USA > North Carolina > Biographical history of North Carolina from colonial times to the present; > Part 29
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This, in short, is the record of a very remarkable commercial success-a success wholly deserved. It has been Mr. Royster's fortune to be associated throughout his career with men of more than ordinary ability and enterprise-O. C. Farrar, C. C. Lanier, Edmund Strudwick and Charles F. Burroughs. This in itself
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is high testimony to his own worth, but it does not account for his remarkable success. He knows his business in detail and in its general features thoroughly. He knows what is demanded by the farmers in the territory which his concern reaches, and he strives earnestly, intelligently and honestly to meet that demand, and those who buy from him know that they are getting honest goods at a fair price. In all this it seems to me lies the secret of his success.
He has steadfastly refused to enter any combination of fertilizer manufacturers, and so, with the financial strength of his company and its annually increasing business, he is able to occupy an inde- pendent position and to meet all competition.
For many years he has been an elder in the Presbyterian Church, an official relation to the church of his mother that has never been nominal. On the contrary he has given liberally of his time and of his means to its service. Nor is his Christianity nominal. It is to him a very real thing, influencing him in all the relations of life, and constituting to him the prime rule of action. I can sug- gest only the benevolence of his character, for in that he sounds no trumpets before him that he may be seen of men.
November 5, 1874, he married Miss Mary Stamps, of Milton, North Carolina, a lady of fine culture and great intellectual charm, and they have four children living, two sons and two daughters; William Stamps, the eldest, is treasurer of the F. S. Royster Guano Company. Mrs. Royster is a daughter of the late Doctor William Stamps of Milton, and a younger sister of the wife of the late Judge George Howard of Tarboro.
Mr. Royster is still in active business with powers unabated, and in the natural course of events may look forward to years of usefulness. Many a man who makes more noise in the world could be better spared than he. If to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before is to constitute one a public bene- factor, how much more is he who makes whole fields to bloom where otherwise there would be desolation ?
Frank Nash.
THOMAS RUFFIN
T HOMAS RUFFIN, one of the most eminent characters in the annals of North Carolina, was born on November 17, 1787, at Newington, the residence of his mother's father, in the county of King and Queen, Virginia. His father was Sterling Ruffin, son of Robert Ruffin, of May- field, in Dinwiddie, and later of Sweet Hall in King William, a member of the House of Burgesses, serving with Peter Jefferson, the father of Thomas Jefferson, William Byrd, Benjamin Harri- son, William Randolph, Augustine Washington, Henry Lee, and others whose names are still prominent in Virginia, while the fol- lowing names are familiar also in North Carolina : John Ruffin, Armistead Burwell, Paul Carrington and Abram Venable. Mr. Sterling Ruffin was a planter residing in Essex County, who early in life had married Alice Roane, a daughter of Colonel Thomas Roane, whose family was highly distinguished in Vir- ginia by the public services of its members; and his mother was first cousin of Chief Justice Spencer Roane and of Thomas Richie, the distinguished editor, and of Doctor William Brockenborough, the president of the bank of Virginia, and United States Senator William Henry Roane.
After being prepared at the Classical Academy in Warrenton, North Carolina, then taught by the celebrated Marcus George, where among others as his schoolmates were Robert Broadnax
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of Rockingham County, Cadwalader Jones, then of Halifax, later of Orange, and Weldon N. Edwards of Warren, who continued through life his intimate friends, the subject of this sketch entered the College of Princeton, New Jersey, and graduated with honors in 1805. He studied law with Mr. J. A. Robertson, of Petersburg, and continued in his office until 1807. In that year his father re- moved to North Carolina, settling in Rockingham County, and the son also coming to this State completed his legal studies under the direction of Judge A. D. Murphey, and was admitted to the bar in 1808: The next year he located in Hillsboro.
