screamed with war cries on every side. The unfortunate South Carolinian, whom fate reserves to record in these pages his own disaster, was too young and unformed in character to steer his bark over such tempestuous billows, and was soon wrecked upon a treacherous reef."1

Amongst his fellow students from the South were John Holmes Bocock and Stuart Robinson. Amongst those from the North was Henry Ward Beecher. Friendships more or less strong were formed between "Ben Palmer" and each of these men. Beecher was five years older than Palmer, and a member of a more advanced class. But the youth and the young man were naturally attracted to one another. They were alike in possessing active minds, and facile and powerful speech. They were unlike in that Beecher was the possessor of a vastly more impressive figure, was capable of more sensuous and lurid rhetoric, and could with little reason, or against reason, sweep the average audience with him, while Palmer had always to have reason on his side in order to effective speaking. Palmer, had more force with all who thought. He almost never lost command of himself, nor attempted to move without reason at the helm. His speech was more classic, more Demosthenian, more moving to the thoughtful, because in him reason was wedded to feeling and to passion. These two were drawn together also by a common love for the game of chess, a game in which it is said that Mr. Palmer excelled Mr. Beecher.

But if young Palmer formed friendships with men of the Northeast, he found frequent occasions of jars to that friendship. He heard much of the hot-headedness of his section and of his own State in particular, on account of the Nullification measure. He heard the whole South grossly abused on account of her peculiar institution of slavery. He heard the masters and mistresses of slaves vilified as inhuman semi-barbarians. He was not the youth to sit under these slanders in an apathetic, much less in an approving, way. He knew well many large slave holders. He had been a frequent inmate of their homes. He knew the relative happiness and contentment of the slaves. His father had, from the start, been as much a pastor of the slaves as of their masters. He had received more slaves into his churches than whites. More than two hundred and fifty colored members were received into one of his little country churches between 1832 and 1860. Nor was the Rev.

1

From Dr. Palmer's unpublished manuscript on Dr. Stuart Robinson.

Edward Palmer's course exceptional in regard to the slaves. White Christians generally were solicitous, in his region, for the spiritual welfare of their black people. Young Palmer soon became marked as a spokesman for the Southern cause, and was worried not a little by the assaults, in the classroom and on the campus, made upon the land of his birth and rearing. His championship probably provoked repeated assaults. His irritation, thus produced, was not without determining influence in a crisis which was to come in the history of his relations with the faculty.

Meanwhile he had been a good student, and report says that he stood first in his class, notwithstanding his extreme youth. He had completed his first year and gotten about midway of the second, when the crisis in his history as a student in Amherst came.

The Rev. Thomas A. Hoyt, D.D., has left the following account of the occasion of the passage:

"Palmer was attached to a literary society, the members of which were bound by a solemn pledge not to disclose what occurred at its meetings. One of the exercises consisted of the reading by the secretary of anonymous papers which had been deposited in a box at the door. A paper was read at one of the meetings which contained caustic but humorous criticisms of the professors. A divinity student betrayed his fellow-members by informing the Faculty. At the next meeting of the society, an order was read forbidding the exercise, whereupon Palmer, then about sixteen years of age, moved that the paper conveying the order be tabled indefinitely, alleging that the Faculty could not know of the exercises except through the treachery of one of the students, and that it was unworthy of the dignity of the professors to accept perjured testimony as evidence. The president was afraid to put the motion to vote, but two members held him in the chair while the question was put and carried. This transaction was promptly communicated by the same informer to the Faculty.

"That honorable body thereupon attempted discipline for both offenses. In order to discover the author of the obnoxious paper, their plan was to force all who could do so, to swear that they were guiltless; and thus force them by indirection to place the offense at the door of the culprit. A number of high spirited fellows were indignant that they should be thus forced into the role of informers, against their pledge, too, as members of a secret society. The sixteen-year-old Palmer was at their head and their mouthpiece. When summoned into the presence of the Faculty and requested to make his disavowal, he informed that body that he was in honor bound to take no part in

disclosing what went on in a society the members of which were each pledged to secrecy. The Faculty insisted that he must tell, declaring that they were as competent to judge of that which was compatible with honor as he was. He refused in absolute terms to comply with their demand. They threatened to expel him should he persist. 'Well, sirs,' said he, 'I will take expulsion at your hands rather than trample upon my sense of honor.' The boy here shows the father of the man,' as Dr. Stuart Robinson once remarked, when speaking of the incident. He displayed 'the high qualities of honor and courage which marked his life.' It was some little time before he could leave the town. The Faculty repenting of their severity in dealing with him on account of his youth, and perhaps, on account of the sentiments he had expressed, came to him and would have taken him back; but owing to the irritation he had suffered at the hands of the critics of his State and section and to his dislike of the spirit of the college as illustrated in the occasion of his expulsion, he was determined to leave the institution and to return to his own people. In the whole episode he had behaved like a true son of South Carolina. When one morning, on the top of a stage, he left Amherst, he had good proof that his New England fellow students were generous enough to feel and express their admiration for his course. It is said that the entire body of undergraduates assembled and gave him a great ovation, sending him off with ringing cheers.'"

