practical method he would have recommended we are left to guess at. Most likely some plan of gradual manumission and qualified admittance to the right of suffrage would have finally realized his grand idea of universal freedom and citizenship. He who regards the formidable features that the race problem presents now in this the third decade of freedom, can scarcely repress the idle wish that some other plan had been tried than the one that was actually adopted.

But it was not only in Congressional debate that Mr. Rollins displayed boldness and independence as well as ability: he was equally outspoken in his strictures on the Executive. The Proclamation of Emancipation was in his judgment defensible only as a military necessity, but was legally void and impotent-vox et præterea nihil; and the issue would seem to have justified his opinion. It must not be inferred, however, that Major Rollins ever indulged in any captious criticism of the Executive, or failed at any moment to lend it in ample measure a cordial support. On the contrary, his relations with the President were at all times of the most unreserved and intimate nature, who found in him a tried and trusty and sagacious adviser, and who relied on him with especial confidence in all matters pertaining to the difficult and delicate administration in Missouri.

In the autumn of 1862 Mr. Rollins was once more the conservative candidate for Representative from the Ninth District. His opponent was Colonel A. Krekel on the Radical ticket, afterward rewarded for his distinguished party service by the United States District Judgeship for the Western District of Missouri, an office that he greatly honored a gentleman of uncompromising integrity and very considerable legal ability and attainment, but narrow, intense, and partisan in doctrine and feeling even as Rollins was broad, generous, and national. Hitherto it had been the joy and strength of the latter to conduct his canvasses personally, on the hustings. But that course was now altogether impracticable, such was the distracted condition of the country. Accordingly he addressed a kind of general epistle or encyclical letter to his constituents, in which he vindicated his course of conduct as hitherto pursued and outlined it for the immediate future. This letter, as being the most carefully written, is also perhaps the most chaste and elegant of Rollins's literary productions that remain to history. The result of the contest could not be otherwise. interpreted than as a very cordial indorsement of his patriotic but

conservative bearing in Congress. All but two counties (St. Charles and Warren) gave him very considerable majorities; the vote of the soldiers in the field was also cast in his favor, and he was reëlected to his seat by the very great excess of 5,426. He signalized his return to Washington by an oratorical effort of great merit, which commanded the prolonged attention of the House of Representatives and extorted the highest encomiums from the Chief Executive of the nation. The occasion was as follows: The Hon. John B. Henderson, whom Rollins in 1860 had met and defeated at the polls after an animated contest, had now far more than recouped himself for that popular rebuff by a stroke of higher good fortune which sent him to the United States Senate. In the national struggle of 1860 Henderson had supported Douglas, who was charged, though perhaps unjustly, with being the Northern tool of the Southern Democrats, whose senatorial campaign against Lincoln has become historic, and who made such fatal and fatuous concessions to slavery in his Kansas-Nebraska bill with its doctrine of "squatter sovereignty." He did indeed close untimely his mistaken career with a vigorous plea for national unity; his last words became the rallying cry of the War Democracy, and for this great service at the end we may forgive the errors of a lifetime. He was neither, let us remember, the first nor the last man that has thought to play with fire without getting burned. But his views were peculiarly acceptable to Missouri, which cast her electoral vote for him, and it is very significant of the great strength of Rollins in a popular canvass, that he was able to carry the Ninth District, of slaveholding counties, against such a magical name as Douglas and against such a pleader as Henderson. But this latter gentleman had wisely discerned the signs of the times, and now leaping boldly upon the swift crest of events, he brought forward by resolution in the Senate that Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution which should immortalize his own name and abolish American slavery forever. His resolution was lost in the House, June 15, 1864, by a vote of 94 ayes to 64 nays, thus failing of twothirds; but Mr. Ashley having changed his vote and moved to reconsider, the resolution once more came before the House, and, pending the same, Mr. Rollins, who had originally voted nay, arose on the 13th of January, 1865, and defended his intention to change his vote in the speech already mentioned, a speech that may be said

to have closed his Congressional career with high honor and distinction. He had not grown too old to learn; he had always lent an attentive ear to the logic of facts, the persuasion of history; he affected no pride of consistency; but when he changed his mind it was with a frank, open, and honest avowal of reasons.

