History of North Carolina: North Carolina biography, Volume VI, Part 50

Author: Connor, R. D. W. (Robert Digges Wimberly), 1878-1950; Boyd, William Kenneth, 1879-1938. dn; Hamilton, Joseph Gregoire de Roulhac, 1878-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Chicago : New York : Lewis Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 658

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December 19, 1912, Mr. Rankin married Miss Lurline Graham, of China Grove, daughter of John and Mary (Eddleman) Graham. Her father was a merchant. The three children are Charles Wes- ley, Jr., Edward Ray and Josephine.

HON. JOHN ROBERT JOYCE, of Reidsville, is and has been for a number of years one of the most forceful leaders in public affairs in Western North Carolina. Though his father was a Confederate sol- dier, his political affiliation has always been re- publican, and more than once he has led the forces, of that party to victory at the polls, and has done much to maintain something like parity between the partisan forces of his section of the state.

Mr. Joyce was born on a farm in Stokes Coun- ty, North Carolina, and the family have lived there for several generations. His great-grandfather was born in Ireland and was one of the early set- tlers of Stokes County. His grandparents were Andrew J. and Sallie (Mahan) Joyce, lifelong members of the farming community of Stokes County.

John R. Joyce is a son of Robert J. and Mary (Jackson) Joyce. Early in the war his father entered the infantry forces of the Confederate army and was a part of the famous division com- manded by Jubal Early. He saw many active battles and campaigns, and was once captured and held a prisoner. After the war he bought a farm in Stokes County and lived there in modest comfort and prosperity until his death at the age of seventy years. His wife died at the age of sixty-eight. They reared six children, Bettie, Nannie, Ellen, John Robert, Minerva and Cor- nelia.

John Robert Joyce, only son of his parents, will- ingly took his share of labors and responsibilities on the farm as soon as his strength permitted. A part of each year he was in the district schools

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and lived at home until the age of eighteen. He then went to Reidsville and for 41/2 years was an employe in a tobacco factory. His first opportu- nity for public service came in 1889, when he was appointed postmaster of Reidsville. He filled that office 41/2 years. Then for nearly a year he was a local merchant but gave up his business to go to Washington, D. C., as private secretary of Hon. Thomas Settle. This was a valuable experience and brought him acquaintance with many of the prominent men in the national capital.

Returning to Reidsville in the fall of 1895, Mr. Joyce resumed his mercantile connections. In 1897 he was appointed deputy internal revenue collector and was division chief of the stamp office at Reidsville. In 1900 the republican party of the Fifth District nominated him for Congress, and he made a most creditable campaign for that office. In the meantime he resigned his position in the custom house, and after the campaign was over was reappointed to his work there. In 1906 Mr. Joyce was again appointed as postmaster of Reidsville, and held that office until 1914.

In the meantime for several years he put in a short time reading law. In January, 1914, he entered the law department of Wake Forest Col- lege, and in the fall of the same year was admit- ted to practice by the Supreme Court of the state. Since then Mr. Joyce has been one of the capable members of the Reidsville bar and has an excel- lent practice. In the meantime he has filled va- rious other offices. He was elected a member of the Reidsville Board of Aldermen in 1894, and was held in that office by re-election until 1890, when he resigned. In the fall of 1916 he was elected state senator, and during the session of 1917 was a member of the judiciary committee No. 1 and the committees on railroads, corporations and pensions.

For twenty years or more his political party has entrusted him with a large share of the re- sponsibilities of leadership and organization. He has served as chairman of the executive commit- tee of Rockingham County and in 1908 was a member of the special campaign committee which resulted in the election of Mr. Morehead to Con- gress from the Fifth Congressional District. For years nearly every county, district and state con- vention has had him as a delegate, and he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention of 1912. Mr. Joyce is affiliated with Reidsville Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, with the Knights of Pythias, Junior Order of United American Mechanics, the Maccabees, Woodmen of the World and Loyal Order of Moose.

