The gold leaf. [volume] (Henderson, N.C.) 1881-1911, 1894-06-07

were almost asking for bread, when
want and temptation stalked hand in
hand in the land and strong men fell
like Esau, or bowed at the command
of Baal-proud, l repeat, as we were
of his great speeches on the hustings,
of his matchless bursts of combined
eloquence and trenchant logic which
held the attention of "listening
Senates," yet, l am sure l voice the
sentiments of his lifelong friends when
| say that we loved him most for his
humanity-for his genial humor, for
his great tender heart, now pulseless
in death. 1t is for these we mourn,
my friends, " sorrowing most of all
that We shall see his face no more"
In the first place, he showed that his
proioundest sympathies were with the
soldiers in the field, and the people in
their homes. He did not, as he might
have done and as other Governors did
do, content himself with performing
the prescribed duties of his high office
in perfunctory sort of way, but he
occupied his time and his great mind
in devising ways and means to meet
the wants and relieve the suffering of
the soldiers in the field and their
families at home. In pursuance Of
this purpose, he procured from the
Legislature Of his State the authority
to establish in the name of the State
and for the benefit OF her soldiers and
people, line of blockade steamers,
and in charge of these he put men OF
experience and daring courage, who,
like himself, were ready to risk and
dare all to serve his State and people.
Upon these ships he sent to Bermuda
and other places cotton and other
Southern products which brought high
prices in Europe, and exchanged them
for just the very articles that the
soldiers needed in the field and the
people in their homes To cooperate
with these blockade runners, he sent
abroad men in England and France as
purchasing agents for the State, and
by these wise arrangements he was en-
abled to feed and clothe and equip
the North Carolina soldiers better than
the troops from any other State in the
Confederate service. While he was
providing for the soldiers, he did not
neglect their families, and other needy
people at home, but provided for them
those things which were necessary to
enable them to supply their families
with tine necessities, if not the comforts
of life. He established along the coast
of North Carolina salt works where
salt was made for the people, and
through his agents sent it into the
interior and distributed it among the
people. 1t may seem in this city,
amid its splendor and its wealth, like
almost trifling with the occasion to
speak of this great man as sending
cards to the poor women with which
TO card and prepare the cotton and
wool for garments, and salt to poor
people throughout North Carolina.
But those who lived in those days will
remember that it meant food and
raiment for suffering women and
children, and there is many a woman
in North Carolina even to this day
ready to rise up and call him blessed
for the care and thought and devotion
he exhibited toward them when their
husbands, fathers and brothers were
away from them in the army, fighting
the battle of their country.
Another thing desire to emphasize
was his devotion to the great princi-
piles Of human liberty. 1t is we'll
known that North and South as a ger
eral thing men were arrested and i'm
prisoned without due process of law,
and on account of the great struggle
in which the two sections Of the
country were engaged, men laid in
prison weeks, months and years,
appealing in vain to the civil law
which was powerless to relieve them,
because the great writ of the peoples S
rights, the writ of habeas corpus, was
suspended and silent. But there was
one State where that great writ could
60 and always be obeyed. There was
one Governor who held human freedom
in such high regard that he was ever
ready to sustain the courts in their
efforts to inquire into the lawfulness OF
the arrest of the humblest human
beings. In North Carolina this great
writ was never suspended, because
Zebulon B. Vance declared that neither
the existence of war nor the armies of
the Confederacy should trample that
sacred writ under foot. 1t was he who
sustained it and upheld it.
But how shall speak of his devo-
ton to his State and her people-a
devotion of the measure of which even
the most ardent of patriots does not
often fill? His love of home was
almost as unique as was his matches
personality. 1t was not in the realm
, of place or power to shake that allie
glance, and whether surrounded by
, the dazzling allurements of beautiful
Paris-anywhere and everywhere in
the historic old world, whose pages
could be 50 readily translated by a
. lifelong student life himself, his eyes
were ever turned toward the new, and
: the burden Of his song to the members
f of his family who remained at home
was, 81 shall hail with delight the
hour Of my return, for there is no land
. SO beautiful as ours, no music half SO
delightful to my ears as the rustling
, of the wind 10 the old pine trees in
, North Carolina"
We have laid his body to rest amid
, the mountains which were the place oi
! his birth. They shall stand as silen,
J sentinels over his tomb till time shall
be no more, and the waters of the
t French Broad, by the side of which he