University of North Carolina Chapel Hill - Yackety Yack Yearbook (Chapel Hill, NC)

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giving for tlie first time the documentary proof that Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee were taught at West Point, tliat secession was considered one of the reserved rights of the States, by the Framers of the Constitution, and more than 6,000 copies of this paper, in four editions, have been called for from all parts of the country. In December of lOO-i, Colonel Bingham was one of the fom- men inA-ited to speak at the Annual Banquet of the New York Southern Societies in the Walil(nf-Asic.ri:i. liis subject being the Status of the South Before 1860; the Decay of that Status mihI Ii- lIiMm:,! i.m. This paper was received with most marked attention and has been rcpruilucuil ami iiKly distributed in the South and in the North. In October, 1908, as President of the North Carolina Historical Society, Colonel Bingham treated the whole subject of Secession: I. As viewed by the Framers of the Constitution; II. As practiced by the U. S. Government in the Secession from England; in the Secession from the Articles of Perpetual Union, which lasted only 13 years; as sustained three times, in the Secession of Texas from Mexico; in the Secession of Cuba from Spain; in the Secession of Panama from the United States of Colombia; and resisted only in the legal and constitutional, but most unwise. Secession of the Southern from the Northern States; III. As attempted by the Confederate States. This ]ia|)iT lias liccn called by many an unanswerable ainunii ' iit in faxor (if the theory of Secession as a iiirrrh aradi ' inic question, wliili- I ' lmdcniniiig the iIicoin whin alh-mpted in practice. Cdlnncl liiiiLiham has been called iin often tci address n.lh-e au.lienee.s, Y. M. C. A. Asso- ciation , .Ma-onie I,i l;ies, educatiiinal meetings and the like, in this and in many other States, and has always Ijciii lisieiied to with close attention because he always has something to say, and says ii in iiniin and simple English. Some years ago he was called on for a teni]ie Vance called the best temperance speech he had e ir In anl. Ashcville is the only place in the Soiith where ( iiii|mlsory Education with the necessary APPROPRIATION inn Hm.iiiMis AMI TKAi iii;iis, i ill siieii ssful ( i] leiat ion. The Labor LTnions and nonunion men a-ked ( ' olonel Hin liani to speak lo them in joint meeting twice, and again to their wives, molliers, sislers, and ilaiiulileis onee, and ananisl ihe u ishes of many of the larger property holders llie measure was carried liy the Labor ' ote, ' ' only one man voting against it, and they all agreed that ' olonel Bingham carried this important nieasiiie, and that no other man could have carried il atjaiiist the strong o])]iosition of the largir laxp.iyias. Having dealt, during the Civil War, with the 124 non-slaveholding men whom he carried to Lee ' s Army, he understood this cla.ss of men and knew how to lead tlieni in peace, as he had done in war, realizing that they are the very bone and sinew of the country, brave, strong and loyal, and of the purest Anglo-Saxon blood to he found now anywhere in the wiirld. But the most striking and elfeelive of liis addresses w ' as in the LTniversity Chapel, June 3, 1907, at the Fiftieth .Kiiniversary of the graduation of the Class of 1857. This was the largest class that had ever graduateil, (ill in all, every one of whom entered the Confederate Anny, and after fifty years liul tifteen were left, rari nantes in iin;iili m.slo, a few survivors still afloat on the great dei p which had engulfed so many, ten of whom wia-e present. Being the youngest member of the I ' lass. Colonel Bingham was made Class ( )ialor, and he told of what (liis remnant, some of them de.re|iii with age. and some with wounds, had seen and been part oi m i!ii-e most wonderful fifty M ' ai m the world ' s lii toiy -inee tin ( ' In i tian laa. The scene was iiio i realistic, dramatic and patheli( The tears of the outgoing generation mingled freely with llio.se of the incoming g(aieiation, and no one who was present can ever forget how the audience was swayed. Colonel Bingham has passed his seventy-sixth year; but his eye is not dim and his natural force is not al ated. We repeat the wi.sh for him which Hora ' e made for .Vuguslus, Serus in Caelum rcdeas. speech in Charlotte, which Governor

