STATUE OFCHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCKPROCEEDINGSHOUSE DOCUMENT 34372D CONGRESS, 1ST SESSION
Statue of North Carolina Governor Charles Brantley Aycock
72d Congress, 1st Session—House Document No. 343Acceptance and Unveiling of the Statue of Charles Brantley AycockPresented by the State of North Carolina Proceedings in the Congress and in Statuary Hall United States CapitolUnited States Government Printing OfficeWashington:1932
PREPARED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON PRINTING
CONTENTS| Page | |
| Biography of Charles Brantley Aycock | 7 |
| The Aycock Statue Commission | 9 |
| Biography of the Sculptor | 10 |
| Congressional delegation from North Carolina | 11 |
| Proceedings in Statuary Hall: | |
| Program of exercises | 15 |
| Invocation by Rev. Samuel Judson Porter, pastor First Baptist Church, Washington, D. C | 17 |
| Address by Hon. James Yadkin Joyner, secretary of the Statue Commission | 21 |
| Unveiling of the statue by Charles Aycock McLendon and William Benjamin Aycock | 24 |
| Address by Hon. Josephus Daniels, former Secretary of the Navy | 27 |
| Address by Hon. O. Max Gardner, Governor of North Carolina | 67 |
| Address by Hon. Lindsay C. Warren, a Representative from North Carolina | 73 |
| Benediction by Rev. Ze̤Barney T. Phillips, Chaplain of the Senate | 75 |
| Acceptance of the statue by Congress: | |
| Proceedings in the House | 79 |
| Proceedings in the Senate | 81 |
HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION No. 31
SUBMITTED BY MR. LAMBETH
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That there be printed with illustrations and bound five thousand copies of the proceedings in Congress, together with the proceedings held at the unveiling in Statuary Hall, upon the acceptance of the statue of CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK, presented by the State of North Carolina, of which one thousand copies shall be for the Senate and two thousand five hundred copies for the use of the House of Representatives, and the remaining one thousand five hundred copies shall be for the use and distribution of the Senators and Representatives in Congress from the State of North Carolina.
The Joint Committee on Printing is hereby authorized to have the copy prepared for the Public Printer and shall procure suitable illustrations to be published with these proceedings.
Adopted May 26, 1932.
BIOGRAPHY
CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK was born near Nahunta (now Fremont), Wayne County, N. C., November 1, 1859; attended school at Nahunta, Wilson, and Kingston, N. C., and was graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1880; studied law while attending the university and commenced practice at Goldsboro, N. C., in 1881; elected superintendent of public instructions for Wayne County in 1881; presidential elector on the Democratic ticket in 1892; United States attorney for the eastern district of North Carolina, 1893-1897; elected Governor of North Carolina and served from 1901 to 1905; resumed the practice of law in Goldsboro in 1905; moved to Raleigh, N. C., in 1909 and continued the practice of his profession; died in Birmingham, Ala., while addressing the Alabama Educational Association on universal education, April 4, 1912; interment in Oakwood Cemetery, Raleigh, N. C.
THE AYCOCK STATUE COMMISSION
Governor O. MAX GARDNER, Chairman
JAMES Y. JOYNER, Secretary
JOSEPHUS DANIELS
FRANK P. GRAHAM
SUMTER C. BRAWLEY
CLARENCE AYCOCK
ANGUS D. MACLEAN
ROBERT W. WINSTON
ROBERT M. HANES
MRS. THOMAS W. BICKETT
THE SCULPTOR
CHARLES KECK was born in New York City, N. Y., September 9, 1875; was educated in the National Academy of Design and Art Students’ League, New York, and received the degree of Master of Arts and Letters at the American Academy, Rome, in 1904; was assistant to Augustus Saint Gaudens, 1893-1898; first winner of the Prix du Rome, in open competition, in 1899, and received the gold medal for sculpture, Architectural League of New York, in 1926; served as member of the Art Commission of New York City, 1921-1924; National Academician, 1928; president National Sculpture Society; member American Academy in Rome, Architectural League of New York, Numismatic Society Art Commission Association, Beaux Arts Society, American Federation of Arts, and the Metropolitan Museum. Among his works are monuments to George Washington, Buenos Aires; monument to Lewis and Clark and equestrian statute of Stonewall Jackson, Charlottesville, Va.; monuments to Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee, Ala., George F. Johnson, Binghamton, N. Y., John Mitchell, Scranton, Pa., and George Rogers Clark, Springfield, Ohio; Friendship monument, United States to Brazil, Rio de Janeiro; Citizen Soldier monument, Irvington, N. J.; Mohammedanism monument, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Science, and Soldiers’ Memorial, Brooklyn, N. Y.; Liberty monument, Ticonderoga, N. Y.; Soldiers’ monument, Montclair, N. J.; Youthful America monument, Pittsburgh, Pa.; Soldiers’ memorials, Lynchburg and Harrisonburg, Va., and the Shriners’ Peace Memorial, at Toronto, Canada.
CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION FROMNORTH CAROLINA
SENATORS
CAMERON MORRISON
JOSIAH W. BAILEY
REPRESENTATIVES
LINDSAY C. WARREN
JOHN H. KERR
CHARLES L. ABERNETHY
EDWARD W. POU
FRANK HANCOCK
J. BAYARD CLARK
J. WALTER LAMBETH
ROBERT L. DOUGHTON
ALFRED L. BULWINKLE
ZEBULON WEAVER
UNVEILING and PRESENTATION
STATUARY HALL, MAY 20, 1932
PROGRAM OF EXERCISES
| Music—2.30-3.00 | UNITED STATES MARINE BAND |
| Capt. TAYLOR BRANSON, Leader |
Hon. O. MAX GARDNER, Governor of North Carolina
Chairman of the Aycock Statue Commission, Presiding
| Invocation | Rev. SAMUEL JUDSON PORTER, D. D. |
| Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Washington, D. C. |
“The Old North State”—
STATE SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, D. C.
History of the Aycock Statue Commission—
Hon. JAMES YADKIN JOYNER
Secretary of the Commission
| Unveiling of the Statue | CHARLES AYCOCK MCLENDON |
| WILLIAM BENJAMIN AYCOCK | |
| Grandsons of Governor Aycock | |
| “Star-Spangled Banner” | UNITED STATES MARINE BAND |
Presentation of Wreath from the National Education Association and the United States Office of Education—
Dr. JAMES Y. JOYNER
Life Director of the National Education Association
Presentation on behalf of the Commission—
Hon. JOSEPHUS DANIELS
Former Secretary of the Navy
| Selection | UNITED STATES MARINE BAND |
Presentation on behalf of the State—
Hon. O. MAX GARDNER
Governor of North Carolina
| Presentation of Sculptor | CHARLES KECK |
| of New York City | |
| Selection | UNITED STATES MARINE BAND |
Acceptance on behalf of the Government—
Hon. LINDSAY C. WARREN
Representative from North Carolina
| “America” | UNITED STATES MARINE BAND |
| Benediction | Rev. Ze̤BARNEY T. PHILLIPS, D. D. |
| Chaplain of the United States Senate |
“Stars and Stripes Forever”—
UNITED STATES MARINE BAND
Grateful acknowledgment is made of helpful assistance rendered by the office of the Architect of the Capitol for the preparation and arrangements for the ceremonies in Statuary Hall.
CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK
FRIDAY, May 20, 1932.
The presentation and unveiling of the statue of CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK, of North Carolina, was held in Statuary Hall, United States Capitol, Washington, D. C., on Friday, May 20, 1932, at 3 o'clock p. m.
Hon. O. Max Gardner, the Governor of North Carolina and chairman of the Aycock Statue Commission, presided.
The United States Marine Band, Capt. Taylor Branson, leader, played several selections.
INVOCATIONRev. Samuel Judson Porter, D. D., pastor of the First Baptist Church of Washington, D. C., invoked the Divine blessing:
God of our fathers, assembling in this historic shrine we desire to worship Thee in the beauty of holiness and with becoming humility. Make this spot radiant with Thy glory and redolent of Thy grace. Bless our Nation with the blessings that will make us good and truly great. Give saving wisdom to all in positions of trust and responsibility in our government. As in the golden past treat North Carolina favorably and all her people.
Hallowed be Thy name in this hour when we come to honor one of Thy servants, of whom we
rejoice to say: “One there was among us, ever moved among us, in the white armor of truth.” We still see him as he moved, modest, kindly, wise, with fine suppression of himself—
Not making his place the lawless perchOf wing'd ambitions, nor a vantage-groundFor pleasure; but . . . Wearing the white flower of a blameless life.“After he had served his generation by the will of God, he fell on sleep,” but we have not forgotten him. And now we come to honor and to perpetuate his memory by leaving in this sanctuary a likeness of the face and form of him—
Thy creature whom we found so fair;We trust he lives in Thee, and thereWe find him worthier to be loved.He believed in “the glory of the lighted mind.” Like the dear Lord Jesus, he loved little children. He had faith in boys and girls and battled that they might have a chance. We loved this courageous man whom Thou didst give “as a covert from the tempest and as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land” for the youth of our native State.
To-day we salute him in Thee across the spaces which but thinly intervene between us and that “fair and pleasant land” where “the spirits of just men are made perfect.” What we do, O Lord, this day in honor of our departed friend wilt Thou accept as an act of praise and worship to Thyself, a gift laid up before Thee on the altar of our love for him. While we unveil his statute in the Capitol Building of our beloved Nation our souls thrill
to the faith that Thou hast already caused him to experience in fellowship with Thee the joyous fulfilment of our adorable Saviour's promise:
Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name.
Father, empower us all in this hour sincerely to pray that we may be consecrated to the unfinished tasks to which our erstwhile leader called. The torch, which he bore till the exquisite moment when Thou didst call him, we pledge to carry with fresh devotion till the night of ignorance and sin shall flee away in the dawning of love's fair day of knowledge, peace, and salvation, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The North Carolina State Society, of Washington, D. C., sang “The Old North State.”
