"The village of Chapel Hill owes its existence to the University, and is of course materially affected by the prosperity or decline of the institution. The young men of the village responded to the call of the country with the same alacrity which characterized the college classes; and fifteen of them--a larger proportion than is exhibited in any other town or village in the State--have already fallen in battle. The departed are more numerous than the survivors; and the melancholy fact is prominent with respect to both the village and the University, that the most promising young men have been the earliest victims. "Without entering into further details, permit me to assure you, as the result of extensive and careful observation and inquiry, that I know of no similar institution or community in the Confederacy that has rendered greater services or endured greater losses and privations than the University of North-Carolina, and the village of Chapel Hill. "The number of students at present here is sixty-three; of whom fifty-five are from North-Carolina, four from Virginia, two from South-Carolina, and one from Alabama; nine Seniors, thirteen Juniors, fourteen Sophomores, and twenty-seven Freshmen. "A rigid enforcement of the Conscription Act may take from us nine or ten young men with physical constitutions in general better suited to the quiet pursuits of literature and science than to military service. They can make no appreciable addition to the strength of the army; but their withdrawal may very seriously affect our organization, and in its ultimate effects compel us to close the doors of the oldest University at present accessible to the students of the Confederacy. "It can scarcely be necessary to intimate that with a slender endowment and a diminution of more than twenty thousand dollars in the annual receipts for tuition, it is at present very difficult and may soon be impossible to sustain the institution. The exemption of professors from the operation of the Conscript Act is a sufficient indication that the annihilation of the best established colleges in the country was not the purpose of Our Congress; and I can but hope with the eminent gentlemen who have made me their organ on this occasion, that it will never be permitted to produce effects which I am satisfied no one would more deeply deplore than yourself. "I have the honor to be, with the highest consideration, your obedient servant, D.L. Swain." The result of this application was that orders were issued from the Conscript Office to grant the exemption requested. President Davis is reported to have said in the beginning of the war in reference to the drafting of college boys, that it should not be done; "that the _seed-corn_ must not be ground up."