velous. Before the end of the year there were one new building and ninety-three students. At the end of the second session the enrollment was 120 and during the summer the new building was enlarged to 91 x 38 and to four stories, including the basement. In 1885 Dr. Price visited the Pacific Coast in the interest of Livingstone and succeeded in raising nearly $9,000 which with $5,000 pledged by William E. Dodge 2 and from other sources he created a fund of $25,000 with which the Dodge and Hopkins Halls were erected. These donors whom Dr. Price brought to the aid of Livingstone, Collis P. Huntingdon, William E. Dodge and Leland Stanford were among the greatest philanthropists of the nineteenth century. They were no less swayed by the eloquence of Dr. Price than they were by their confidence and belief in him as a man.

Like most born leaders Mr. Price was tall and majestic, possessing a physique and personality noticeable in any gathering.

His friend, John C. Dancy, in describing his oratory says: "He was logical and argumentative, and never lost sight of these in his grandest flights. Simplicity of statement marked every utterance, and like Wendell Phillips, in order to judge him, you had to hear rather than to read him. To a most resonant and musical voice he added a personal charm and dignity which made him a general favorite and at home in any presence. Whether speaking for Mr. Beecher at Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, or Mr. Spurgeon in London, or before the most aristocratic classes in Boston, or in the Nineteenth Century Club in New York, he was always, and in every place the same strong and forceful personality who won esteem, admiration and regard by his forcible, earnest and sincere expression of his honest convictions in a manly, dignified and winsome way."

A few instances of the electrical effect which the oratory of Mr. Price produced may give some slight idea to those who never 2 Mr. Price's benefactor at Lincoln.

witnessed an exhibition of his wonderful power before an audience.

"It was in 1881 when only twenty-seven years old," says Bishop J. W. Hood, "Dr. Price began to be known-first by his speeches in North Carolina under the prohibition campaign, and no speaker made a better impression. White ladies who had never listened to a Negro orator before, were so pleased that they lavished bouquets of flowers upon him, and the best men of the State were proud to occupy the same platform with him.”

The same prelate says, "When he made his first great speech before a white audience in Raleigh in 1881 a man present, who hardly would have put himself to the trouble of going to hear a Negro speak, said, 'After several of the distinguished orators of the State had spoken before this convention composed largely of the best men and women of the Old North State, there were several calls from all parts of the house for "Price, Price! Price!" You may imagine my surprise as the speaker stepped on the platform to find a great big black Negro with very white teeth. "Now Webster will catch it," this gentleman said, "and as for the ladies what will become of them?" I was almost beside myself with fear that something uncouth or unbecoming would be heard.' His suspense, however, was of very short duration, for the speaker had not uttered half-a-dozen sentences before the fear. . . had given place to astonishment. The black speaker was delivering in the best of English one of the most eloquent discourses to which it had ever been his privilege to listen.'

As to his impress on the Ecumenical Conference of 1881 the bishop in his eulogy says: "In a five-minute speech he secured that attention of the world for which he was called 'the world's orator.' The wonder to people was that, while he was a stranger to nearly all the delegates, the audience seemed to know him. A few days previous he had captured an audience of two thousand people at the town of Hastings, and possibly a hundred of those who had heard him there had come to London hoping to hear

him again. They were scattered about in the galleries and hence when he arose there were calls for 'Price' from all parts of the house. When his clear voice rang out over that vast assembly in most polished English he was heard in all the committee rooms, and committees breaking off from their work stopped and asked each other, 'who is it that is creating such extraordinary enthusiasm'? The committee rooms were soon deserted; he set the conference wild with pleasing emotions. He was the favorite of the audience and the sound of his voice was the signal for the wildest enthusiasm, no matter how dull the session before he began to speak. At a grand reception given in Bristol to the delegates from abroad on the eve of their departure, Price was kept for the last speaker so as to hold the audience. Bishops Peck and Walden of the M. E. Church were among the speakers and it was ten o'clock when Price arose. You would have thought that the roof was coming off the house. Those who had started out turned back, and when he stopped they cried go on though it was nearly eleven o'clock."