ADDRESS BY DOCTOR JOYNER
The General Assembly of North Carolina, at its session of 1929, unanimously passed the following act:
Chapter 293, Public Laws of 1929, reads as follows:
SECTION 1. That there shall be erected and placed in Statuary Hall, Washington, D. C., a statue of CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK, former Governor of North Carolina, to commemorate his fame and services as a great North Carolinian.
SEC. 2. That there is hereby created a Commission composed of the Governor of North Carolina, who shall be chairman, and six citizens of the State who shall be appointed by the governor, known as the Aycock Statue Commission, and said Commission is hereby authorized and directed to have said statue placed and erected, and make all necessary arrangements for its acceptance by the Congress of the United States.
SEC. 3. No member of the Commission shall receive any compensation.
SEC. 4. The said Commission is authorized to expend for the purposes of this act the sum of fifteen thousand ($15,000) dollars made for “CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK Statue” in the general appropriation act of one thousand nine hundred and twenty-nine.
SEC. 5. That this act shall be in effect from and after its ratification.
Ratified this the 19th day of March, A. D. 1929.
The bill was introduced and sponsored in the House by Hon. A. D. MacLean, of Beaufort County, and in the Senate by Senator S. C. Brawley, of Durham County.
The following resolution, which was introduced in the House of Representatives by Representative Lindsay C. Warren, of North Carolina, was
adopted by the Congress of the United States on April 29, 1932:
That the statue of CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK, presented by the State of North Carolina to be placed in Statuary Hall, is hereby accepted in the name of the United States, and that the thanks of Congress be tendered to the State of North Carolina for the contribution of the statue of one of its most eminent citizens, illustrious for the high purpose of his life and his distinguished services to the State and Nation.
2. That a copy of these resolutions, suitably engrossed and duly authenticated, be transmitted to the Governor of the State of North Carolina.
Governor Gardner appointed the following members of the Commission:
Josephus Daniels, James Y. Joyner, Angus D. MacLean, Dr. Cyrus W. Thompson, Judge R. W. Winston, Sumter C. Brawley, Mrs. Thomas W. Bickett, H. G. Chatham, Judge James L. Webb.
Three members—Mr. Chatham, Doctor Thompson, and Judge Webb—having died, President Frank P. Graham, of the University of North Carolina, Hon. Robert M. Hanes, of Winston-Salem, and Clarence Aycock were appointed to fill the vacancies.
The Commission met in the governor's office in Raleigh, May 14, 1929, and organized by the election of James Y. Joyner, secretary, and State Treasurer Nathan O'Berry, treasurer. The act named the governor as chairman.
After most careful inquiry and investigation, Charles Keck, of New York, an eminent artist of national reputation, was selected sculptor. The wisdom of this selection must be judged by the
statue that the sculptor's genius and skill have created.
The Commission selected May 20 for the unveiling, the date of the first Declaration of Independence on the American Continent in Charlotte, N. C. Governor AYCOCK led North Carolina to a declaration of independence against ignorance.
As the Commission comes to-day to the happy consummation of its task, I speak for every member thereof in saying that it has been a labor of love to carry out a loving people's mandate of love to honor their best loved son and public servant with a statue in the Nation's Hall of Fame, selected unanimously by their representatives for this high honor twenty years after his death, ample time for a calm, just, comparative appraisal of the man and his service.
Because of my long and intimate association with him from young manhood to the hour of his death, as friend and coworker in the cause of universal education, because of my great love for him passing the love of a man for a woman, may I be pardoned for expressing my personal satisfaction and joy in having been permitted, as secretary of this Commission, to help to perpetuate in the Nation in this noble statue of bronze his name and fame.
This statue is not only an expression of North Carolina's love and gratitude to CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK, its Educational Governor, but is equally an expression of the State's faith in universal education of which he was the flaming evangel, that was the ruling passion of his life, the dominant
purpose of his administration as governor and the last word upon his dying lips.
Though to others has been assigned the delightful duty of speaking on this notable occasion about this great man and his great work, I know that I shall be pardoned too for this brief tribute of my heart to my friend whom I loved in life and shall mourn in death until we meet again.
Great in mind, great in soul, great in leadership, great in accomplished service was he, but greatest of all in love. Because he loved greatly all men and all things, both great and small, he was and ever will be greatly beloved.
I think these lines of his favorite poet, Tennyson, old “Ten” as he lovingly called him, can be more truthfully spoken of him than of any other man that I have known:
Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might;Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.UNVEILING OF THE STATUECharles Aycock McLendon and William Benjamin Aycock, grandsons of Governor AYCOCK, proceeded to unveil the statute.
The United States Marine Band played the “Star-Spangled Banner.”
PRESENTATION OF FLORAL WREATHDoctor JOYNER. The National Education Association, in membership the largest, and in influence perhaps the greatest educational organization in
the world, has requested me as a life director and former president to present on behalf of the Association and the United States Office of Education this floral wreath in recognition and appreciation of Governor AYCOCK'S splendid service to the cause of education in the State and Nation and of his stimulating example as a statesman and governor of a great State in placing education first in governmental administration and in the hearts of his people.
THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATIONOF THE UNITED STATES,
Washington, D. C., May 20, 1932.
Dr. J. Y. JOYNER,
Secretary of the Commission,
Washington, D. C.
DEAR DOCTOR JOYNER: It gives the National Education Association, and the United States Office of Education, great pleasure to present this wreath to be laid at the base of the statue of Governor AYCOCK, which your Commission is placing in Statuary Hall at the Capitol to-day.
Governor AYCOCK did for education in North Carolina what Horace Mann did for it in Massachusetts, and like Horace Mann, he rendered a never-ending service to the schools of the Nation.
The greatest need in the educational crisis of to-day is an educational governor of the type of Governor AYCOCK in every State in the Union—one who sets forth the great value of education in our democracy and one who places the interests of childhood above the need for fine roads and that of extensive public improvements. Education in this Nation craves friends of his type in every community. Education, and hence our American civilization, is safest when it is made safe by the lay forces and their leaders.
Accept this wreath as a mark of appreciation for the services of Governor AYCOCK from not only the National
Education Association and the United States Office of Education, but from the entire teaching profession in the United States.
Very sincerely yours,
FLORENCE HALE, President.
J. W. CRABTREE, Secretary.
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THEINTERIOR, OFFICE OF EDUCATION,
Washington, May 19, 1932.
Dr. JAMES Y. JOYNER,
Former State Superintendent of Public Instruction.
DEAR DOCTOR JOYNER: It is gratifying to know that the State of North Carolina has chosen a great educational leader to represent her in the Nation's Hall of Fame. Governor CHARLES B. AYCOCK, whose statue will now stand in the Capitol of the United States, created and led in North Carolina an educational renaissance without equal in the history of our country. He fostered the drive which not only lifted the level of public elementary education profoundly in North Carolina but which gave impetus and leaders to the forward movement in education throughout the United States that marked the turn of the century.
The Office of Education takes pride in the fact that he drew heavily on the facts and information it constantly collects concerning American education to fortify his arguments for equal educational opportunity to all.
Placing his statue in the Capitol of the United States will be an appropriate reminder that heroes of victories in the cause of education deserve to rank beside the heroes of national defense, statesmanship, and pioneering enterprise.
Very truly yours,
WILLIAM J. COOPER,
United States Commissioner of Education.
BESS GOODYKOONTZ,
Assistant Commissioner.
ADDRESS BY MR. DANIELSTo this historic hall the commonwealths have brought for permanent place statues of their suncrowned men. Most of them memoralize cherished sons who commanded listening senates, or who won distinction in war by courage beyond the call of duty, or who pioneered in science, or conquered new lands, or discovered new ways to alleviate suffering or to prolong human life. North Carolina to-day with proud memories presents to the Republic, which the wisdom and valour of its sons helped to establish, the statue of a beloved son whose whole life was spent in the confines of his State and whose genius was consecrated wholly to the service of the people among whom he was born. Although his labors were restricted to a single State, he proclaimed a social and economic philosophy that transcended geographical and political limitations, and survived the complexities of changing years. It embodied the remedy for the evils of his own time, a potent solvent of the ills that stagger this Nation to-day. He expressed his faith in these words, as he neared the end of life: “Equal. That is the word. On that word I plant myself and my party—the equal right of every child born on earth to have the opportunity to burgeon out all that there is within him.” The man who professes that creed and dedicates himself to it would be noble and great however restricted his environment.
MADE FORCES OF PROGRESS STRONGER
I dare to say in a time fraught with more of peril than he dreamed could ever confront this Nation, that this truth and this alone will free us from the oppression of organized greed grown fat and arrogant and poisonous on privilege mulcted from the rulers of a patient people, and that will restore this Government to its primary function—the adequate protection and even-handed service of those for whose freedom and happiness it was created.
It was the genius of this man, and through it his supreme claim to immortality, that he pierced the fog of prejudice and despair of his day with a forward call, universal in its breadth and timeless in its appeal. Because of it he is a greater man in North Carolina to-day than on the day the State gave him its richest reward. Because of it also, the forces of order and progress, equality and justice are stronger in North Carolina to-day than when he led them to their greatest victory.
THE HIGHEST CALLIn Governor AYCOCK'S devotion to the weal and advancement of his own people there was not time for him to sow or to reap in the so-called larger fields. But North Carolina is a noble State, worthy of the undivided love of the illustrious son honored to-day. Other spheres of service, larger in terms of geography or population, might have lured him. CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK exemplified the eternal truth that the highest call that comes to any man is the duty that lies nearest. His mission, as he conceived
it, commanded his whole-hearted espousal of causes projected for the strengthening and the elevation of the people of his own State.
