But, since reaching New York, and while reading the proof-sheets of this volume, I have received additional facts from the highest authority; and, as the case has become so celebrated, there is now no reason why I should withhold any of them. In the year 1859, one year after my election to the presidency of Cumberland College, I one day made a very long horseback-ride in order to reach the residence and spend the night with the Hon. Francis M. Bristow, at Elkton, Todd County, Kentucky. Mr. Bristow was at the time serving his second term as a member of Congress from the third district. I was anxious to see him, from the fact that, in accordance with instructions from the maker of the above-named will, the executor had employed him and his son, a young lawyer who had recently opened an office in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, to defend the will in a suit that had already been instituted in the Circuit Court. I did not find the distinguished Congressman at home, but was so fortunate as to meet and spend the night with his son. I have called several times, since reaching the city, upon the "junior counsel for the will," now the Hon. Benjamin H. Bristow, late Secretary of the United States Treasury, Washington, D.C. The maker of the will was Mr. Lycurgus B. Leavell, of Trenton, Todd County, Kentucky. General Bristow informs me that the case was tried before Hon. Thomas E. Dabney, at a term of the Circuit Court, held at Elkton, Kentucky. The senior counsel for the will was Hon. Francis M. Bristow; the junior counsel, Benjamin H. Bristow and H.G. Petrie. The senior counsel for the contestants was the Hon. Gustavus Henry, the "eagle orator" of Tennessee; the junior counsel was James E. Bailey, late United States Senator for Tennessee. As the case was so very important, the jury was selected from the most prominent and honorable slaveholders in the county. Young Bristow and Bailey opened the case. It was ably contested, and of most extraordinary interest, but this is not the place to describe it. The jury were eleven for and one against sustaining the will. The war soon came on; the slaves, including several who had recently been imported from Africa in the Wanderer, were freed by the emancipation proclamation; the contest was withdrawn, and the will established. The executor and his bondsmen were financially ruined by the war, and only a small part of the estate, some forty thousand dollars, reached the two surviving children to whom it was devised. One of them, a young lady, has recently graduated with distinguished honor, and the president and professors of the college speak of her in terms of the very highest praise. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 2: This was, alas! too true--and true of a very large portion of country that I have visited, where the great majority of the preachers were uneducated.]