COL. ROBERT BINGHAM. Since 1873 Col. Rob- ert Bingham has been head master of the famous Bingham School, founded by his grandfather in 1793, which, by its service, its traditions, its suc- cess and the character of its managers as well as of its student body, has a rank second to none among American preparatory schools. In the century and a quarter since Bingham became a name in educa- tional circles many thousands of boys have received their preparatory or finishing instruction at Bing- ham, and today the school at Asheville has the same high quality and reputation, not only in this state but all over the United States, as those exclusive Phillips preparatory schools of New Eng- land.

Col. Robert Bingham, its present head-master, was born at Hillsboro, in Orange County, North

Carolina, September 5, 1838, and is the son of William James and Eliza A. (Norwood) Bingham. He is of English and Scotch descent. His mna- ternal grandfather was Judge William Norwood, of Hillsboro. His maternal great-grandfather, James Hogg, came to North Carolina from Scot- land in 1774. His paternal grandfather was Rev. William Bingham, born in County Down, Ireland, a graduate in 1778 of the University of Glasgow, and a typical representative of that Scotch-Irish strain of blood which has produced so many men of mark both in Europe and America. The Rev. William Bingham founded the Bingham School in 1793, was succeeded by his son, William J. Bing- ham, in 1825, by his grandsons, William and Rob- ert Bingham, after 1857 and by Robert Bingham after 1873; and it is noteworthy that Bingham is the only school for boys in the United States which has been administered by three successive genera- tions of head masters for 125 years.

Robert Bingham, the school's present head mas- ter, was prepared for college by his father, entered the University of North Carolina in 1853, was one of the four first honor men in the class of 1857, and he has the honorary degree of A. B., A. M., and LL. D. from the University of North Carolina. He was not yet nineteen when he joined his father and older brother in the management of the school in 1857, and, with the exception of four years as a soldier during the war between the states, his work in the school has been continuous and unin- terrupted now for fully sixty years. Since 1861 the military department has been coordinated with the other departments of the school's educational work, and it is one of the few schools where officers of the United States Army have been detailed as commandants of cadets since the details began in 1882. It has been Colonel Bingham's chief object and ambition to put the school, with which the name and fortunes of the family are so insep- arably interlinked, on a more extended and sub- stantial basis than when it descended to him. He found the school already famous and it has been his greatest desire to make it even more so. In 1904 he made provisions for the future of the school by transferring the property to trustees, so that its continuity should not be interrupted when its helm must pass into other hands.

But while in the hands of its present head master Bingham has attained the highest distinc- tion among Southern private schools for the few. Colonel Bingham enjoys the unique distinction of having been more prominent, more unyielding, and more effective in pressing the education of all the children of all the people of both races than any other private school or college man in the South; and, in fact, he has been the only private school man in our knowledge who has pressed the educa- tion of all the children of all the people, all other private school men seeming to think that the schools for the few would be put in jeopardy if the schools for the many should be made more effective.

When our people began to throw off the stagna- tion of the war and to realize that all the children of all the people must be educated, they found themselves confronted not only by poverty, but by the constitution imposed on the state by the "carpet bag" legislature of 1867, which limited taxation to such a degree that the public schools could be kept open but three months in the year. In order to overcome this obstacle the Legislature legalized a "local option" tax for public schools,

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so that any community could tax itself for better schools. Colonel Bingham "took the stump" for this tax, against which, as against all other taxes for education, there was great prejudice. The movement must begin with the more intelligent people of the towns and Colonel Bingham was in- vited to persuade the people of Wilmington, Golds- boro, Raleigh and Charlotte, among other places, to tax themselves for better schools. Other private school men, fearing the effect of better public schools on their prospects, remonstrated earnestly with Colonel Bingham for doing what must injure him and them alike. But he continued, against the remonstrances of both school men and tax payers and against the general and strong inertia of the situation, to advocate with signal energy and ability better free schools for all the children of all the people.