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Col. Robert Bingham COL. ROBERT BINGHAM, the fourth Headmaster of the Binfrl,:,in School, of the third generation since its foundation in 1793 (two years before the fduiidatiun of the University), was born September 5, 183S. He entered the Bingham Schuul when not quite eleven, the University when not quite fifteen, and graduated with hrst distinction, in the Class of 1857, when not quite nineteen. In July of that year he joined liis father and elder brother as junior partner in the firm of W. J. Bingham Sons. Soon after the Civil War broke out he rai.-ii ' d :i c(iiii|):iny of Vohniteprs, 128 in all, only four of them belonging to the l:i i-lii)lding class, :iimI II :i- ;i igncd tii till- 44th Regiment, in what became at lengtli M:iii;:i. ' - Iliinade, in Heth ' . I )i i inii, A. 1 ' . Hill ' s Curp.s, and he was one of General Lee ' s 7,892 arincil nun :ii Appo- mattox Coml House antl saw llie last smi rise on what was left of the Army of Northern u ' ginia. As he was never sick or wounded, he was on the firing line all the time. General MacRae always made the 44th Regiment the centre of his brigade, and when the only flag the regiment had ever had was so shot away as to be no longer an ensign, and a new flag was issued, the torn and tattered remnant of the old flag was given to RolxTt Bingham because he was the only officer in the regiment who had always been under fire with it. except when he was a prisoner for a while, a fine testimonial to brave and faithful service. And this fragment of the 44th ' s Regimental Flag, which is framed and hangs in Judge Robert Worth Bingham ' s office in Louisville, Kentucky, is to be handed down as a trophy from generation to generation of the Bing- hams. A detailed history of the men who followed Lee, and above all, an account of their de- velopment in every sphere since the war, would form a most valuable contribution, not only to the annals of the South, but to the record of American progress and expansion in the broadest sense. To call them by name as they rise in the retrospect of memory is an easy task; for age has not withered them, and they respond as I saw them with the dew of youth upon them — that same gray line which for fnin- years bore the cause of the South aloft on its bayonets. There is Robert Bingham, I lie liiir uf three generations of scholastic tradition, an intellectual power in the evolution of the Sciiiili, ilie reniiwn of whose great School, like that of Eton or Rugby, has passed beyond the seas. iSheiilierd ' s Life of R. E. Lee, p. 97.) When the Civil War ended, Robert Bingham returned to his place in the School, which his elder brolhei- had held together dtu ' ing the war under the most adverse conditions. At Col. William Bingham ' s death, in 1873, the School had only thirty-five tuitinn fees and pupils from only .seven States. In Robert Bingham ' s hands it has atlraeted pu]iils from the United States Army, from 39 States of the Union, from Canada, Mexico, HoiidiiiMs, and Nicaragua in North America, from two countries in South . nierica, from fmn- in Europe. Irum fom- in Asia, from Ciilia in the . tlantii-. and from the Phili|i|iines in the I ' arihe, an area of patronage second to none in the SuvUheni States, and equaled liy but few selmnls in the rmled States. But Robert Biughani has been more tlian a Confederate Soklier, and more than the Head- master of the Bingham School. In 1884 he was invited to read a paper before the National Educational Association in Madison, Wisconsin, which he called The New South. This paper was reproduced and was widely dis- tributed, and was called by nne of North Cai ' olina ' s most distinguished citizens, the finest brief he had ever seen on any . iilijeet. In 1900, Harpur ' s Miujuzine published Colonel Bingham ' s E.x-Slaveholder ' s View of Our Negro Problem, which has been acceiJted as a classic on the subject, and 3,000 copies of it have been called for from all over the country and abroad, and it has been repeated on several platforms, both Ib the South and in the North. In September, 1904, the North American Review, which up to that time had never accepted a paper by a North Carolinian, published Colonel Bingham ' s Sectional Misunderstandings, 10

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Robert Stkaxge, 79 K. B. Thigpen, ' 01 Edwin E. Murphy, ' 03 John M. Craig, ' 03 Harry M. Jones, ' 03 Neill Ray Graham, 04 Eugene J. Newell, ' 09 Marc Spencer, ' 15 Robert M. Davis, ' 93 David S. Whitaker, ' 00 James W. Scroggs, ' 05 Ernest C. Ruffin, ' OS J. W. Murray, ' 96 David P. Stern, ' 02 H. B. Short, ' 02 W. R. Edmonds, ' 10 Lauchlin McLeod Ivelley, ' 05 Henry Weil Jerome Stockard W. T. Crawford