His death October 25, 1893, in his fortieth year, was universally mourned. He left a widow and four small children bereft of his fatherly care. Untimely as his death, his life nevertheless was a complete and successful one. He had founded and established the foremost institution for the higher education of the Negro in the Southland controlled entirely by his own race. His race leadership was conceded by affirmative action more than once in church and civic bodies. He had won the good opinion of the white South during his life. At his death four of the leading white lawyers of Salisbury asked and were permitted to act as pallbearers, while the mayor and the city council were present in a body.

3

3 At Spartanburg, South Carolina, he was invited to speak before the students of a white institution. So delighted were they at his address that they voted him a gold cane, raised the money, purchased it and hurried to the train, which Mr. Price had rushed to meet, and presented it to him there.

XXIX

ROBERT BROWN ELLIOTT

ROBERT BROWN ELLIOTT as scholar, lawyer, orator and politician loomed up above all those of the Negro race whose public career began and closed in the Reconstruction Era.

He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, March 15, 1842, of West Indian parents. His educational training was begun in the schools of his native city, continued in Jamaica, where he resided with relatives, and ended in England, in which in 1853 he entered the High Holborn Academy; in 1855 he was admitted to Eton, one of the colleges of the University of London, graduating therefrom in 1858. He next began the study of law with Sergeant Fitzherbert, but shortly afterwards returned to Boston.1

During his early manhood he followed the sea, which enabled him to visit Ireland, Scotland, several of the West Indies and South America. He entered the U. S. Navy while the Civil War was in progress and during an engagement received a wound that made him slightly lame. The year 1867 finds him a resident and printer in Charleston, S. C., working on the Charleston Leader, subsequently the Missionary Record, edited by Rev. subsequently Bishop Richard H. Cain. Elliott's ability gave him such influence that his election to the Constitutional Convention authorized

1 This biographical sketch follows the conventional account found in the Congressional Directory, but is challenged as to some details. A very high authority who knew Elliott intimately says, he was born of South Carolinian, not West Indian parentage, and gives Hon. T. McCants Stewart for his authority that the extent of Elliott's legal training was a six months' close study of the South Carolina Code, on which before experienced eminent lawyers he sustained a very rigid examination, as a result of which he was admitted to the bar.

by the plan of reconstruction, easily followed. In this body the Republican Party had full sway and there were many Negro members. Among these were J. H. Rainey, R. H. Cain, Robert C. DeLarge, A. J. Ransier, and Robert Smalls, who all became members of the national House of Representatives, Francis L Cardozo, later state Treasurer and Secretary of State, W. J. Whipper, and J. J. Wright, who were elected state judges.

Elliott's appearance did not mark him as one destined to be at all prominent in the proceedings of the Convention, nor did the fact that he was silent the first fourteen days of the session, while there was oratory in abundance, but when he did take the floor his words at once challenged attention and foretold his eminence.

A measure which seemed to countenance payment to slave owners for their erstwhile slaves was up when he arrested its passage by saying among other things:

"The importance of this subject overcomes my reluctance to obtrude my feeble opinion, but as this subject has been presented here, I deem it the duty of every gentleman in this Convention to express himself candidly. . . . I am aware that it is urged that contracts made in the traffic of slaves were bona fide contracts, that Congress sanctioned them. But if Congress did sanction them it does so no longer. I contend there never was nor never can be any claim to property in man. I regard the seller of the slaves as the principal and the buyer as the accessory. A few years ago the popular verdict of the country was passed upon the slave seller and the buyer, and both were found guilty. The buyer of the slave received his sentence, and we are now here to pass sentence upon the seller. I hope we will vote unanimously to put our stamp of condemnation upon this remnant of an abominable institution which was such a stigma upon the justice of this country. I hope we will do away with everything connected with this bastard of iniquity."2

2 T. J. Minton in the A. M. E. Review.