History of Randolph-Macon College, Virginia Part 25

Having seen the removal of the College determined upon, to relieve the Trustees of all the embarra.s.sment in the election of a Faculty, he generously came forward and tendered his resignation, and soon after started to the West, the scene of his early labors and successes. It was while en route to St. Louis (on August 8, 1868,) that he met with the terrible accident that in a few hours closed his n.o.ble and useful life.

The death of Colonel Johnson was a calamity to our church and to our country. He had pa.s.sed the period of life when men are seized by ambition and borne off in pursuit of wealth or fame. He had gained both; the former he had lost in standing for his native land and State rights; the latter he still possessed in a more valuable form, as purified by the power and faith of his religion. Repeatedly has he said to the writer, "I only wish to live to do good." To the Christian education of the young men of the South he was ardently devoted, and to this work we know he wished to devote the energies of a manly and mature intellect.

The spontaneous tributes to the memory of this good man will best show how he was appreciated by those who knew him.

In a letter now before us from Rev. Charles K. Marshall, D. D., of Mississippi, to his bereaved family, that eminent minister says: "From my first acquaintance to this hour my affections took to and clung around him as one of the highest and n.o.blest types of exalted manhood, as a true, steadfast, appreciating friend; and as a brother in Christ with whose inward spirit it was a joy to commune. Few men cherished so high and sacred views of the dignity and ends of life. Usefulness was the keynote of his being. Unselfish, wide-minded, spiritual, transparent, pure, he was a living epistle known and read of all. His life was hid in Christ, and the highest ambition of his soul was to live to and for Christ."

Rev. Dr. Deems, of New York, says: "His abilities and virtues rendered him one of the most useful men I have ever known. Every interview I have had with him since our acquaintance began has served to deepen my respect for the loftiness of his character."

Bishop McTyeire, who was a fellow-student with him at Randolph-Macon, says: "In church and state it seemed to me he was just such an one as we need now. With grat.i.tude I remember his high Christian influence as a student. Our meeting and reunion at Montgomery, twenty-five years after, was one of the most pleasing events of my life. Who of us has not coveted his gifts?"

Such is the testimony, voluntarily given, by this eminent minister.

We are enabled to give a more detailed account of this sad event from a letter written by the proprietor of the hotel at Mattoon:

"When Mr. Johnson came out of the saloon of the sleeping car, the conductor told him to 'hurry up.' Thinking he would be left if he did not make haste, Mr. J. went quickly forward through the car, and was just in the act of stepping across to the forward car when the cars separated, and he fell on the track, and before he could recover himself he was struck by the rear car and fatally injured. His right leg was crushed in two places and his back broken. As soon as possible he was taken from under the car. His first words were, 'My friends, my name is Thomas C. Johnson, of Boydton, Va.; take your pencil and write it down.'

A stretcher was then procured, and he was brought to my house. We did all we could for him. Doctors were at hand from the moment he was hurt until he died. The injured leg was amputated; and on further examination it was found that his back was broken. He was then told that he was fatally injured and could live but a short time, and that any directions he had to give must be given quickly. He then gave directions as to the disposal of his body, requesting it to be sent to his friends in Virginia. He was emphatic in saying that his death was caused by the mismanagement of the railroad officials. Before his death, at his request, a notary public was sent for, and his testimony as to the cause of his death was legally taken. He was sensible to the last moment, and spoke with deep feeling of the overwhelming effect the tidings of his terrible and sudden death would have upon his family. I sat by his side and heard every word he uttered. The general opinion of the public here is that the railroad company is responsible for Mr. Johnson's death."

[Ill.u.s.tration: JUDGE W. J. KILBY, Trustee of College.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PROF. MANSFIELD T. PEED, A. M., 1877. _Prof. Emory College, Ga._]

Such was the end of a most useful and devoted Christian. In the midst of strangers, mangled, and bleeding, he died. By the grace of G.o.d he was sustained and comforted. Calmly he surrendered his life into the hands of his Creator. How wonderful are the ways of Providence! The workmen die, but the work goes on. Is the doctrine of premonition true? We often incline to the belief that it is. In many cases there appears to be a conviction that the work of life is finished, and the soul feels itself nearing the portals of eternity. Speaking of Colonel Johnson's experience, one who knew him well says, "I can but think that the last six months of his life was a period of preparation for eternity. I was deeply impressed with his growth in grace, the fervor and earnestness of his piety, and his forbearance and patience under severe trials."

The close of life was in happy accord with his previous religious experience. A letter from Mattoon says: "He died in perfect peace. I never saw a more peaceful expression than rested on his face after death." He leaves to his family the priceless legacy of a pure and n.o.ble Christian life. May they move on to the meeting and reunion in the house of our Father in heaven.--W. W. BENNETT, in _Richmond Advocate_.

The committee of nine appointed to elect professors and a president (in case of Dr. Garland's declination to accept) met August 7, 1868. Dr.