Just east of that historic town, touching indeed its boundary, was a rounded mound, scarcely high or abrupt enough to be called a hill, whose sides and top were covered by an open grove of mag- nificent oaks, hickories and maples. Through this in 1809 ran a footpath to Ayrmount, the home of the Kirklands, a mile away. In this grove, the Summer of the same year, and on a tree trunk fallen by the wayside, Thomas Ruffin, the ambitious young law- ver, with his future already to himself secure, but unsuspected by others, addressed Annie M. Kirkland, then scarcely more than a child -- not yet sixteen years of age-and was accepted by her ; and they were married December 7, 1809. Miss Kirkland was a daughter of William Kirkland, a prominent merchant of Hillsboro.
. For the next twenty years Judge Ruffin made his home at Hills- boro, representing that town in the House of Commons in 1813, 1815 and 1816, when he was elected as judge to succeed Judge Duncan Cameron, but he remained on the bench at that time only two years. He had become surety for Judge Murphey, whose financial embarrassments involved many of his friends in pecuni- ary distress. Jutlge Ruffin was very punctilious about money matters, and having suffered this heavy loss he felt it incumbent on him to retire from the bench and seek to restore his fortune by his practice at the bar. Probably no other lawyer in the State at any time made greater professional efforts than he did at this juncture. He extended his practice into the courts of the adjoin- ing districts, and habitually made two courts in one week, and for forty-three weeks in the year he had his engagements in court, and
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despite all conditions of weather, traveling in a stick gig, he rarely failed to meet any of them. Throughout all these years of strug- gle and of striving, of disappointment and disgust, his wife was ever his good angel, soothing the asperities of his temper, restrain- ing his ardent, sometimes intense, sensibilities, stimulating his hope and ambition and sharing his disappointments and trials. Meantime she was caring for, guiding and controlling their grow- ing family. It is said that she was the only influence that came into the life of this great but rugged personality to which he de- ferred-the kind of deference that is beautiful always, but strik- ingly so in such a character. Six years of this hard, unremitting toil, however, brought its reward, and being relieved of embarrass- ment, upon the resignation of Judge Badger in 1825, he again ac- cepted an appointment of Judge of the Superior Court.
As an advocate Judge Ruffin was very successful and very strong. In his addresses he was earnest and impassioned, and sometimes he would bend his slender, lithe form until he could strike the floor in front of the jury with his knuckles, and he was eminently successful as a jury lawyer, while his thoroughness in the learning of his profession gave him great influence with the Court. He had no rival in the Supreme Court except the dis- tinguished Archibald Henderson and Judge Gaston, and in the lower courts he had command of all the important cases. Indeed it may be said that he was the first practitioner in the State when he retired from the bar and accepted a place on the bench in 1825.
In the Autumn of 1828, however, because of his fine business qualifications, he was prevailed on to take charge of the old bank of North Carolina ; and the next year Honorable John Branch, be- ing then appointed Secretary of the Navy, resigned his seat in the United States Senate, and Judge Ruffin was urged to become a candidate for that position, to which he certainly would have been elected ; but, like Judge Gaston, he declined, declaring that he had rather go down to posterity as a lawyer than as a politician. Thereupon the Legislature elected him a judge of the Supreme Court, and four years later, upon the death of Chief Justice Hen- derson, he succeeded to that high office. In this, his chosen field,
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he won imperishable fame. His decisions illumined the annals of jurisprudence. As great as he was as a common law lawyer, he was even more distinguished for his equity decisions. His reputa- tion extended beyond the bounds of North Carolina and his opin- ions were quoted not merely in other States but with approbation also in Westminster Hall. They were authority relied on by eminent writers of text-books no less than by the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Few judges in the Union have been of the same class as he in the annals of judicial litera- ture. If any have had a greater influence upon the development of the law in this country, it was because their decisions dealt with questions broader in their scope and more varied in their aspects and not because they were greater judges.
His style was elevated and his language well selected, clear and precise, well suited to judicial opinions. For twenty-five years he adorned the bench and his opinions run through thirty-five volumes of the reports and formed the bulk of our judicial litera- ture for a generation. They are of unsurpassed excellence, un- rivaled in the jurisprudence of any other State or country; and they constitute a memorial of North Carolina thought, sentiment and juridical learning that posterity will ever value as the chiefest pride of our people.