THE TYPICAL NORTH CAROLINIANRichard Grant White, writing of Palmerston, said he was a typical Englishman, having all the virtues and prejudices of his countrymen. In much the same way it might be said that CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK was a typical North Carolinian, embodying in his life the virtues, aspirations, the hopes as well as the beliefs of his people. Some of those beliefs might be regarded as parochial. It is true that he was confessedly more State-minded than national-minded. But do not confuse that with prejudice. There was no room in his heart for that unwholesome poison unless you account it prejudice that, more conspicuously than any other North Carolina leader since Vance, he identified himself with his own people, making their cause his cause, their wrong his wrong, their progress his reward.
EARLY IMPRESSIONSBorn a little more than a year before the beginning of the War between the States in Nahunta, Wayne County, N. C., and six years old at its close, Governor AYCOCK remembered the return of his older brothers and their comrades from the Confederate Army, “weary, worn, and sorrowful, to find their farms gone to ruin, their fences down, their ditches filled, their stock slaughtered, in many instances their houses burned.” He was old
enough to understand how the iron entered the souls of these men as they drank to the dregs the bitterness of the cup of reconstruction. His impressionable young mind shared the resentment of his elders in the humiliation and injustice heaped upon his people. His father's house became the rendezvous for the farmers of the community. They gathered on his broad piazza summer evenings to discuss their problems when Union League and Ku Klux organizations made political action a matter of vital preservation. Frequently, the boy crept down the back stairs in his night clothes, and, hiding under the front-porch steps, listened to the political talk that stirred his elders. Public political discussion was then the chief interest of a people who believed the protection of the things most dear to them must come through political victory. AYCOCK attended political meetings at an age when most boys were thinking only of play. Serious conditions troubled the family and the State. The eloquence, some of it rude, fascinated him. He would return home to repeat pointed passages that stuck in a peculiarly retentive memory. The burden of the speeches he heard involved the restoration of government to the people from whom reconstruction had wrested it. Before he was out of his teens he had imbibed the spirit of the political orators, and had developed a talent for public speaking which gave promise of the eloquence which enriched his later public career.
The Federal reconstruction administration in North Carolina, it must be remembered, was in
the hands of officials, most of whom did not enjoy or merit the confidence of the people. The soldier brothers of AYCOCK, in common with the people in general, regarded them as aliens to the spirit of North Carolina. For a long time even the Federal courts were held to be foreign to the genius and indifferent to the traditions of North Carolina.
PASSIONATE LOVE OF STATEIn such an atmosphere, AYCOCK developed a passionate love of his State and a profound conviction that it had been wronged by the government of the country which the blood of his fathers had established. It was not until he reached manhood that this early resentment was erased. But it left its scars with him, as with the men of his generation, even though they later rejoiced that this is an indissoluble union of indestructible States. In his riper years, no more ardent lover of the Union lived, but always his dearest affection was for the government units that were nearest home.
ROOSEVELT'S TRIBUTEIn an impromptu address at the Charleston (S. C.) Exposition he shared honors with President Roosevelt. A speaker preceding him had said he “thanked God there was now no North, no South, no East, no West,” seeming to be apologetic for the attitude of the South of a former day. Governor AYCOCK graciously said that “there is a very fine and high sense in which my distinguished friend said there is no North and no South, and yet there is another and a finer sense in which I am
glad to say to-day that there is a South.” Touching upon the industries developed after its people had been stricken by four years of destructive war, he added:
Nor am I ashamed of the mighty deeds which you wrought from 1861-1865. I shall forever defend these men and women, and I must do so in order to justify the splendid courage of the President of the United States,
turning to President Roosevelt, who was sitting on the platform. Continuing, Governor AYCOCK said:
They were a great folk, sturdy, determined, hot-blooded maybe, but their blood stayed hot through four years. Your hot-blooded man cools under less than four years of suffering. But it took from Bethel to Appomattox to cool the blood of these southern people. They were tired of fighting against their brothers, but they had just gotten themselves into good fighting training for fighting the greatest battles of life. And so I say that I have ceased to talk about the fact that we are in Union, for we never got out. And if there be any State—in the Philippines or elsewhere—that wants to secede, we will teach them that they can't get out.
President Roosevelt joined in the applause, calling out: “You are all right, Governor!” to which AYCOCK replied: “I will say for the President that I know he is happier that he may be a President of a people who are proud of their history than he would be to be President of a people who were ashamed of it.”
It is an interesting aftermath of that meeting between Theodore Roosevelt and CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK that the President tendered to AYCOCK, after his term as governor expired, an appointment to a position of honor. AYCOCK declined it with high appreciation, saying to a friend:
I would not fit in. How could I oppose Republican policies and oppose Republican victory while holding office under a Republican President? Besides, if there is any public duty I owe, it is here in North Carolina where so much is to be done to educate the people and undergird and advance the material development of the State, to which tasks I long ago committed myself.
LOVED HOME BESTInvited to make a series of educational speeches in Maine, Governor AYCOCK enunciated the creed that his environment and love of home had developed and which made him the best loved man in North Carolina:
I love my home town better than any town in Wayne County, I love Wayne County better than any other county in North Carolina, I love North Carolina better than any other State in the Union, I love the United States better than any other country in the world.
He added, with the inimitable humor that characterized him, half jestingly and half seriously: “And I love this world better than the next.”
AYCOCK LIKE LEEHe expressed his passion for home in the following extract in an address on Robert E. Lee, in which he ascribed to Lee the quality that marked his own life:
The love of home, of family, of neighborhood, of county, of State predominated him. The elemental foundation of all free government is found in this vital fact. There can never be a free people save those who love and serve those closest to them first, and farthest away afterward. The gospel must be preached to all the world, but its preaching must begin at Jerusalem. It could never have begun anywhere else, and if it had, it would never have gone anywhere else.
This philosophy, in a day when his home State needed him and leaned upon him and was nourished by his inspiring faith and accomplishments, accounts for his absorption in service at home.
VITAL LOCAL ISSUES CALLED HIMDeeply interested in politics and profoundly versed in the great issues that touched the life of the Republic, he declined election as delegate to the national convention of his party and put aside the proffer of support for a position on the national ticket. Writing to a friend of a younger generation, who urged that, having done so much for the people of North Carolina, he ought to seek service in national affairs, Governor AYCOCK set forth what had actuated his course in these words:
My own conviction is, that the generation to which I belong, those in and around fifty years, will never furnish to the South the leadership which it must have. We came on during, or at the end of the war, and our environment has been such that we were compelled to devote ourselves to local issues. These issues were important; indeed, they were vital. The future of our State and section depended upon their right solution. But, vital as they were, they were narrow, and in the discussion of them and in working them out, we imbibed passions and prejudices that unfitted us for great work on the stage of the Nation. It was my hope, and still is, that our labors would not be in vain, but would produce a stronger and broader leadership out of the generation to which you belong. That is my firm belief now.
What did Governor AYCOCK mean when he said:
Vital as the questions were that compelled us to devote ourselves to local issues, they were narrow, and in the discussion of them and in working them out we imbibed passions and prejudices that unfitted us for great work on the stage of the Nation.
Clearly he was thinking about the question of suffrage in the South. The greatest wrong done to the southern white man and to the Negro in the Reconstruction era was immediately intrusting all the enfranchised slaves with the ballot. Mr. Lincoln never favored it. On the contrary, he advised the Governor of Louisiana to grant suffrage at first only to such negroes as had acquired property or by education had shown fitness to use the ballot wisely. If this Lincoln plan of gradual extension of suffrage had prevailed over the Thaddeus Stevens plan, based upon political advantage rather than interest in the welfare and advancement of the Negro, what a Pandora's box of ills the whole country would have escaped!
EFFECTS OF NEGRO VOTINGGovernor AYCOCK grew up in a district having 8,000 Negro voting majority. He saw how ignorant Negro voters were used en masse by designing leaders, white and colored, to the injury of both races. Later, in 1894-1898, the manipulation of the solid Negro vote by unscrupulous and faithless white men brought a return of incompetent government to North Carolina. Men climbed to office by the support of ignorant and unqualified voters and then deserted them and kicked them over when they could no longer serve their selfish ends. The character and results of government by such men in his State was thus described by Governor AYCOCK in his inaugural address as Governor of North Carolina January 15, 1901:
Under their rule lawlessness stalked the State like a pestilence; death stalked at noonday; “sleep lay down
armed”; the sound of the pistol was more frequent than the song of the mocking bird; the screams of women and children fleeing from pursuing brutes closed the gates of our hearts with a shock.
THE SUFFRAGE AMENDMENTTo overthrow such administration AYCOCK was selected by the unanimous vote of his party as candidate for governor to lead in the most critical campaign of his generation. He was chosen by reason of the recognition of his “preeminent power to convince the minds of men and to arouse their highest and best emotions, to enthuse them with the truths of his cause and lead them to action.” In his first speech in the campaign he told the voters that the passage of the suffrage amendment “will mean an end of an era of crime and lawlessness, insure security of property and purity of politics, and no more rule of the incompetent and corrupt.” He made a campaign without precedent in the annals of North Carolina, championing a constitutional amendment that would exclude from the ballot all Negroes who lacked the necessary educational qualifications for the exercise of suffrage. In a contest involving bitterness and some racial animosities, he lifted the cause above passion and prejudice and showed by every word and act a friendliness and sympathy for the uneducated Negroes he was proposing to disfranchise which won their lasting esteem. His subsequent policy proved his justice and friendship.
Governor AYCOCK declared that before the party he led had proposed the limitation on suffrage, “We endeavored with sincerity to bring the Negroes to a realization of the true dignity of full
citizenship,” and pointed out that the State opened schools for them, cared for their afflicted, and yet “the result was a disappointment.” Why? The 120,000 Negro voters were the pawns of unworthy political leaders who employed them for their own undoing and the bringing about of a reign of terror in certain parts of the State. AYCOCK and other leaders, therefore, procured a suffrage enactment by which suffrage is based on education.