During the period of reconstruction the abject poverty, the helplessness, and the illiteracy of the Southern people, intensified by their ingrained hos- tility to taxation for educational purposes, so moved on the hearts of patriots and benevolent men and women in the Northern states that, find- ing a surplus in the National Treasury again, as in 1836, they proposed to divide it again among the states for public schools on the basis of illit- eracy, as the surplus of 1836 was divided for public schools on the basis of population in 1836, and Senator Blair, of New Hampshire, introduced a bill into the Senate for a seventy million dollar appropriation for this purpose, as a means of tem- porary relief until the Southern people should recover sufficiently from the ravages of the war to be able to help themselves.

Colonel Bingham was from the first a strong ad- vocate of the Blair bill, and in February, 1884, he addressed the superintendent's department of the National Educational Association in Washington, and by special request he repeated the address before the Madison, Wisconsin, meeting of the association in July of the same year, which was the largest meeting of the association up to that time. The Blair bill passed the House twice and the Senate twice, and the President was ready to sign' it, and it failed to become a law only because the politicians "held it up" in committee. But the discussion was very germinant. Never before in the history of the world had a National Legis- lature voted to make an appropriation for the education of all the children of all the people; and it is largely due to the public sentiment thus created that the public schools of the whole South developed so early and so rapidly against the previously accepted theory that the education of children was the duty of parents alone. Many said that Colonel Bingham's paper, which he called "The New South," of which several thousand copies had to be reproduced, was the best state- ment of the case made while the Blair bill was pending.

Up to 1886 there was no industrial training in North Carolina. The university was getting the interest on the Land Script Fund, extorted from the Legislature by the United States Government as a compromise on restoring the principle, which the mongrel black-and-white Legislature of 1867 had sold, dividing the proceeds among themselves. Private school and college men seemed to fear that the introduction of industrial education would in- jure schools of letters.

But as grand master of Masons and ex-officio head of the Mason'e Orphanage at Oxford, Colonel Bingham took the initiative in urging that indus-

trial training be introduced into the orphanage in the words, taken from the proceedings of the Grand Lodge of North Carolina, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, at the annual communication January 13, 14, 15, 1885:

"I venture to make one more suggestion, namely, that the asylum be made less a school of letters and more a school of industrial training. * * * Industrial training has become the leading idea in public education in progressive communities on both sides of the ocean. * *

* Let us make forward movement and ask the Legislature for an appropriation sufficient for us to give our orphans the great advantage of being skilled workmen by combining industrial and literary training in har- monious proportions, and this is more important as every one of the orphans must make his living by the work of his hands."

In accordance with this recommendation an ap- propriation of $5,000 for industrial training for the benefit of Masonic and non-Masonic orphans alike in the only orphanage in the state at that time was so strongly urged by the whole Masonic fratermty that, despite the vigorous opposition of many to such an innovation, the next Legislature made the appropriation asked for. This was the first dollar ever appropriated in North Carolina for industrial training, and the first industrial training ever given in the state was thus inaugu- rated at the Oxford Orphanage in pursuance of Grand Master Robert Bingham's recommendation in January, 1885.

Very soon after the introduction of industrial training in the Oxford Orphanage, and in some degree, at least, as the result of this forward movement and of the appropriation for it, a mass meeting was called in Raleigh to create such a public sentiment as to force the Legislature to establish a state mechanical and agricultural col- lege. Both private school and college men ab- sented themselves from this great meeting. Many of the alumni of the lately reopened university thought that the movement was a blow at the life of the university which had had the benefit of the interest on the land scrip fund for several years and wished to retain it at all hazards in default of any fund in sight to take its place, taxation for the University being deemed practically impos- sible at that time, and private school and college men seemed to think that their interests would be put in jeopardy by a state school to wed the skilled brain and the skilled hand. But Colonel Bingham, though a loyal son of the University, alone among school and college men took the field for this great forward movement; and he, alone among school and college men, was invited to be present and to speak again when "The State College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts" was so successfully opened three years later.