Chief Justice Clark has written of him in the History of the Supreme Court :
"The hunter in the Indian jungle discovers by unmistakable signs when the king of the forest has passed by. So the lawyer who turns over the leaves of the North Carolina Reports, when he comes upon an opinion of Thomas Ruffin, instantly perceives that a lion has been there. He reached the rare distinction of being equally great both in the common law and as an equity lawyer. Pearson probably equalled him as a common law lawyer, but fell far short of him in the grasp and application of the great principles of equity."
Judge Clark continues :
"It is his singular fortune to have resigned twice from both the Superior Court and Supreme Court bench. It is worthy of note, too, that in 1848 all three of the Supreme Court judges (Ruffin, Nash and Battle), the gov- ernor (Graham), and one of the United States senators (Mangum) were
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from the single county of Orange. Already from 1845 to 1848 two of the Supreme Court (Ruffin and Nash ), the governor ( Graham), and one United States senator (Mangum) had been elected from that county; while at the Legislature of 1841 both United States senators (Graham and Man- gum) were elected from the same county of Orange, in which the chief justice then resided, and from 1852 to 1858 two of the Supreme Court judges were again from Orange.
"Take him all in all, we have not seen his like again. By the consensus of the profession he is the greatest judge who ever sat upon the bench in North Carolina, and those few who deny him this honor will admit that he has had no superior. In political opinions he was the follower of Jef- ferson, but this did not prevent his reverence for Chief Justice Marshall, who was his personal friend, as was also Chancellor Kent. Mr. Frank Nash in the course of a discriminating article says: 'Judge Ruffin's men- tal constitution was more like that of the great Chief Justice Marshall than of any judge of whom the writer has knowledge, but the defects of Ruffin's temperament, assuming that he had been placed on so broad a stage, would have prevented him from becoming so great a judge. Both were endowed by nature with what, for lack of better term, we call a legal mind; both had great courage and strength of will; both were ambitious in and for their profession : both had a great capacity and fondness for labor, both had great vigor of understanding, and both loved the law as a science,and were thoroughly imbued with its principles. Marshall, how- ever, had a calm evenness of temper, a sweetness of disposition. a thor- ough control over his prejudices that Ruffin never had, nor could ever ac- quire. so the order of his temperament made him, who otherwise might have been a Marshall, more of a Thurlow. So great, however, were the endowments and acquirements of Judge Ruffin that one can but regret that he had not been placed upon the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, side by side with Marshall. What noble discussions of fundamental questions from opposing points of view we should have then have had.'"
And of him Judge R. T. Bennett says :
"I have read every opinion delivered by the late Chief Justice Ruffin, as Associate-Justice and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of North Caro- lina, and when I completed these readings, I said in my deepest thought, "Chief Justice Ruffin is the greatest judge who ever administered justice in an English-speaking community.'"
When in che zenith of his fame, in 1852, he resigned from the bench, proposing to retire from all professional work. In 1830 he had removed to his -plantation on Haw River in Alamance
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County, while operating another on Dan River in Rockingham County, and he had become known as one of the most progressive and successful farmers of the State, and that employment was very agreeable to his disposition. The pursuits of the farm gave him pleasant recreation, as well as large profits, and his home was a seat of culture and refinement and bounteous hospitality. In 1854 the Agricultural Society of North Carolina elected him its president, and for six years he continued in that position, and by force of his example and by his precepts he contributed largely to the improvement of agricultural methods in the State. And not only so, but he availed himself of his position to urge improve- ment in all lines that would be beneficial to North Carolina. There had always been a great stream of North Carolinians seeking homes in new regions, and in his address before the State Agricul- tural Society in October, 1855, he said :
"I cannot close, however, without asking you once more to cleave to North Carolina. Stay in her, fertilize her, till her, cherish her rising manufactures, extend her railways, encourage and endow her schools and colleges, sustain her institutions, develop her resources, promote knowledge, virtue and religion throughout her borders, stimulate State pride and exalt her renown."
Such indeed had been his own course in reference to the State, and no one could urge her people onward and forward so well as this eminent citizen who had reflected so much honor on the State and who had set such an example of usefulness and development.