NOT POLITICAL ADVANTAGEMany people outside the State, and some within its borders, believed the policy of which AYCOCK was the chosen crusader, was born of desire for political advantage and prejudice of the Negro race. Undoubtedly there existed prejudice. Undoubtedly political victory came to the party espousing the suffrage amendment. But neither of these considerations controlled, certainly not with AYCOCK. His magnanimous nature forbade hatred or injustice toward a people wanting in power to demand and secure justice. During the epochal campaigns from 1894 to 1900, AYCOCK pledged that if power was given to his party it would be exercised in such spirit as to help the Negro as well as to restore order and promote prosperity. Proof that he entertained no hostility to the Negro is afforded by this extract in his speech of acceptance:
May the era of good feeling among us be the outcome of this contest. Then we shall learn, if we do not already known, that while universal sufferage is a failure universal justice is the perpetual decree of Almighty God, and that we are entrusted with powers not for our good alone, but for the Negro as well. We hold our title to power by the tenure of service to God, and if we fail
to administer equal and exact justice to the Negro whom we deprive of suffrage, we shall in the fulness of time lose power ourselves, for we must know that the God who is Love trusts no people with authority for the purpose of enabling them to do injustice to the weak.
DEVOTION TO JUSTICEThis noble consecration pledge was the guiding star of his administration and those succeeding it. His policies of justice and equality brought peace and order. Freed from political disturbance there followed an “outburst of industry” and agriculture, commerce and manufacturing. Banking expansion initiated the largest growth and prosperity that North Carolina had known in all its history. The disgrace of lynching disappeared under a sound public sentiment strengthened by the new governor and the just administration of law bore the good fruit born of AYCOCK'S creed:
The law must have full sway. It will be enforced with impartiality and I shall strive to be a just governor of all the people, without regard to party, color, or creed. The mob has no place in our civilization. No man is so high that the law shall not be enforced against him, and no man is so low that it shall not reach down to lift him up, if may be, and set him on his feet again and bid him Godspeed to better things.
HONEST ELECTION LAWSWhen it came to enact election laws in consonance with the new suffrage amendment, Governor AYCOCK demanded that they should have in them no provision open to unfair operation. He had favored the North Carolina method of restricting suffrage because it gave no opportunity to election officials for discrimination, but was open and
understandable. If for a time under its operation advantage rested with the whites, the time was fixed definitely when education was to be the only qualification for all voters. Equally resolved that elections should be fair, he insisted that each party should have representation upon all election boards from the precinct to the State board. He never rested until such legislation was enacted. Thus was the “vital” and “narrow” issue, which monopolized his talents for so many years, met by AYCOCK and the leading men of his commonwealth for the weal of all its people.
EDUCATION OF THE NEGROAnother “vital issue,” local in its setting and testing the stuff of which AYCOCK was made, was raised during his administration. It was the question of universal education, embracing the children of both races. During his candidacy Governor AYCOCK had committed himself and his party to this principle. Long before this the State had established separate public schools for both races, but the terms were short and many of them were indifferently manned. Immediately upon his inauguration, larger sums were required for improved schools and this necessitated an increase in taxation. There were those citizens in the State who had not been converted to the AYCOCK theory that the State owed equal school facilities to both races. They protested that as the white people paid the larger portion of the school taxes it was not just that the Negroes, whose tax contribution was relatively small, should have school terms equal in length to those of the white children.
Indeed, there appeared an element who did not believe in the education of the Negro. They demanded that the money paid by white taxpayers should be applied solely to white schools and that the Negro schools should have only the money paid by Negro taxpayers. Those entertaining this view were more vocal than numerous. To these dissenters from AYCOCK'S educational policy were added the critics who complained of other policies of his administration. The opposition was increased by some who saw in AYCOCK'S great popularity a danger to their political ambitions.
DEFEATED SEGREGATIONAltogether, therefore, quite a body was massed in opposition to that portion of his educational policy which included equal schools for the Negro. These opponents caused to be introduced in the legislature an amendment to the Constitution for a distribution of school taxes on the basis of what each race paid. The manifest purpose of this amendment was to restrict the opportunity for the Negro to become educated and qualify himself as a voter. Governor AYCOCK in the most unmistakable terms let the legislators understand that he should regard the adoption of such an amendment as a violation of the pledge made by him and his party, and that if the plighted pledge was broken, over his opposition, he “would resign his office and return to private life.” He said: “It must be manifest that such a provision as this is an injustice to the Negro and is injurious to us.” He declared it was unconstitutional, was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and contrary to the
platforms of both political parties. His opposition strengthened the hands of the men of like views in the general assembly and prevented the measure from coming to a vote. However, its champions secured the adoption of resolutions for such segregation of school funds by the conventions in several counties of the State. In his message to the general assembly of 1903 Governor AYCOCK, after an able and conclusive argument against the suggestion, declaring it to be “unjust, unwise, and unconstitutional,” said: “It would wrong both races, would bring our State into the condemnation of a just opinion elsewhere, and mark us as a people who have turned backward.” He pleaded with the people thus: “Let us not seek to be the first State in the Union to make the weak helpless. This could be a leadership that would bring us no honor but much shame.” His strong argument determined its fate, and it could not muster a corporal's guard in the legislature.
GREATEST ORATORICAL TRIUMPHWhen the Democratic State Convention met in 1904 there was a well organized movement to bring the question up in the hope of securing approval of race tax segregation. There was a rumor, which lacked confirmation, that an element would howl down anyone who would support AYCOCK'S universal educational policy. He was told that if he raised the issue and defended his course he would experience humiliation. The suggestion that he should avoid this controversial question was met by a resolve to make it the central idea in the address he was scheduled to deliver. When he
appeared on the platform the atmosphere was cool, not to say hostile. He began quietly and confidently, piling reason upon reason, with a winning and lucid manner which few could resist or refute. Within ten minutes the coolness had turned to warmth. From that time on he was master of the vast assembly and the delegates enthusiastically approved what a portion had entered the hall to condemn. A greater oratorical conquest is not recorded in the annals of North Carolina. His long time law partner, Judge Frank A. Daniels, gave this judicial estimate of what will always be regarded as the high watermark of convincing eloquence in North Carolina:
I have long regarded this as the greatest triumph of moral and intellectual powers attained by a North Carolinian, certainly in my day. Its immediate and ultimate effect was to break in pieces the opposition to our educatonal advance which has never since been able to rear its head; and this victory of truth and justice has made secure the progress of enlightenment throughout the length and breadth of the State.
UNIVERSAL EDUCATIONIf the “vital issues” to which Governor AYCOCK referred were narrow in the sense that they were sectional, the cause to which AYCOCK'S life was consecrated, was universal. It was the one into which Jefferson breathed the breath of life in Virginia and which enabled Horace Mann to give primacy and distinction to Massachusetts—the duty of the State to set up public schools for all the children. Mainly because of this faith AYCOCK came to be known as “the Educational Governor of North Carolina,” and because he transformed
educational thought and progress in North Carolina the people of his State have caused his statue to stand in this place. It is the lasting tribute of a people who are grateful for his translated vision of universal education. As a boy he was denied this inalienable right. He never went to a public school of the character he obtained for the children of the next generation until he entered the University of North Carolina, established in the Constitution of 1789 as the head of the public school system before there were any public schools. The few schools supported by taxation were of only a few weeks duration and generally inefficient. The educational fund built up before 1860 was swept away by war or squandered by reconstruction. Young AYCOCK, thanks to the pride of a family whose members early perceived he had rare gifts, was given the best instruction in private schools which his section afforded. He learned easily and when most boys were wrestling with Latin verbs young AYCOCK was translating English into Latin with the utmost facility and laying the foundations of accurate scholarship and style which lifted him above his fellow students both in the preparatory schools and at the university.
EDUCATIONAL LEADERSThe hour may not be fixed when, like Samuel of old, he heard the voice setting him apart as the leader of public education, and answered “Here am I.” Before he was of age he taught in a public school. In the university, when he was a student there, among his closest friends were three men who with him did more to revolutionize North
Carolina educationally than any three others among the many who have poured their lives out in that endeavor—Dr. Edwin A. Alderman, who became successively president of the University of North Carolina, Tulane, and the University of Virginia; Dr. Charles D. McIver, who founded the North Carolina College for Women and was the educational dynamo of his generation; and Dr. James Y. Joyner, under whose leadership as State superintendent of schools in AYCOCK'S administration a schoolhouse was built every day in the year including Sunday. These men and others were fired by love of State and were troubled because many children were growing up without schooling. “There was no better place, I think, for the making of leaders in the world than Chapel Hill in the late seventies,” said Doctor Alderman. “The mode of life was simple, rugged, almost primitive. Our young hearts, aflame with the impulses of youth, were quietly conscious of the vicissitudes and sufferings through which our fathers had just passed. A heroic tradition pervaded the place, while hope and struggle rather than despair or repining, shone in the purpose of the resolute men who were rebuilding the famous old school.”
With a zeal as holy as sent the Wesleys from Oxford to preach a gospel of universal salvation these four young men left the university consumed with a zeal for universal education. They started a revival that swept over the State, culminating in its glow and glory during the years when AYCOCK was governor of the State. AYCOCK went from college into the law to become the educational
statesman. The other three into the schoolroom, and from that day they were united and dedicated to one great aim: The establishment of an educational system that would remove the stigma of illiteracy. The influences they created are seen in the magnificent school buildings that give honor to the State and the opportunity of every child in the State to secure a common-school education.
AYCOCK AND HORACE MANNThe first public office Governor AYCOCK held was as county superintendent of the public schools of Wayne County, and the second was as member of the school board in the town of Goldsboro. Ending his term as governor, the last office he held was on the same school board. No perfunctory official was he, but a trustee who gave his time and thought to the cause nearest his heart.
Horace Mann may have been as eloquent an advocate for public education or as efficient an educational statesman as CHARLES B. AYCOCK. If so, no other public man in America deserves equal rank with the North Carolina governor in the sphere in which he made his largest contribution.