He proceeded to New York, and there engaged passage for Charleston, S. C. While waiting for the sailing of his vessel an incident happened which gave him excruciating misery for about six hours and exerted a life-long influence upon him, inclining him to sympathize with all the stranded sons and daughters of men. Killing time by strolling the streets, he came upon a second-hand book store, entered and looked over the shelves. He discovered a work of value and proposed to buy it. This book store was kept by rascals. Young Palmer had but one bill of currency, a fifty-dollar note. He purchased the book and gave the note in payment, asking for the change. The recipient, leaving his partner in charge, said, "I will go out and get the change." Minutes passed, an hour dragged by; the youth approached the other partner and remarked on the length of time he had to wait for his money; he received the cruel reply that he would never see his money again, that the fellow would not come back. This was to the countrybred youth a staggering blow. He had no other money. He had not yet paid his passage. He did not know what to do. He was afraid to go out in search of a policeman and lodge

complaint, lest he himself should be charged with being an impostor. In grim desperation he resolved to stay in that store as long as it should be possible that he might confront the scoundrel upon his return. After six weary hours had passed the man cautiously ventured back to the neighborhood. Circumstances favored Mr. Palmer. While the knave was trying to discover whether the coast was clear of the purchaser, that severely tried young man caught sight of him, dashed upon him, when for very shame the shabby fellow gave up the money. To his latest day he could never recall this experience without pain. He was ever remarkably ready to respond to all appeals for help made by young men. He often suffered at the hands of the unworthy importunate. He knew it, but would say, "Twelve impostors may hoodwink me, but in the thirteenth man I may aid a person in real need. I will give the money to the thirteen that I may certainly give to him who really needs. I was once in awful straits and if my money had not been returned I had determined to go to some minister of my own church and tell my story and ask him for help. I am behaving now simply as I would have had others behave toward me."

Recovering his money and boarding his ship he reached Charleston, S. C., without other important incident. Thence he made his way to the Pocotaligo Creek and up it to the neighborhood in which his father was now living.

As already narrated Rev. Edward Palmer had in 1831 changed his field of labor from Walterboro to Stony Creek, twenty-five or thirty miles distant. He had not removed from Walterboro, however, till 1832, and perhaps not till after his son had left for Amherst. In the spring of 1834 when "Ben Palmer" was trying to reach his parents, they were living at a country plantation called Laurium, not far from the Stony Creek Church. It will be recalled that the planters whose families worshipped at this church passed their summers at McPhersonville, about seven miles off, on the sand hills and under the long-leafed pines; and that they had a "parsonage" there for their preacher's summer house. They had had a manse near Stony Creek Church for his use in the winter when the most of the planters had their families on the plantations; but the parsonage had been burned and because of the want of a manse they had rented for their pastor's use during the winter of 1833-1834, the plantation house of Laurium. This was a

rather imposing house for a minister. The original Laurium house had been of the usual plan, a two-story house, with hall and stairway midway between the two ends, a plain square room on either side of the hall in each story, and broad piazzas on north and south. The preceding owner had added a very long room on each end, the rooms being as long as the breadth of the original house and of the two piazzas, and fashioned in front in octagonal form. They were intended, one as a ballroom and the other as a supper room. The front piazza looked to the north, the back one to the south. It was warm and sunny, with orange trees on either side of the steps.

Ben Palmer had been longing for this home for weeks. Every person he most loved was there. The stern father he admired was there; his two bright and devoted sisters were there; and his younger brother; most of all, his mother, the brilliant, buoyant, pure and noble, his companion, inspiration and mentor was there. He knew that reports from Amherst had outrun him. He did not know how his family would receive him. Laurium did not have a landing on the Pocotaligo, but the boats touched at the adjoining plantation owned by a Mr. Wm. G. Martin, who was an elder or deacon in Stony Creek Church. Ben Palmer left the boat at Mr. Martin's landing, and went to his house as the hour of the little schooner's arrival was late at night. Anticipating some trouble at home, he laid his case before Mr. Martin, who went over and acquainted Mr. and Mrs. Palmer with the fact of their son's arrival at his place. He returned with the message that Benjamin was to come on home.

His welcome under the paternal roof as extended by his father was not warm. Tradition says that Mr. Palmer, having heard the side of the Faculty directly from them, had made up his mind that his son's course could not be justified; that he was greatly mortified at his dismissal from college; felt that his son had sacrificed foolishly capital advantages; and that, as he was himself without private fortune and living on a modest salary, the sacrifice was perhaps an irreparable one. He was fearfully disappointed with the outcome of sending his son, on whom he had set high hopes, to the far-off Northern college. Traditions vary as to the extent of severity which he now displayed. Some say that he forbade his son the house, telling him that he would henceforth have to shift for himself. Others says that he simply expressed plainly his own view of