Garland having declined to accept the presidency, the committee, all being present, elected Rev. James A. Duncan, of the Virginia Conference, and an alumnus of the College (cla.s.s of 1849), president, at a salary of $2,500 per annum, and use of residence. Subsequently, on the first day of September, the committee, all being present except Bishop Doggett, in conjunction with the President-elect, Duncan, who had accepted the presidency, proceeded to fill the chairs of instruction. Thomas R.

Price, M. A., was elected Professor of Ancient Languages; Harry Estill, A. M., Professor of Mathematics; Richard M. Smith, Professor of Natural Sciences. Their salaries were fixed at $2,000 per annum with houses of residence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PROF. THOMAS R. PRICE, M.A., LL. D., _Founder of the School of English._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: REV. JAMES A. DUNCAN, D. D., _President Randolph-Macon College, 1868-1877._]

Subsequently, at a meeting of the Board October 1, 1868, the chair of Modern Languages was filled by the election of W. W. Valentine, of Richmond.

The sudden and lamented death of the late President Johnson was announced to the Board, and appropriate resolutions in regard to him were adopted.

At a meeting of the Board, held November 20, 1868, Rev. Wm. B. Rowzie was appointed Agent of the College in the bounds of the Virginia, and Dr. Nelson Head Agent (till the succeeding Baltimore Conference), in the latter Conference.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PROF. HARRY ESTILL, A. M., _Professor of Mathematics, 1868-1878._]

The College opened at Ashland, October 1, 1868.

With great labor and many embarra.s.sments the College furniture, laboratories and libraries had been transferred from Boydton to Ashland, under the special superintendence of Rev. T. S. Campbell. The buildings on the campus had been remodeled and repaired, and were in fair condition for occupancy, and for the work and use to which they had been converted. They had in former years been used for a summer resort, to which many visitors annually repaired for health and dissipation. The largest building was the hotel, which had several buildings attached. In the centre of the grounds was the ball-room, flanked by dressing-rooms.

This building was converted into a chapel and society halls, while the hotel became the main dormitory building. The bowling-alley and other buildings also became dormitories. Three buildings were fitted up for professor's houses. The rooms on the lower floors of the hotel were made lecture-rooms. Though the buildings were extemporised, the whole arrangement was comparatively convenient and comfortable. What was defective and might have been complained of was more than compensated by the superb Faculty of instruction provided for the students in attendance. First and foremost was the President, Rev. James A. Duncan, D. D. Of him we will let others who were a.s.sociated with him speak. His colleagues were Professor Thomas R. Price, M. A., Professor Harry Estill, A. M., Professor Richard M. Smith, Professor W. W. Valentine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PROF. RICHARD M. SMITH.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAIN COLLEGE BUILDING, ASHLAND, 1868-1875.]

Rarely has such a combination of teaching ability been found in any college, or one which met the needs of the time more fully.

The name of the President had drawn from his far-away Southern home one of the most original characters the College ever had among its matriculates, John Hannon, of Montgomery, Ala.

JOHN HANNON'S SKETCH OF DR. DUNCAN.

"In the autumn of 1868 upon the train I first met Dr. James A. Duncan, as I was going to Ashland. Full-orbed, approaching his zenith, this pulpit star thus came into my sky. Though he has years since set behind the gra.s.sy hills of Hollywood, the light of his great character still lingers in the valleys and on the high places of my being.

"It is impossible in a sketch like this to give the full spectrum of a character so rich as that of Dr. Duncan. There were X-rays, delicate gleamings of light from his presence, that could be felt, but do not photograph themselves upon the plates of a biography. He was not a man easy to forget.

"There is a sense in which every man is a word of G.o.d, or a syllable of the word. But in some the divine articulation is not so distinct.

Regarding humanity as a written word, such characters are what scholars would call a 'disputed text.' Not so with James A. Duncan. Looking upon him no man could doubt the authorship. The divine autograph was there in capital letters. A look at him shook our faith in man as an evolution.

We felt that _that_ man was a creation.

"Would I had a presence,' said one of our brainiest men to me. A lady of my congregation asked a friend in a Boston dining parlor who a certain man was, remarking that she knew he must be a distinguished person, for she said, 'He has a presence.' The man was Phillips Brooks.

"Dr. Duncan had a _presence_. Who will ever forget that Napoleonic build? That physique, the very motion of which was silent music.

[Ill.u.s.tration: REV. J. W. COMPTON, R. M. C. 1867-'68--1868-'69. _Removed with College from Boydton to Ashland. Pioneer preacher Pacific Coast for twenty-three years._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: REV. W. WADSWORTH, D. D., _Author and Minister North-Georgia Conference._]

"Tremendous was to be the draft on this superb physique during the ten years that followed the day I first looked on it. The College with its endowment had gone down amid the ruins of the Confederacy. The outlook was gloomy; but it was resolved to remove the tree to Ashland. Here the railway system of the South would renew its roots and make it bud and bloom again. Jefferson Davis was thought of for the presidency, but in a happy hour Dr. Duncan was chosen to lead the forlorn hope in its rebuilding. Without funds, without laboratory, without proper buildings, he addressed himself to the task. Providence came to his rescue. By one of those flashes of common sense, which not always light up church enterprises, a Faculty pre-eminently adapted to the work had been chosen. Professor Thomas R. Price, a name synonymous now with scholarship, was in the chair of Ancient Languages. Harry Estill filled the chair of Mathematics. Professor Richard M. Smith brought the ripe wisdom and experience of his distinguished life to the chair of Natural Sciences. W. W. Valentine held the keys of the Modern Languages.