On the death of Chief Justice Nash, in December, 1858, however, having been elected his successor by the almost unanimous vote of the General Assembly, he again took his seat as a justice of the Supreme Court, but sat only one or two terms, returning to private life in the Fall of 1859.
After his retirement from the bench he was appointed a magis- trate for his county, and for many years he presided over the county courts of Alamance County and attended to all the busi- ness of his community. Nor did he abandon his interest in the University, of which he was a trustee for nearly fifty years, being at last retired in 1868 by the Republicans to make way for some
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of those who destroyed the usefulness of that institution. He worthily received the honorary degree of LL.D. from the Uni- versity and also from his Alma Mater.
The religious affiliations of Judge Ruffin were with the Protest- ant Episcopal Church, of which for more than forty years he was a communicant, and he was one of the most active members of the church in the State and more than once he represented the diocese in the General Convention of the church in the United States.
Judge Ruffin was from his early years an adherent of the Demo- cratic Party, and in 1824 was a candidate on the electoral ticket of William H. Crawford for President, Mr. Crawford being the nominee of the caucus of the Democratic members of Congress, that being before the era of national conventions, and thus the regular ticket ; but on that occasion North Carolina gave her votes to Andrew Jackson, and the election was thrown in the House of Representatives, where Henry Clay gave his preponderating influence to John Quincy Adams, making that break with Jackson that led to the formation of the Whig Party. Judge Ruffin continued to adhere to the Democratic Party and was a supporter of Jackson's administration. He not only held like political views with Thomas Jefferson, but in other respects resembled him.
In the campaign of 1860 he supported Breckenridge as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, and when toward the end of January, 1861, the Legislature of North Carolina made an ef- fort to secure a peaceful solution of sectional differences by sending commissioners to represent the State at Montgomery and at the Peace Conference called by Virginia to meet at Washington on February 4th, Judge Ruffin was appointed a delegate to the Peace Conference at Washington. He accepted the employment with the purpose of preventing a rupture of the Union if possible. In that body he urged compromise, concession and conciliation. Nor did he confine his efforts merely to the members of the Congress. General Scott, then at the head of the Federal army, was a man of potent influence, and he had been a fellow law student with
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Judge Ruffin at Petersburg. At this critical period Judge Ruffin gladly renewed their former acquaintance and urged upon him that there should be an amicable arrangement of differences, and he also sought to influence others who bore relations with the in- coming administration. General Scott in his Autobiography men- tions that if the sentiments of Judge Ruffin had prevailed the coun- try would have escaped the sad inflictions of the war; and Presi- dent Buchanan makes the same statement in his "defense" of his administration.
But the pleadings of this illustrious patriot were unheeded by the victorious partizans who were about to possess themselves of the Federal Government. In that Congress North Carolina and Virginia were unable to approve of the conclusion reached by a majority of the delegates, still as weak as the report was it was not acceptable to those in control of the Federal Congress. The party friends of Mr. Lincoln had no purpose to conciliate or to remove the causes of apprehension which had led to the action of the Southern States. They preferred war with all of its horrors and sufferings rather than live up to the provisions of the Constitution of the United States. The concessions and sacrifices offered by the South were disdainfully rejected by these rabid partizans. With a heavy heart Judge Ruffin returned to North Carolina and retired to the quietude of his home. It happened that the writer, then a student of the law under Mr. William Ruffin, was present at the time and daily listened to Judge Ruffin's conversation on the portentous events of that momentous period. There also came his distinguished kinsman, Mr. Edmund Ruffin, of Virginia, and his son, who later married Judge Ruffin's daughter Jane. It seemed to these gentlemen that the movement at the South was forced by the people rather than led by the public men, who ap- peared inclined to be more conservative than the masses: and hopes were still entertained that war might be averted until the whole situation was changed by President Lincoln's call to arms. Then the younger men of the household and of the family at once responded in defense of the South and hastened to occupy. with others, the forts on the seaboard.