DISPELLED INDIFFERENCEUnless there is appreciation of the lack of decent schoolhouses and trained teachers and money for schools, and knowledge of the widespread indifference to the right of the child to go to school, and a sense of the power of the opposition to “paying tax for the education of the children of other people”—unless the conditions prevailing in AYCOCK'S youth can be visualized—there can be no
proper appraisement of the revolution of public sentiment under his leadership and that of his coworkers.
ERA OF EDUCATIONAL GOOD FEELINGAs “educational governor” not only did he create sentiment for public schools, but he brought about an era of good feeling and cooperation of all the educational institutions in the State, secured larger appropriations for State schools, and stimulated gifts to church, educational institutions, and other colleges. One day publication was made that an old and useful church institution for the education of women was to be closed and its magnificent campus cut up and sold as city lots. “No educational institution shall close its doors in North Carolina during my administration,” he declared, as he announced he would speak for the continuation of the college in the town in which it was located. The college was not closed and shortly was enlarged to accommodate its increased attendance.
HIS MASTERPIECE LIKE WEBSTER'SHow many speeches Governor AYCOCK made from boyhood to the tragic night when he died speaking on universal education no record remains. He spoke in every county in North Carolina and in other States upon occasion. His addresses on Universal Education became as familiar and as famous as Webster's oration on The Constitution and the Union, and quite as eloquent and effective. Like Webster's masterpiece it was a growth. Webster as a teacher, just out of college, gave the substance of the same argument in
a small Maine town that he employed in his famous reply to Hayne. But in the years it had evolved from a patriotic oration of a young man into the great oration of the master of assemblies. It was the same with AYCOCK'S masterpiece. It was first given in its essence in his home township of Nahunta. From frequent repetition and polishing it became the masterpiece which AYCOCK was delivering on the night of April 4, 1912, at Birmingham, Ala., at the State Teachers Association, when death claimed him.
HIS LAST PUBLIC ADDRESS“God Almighty, who is no respecter of persons, has made it so that you can not get the best for your boy and your girl until you are ready to give the best to my boy and my girl,” he declared, and demonstrated his point with the most convincing illustrations. Then he added:
You are going to educate your girl; I know you are. You are going to sit up all night to educate her; you are going to save to educate her; going to economize; going to be stingy to educate her. Maybe you want her to make a musician. Well, I am going to tell you. You can send her to all the schools; you can let her burn the midnight oil; you can let her study under great musicians until she is almost blind; you can send her to the conservatory of music; you can send her abroad until her whole soul thrills and feels the glory of her gifted music, but she can not make music to people that do not understand. You can not talk to an audience that can not hear. Governor, did you ever try it? Well, I have. When I was governor I made speeches all over North Carolina. I canvassed the State for four years in behalf of the education of the children of the State, right straight along; sometimes on Sunday they would ask me down to the churches to talk, and I always talked about education.
With these words he fell dead. The State of North Carolina, “like Niobe was all tears” when the news of his sudden death reached its people. Millions have been appropriated and stately memorials erected in honor of the men who gave their lives in the World War, but in North Carolina to-day the people regard the sacrifice Governor AYCOCK made to open larger doors to the children as constituting him the great casualty of the war against illiteracy. It was this universal feeling in the State that brings us here to-day.
MASTER ON NATIONAL QUESTIONSBecause Governor AYCOCK chose to deny himself ambition for official station in the Nation, feeling an irresistible call to give himself to the rebuilding of an ancient commonwealth, it must not be inferred that he was not deeply concerned and profoundly informed as to national problems and national affairs. His own people were compelled to construct a foundation upon which to stand in the rebuilding of the State. This was vital to them and to him. It came first and commanded all his powers and allegiance. The people felt “He was come to the Kingdom for such a time as this.” He was truly the Moses that led them toward the promised land—a land into which he believed men of his generation would not be called to broadest leadership. Events have proved he was right, for though nearly three score and ten years have passed since Appomattox, neither of the chief political parties has nominated a southern man for President. It was not that he and others lacked ambition or the fitness for the chief magistracy.
It was, certainly, for a long period because engrossing State issues and local demands unfitted them “for great work on the stage of the nation.” He could say with Stevenson that he could “renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered.” For all along he believed, as he wrote to a young friend, “It was my hope, and still is, that our labors would not be in vain but would produce a stronger, broader leadership out of the generation to which you belong.”
PROFOUND KNOWLEDGE OF TARIFFThe country produced no man of his era who was more deeply versed in the issues which divided political parties, particularly the tariff question around which so many battles have been waged. He was master of the debates and papers on this subject from the time of Hamilton and Jefferson. In his last written speech, in the early part of 1912, the ablest and most illuminating treatise upon Democratic doctrine of the half century, Governor AYCOCK declared:
I agree with Governor Woodrow Wilson that the tariff is the one central issue. It is at the head of every other economic question we have to deal with, and until we have adjusted that properly we can settle nothing in a way that will be lasting and satisfactory.
It was a tragedy that he died before he could cooperate with Wilson as he made “sound tariff measures the first” item in his program of reforms. I have been privileged to hear such masters of the tariff question as Roger Q. Mills, William L. Wilson, Grover Cleveland, William Jennings Bryan, and Woodrow Wilson elucidate the tariff question,
but I weigh my words when I declare that not one of them surpassed AYCOCK in thought, knowledge, or apt illustration or lucidity of statement or convincing argument.
AYCOCK'S TARIFF CREEDIn his last political speech Governor AYCOCK compressed his attitude on the tariff in these four propositions:
1. I am in favor of a tariff for revenue only.
2. Such tariff to be levied—
(a) On luxuries;
(b) On comforts;
(c) And only as a last resort on necessaries.
3. Such tariff to bear equally upon all productive energy, engaged in agriculture, mining, or manufacturing.
4. Such tariff to bear equally upon every section of the country. And under this head I would observe that I do not believe in protection for New England and free trade for North Carolina, but a tariff for revenue only, applicable alike to both sections. I would not be guilty of the quixotic folly of compelling my own people to bear an unequal proportion of the burdens of the maintenance of government, nor would I on the other hand exact one cent of tribute from any other section of the country in order that my own State and the South, which I love with my whole heart, should prosper at the expense of others.
THE TARIFF A MORAL QUESTIONHis discussion of the tariff was no siccant presentation of schedules. It was the philosophy of taxation. He properly regarded tariff as a moral question which lifted it to the heights. He drew a graphic picture of how he had seen during the span of his life “the struggle of the people for continued and enlarged freedom seeking to work
itself out” by invention and industry and commerce providing fabulous wealth and enormous products, with the prophecies of the orator that “with the coming of this wealth there should come also a better age and a finer chance for those who sweat and struggle.” He was forced to this conclusion: “And yet I have looked in vain for the coming of that hour, and as I read the current history of the times, I find strikes and lockouts and cold and suffering greater than when Great Britain acknowledged the independence of the thirteen American Colonies.”
PROBLEM NOT INSOLUBLEThe superabundance of the few and the struggle of the many for a wage that barely kept soul and body together, under laws giving special favor “despite the efforts of right-minded men with good hearts, humbly seeking wisdom from God sufficient to enable them to correct these conditions,” caused him to quote Tennyson—
An infant crying in the night,An infant crying for the light,And with no language but a cry.To him the problem, however, was not insoluble. Unlike many then, and more now, he did not sit in the ashes and regret that there was no escape from the conditions he deplored. He knew that there was a remedy for the unequal distribution of wealth, and a simple one, if only it could be put to work. He said in a notable address:
Yet I can not bring myself to believe that the problem is insoluble. Yes, I believe that it has already been solved and the solution has been forgotten by us. It was
solved in the single phrase “Equal opportunity to all and special privilege to none.” It found its correct exposition in the inaugural address of President Jefferson when he insisted that the Government should be economically conducted to the end that labor shall be lightly burdened.
He pointed out that ever since this utterance we have been going away steadily from it and seeking to find in the extension of special privilege to some the hope that out of their abundance they would make easier the condition of all. He laid down this proposition and by powerful reasoning and illustration proved it: “You may tax some people rich by creating a monopoly by reason of taxation, but you can not tax all the people rich.” Proceeding upon that sound thesis, too often overlooked, he traced how the protective tariff had bred trusts. In one of his best speeches on the hustings, speaking to make plain and clear a subject often dull, he made the operations of the protective tariff so lucid that a child could understand it. Here is his graphic portrayal of what happens under high tariff laws, including an indictment of the policies of favoritism by which eighty per cent of the national wealth is monopolized by a comparatively small per cent of the people:
HOW MONOPOLY IS CREATEDBy means of this protective tariff what has happened? You can build up an industry by it. I have never disputed that proposition anywhere. We could grow tea in South Carolina, by operation of the protective tariff, Senator Tillman says. If you will make it high enough you can grow it in South Carolina and make some people rich. You can build up a special industry. Don't you see when they put on that high tax, and exclude foreign competition, the manufacturer starts up? One man starts
with a capital of $100,000. He hurries up his plant. He has a large market and it is exclusive. The tariff has shut out all foreign competition. He goes to work and gets his goods on the market and sells them nearly as high as the tariff will allow him. He coins money, and gets rich fast. The next man sees this, and says,
“If A is making money that way, I can, too.” He builds a $250,000 factory and gets rich, too. Then C comes in and builds a factory for $1,000,000, and the prices go a little lower. And so they keep on until they have twenty-five or twenty-six plants throughout the United States, supplying the needs of the American people, and they have brought the prices down as low as the foreign market. We are reveling in low prices for these manufactured goods.
Finally the smartest one of these fellows drops a letter to the others. He says:
MY DEAR SIR: You and I are engaged in the same line of business. For the past few years we have not been making much profit. In the beginning we made a great deal of money, but for the last few years, by reason of competition with one another, it is getting almost impossible for us to make a living. It is folly for us to waste our lives in this mad struggle of competition. I am going to be at the Waldorf-Astoria next Thursday at 3 o'clock p. m., where I hope to see you and have a little conference.