At a meeting of the North Carolina Teachers' Assembly in 1884 Colonel Bingham was called on to tell what he had seen on a tour of inspection of public and private schools, chiefly in Massa- chusetts and he said that the most noteworthy thing which he saw was that, whereas seven-eighths of all the public school teachers in Massachusetts were women, less than one-seventh of them were women in North Carolina, and that we could never have efficient public schools in the South till we utilized the God-given power of women to train children.

At the meeting of the teachers' assembly at Black Mountain in 1886 Colonel Bingham moved to memoralize the Legislature to create a normal

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school for women and suggested that it should be located half the year at some central point, Greensboro, for instance (where it actually went afterwards), and that the teachers should spend the other six months of each year carrying this normal training to such as could not come to the central or stationary normal school by holding teachers' institutes in every county in the state. The next Legislature appointed Edward A. Alder- man and Charles D. McIver to do this peripatetic normal school work; and in two years these two great educational statesmen had not only held teachers' institutes in every county in the state, but they had created a public sentiment which forced a reluctant Legislature to make an appro- priation for a State Normal and Industrial College for Women, although many prominent men in the state proclaimed that North Carolina would never tax herself for the education of women. But these two great men had created public sentiment which made our Normal College for Women an accom- plished achievement; and after President McIver had his great work fully organized he invited Colonel Bingham to come and tell the 600 girls in attendance of the germ of the State College for Women at Greensboro in his proposal at Black Mountain in 1886 to memorialize the Legislature for a place where our young women could be prepared to be expert teachers.

But the victory for the education of all the children of all the people could not be complete till the last stronghold of ignorance should be cap- tured by taking the control of children of the school age away from such unnatural parents as deprive their children of education and by giving this control to the state. Compulsory education must be introduced in the Southern States, as it had been introduced practically everywhere else in the civilized world, in order to stamp out illiteracy, as compulsory vaccination must stamp out con- tagion, and as compulsory sanitation must stamp out disease. The battle for taxation for public schools, for local option taxation for city schools and lately for country schools as well, for taxation for the State University, for taxation for the State Industrial School for Men, for taxation for the State Industrial School for Women, had been fought and won against serious opposition to every advance movement. The prejudice against com- pulsory education was the strongest of all, not only as an innovation and because it must increase taxation, but because it must interfere with the traditional and, many claimed, with the scriptural control of children by parents; and so, many chil- dren of the poorer classes have been deprived of their birth right not only because parents de- manded their services in the various forms of child labor, but because they were bitterly opposed to the state's intervening between them and their children. But the plain people of Asheville de- termined to storm this last stronghold of ignorance.

The Legislature had passed a local option com- pulsory educational law but no provision was made to meet the additional expense for school buildings and for teachers. The property owners opposed the movement because they were able to take care of their children themselves and because of the increased taxation. Those whose children would get the benefit of it opposed it because they con- sidered it an officious interference with their in- herent control over their children. Many opposed it from mere inertia and if it was to be carried it must be done by the labor vote, which is un- usually strong in Asheville.

Knowing Colonel Bingham's persistent attitude for the education of all children of all the people, some of the labor union leaders asked him how to champion the movement and the nine "crafts" met in May in their hall to hear him discuss it. One hundred and twenty-four volunteers, belong- ing to the non-slave holding class, had followed him in the Confederate Army and he knew how to deal with the same class of men here. He was entirely out of politics. He had no "axe to grind." He had employed many of them on his extensive buildings. The decided majority were hostile at first; but he had won the confidence of their leaders and every labor union man went to the polls and voted for compulsory education and $30,000 in taxation to meet the expenses; and thus far Asheville is the only place in the South where compulsory education with the necessary taxation has been effectively inaugurated, and all agree that the success of the movement is due to Colonel Bingham's influence with the labor vote.