"It has been said that what a university needs is not so much an endowment as a _man_. Randolph-Macon had men, and Dr. Duncan, a _man_ among _men_. The Faculty itself was an endowment. Good material gathered around them as students. '_Facile princeps_' among these were Wm. W.

Smith, now LL. D., and President of the Randolph-Macon System of Colleges and Schools; Charles Carroll, now a brilliant lawyer of the Crescent city; Rhodes, since a judge in Baltimore; J. F. Twitty, of blessed memory, and a number of others.

"Dr. Duncan, while not technically trained as a teacher, yet showed himself a great teacher. What an inspiration he imparted to the band that gathered around him! How he lit up every dreary field of text!

Blessed, yea, thrice blessed, was that school of young prophets. While himself the finest of models, nothing was farther from his thought than to make little 'Duncans' of every student. Bring up a boy in the way he should go, according to his bent, this was his idea. He would never have been guilty of putting the toga of Cicero upon Charles Spurgeon. With him good 'pork and beans' was not to be made into bad 'quail on toast.'

'Sing your own song,' only let that song be the best possible to you.

Broad, Catholic-hearted Duncan!

"Making a great teacher did not spoil a great preacher in Duncan's case.

On a 'star-map' of the pulpits of that day, the pulpit in the old ball-room chapel at Ashland would shine as a star of 'the first magnitude.' His sermons were not like Robertson's eruptions of internal volcanic fires lifting up new heights of thought; they were not Munsey's great, gorgeous cathedrals of polished words; neither were they Keener's cyclones filling the air with boulders of logic, cutting a pathway through forests of prejudice as old as our being. His eloquence was not the glacial magnificence of Wilson's great icebergs floating in polar seas with gra.s.sy sh.o.r.es; it was not Galloway's mountain torrent with 'optimism,' that music of heaven in its splash and the swiftness of redeeming love in its rush to the low places of earth. Very different was it from Sam Jones' wild tanglewood of tropic forest of mingled fruit and flowers and thorns. His sermons were the expression of what Carlyle would style a healthy nature. There was nothing wild or abnormal. They were like landscapes in a civilized land--great, like the movement of the seasons, like the coming of the tides--as the processes of nature are great; great as a summer day is great. The introduction was morning!--sunrise! not striking, not surprising. The thoughts not larks soaring heavenward, were rather sparrows on the sward. But we could see great stretches of thought before us. Now the morning changes into high noon. It is the sermon proper. We are now in the midst of vast grain-fields of ripe thought. Divisions barely visible above the heads of the choicest of the wheat waving now in the zephyrs of pathos. Shouts at times among the listeners, as like reapers they garner ripe sheaves into their bosoms; orchards now growing with ripe fruit.

"The peroration comes naturally, as evening follows noon. We hardly know when it comes. A splendid sunset, often tears like the dewdrops in the flowers of new resolves, now springing in the soul; solemn impressions, like shadows, growing larger; a deep hush upon everything. The sermon closes. It is night. But stars of hope are shining in the sky of the soul.

"At Haslup's Grove, in the seventies, in a great sermon, the rush to the altar was so great that the enclosure had to be torn down. It was pentecostal.

"I heard him on two great occasions. In 1876, along with Dr. Landon C.

Garland and Lovick Pierce, he was fraternal delegate from our church to our sister Methodism at the General Conference in Baltimore. After years of estrangement the two Methodisms were meeting again. It was an occasion. You could feel it. The great building was thronged. When the time came for Duncan to speak he threw his soul into the 'G.o.d speed you!' of seven hundred thousand Southern Methodists. The audience for awhile it seemed would go wild. The day was a great triumph.

"During that same Conference the princely 'Jeff. Magruder' organized a great ma.s.s-meeting of the Sunday-schools of the Southern Methodist churches in Baltimore. Bishop Vincent, Secretary of the Sunday-School Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church, then in the prime of his powers, General Clinton B. Fiske, and Dr. Duncan were to speak. The speeches of Vincent and Fiske had been so superb that a gifted minister remarked to me, 'I am sorry for Duncan.' I responded, 'I am sorry for any man who has to follow two such speeches.' But I found that I did not yet know him. He pulled out new organ stops in his great soul that afternoon. His speech was a brilliant improvisation. The audience was captured. Southern Methodists who gloried in the flesh were radiant.

"When going to New Orleans, in 1877, I met him going to Washington City to preach the first sermon to the President-elect, R. B. Hayes. It was not long before wires flashed to me the startling news of his death.

Duncan, Marvin, A. T. Bledsoe, Doggett, in a single year. Heaven was drawing heavily upon our beloved church. Duncan's old pupil, President Smith, took up the work he and the sainted Bennett laid down.