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The conservative and union sentiments of the venerable ex- chief justice were well known, but he himself realized the exe- gencies of the occasion. A public meeting was held in Hillsboro in April, 1861, that the citizens of the town might express their sentiments on the alarming state of public affairs. Judge Ruffin, though residing in Alamance until after the war, was present. In the course of the meeting he called the veteran Democratic politi- cian, General Allison, up to the bar and, facing the audience, stood by his side with one arm about him, and said: "My good old friend, I ask you what ought to be done now?" General Allison's reply was inaudible, but as he was known to be a Union man, it was guessed. Judge Ruffin, leaving the old general standing, ad- vanced a step toward the audience, and his whole frame in a quaver of emotion, extended his arms, bringing them down in vehement gesticulation at each repetition of the word, as he shouted, "I say Fight ! Fight! Fight!" It was the scream of the eagle as he swoops upon his prey. The war feeling already aroused became the dominant passion in every man's breast.
In May, 1861, after the war had begun, a convention was called to meet on the 20th of that month, and Judge Ruffin was elected a delegate from Alamance County. In the Convention he sought to avoid a declaration of a constitutional right on the part of the State to secede, preferring an ordinance merely declaring the union between North Carolina and the other States dissolved to the one proposed by Mr. Craige, which repealed the Ordinance of 1789, by which the State became a member of the Union; but in this he may have been influenced by considerations of tender- ness toward those who had violently opposed the doctrine of a constitutional right to secede, as well as by doubts of that right under the provisions of the Constitution. However, on being over- ruled by a majority of the Convention, he acquiesced in the views of his associates and voted for the Ordinance of Secession pro- posed by the ultra-States' Rights men and signed it, when passed.
The Convention continued in session for a year, taking several recesses, and Judge Ruffin contributed from the stores of his ex- perience to the promotion of the success of the Southern cause.
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He advocated those measures that were early adopted to put the State in a position of defense, making large appropriations to obtain military supplies and to equip soldiers for the field. His action was ever patriotic and based on the wisdom of a thoughtful statesman.
At the end of the war he found that his farm had been desolated in consequence of the army having been encamped upon it, and the system of labor being abolished, he felt unequal to the task of seek- ing to resuscitate his plantation and continue its cultivation. The calamities that had befallen him at his age were too great for him to successfully combat. He, therefore, disposed of his estate and again took up his residence at Hillsboro, where, in the enjoyment of the highest respect and veneration of the State, he passed his declining years in the midst of friends and surrounded by his children and grandchildren.
He lived through the period of Reconstruction and saw the baleful consequences of the sudden and violent abolition of slavery and the subversion of the Constitution and system of laws which for more than half a century he had aided in perfecting, and the blighting and degrading effect of subjecting the State to the do- minion of ignorant negroes and their allies; and at length, on January 15, 1870, in the eighty-third year of his age, after an ill- ness of but four days, he passed away. No man in any community ever attained a higher eminence for virtue, for learning or for integrity of character than this exemplary citizen of our State.
Mr. Nash in summing up his career said of Judge Ruffin :
"He was great as a lawyer, great as a judge, great as a financier, great as a farmer-a rugged, indomitable soul in a frame of iron, made to con- quer, and conquering every difficulty on every side."
"A man resolved and steady to his trust, Inflexible to ill and obstinately just."
S. A. Ashe.
THOMAS RUFFIN, JR.
T & HOMAS RUFFIN, the fourth son of Chief Jus- tice Ruffin and his wife, Annie Kirkland, also an eminent jurist, was born in Hillsboro in 1824. He was prepared for college by a celebrated teacher of his day, familiarly known as "old Sam Smith," who instructed many men that afterward attained distinction, and who always regarded him with affectionate veneration. After a thorough preparatory education, at the age of sixteen he entered the University of North Carolina, where he graduated with distinction in 1844. He was gifted with a logical mind and, being a man of fine attainments, he looked for- ward to a professional career. His disposition was genial and he was sociable by nature and fond of fun, and without bad habits or any inclination to dissipation. He was fortunate in being in- structed in the elementary principles of the law, and in the prac- tice, by his distinguished father and his elder brother, William, · who was unexcelled as a teacher of jurisprudence. Having ob- tained his license to practice, he located in Rockingham County ; and a few years later, in 1848, he formed a partnership with John H. Dillard, in whom he found a congenial companion, and the friendship then began lasted throughout life.
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