Colonel Bingham's career as an educator has not been confined to the fine achievement which has made Bingham School, already famous through the work of his brother, his father and grandfather, stronger, broader and more famous. He has been a notable pioneer along educational lines entirely disassociated from his own special work for the sons of the few, and from his persistent and con- stant efforts for the betterment of the schools for the children of the many. He has long enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most scholarly and broad-minded men of the South, whose words are always listened to with respect when dealing with an exposition of Southern conditions, whether social, educational or industrial. An article from his pen which created a profound impression in this country and abroad was entitled "An Ex- Slave Holder's View of the Race Question in the South,"' published in the European edition of Harper 's Magazine for July, 1900.

A still more noteworthy article was that under the title "Some Sectional Misunderstandings," published in the North American Review of Sep- tember, 1904, in the interest of harmony between the sections. This paper was reproduced by per- mission and more than 6,000 copies had to be printed to meet the demand for it from all parts of the Union; for it contained the documental proof, collected for the first time, that when Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis entered the United States Military Academy at West Point, the cadets were taught from "Rawle's View of the Constitution," that the Union was dissoluble and that if it should be dissolved, allegiance would revert to the states. It is an historic fact first brought out in this address. that Jefferson Davis was not tried for treason, because, under several states' rights decisions of Chief Justice Chase, before he became chief justice, and under the states' rights instruction received at West Point from "Rawle on the Constitution," which was to be put in evidence if the trial had occurred, he could not have been convicted.

An address, which was read in part. or in whole, all over the Nation was one delivered bv Colonel Bingham in the Waldorf-Astoria, New York, be- fore the New York Southern Society in December, 1904, in response to the toast "The Status of the South in the Past; the Decadence of that Status; its Restoration." This paper was received with great applause and several thousand copies of it had to be reproduced in answer to many calls for it from all parts of the country.

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At the ninth annual session of the State Lit- erary and Historical Association of North Caro- liua October 13, 1908, the annual address of the president was delivered by Col. Robert Bingham. His address was a review in compact and revised form of various previous and notable efforts in dis- cussing the true grounds for the Civil war, all with a strong effort to move the long existiug mis- understandings between the people of the North and South. His aunual address bears a composite title, suggesting its three natural and logical divi- sions. The title in full was: "Secession in Theory, as the Framers of the Constitution Viewed it; Secession, as Practiced and as Sustained by the United States; Secession, as Attempted by the Confederate States.'' And many have called this paper the most compact and the most satisfactory statement of the whole subject known to them. Such data as this will help the historian of the future to explain the causes which carried 3,400,- 000 men, between 1861 and 1865, to more than 2,200 battlefields and kept them there for four years; and the answer must be that it was the Anglo Saxon's most striking characteristic, his intense instinct of local self-government, and this instinct is more strongly developed in the Southern States than anywhere else where God's sun shiues on the English speaking man.

Colonel Bingham's conclusion of the whole mat- ter, which is universally accepted now, is that the greatest blessing that ever befell the South was a failure to establish a nationality, and that the next greatest blessing was getting rid of slavery on any conditions.

The method used was doubtless unconstitutional; but it was impossible for a great inter-oceanic empire to be governed by the conditions agreed on by the thirteen little, independent republics, acknowledged by Great Britain in 1783, occupying a little strip along the Atlantic seaboard with only 4,000,000 people, and his conclusion is that as a result of the Civil war Sectional America has been absorbed into National America, with her hand holding a strong grip on the handle of the world, and with the states still "as distinct as the billows," but with the Nation "as one as the sea. ''

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History of North Carolina: North Carolina biography, Volume VI, Part 50

Author: Connor, R. D. W. (Robert Digges Wimberly), 1878-1950; Boyd, William Kenneth, 1879-1938. dn; Hamilton, Joseph Gregoire de Roulhac, 1878- Publication date: 1919 Publisher: Chicago : New York : Lewis Publishing Co. Number of Pages: 658

Author: Connor, R. D. W. (Robert Digges Wimberly), 1878-1950; Boyd, William Kenneth, 1879-1938. dn; Hamilton, Joseph Gregoire de Roulhac, 1878-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Chicago : New York : Lewis Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 658