It was not merely, however, the war and its incidents, countless and important as they were, that engaged the attention of Mr. Rollins while a member of the national legislature. Internal improvement, the development of the material resources of the country, but still more the advancement of its educational and intellectual interests, subjects that enlisted his earliest efforts and provoked his first appearance in public, he did not now, amid the clash of arms, for a moment forget or suffer to lie in abeyance. The Agricultural College bill, appropriating a vast public domain to the endowment of colleges for the more especial promotion of such studies as bear more or less directly upon agricultural and mechanical pursuits and tend to elevate the plane of rural and other industrial life, found in him an advocate both able and earnest; and it was his persistent contention that all the public lands, with reservations only in favor of preëmption and the homestead, should be devoted to the cause of education. This was not all, however. It was on the 5th of February, 1862, that he proved himself to be the legitimate successor of Benton, by introducing the celebrated "Bill to aid in constructing a railroad and telegraph line from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, and to secure to the Government the use of the same for postal, military, and other purposes." It was much discussed and variously amended, but suffered no substantial modification; finally, in July, 1862, it received the Presidential signature, and under its provisions the three great Pacific railways, the Union, the Kansas, and the Central, came into existence. So it was, with blood in the South and with iron in the West, that the States were cemented together.

Thus, regard it as you may, the Congressional career of Mr. Rollins appears to have been equally industrious and honorable. Missouri has rarely been without able representation at Washington. For thirty years Benton was a close second only to the very first; Schurz, Henderson, Blair, and others attained high and well deserved national reputations; Vest and Cockrell, the latter in fidelity and industry, the former in boldness and brilliance, stand conspicuous

among their fellows; while R. P. Bland, though the chief apostle of financial heresy and economic delusion, is yet

By merit raised to that bad eminence.

Nevertheless, it is doubtful whether the best and highest interests of the whole people have, during any equal period, been more carefully conserved or more zealously promoted at Washington by any Missourian than by James Sidney Rollins during the four eventful years of his Congressional incumbency.

One of the most pleasing incidents with which his life of toil at the Capitol was varied was a visit to Boston as member of the Committee of the House on Naval Affairs, at invitation of the merchants of that city. The committee met with a brilliant reception at the Revere House, the Hon. Edward Everett presiding, and it fell to Mr. Rollins to deliver the most elaborate response on the occasion,though no less distinguished men than Judge Kelly and Gen. Garfield were his associates,-a response marked at once by felicity of thought and propriety of diction.

PATER UNIVERSITATIS MISSOURIENSIS.

But

"An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man."- Emerson. MR. ROLLINS withdrew voluntarily from public life on the expiration of the XXXVIIIth Congress. During his absence at Washington through four years of civil strife his affairs at home had fallen into great disorder, and his presence and personal attention were imperatively required for the reconstruction of his private fortunes. his great abilities, his large experience, and his wide knowledge of men and affairs could not long be allowed to rest in idleness or seclusion. In less than two years in fact, at the next election in 1866 the citizens of Boone County, by an almost unanimous vote, returned him to the State Legislature. The office could indeed no longer bring him any honor, nevertheless such an expression of confidence from those who knew him best set a new and impressive seal of popular approval to his Congressional record. The position, moreover, was really a most important one. A new Constitution, an emanation from the head and heart of the Hon. Charles D.

Drake, had been adopted in 1865, and all the laws of the State had to be revised into consistence with its provisions. All the wisdom, adroitness, conservatism, and magnanimity of such a patriot as Rollins were now needed to temper the radicalism that was rampant at the Capitol. It was in this important Assembly that he opened a long series of services to the University that not only reëstablished that seminary on a solid foundation, but also placed the keystone in the arch of his own fame. Friends of education, at least of the common schools, were not wanting in that body, as indeed they have rarely been wanting in Republican conclaves, and with these he coöperated heartily and efficaciously in organizing the system of public schools in the State; but as a friend of the University he was almost alone. The flame of life in this seminary was indeed barely flickering. For six years the devotion of President Lathrop and his few faithful colleagues had fed it with precious but scanty oil. He at last had departed, in his final moments clasping the hand of his true yoke-fellow, Rollins, whose ear it was that caught the last accents, in consciousness of duty done, that fluttered from his lips.3 His successor-elect, Dr. Daniel Read, found every interest of the University in a dismal plight: its attendance shrunk to one hundred, its annual income to seven thousand, its corps of teachers to six; its buildings in ashes or falling to ruin, having been made the barracks of a Federal soldiery; itself a bone of political contention, and the prey of local factions; encumbered with a debt of $20,000, and so discredited that its warrants were at 40 per cent. discount; nay, more and far worse, the party in power was intensely hostile to the whole institution as having its site in a town reported to be disloyal. In vain had Col. W. F. Switzler, as member of the Constitutional Convention held in St. Louis, 1865, sought to secure recognition of the University as the "seminary of learning" contemplated in the Constitution; his proposition was lost by a decisive vote. The deep degradation into which the University had fallen was in part the immediate and necessary result of that intestinal strife which had so torn the vitals of society throughout Missouri; in part, however, it was a more remote but equally certain result of that settled indifference towards the concerns of higher education which so long affected the public mind of the State and which in many sections still affects it. Perhaps, indeed, it was too much to expect of border