He sends that to the others, and the next Thursday the whole push is there. They eat a little, and drink a little, and smoke a great deal, and finally the same fellow says: “Boys, this is all foolishness; we are cutting each other's throats. We have the American market and there is no sense in barely making a living. We used to make big money, and can do it again. I want us to form what is known as a trust; that is to say, I want us to form one great big corporation. You take stock in this corporation to the extent of the value of your plant, and I will take stock to the value of my plant, and so on around, and we will have it all in one company. We won't have but one president, one superintendent, two or three drummers, and we will discharge all the rest of them and centralize these plants and the management, and produce our product cheaper and earn a bigger dividend, and not
only put our plants in at the valuation they are now worth, but we will double the amount of stock and give each one twice what his plant is worth and still make a dividend.”
That looks good to all of them except one fellow born a hard-shell Baptist Democrat. They are all like Paul—“None of these things move me.” He says, “I have been an independent manufacturer and am going to remain one still.” They say, “All right, Bill. Good-bye.” Bill goes down home and goes to work and overhauls his plant and oils it up and gets all the rust out of it and makes it run as smoothly as possible. He begins to economize because he knows there is a good fight on. The other twenty-five form their combination and put out their goods, and offer them on the market a little higher than before and Bill sells at the old price, so they can not get much rise on them because Bill is offering his goods to the jobbers a little cheaper than theirs. Finally, they send a fellow down in Bill's neighborhood, and every time Bill tries to go up a little, they go down. They tell their representative, “Every time Bill goes down on those goods, you go two better.” Bill goes down five points, and they go down fifteen. Bill goes down five more, and they go down fifteen.
It is beginning to wear on Bill. He is turning gray and getting pale. He has been a tactful, pleasant-faced fellow, and he used to go home in the afternoon and take his wife and children to ride in the automobile, or better, in the old-fashioned buggy. Now he does not get home until dark, and there is a scowl on his face. Mary meets him at the door and says, “William, what is the matter?” He scowls and says, “Nothing the matter with me.” The trust had just gone down fifteen points the day before and he knows five points more will bankrupt him. He goes to bed and dreams dreams, and sees visions, and his visions of the devil are the most real. He gets up unrefreshed and a cold bath fails to put him in good humor. The morning is a bright, glorious, sunshiny morning, and there is a crispness in the air. Nothing appeals to Bill. Bankruptcy is before him. From being wealthy, he is about to descend to poverty. From having his family
have everything they want, they are about to descend to want.
He finds a representative of the trust in his office. “Good morning, how are you feeling, Bill?” “Don't feel much. How are you?” “I am feeling fine. Now, Bill, there is no use in this foolishness. Come to terms. While we are in the humor, you had better get out. We dont want to hurt anybody. We are good folks. You have $100,000 in your plant. We will give you $100,000 stock in our concern, and a $50,000 check on top of it.”
Bill had had visions of bankruptcy, and his wife wants a new automobile, and his children want to go to college. He is mad, but he reaches over and says: “Make out your papers,” and he makes his deed, and gets his $100,000 in stock, and he sticks that check for $50,000 into his pocket and walks around town, with a stoop in his shoulders and a scowl on his face, but there is a smile lurking around the corner of his eye. He banks that check, and in a week's time Bill is beginning to smile again, and in a month's time he is driving out with his family. The world looks good to him. He votes with the Democrats for a while against the trusts, but he is softening. At the end of the quarter Bill gets a ten per cent dividend on that $100,000 stock, and he sticks that $10,000 into his pocket and he steps about three feet at every step now. He is still mad but he will vote the Democratic ticket, provided the fellow on the ticket is a good man.
Another quarter rolls around and another $10,000 check comes in. Well, sir, there ain't hardly room on the sidewalk for Bill. His thumbs have found the armholes of his vest. “I am a Democrat, but I tell you this Democratic party is getting mighty silly, putting out a heap of fool-fangled notions. Better let the business men run it. I will vote the Democratic ticket, but I am getting mighty tired of them calling on me to vote for the kind of men I have been voting for, and I am not going to do it any more.”
Another quarter rolls around and then at the end of the year they send Bill a stock dividend of twenty-five per cent. He says, “I am getting tired of this whole business anyhow. I have long thought those Democrats had too
many fool things in their heads. I believe I will vote for Taft this fall.” Just as soon as the Republicans hear tell of that, they elect him chairman and at that instant they become respectable.
Oh! my countrymen! this is no fancy picture. It is the everlasting truth of history as it has been written in the United States for the past twenty years and is being written to-day. It is the history of the United States as it must needs be written and always will be written as long as the doctrine prevails that the power rests in the Government to levy taxation for any purpose other than the administration of the Government. You may take every other plank out of the Democratic platform, but I will not submit to putting power into the hands of anybody to tax me poor and to tax you rich.
COMBINATIONS DO NOT PRODUCE CHEAPLYGovernor AYCOCK went further and demonstrated that the tariff “corrupts the entire body politic” and is “a moral issue.” Once enjoying the benefit of this subsidy the beneficiaries contribute to campaign funds to keep or put in power the men who will continue to vote them largesses and defeat those who believe that taxation can be levied only for public purposes. He denied that combinations would produce more cheaply or sell their products at a lower price to the consumer.
PROVED HIS CONTENTIONAnswering the contention that such claim was well founded, Governor AYCOCK said:
But fortunately at this juncture, Mr. Brandeis, of Boston, in his evidence before the Interstate Commerce Committee of the Senate has demonstrated beyond all peradventure that at this very point the trust fails instead of succeeds. The highest efficiency of production and the greatest economy attainable are to be found not in gigantic plants, but in the reasonably small ones. Efficiency
is due to the cooperation of every man engaged in the production, and this cooperation is largely dependent upon the esprit de corps which is developed, so that each worker in his department is necessary to every worker in every other department, and when the heads of these departments are in direct contact with all the men, and when each man feels that the business is his own. When the business grows beyond this point and the men become units instead of individuals and are counted by numbers instead of names, inefficiency creeps in and expenses increase in the various departments. The only way to secure the highest efficiency and the greatest economy is by a large number of plants under separate and independent conduct, each one striving to the utmost limit with the power of every individual in its employment to outdo the others.
TRUSTS MUST BE DESTROYEDGovernor Aycock ended a powerful discussion on trusts by saying:
So I conclude on this subject that the trusts are not to be regulated, but destroyed and supplanted by the old-time organization, willing to fight, to work, to struggle, to invent, to discuss and initiate, willing and able to compete and actually competing for the business of the world, asking no favor, paying for no special privilege, and eternally opposed to conferring special benefits upon others.
That is an eternally true statement of sound doctrine. If it had controlled governmental action in the years behind us, the spectacle of trust-created multimillionaires and hosts of unemployed could never menace the American system in our country.
RARE PERSONAL CHARMNo man deserves a place here with America's immortals because of personal qualities. He must have rendered some service to mankind to be regarded as eligible. But if sincerity and simplicity
and beautiful character and garnering the love of a great State could entitle any man to this distinction, then North Carolina would feel justified in saying that it had selected Governor AYCOCK for the niche assigned to it, because he was the best loved man it had produced since the statue of Governor Zebulon Baird Vance was unveiled in this hall. It is not alone because of official station that the State chose its illustrious war governor and equally illustrious educational governor as the two sons who most fittingly represent the spirit and character and flavor of its people. As the man is always superior to his song or speech or invention or achievement so are Vance and AYCOCK greater than their public contributions. In the whole history of the State, which has been fruitful of men who attained eminence, Vance and AYCOCK by common consent are most representative of the people from whom they sprang and who delighted to honor them. It is a distinction worthy to be coveted for a man to be called to high office by his people because they trust him and value his ability.
WON LOVE OF HIS PEOPLEIt is a greater and a rarer honor when to their esteem and confidence they add their personal attachment and love. Love is something which neither wisdom nor learning can command. It comes only from a sympathetic understanding and common aspiration. The leader who wins the hearts of a people must have a heart that beats in unison with theirs. The people have rare discernment. They are never deceived into giving their affections to a man unless his whole aim is to serve
the common good. They often give their votes to men who have capacity for public service without personal affection for the people whom they serve, but they do not give their affection to those who flatter them or seek to please as a means to their own ends. Rather they pass over such men and love those who are frank, sincere, genuine, and put service above ambition. Having this thought in mind, speaking at the University of North Carolina, Hon. Charles W. Tillett, sr., of Charlotte (N. C.), gave this just appraisement of Governor AYCOCK:
I appeal to you, sir, the president of this great university, to emblazon somewhere upon the walls of these buildings in letters of gold, set in a frame of silver—
“The public life of CHARLES B. AYCOCK teaches that a man may have an abiding mastery over the affections of the people without sacrificing either self-respect or principle.”
A GREAT LAWYERIf you were to ask the average North Carolinian why AYCOCK was chosen from the list of North Carolina's ablest leaders, the answer would not be because he was the greatest lawyer, though in the practice of the law and in its mastery he stood equal to the best in his generation. People do not erect monuments to men because they are learned in the law unless all that they know is brought under requisition for the benefit of mankind.
“Where have you been keeping that wonderful lawyer and orator?” Chief Justice White asked a North Carolina friend upon the occasion of Governor AYCOCK'S appearance in an important case before the Supreme Court of the United States.
“In all my experience on the court I have heard no lawyer present his case more lucidly and effectively and delightfully. He has the faculty of presenting his contentions so convincingly that his proposition is stated as if it were the necessary conclusion. His style and logic prove his superior quality and charm as an orator and as a lawyer.”
A like tribute came from Justice Harlan: “You have a wonderful man in Governor AYCOCK,” he said. “My dissenting opinion in the case he argued was based almost entirely upon AYCOCK'S argument.”
