at the battle of Murfreesboro. The two eldest sons of Dr. Wheat both fell in battle--one at Shiloh and the other in Virginia. Of the six college tutors then present but one survives. Of the crowd of trustees and distinguished North-Carolinians who surrounded that rostrum, time would fail me to tell of the prostrate hopes and darkened hearths; but in brief, I may say, that of the four hundred and thirty young men then listening with intense eagerness and prolonged applause to words of wisdom and affection from their chief magistrate, more than a fifth, in less than five years, fell in fratricidal strife on every battle-field from Pennsylvania to Texas. Could the curtain that in mercy vailed the future, have been that day withdrawn, what would have been the emotions of the audience? Could they have seen one hundred of those four hundred and thirty gay and gallant boys lying in all the ghastly and bloody forms of death on the battle-field; a like proportion with amputated limbs, or permanently impaired constitutions; and all, with few exceptions, seamed with honorable scars, would they not have recoiled horror-stricken from such a revelation of war as it really is? What would have been the effect on that veteran statesman could he have seen all this--seen his friend and associate in the councils of the nation an exile, wandering in foreign lands, and all the wide-spread havoc, ruin, and woe of a four years' merciless war darkly curtaining the broad and smiling land? In the providence of God he was childless. How many fathers of that goodly throng have gone down to the grave sorrowing--for sorrow slays as well as the sword; how many mothers, sisters, and wives refuse to be comforted, and long for the grave, and are glad when they find it! I have selected the catalogue of 1859-60 referred to in the letter from Governor Swain to President Davis, as best calculated to show the results of the fearful change produced among us in the brief interval preceding the civil war. The Senior class of 1860 consisted of eighty-four members. The subjoined table will show that every one of these able to bear arms, with perhaps a single exception, entered the service, and that _more than a fourth_ of the entire number now fill soldiers' graves. The proportion of the wounded to the killed is ordinarily estimated as not smaller than three to one; and judging by this rule, it appears and is believed to be the fact, that very few of the whole class remained unscathed. Of the younger classes, my information is not sufficiently complete to justify the giving a list; but enough is ascertained to make it certain that the sacrifice of life among them was in very nearly the same proportion as among the Seniors. As a matter of undying interest to the people of my own State, and significant enough to those of others, I present this record of the sons of her University.