active Revolutionists during that struggle, and after it most of them were ardent State's Rights interpreters of the Constitution as opposed to the Federalists. This pedi- gree in blood and politics, registered on the pages of American history, foretold very plainly where the younger shoot, Roger Pryor, would stand amid the agita- tions of his day. lllr. Jefferson said of Richard Bland, his lineal ancestor, that he was the ablest man south of James River, and his learning and historical writings gained for him even in England the name of Virginia Antiquaryf' General Pryor has been known to say that the Pryors got their brains from the Blandsg his father used to say that he thought they had some brains before the Blands came in. Srrhirra. He was born for dI.Sfl.lIC'fI'0l1 in service. His talents, energy, and capacity for work fitted him for it: the varied and momentous movements of his day have given him opportunities for it. XVithout detracting from the past, it may be said that his life has sustained and added to the reputation of his ancestry. Follow that life. His mother died when he was still an infant, less than two years old. After his father's entry into the ministry and second marriage, he settled in Notto- way County, Virginia. as pastor of the Presbyterian Church. Much of the son's earlier years was spent in the father's home here, the Old Place, and his earlier education was received in the old-held schools of the county and at the Classical Academy of Ephraim Dodd Saunders, in Petersburg. In 1843 he entered Hampden-Sidney College and graduated with distinction in ,45, being valedictorian of his class, the pride of the Union Society, in whose hall his portrait now hangs, and noted for love of general reading. II

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He was a very active member of the Montgomery Commercial Convention of I858-COllllllGI'Cl3l in name, political in purpose-where first hints of organized resistance to the Federal Government and immediate secession took shape, and where plain resolutions for the reopening of the slave trade were introduced. The Gulf States and the gifted lVilliam L. Yancey led the movement. The reply of the border States and the conservative element in the South to Nr. Yancey was delivered by Rlr. Pryor in a masterly speech, and the resolutions were defeated. His reputation as a political writer, keen debater, and brilliant orator had become national now, and he was elected in 1859 to the House of Representatives in the United States Congress, from the Fourth tthe Petersburgl District of Virginia, to succeed the lamented lYilliam 0. Goode, of Mecklenburg, who had died in his seat. The newspapers of the State and district really nominated Mr. Pryor before the assembling of the convention. He was returned in 1860 with- out opposition. Things were strained, things were tragic, then in lVashington, with events coming thick and fast that soon split this country asunder in the earthquake throes of civil war. The Virginia delegation in the House were generally either Unionists or con- servatives waiting the action of their State. Pryor's political inclinations and con- duct were with the conservatives, till the panorama of 1860 was well unrolled. Then in the Presidential campaign of that year, which was really one of war or peace, he espoused the cause of lfireckenridge and Lane, the Southern cause, and became a fiery secessionist. He went everywhere as a stormy petrel preaching the doctrines of organized resistance, conditioned always on the assumption that Mr. Lincoln should be elected and be invested with 4' the Federal prerogative, and he excited the public mind of all lower and Southern Yirginia as no other man could have done. This campaign was his most effective public service and these speeches are the oratorical chapter of his life. The subject. the occasion, the 1111111, and the audiences met, At Nottoway Court-House, the reporter said, Never man spake like this man. In Petersburg, a Union citizen from Danville, with XVhig ancestry back to the Revolution, who had never had patience before to listen to an attack on the Union, heard him, attracted, while strolling about, by the majestic appearance of a man like an Indian, speaking from the wharf. The result was that he became an ardent secessionist, invited Pryor to Danville, where there were not l six Breckenridge men, and when he left there were not six who voted against Breckenridge. At Lawrenceville, the county-seat of Brunswick, an over- whelmingly Union county, Pryor was to speak. Three thousand men gathered to hear him. The county leader was placed on the long hotel porch just under him: the crowd stood in the street below. The plan was that the crowd should interrupt and the leader break him down by asking questions. Pryor proceeded, the leader 13