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

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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

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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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forgot his questions and the crowd forgot to interrupt, swaying to and fro with him as he fell into a secession trance-frenzy and walked back and forth along the porch railing, pouring burning words into their bosoms. ln the crush, as the crowd surged back and forth with him, many were borne down, some were injured. During this campaign, he first gave currency to the phrase, the irrepressible conflict, so often used by Mr. Lincoln: and Daniel Dougherty, the Pennsylvanian of silver tongue, has since called him the Harry Hotspur of the Confederacy. The war came in '61, Yirginia seceded. He took his place with his State and his country, the Confederate States of America. He was elected to and served in the Confederate Congress, until active hostilities commenced, for which his restless spirit panted. Then he resigned his seat and went into the field as Colonel of a regiment. After the battle of lVilliamsburg he was promoted Brigadier-General for gallantry by Major-General joseph E. Johnston. who ordered the words Williamsburg and Seven Pines to be emblazoned on his regimental banner. In consequence of a misunderstanding with the Confederate XVar Department, he resigned his commission, and enlisted in the ranks in '63, There is not a nobler period in his life than this. For some eight months he served as a private soldier in the Nottoway Cavalry, Company E, Third Yirginia Regiment. as cheerfully, as dauntlessly, as when in Brigade Headquarters or Congressional Halls, shirking no duty under privilege, commanded by men whom he had been leading from their boyhood. He was detailed for duty as special courier and scout under Lee around Petersburg in '64, being familiar with every inch of the ground. On one of these missions he was taken prisoner by violation of an informal truce, such as the soldiers of the two lines often made for the interchange of newspapers and camp comforts: a dastardly deed, done because his unmistakable, striking figure, as true to description as to photograph, was recognized. He was closely confined in a casemate at Fort Lafayette, New York, for more than half a year, until liberated on parole for exchange, by Nr. Lincoln, twenty days before the surrender. That surrender came at Appomattox, April oth, 1865-hlCl'I'lOI'2.lJlC Day! And such a surrender! None can know who have not made such surrender. It can not be learned from recitals of historians or descriptions of orators. It was not a surrender of arms and Hags and the payment of an indemnity in dollars. It was the surrender of customs as old as Jamestown, that had become habits of nature, that could no more be substituted, than the foot of an amputated limb can be sub- stituted, except by false ones: the surrender of sentiments, that could no more be eradicated. than the nerve anatomy can be extracted: the surrender of principles, that could no more be unbosomed, than the heart can be taken out: the surrender I4