Many like tributes from members of the North Carolina judiciary and bar could be quoted to show his high rank as a lawyer and his primacy as an advocate. Judge Henry Groves Connor, of the State Supreme Court and the United States District Court, who had known AYCOCK from his boyhood, and was intimately associated with him, concluded a perfect tribute by writing:
Both by precept and example he taught and practiced, illustrated and emphasized the truth that the administration of justice is the highest duty as well as the highest privilege of man. The law, to him, was a jealous mistress, demanding his best powers and most reverent service. In our active practice, in all its departments, for more than a quarter of a century, no man thought or suggested that he had perverted justice, made falsehood to triumph, truth to be sacrificed, or used his privileges to minister in the courts for other than honest and honorable means.
Learned in the law, he was always at his best in the contests in the courthouse. His partner, Judge Frank Arthur Daniels, gives this graphic picture of his conduct of cases in which he appeared and which gave him leadership at the bar:
It was one of the great experiences of a lifetime, not to been forgotten, to have seen him at his best for the defendant in a capital case, contesting every inch, watching every development, resisting the introduction of damaging testimony, protecting his client from every aspersion and, when the case went to the jury, rising to the height of the occasion, dissecting every portion of the testimony, laying bare every motive of the prosecution and witnesses, exposing every fallacy and every falsehood, tearing away every mask of hypocrisy with the power of reason, ridicule, satire, and invective; constructing upon the evidence an impregnable defense, fortifying it with every argument, calling to his aid every resource known to ingenuity and sustaining it with overpowering eloquence until the prisoner was acquitted amid the plaudits of the spectators and the approval of the court.
NO TIME TO MAKE MONEYGovernor AYCOCK is not of the elect in this presence because he was a leader in the business world, for his life was so consecrated to securing opportunities for the child and the average man, that like Agassiz, he “did not have time to make money.” In fact, money meant nothing to him. As governor he gave stimulus to business and industrial development. While he was building a schoolhouse every day, factories were springing up and being enlarged, business was expanding, sound banking was enlarging and, as he once put it, “The State had an outburst of industry” which had waited upon the peace and good government ushered in with his administration as governor.
HIS MATCHLESS ELOQUENCEThis statue has not been unveiled here because of his matchless eloquence, though doubtless without that gift of God he could not have reached the hearts and mobilized the people to the giant tasks
which they achieved, overcoming obstacles hitherto deemed insurmountable. Eloquence Governor AYCOCK possessed in a superlative degree. It was inborn. As a boy in school, when he was to recite, the children and teachers from adjoining rooms would crowd into the chapel to hear him declaim some great oration he had committed to memory and into which he imparted a meaning which the orator who delivered it would have coveted. When, later, in debating societies he wrote his own speeches there was something indefinable in manner and delivery that gave them a charm which none could resist. It was not that he had the lute voice of Bryan at Chicago or the majesty of Webster in the Senate or the grace of Prentiss. He had none of these gifts. Neither graceful nor musical nor majestic, his oratory had a flavor all his own. He never spoke without full preparation. He often wrote his addresses, and always chose his words with care. He was deeply read and his mind was stored with the best that great men had written. He had style of a timbre all his own, that indefinable quality which clothes thought with the right words, so put together as to please, instruct, and convince. What is eloquence? Governor AYCOCK thus defined it:
Eloquence is simply the response of the common-sense or general mind, to that which the speaker is saying. Slumbering in the minds of men is a sense of right and justice, and the man who can interpret the feeling and give it expression is the eloquent man, and this is why he can so mightily move men.
This definition leaves out the divine spark which enables the orator to play on the hearts of men and
often to win them over against their will. It is a definition born of the modesty of the orator, who gave to his auditors more of the credit for the oration than they deserved. This was in keeping with an opinion he voiced frequently in his educational speeches. In one of them he said:
No man can speak to a people who can not hear, no musician can play for those whose ears are not attuned to harmony, and no man can paint for those whose eyes are not trained to see the beauty which he produces. There must be an appreciative audience before any man can do his best.
EDUCATION A BY-PRODUCT OF EQUALITYThey called AYCOCK “the educational governor.” He was that but he was more than that. I make bold to say that his advocacy of universal education was born of a principle deeper and broader than the learning of what is contained in books. It is true to say that his advocacy of education and public schools was a by-product of an underlying faith which embraced the very foundations that must exist in democracy.
ALL MEN EQUALThat conviction was that he profoundly thought all men are created equal and have the inherent right to stand upon equality with all other men. He held every man to be entitled to every right and opportunity that was enjoyed by the other sons of men and that caste or class or privilege was subversive of the spirit of American life and its institutions. He was a democrat in heart, in manner, in life. No artificial barrier shut him out from his fellows and he believed civilization's greatest evil
was denial of the doctrine Jefferson incorporated in his declaration and in his first inaugural. He wanted no door open to him that could be slammed in the face of others. Such injustice aroused his life-long hostility. He insisted upon the right to enjoy every advantage that came to other men, and that what came to him of education and opportunity must be open alike to every other man.
DEEPLY RELIGIOUSThis faith was to him religion, for he believed in the Christ who was no respecter of persons. He was deeply religious; the Bible was his daily companion; he knew it thoroughly and drew upon it for his most forceful illustrations. His college mate and law partner, Judge Robert W. Winston, compresses the faith that was the mud-sill upon which AYCOCK built his life, saying:
AYCOCK'S faith in God was sublime. He had no more doubt of the divinity of Jesus Christ than he had of his own existence. He once said that the best thing about the Christian religion to him was that your sins were not only forgiven, but blotted out.
DOMINANT FORCE IN HIS LIFEIt was this faith that inspired life-long devotion to the doctrine of equality which was the dominant force of his private and public career. It is a doctrine nearest divine of any human creed. Faith in God must inspire the highest faith in man and consecration to his well being. Herein was the secret spring of Governor AYCOCK'S hatred of all inequality, the espousal of equal opportunity, and the love of his fellow man.
Why did Governor AYCOCK'S heart flame with the passion of universal education? As a boy he saw youths of good mind grow to manhood without a chance even to learn the three Rs. He saw men and women of rare qualities who had to make their mark in legal papers because there were no public schools when they were growing up. These injustices and inequalities all about him, in his own neighborhood and near him, made him highly resolve that he would consecrate his life to see that every child in the State of every race should have equal opportunity for education with all other children. Equality for all was his master passion. He closed his last written address with this declaration of his optimism and his philosophy:
We stand a-tiptoe on the misty mountain height and see the morning sun make purple the glories of the east. We are entering upon a new day, the day of equality, of opportunity, the hour when every man shall be free to work mightily for himself until his soul, filled to satisfaction, shall overflow with a common benefit to mankind, owing no tribute to anyone and bound only to love his fellow man and serve his God as to him may seem best.
“May these things be!”Sighing she spoke;“I fear they will not,Dear, but let us type them nowIn our own lives,And this proud watchword rest,Of equal.”Equal! That is the word! On that word I plant myself and my party—the equal right of every child born on earth to have the opportunity “to burgeon out all that there is within him!”
ADDRESS BY GOVERNOR GARDNER
In Westminster Abbey there is a tablet to the memory of a great son of Britain which bears only two words, “Loved, served.” These two words, with great appropriateness, could be carved on this statue of AYCOCK.
In the undelivered speech of CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK, announcing his candidacy for the United States Senate, there is a sentence which seeks a self-appraisal that will be universally accepted by the public and will relieve contemporary North Carolinians of all embarrassment in the invidious task of selecting him for this great national honor.
Mr. AYCOCK had set a date for his formal announcement of his candidacy for the Senate, but meanwhile had been called to Birmingham to address the National Education Association. There standing before the teachers of his country and glorifying their cause, he fell dead on the platform with “education” as his last audible word. There was a predestined fitness in his death as there had been in that life, for despite his rearing in the sweltering domain of politics he wrought his immortality in his ministry to the child.
In that unuttered address Governor AYCOCK wrote of himself: “For I am a plain and simple man who loves his friends and has never been hated enough by any man to make him hate again in return.” You see in a moment why North Carolina's devotion perseveres after an interim of thirty years between his public service in office and this good day. “A plain and simple man who loved
his friends” and never allowed the hate of an enemy to change the direction of his duty. What a sublime philosophy of life.
Most of our great public men have been victimized by both their enemies and their friends. If friends have not disproportioned our heroes utterly by praise, enemies have deformed them by calumny. To see only the faults or to see no faults at all has been the tragic limitation of this great democracy of ours. And then finally comes a day when this great whirling chaos turns to order, justifies itself and the faith of all its dreamers, canonizes a man like CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK, and in one voice demands that he be placed in the Valhalla of the Nation.
I do not anticipate any development in our national life which can alter the verdict of our times. Choosing for Statuary Hall a second North Carolinian to embody in bronze the spirit of our people and the genius of our institutions could have been both an audacious and an impudent performance. It has a finality about it that is subject to all the discounts of history. But I dare say that if there ever comes a time when North Carolinians repudiate the decision of our own day, the Commonwealth itself will have degenerated so that it will be interested in no great past, without which interest there can be no great future.
Two of our greatest sons have been honored by other States. Andrew Jackson is presented by Tennessee and Thomas Hart Benton by Missouri. They pioneered in the westward sweep of the empire, leaving behind an equally mighty array of figures to pioneer in the spirit of democracy—William Richardson Davie,
the “father of the university,” governor, diplomat, Senator; Nathaniel Macon, fundamental democrat and prince of the parliamentarians as Speaker of the National House of Representatives; James Knox Polk, President of the United States, who added the vast empires of Texas and California to the great Republic; Archibald D. Murphy, deep scholar and constructive planner of North Carolina's development; Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, defender of the Constitution, and glorified exponent of the right of mankind to be redeemed by their own crafts; Thomas Ruffin and Richmond Pearson who made their own bar and bench known throughout the country; Walter Hines Page, editor, scholar, social and educational reformer, internationally famous ambassador to the Court of St. James; not to mention Willie P. Mangum, William Gaston, William A. Graham, John Motley Morehead, James Johnston Pettigrew, and a hundred others of a great line. What a galaxy of stars from which to find our contribution to the Nation.
