THE UNIVERSITY--ITS EARLY HISTORY--ITS CONTINUED GROWTH--THE ARDOR OF THE YOUNG MEN--APPLICATION FOR RELIEF FROM CONSCRIPTION--GOVERNOR SWAIN TO PRESIDENT DAVIS--ANOTHER DRAFT ON THE BOYS--A DOZEN BOYS IN COLLEGE WHEN SHERMAN COMES; AND THE BELLS RING ON--"COMMENCEMENT" IN 1865--ONE GRADUATE--HE PRONOUNCES THE VALEDICTORY--CONCLUSION. As to the State University, perhaps more than a mere reference to its condition at the close of the war may not unjustly form part of a contribution to our State history, since its influence and reputation have been second to those of no similar institution in the country, and its benefits have been widely diffused through every State of the Confederacy. Its Revolutionary history is not uninteresting in this connection. At the very time when all our State interests lay prostrate and exhausted from the Revolutionary struggle, the very time when a superficial observer would have thought it enough for the people to get bread to eat and clothes to wear, our far-seeing patriots, who knew well that without education no state can become great, and that the weaker we were physically the more need there was for intellectual force and power to enable us to maintain our stand among the nations--these wise men projected and laid the foundations of a State literary institution, which, uncontrolled and uncontaminated by party politics or religious bigotries, should be an honor and a benefit to the commonwealth through all future generations. General Davie may be said to have been the father of the University, though every man of distinction in the State at that time manifested a deep and cordial interest in its establishment.