North Carolina's choice has fallen upon men close to our own time—Vance and AYCOCK—men whose personality and traits are still familiar to many now living. Neither won the highest prizes of public office in the Nation—Presidency, Vice Presidency, or Cabinet officer. But each loved his way into this national eminence and won his place on their universal recognition as typical products of North Carolina at its best.
Yet all of us recognize that this distinction, admirable and enviable as it may be, is of itself not sufficient to warrant inclusion in the national
pantheon. We must look for that elusive, almost indefinable, quality which the world calls greatness. The term is loosely used and bestowed often where it does not belong. These men were North Carolina politicians, and in the world-wide debunking it has become a fashion to make politics a byword and a hissing. Neither Vance nor AYCOCK regarded himself better or worse than his fellows, and they in turn knew that the difference between these statesmen and themselves was their unwillingness to flatter, to cringe, to crawl, to time-serve, to gain power and applause by pandering to the mistakes, the prejudices, and the passions of the uniformed multitude.
In a régime beginning in the fury of a “white-supremacy” campaign, who will ever forget AYCOCK, standing in the State convention and called to account by the critics of his administration? Yet he stood there before a mighty throng of his own people and told them that a Commonwealth could be neither great nor good at heart if it supported that monstrous doctrine that ignorance can be a cure for anything. Standing before his great mind there was not merely the white child, there was the child race to be taught. And never since that day, twenty-eight years ago, has universal education been seriously challenged or interrupted in North Carolina. He never lost his partisan fervor; he never abated a jot or tittle his love for the democracy whose virtues he extrolled with incomparable eloquence. Yet he won the respect, the admiration, the love of his political opponents.
North Carolina gratefully presents him to the whole people to-day as a North Carolina product
unchanged or unspoiled by exotic growth. He was a “tar heel” to the toes. Other public men in our State have had a broader but not a deeper culture. His Shakespeare, his Tennyson, and his Bible gave him a style that fascinated any audience anywhere in the country. New York cheered him and Boston marveled at the rhythmic oratory of a countryman who did his utmost to be unadorned in speech or dress. But it was his love that made him eloquent, and Boston warmed to him with the fervor of Black Swamp in Wayne County.
Had CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK reached the United States Senate he never would have regarded himself a United States Senator, but rather an ambassador from the country of North Carolina to the court of Washington. Yet his colleagues never would have called him a provincialist, for none knew better than he that North Carolina was in the world and of it. His was a love that began at Jerusalem, spread to Samaria, and then to the uttermost parts of the earth. He conceived his first duty as a citizen to set himself aright. He sought first the “kingdom and its righteousness,” and the Nation had been added unto him.
This explains how to-day it comes that we are gathered in the sanctuary of statesmanship to unveil this monument to him. Geographical theaters do not restrict him, public office does not remind us constantly of him. Shakespeare makes one of his characters exclaim, “So shines a good deed in a naughty world,” but in CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK we behold the good deed shining in a society organized to radiate his influence and power throughout the Nation.
North Carolina lovingly presents him to the country as a leader of men, who, in his small territory, was too great to praise prejudice as patriotism, to call ignorance wisdom, or to make flattery the test of real friendship for his people. He saw his beloved State struggling up out of “poverty and ignorance and long repression into knowledge and general power.” Some of us gave startling statistics on the lowliness of our position, others lamented our grinding poverty, still others bemoaned the depths of our illiteracy. But CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK rose to dispel them. He could tell his people that they were poor without patronizing them, that they were illiterate without deriding them, that they were lazy without abusing them. Others coming after him have reaped where he sowed, and have sowed in soil made fertile by his life.
It was the great Pasteur who defined democracy as “that order in the State which enables every man or woman to put forth his or her utmost effort.” Such was the passion of AYCOCK that 3,000,000 of his North Carolina people to-day have a larger and a richer life because he was democracy personified, democracy in action.
North Carolina joyfully presents him to his country, not as the expounder of a form of government, but as the product and fruit of its spirit. We acclaim him in North Carolina, white and black, and love him because he first loved us.
The sculptor, Charles Keck, of New York City, was presented and received an ovation from the audience.
ADDRESS BY REPRESENTATIVE WARRENSurveying a brilliant field of stars of the first magnitude, appraising those who had best served her and the Nation throughout her long and great and honorable history, North Carolina, with an unanimity of opinion, brings here to-day as the companion of the immortal Vance the well-carved image of one whose title is the most deserving, whose fame is the most secure, and whose right to stand in the Nation's pantheon will never cause the justness of the award to be challenged.
Here amongst the memorials of her good and great—of her best and highest—our State presents the likeness of one whose works and deeds have made him worthy to bear witness to all time of what our country holds to be highest and noblest in her citizens and her servants, and provides for its citizens in him a lasting sense of individual inspiration and of national life.
While this statue may speak of the past, it also has a greater meaning to the present and future. Valuable as was his contribution to his day and generation, it will prove incomparably more valuable on down through the ages, and beyond the calculable values of his life and works, there is also an infinite inspiration like a spring of water never ceasing, of which everyone who pauses here in all the time to come may drink, and for the drinking will be the better in every aspect of life.
When CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK heard the cry of his people and saw the perils of his government, he threw the whole weight of his great mentality,
his indomitable spirit, and his majestic courage into the struggle. By the sheer power of his personality, by the force and eloquence of his logic, by the all-pervading sincerity and sweetness and simplicity of his soul—speaking a language all could understand—he led a revolution that gave his people a rebirth, and laid securely the foundation of the new order that has carried the State to the highest peaks of her sisterhood in the Nation.
In a time more distressful than the present, and out of disaster more dark than any that now threatens or may ever threaten us, there arose his great figure in the Commonwealth of North Carolina; a figure of the infinite riches of the spiritual values in a time of poverty; a figure of faith in a time of despair; a figure of courage in a time of fear; and in that figure the Commonwealth found the symbol of her will, the deliverer of her rights, and the vindicator of her ideals. He was born of the travail of her soul—of the travail of the War between the States, and the travail of her struggle for the preservation of her institutions, and it may reverently be said of North Carolina that in him she saw of the travail of her soul, and was satisfied.
The distinction of CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK is twofold. He gave to North Carolina the leadership which brought with it the right of those fitted by the centuries with the capacity to govern and to determine the destiny of the State, and at the same time to execute judgment in righteousness in regard to a numerous people whose activity in political matters stood in the way of that destiny. He gave to North Carolina also the leadership
which established popular education as the foremost interest of his Commonwealth and brought to every boy and girl in the State the privilege and opportunity of a great system of public schools.
This statue will long abide, but his fame will outlast the bronze, and the impression of his deeds will survive so long as civilization itself shall be the goal of human endeavor.
Mr. Chairman, with the pride of his Commonwealth, and the gratitude of his country, I accept in behalf of the United States this statue of North Carolina's noble son, CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK.
“America” was played by the United States Marine Band.
BENEDICTIONRev. Ze̤Barney T. Phillips, D. D., Chaplain of the United States Senate, pronounced the benediction:
The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you; the Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon you and give you peace, both now and forevermore. Amen.
ACCEPTANCE of the STATUE
BY THE HOUSE, APRIL 28, 1932
BY THE SENATE, APRIL 29, 1932
PROCEEDINGS IN THE HOUSE
THURSDAY, April 28, 1932.
Mr. WARREN. Mr. Speaker, I offer a concurrent resolution and ask unanimous consent for its immediate consideration. I might state in explanation before the resolution is reported that it was placed in my hands this afternoon, and after conferring with the officers of the House I am advised that it is necessary to pass this resolution immediately on account of the short time intervening between now and the purposes of the resolution.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from North Carolina offers a concurrent resolution, which the Clerk will report.
The Clerk read (H. Con. Res. 29) as follows:
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That the statue of CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK, presented by the State of North Carolina to be placed in Statuary Hall, is hereby accepted in the name of the United States, and that the thanks of Congress be tendered to the State of North Carolina for the contribution of the statue of one of its most eminent citizens, illustrious for the high purpose of his life and his distinguished services to the State and Nation.
Second. That a copy of these resolutions, suitably engrossed and duly authenticated, be transmitted to the Governor of the State of North Carolina.
The resolution was agreed to.
SATURDAY, April 30, 1932.
A message from the Senate, by Mr. Craven, its principal clerk, announced that the Senate had passed without amendment House concurrent resolution No. 29 providing for the acceptance of the statue of CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK, to be placed in Statuary Hall.
FRIDAY, May 20, 1932.
Mr. WARREN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a brief statement. I am requested by the Governor of North Carolina and the Aycock Statue Commission to invite the Members of the House to attend the exercises this afternoon in Statuary Hall at three o'clock, when North Carolina will present to the United States a statue of former Governor CHARLES B. AYCOCK.
PROCEEDINGS IN THE SENATEFRIDAY, April 29, 1932.
A message from the House of Representatives, by Mr. Chaffee, one of its clerks, announced that the House had agreed to a concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 29) providing for the acceptance of the statue of CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK, to be placed in Statuary Hall, in which it requested the concurrence of the Senate.
Mr. MORRISON. Mr. President, I ask the Chair to lay before the Senate the concurrent resolution just received from the House of Representatives, and that it be favorably acted upon.
The VICE PRESIDENT. The Chair lays before the Senate a concurrent resolution from the House of Representatives, which will be read.
The concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 29) was read, considered, and agreed to, as follows:
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That the statue of CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK, presented by the State of North Carolina to be placed in Statuary Hall, hereby accepted in the name of the United States, and that the thanks of Congress be tendered to the State of North Carolina for the contribution of the statue of one of its most eminent citizens, illustrious for the high purpose of his life and disdistinguished services to the State and Nation.
Second. That a copy of these resolutions, suitably engrossed and duly authenticated, be transmitted to the Governor of the State of North Carolina.
