Charles Brantley Aycock

Part One

YOUTH

1

ANGLO-SAXON HERITAGE

The fragmentary records of the heritage and childhood of Charles Brantley Aycock, while failing to yield a lifelike portrait, indicate many of the influences that nurtured his personality and shaped his thoughts. His immediate family, which was industrious, intelligent, economically secure, and respected in the community, offered him the advantages of affection, encouragement, and open admiration of his accomplishments. Among the Aycock children, he was the only one to attend college. His known ancestors had farmed for a living, but Aycock’s father, in addition to farming, held public office, and several of Aycock’s brothers engaged in business. Aycock emerged from childhood with a sentimental attachment for farm life, but he also had an appreciation of all types of economic activity and was without antipathy for any economic class. From his home, he derived loyalty to the Baptist church and fondness and respect for the Bible.

The experiences of his family and community during the periods of Civil War and Reconstruction supplied him with lifelong attitudes of veneration for the people of the Confederacy, distrust of the North, and distaste for the Republican party. His father was a slave holder, and although Aycock assented to the idea of abolition, he never lost his conviction that the Negro race was inferior to the white race. Early in childhood, Aycock showed an aptitude for oratory that inspired thoughts of his potential success in politics and law. Through a singular event, he was indelibly impressed with the necessity for educational facilities for all the people. From the total impact of his childhood experience, he eventually evolved a philosophy of life that accepted suffering, encouraged cheerful fortitude, sought for perfection, and required constant service to society.

No one in Aycock’s immediate family was sufficiently interested in genealogy to preserve records of the family’s lineage, but Aycock in his adult years showed strong pride in his Anglo-Saxon heritage. He admired the stability and self-discipline which he regarded as peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon. Wherever the Anglo-Saxon sets his foot he becomes a permanency, Aycock said in an address in 1901. He has conquered the earth by his love of home and has found success in curbing his own desires and passions.¹

Aycock’s ancestors through both his father, Benjamin Aycock, and his mother, Serena Hooks Aycock, came to America from England. Immigrants by the names of Aycock and Hooks entered North Carolina in the colonial period and settled in the broad, flat valley of the Neuse River.² Although the lines of descent have not been established, these immigrants have been regarded as Aycock’s direct ancestors. Benjamin Aycock’s exact lineage has been traced through only one generation. Born on March 2, 1817, Benjamin was one of eight children of James Aycock, a farmer in Wayne County, and his second wife, Charity Wilkinson Aycock.³ The known lineage of Serena Hooks extends through two generations. She was born on September 14, 1817, to Robert and Mary Bishop Hooks. Originally a Quaker, Mary Bishop was expelled from the Contentnea Meeting for her marriage to a non-Quaker. Robert Hooks, a farmer of Wayne County, was the son of Hardy and Drusilla Barden Hooks.⁴

Benjamin Aycock married Serena Hooks about 1840. They settled in a house on the fifty acres of land that Benjamin had inherited from his father in 1836. This house became their permanent home.⁵ They had ten children, two girls and eight boys: Piety Melvina Aycock, born July 22, 1842; Francis Marion Aycock, January 9, 1844; James Robert Aycock, April 16, 1845; Jesse Thomas Aycock, May 20, 1847; William Butler Aycock, April 1l, 1849; JOhn Wilkinson Aycock, November 10, 18503 Benjamin Franklin Aycock, February 11, 18533 Catherine Aycock, January 8, 18553 Bardin H. Aycock, January 16, 1857; and Charles Brantley Aycock, November 1, 1859.⁶ Charles was named in honor of the Reverend Charles Brantley, a Primitive Baptist minister for whom Benjamin and Serena felt strong affection.⁷

From his father, Charles Aycock possibly inherited a latent constitutional weakness. Benjamin died from a heart attack in 1875. He was fifty-eight years old, an age attained by none of his children with the possible exception of William who died in Florida at an unknown date. Catherine died at the age of three 3 Bardin, at twenty-one 3 Piety, at thirty-one 3 James, at thirty-six 3 Jesse, at thirty-seven 3 Francis, at forty-four 3 Charles, at fifty-two 3 John, at fifty-five3 and Benjamin F., at fifty-seven. At least four of the sons—Jesse, Francis, Charles, and Benjamin F.—died from heart attacks.⁸ In contrast, Serena Hooks Aycock displayed the endurance of her ancestors, who had extensive longevity. Serena was seventy-four when she died in 1892.

Benjamin Aycock practiced and taught his family habits of economy, thrift and industry.⁹ He was a man of great dignity, integrity, and practical wisdom, and he had a devout attachment to the Christian Religion.¹⁰ He was a man of action rather than of words, thoughtful, painstaking, and prudent.¹¹ John T. Kennedy, who knew him well for twenty-five years, wrote that Benjamin Aycock was an honest and upright farmer and a good business man. He taught all of his boys to make a living by the sweat of their brows, and that honest toil was honorable. He was … proud to be known as a farmer… ,¹²

Serena Aycock was a solemn and benign woman. Although she could not read or write, she exercised a stronger influence in the home than did her husband. Her manner was characterized by brevity of speech, gentleness, and affection. She was remarkable for her fidelity to duty and vigor of mind and body.¹³ A family friend, Jonathan Thomas Hooks, stated that Serena had full control of the farm during the eight years that Benjamin served as clerk of court of Wayne County. Her responsibilities were great, but she met them with courage, Hooks wrote. Serena "never left the farm, and handled it successfully. She was firm, never known to be in a hurry or to lose her temper, but moved steadily and thoughtfully along, and with her discipline was inflexible, yet she was always kind and accomodating [sic].… And it was to her that Charles gave the credit of being what he was."¹⁴

As a child, Charles Aycock lived through a period in which his family experienced prolonged excitement, uncertainty, and hardship. During the Civil War, three of his brothers—Francis, James, and Jesse—joined the Confederate army. His father often left home to attend sessions of the North Carolina Senate. Food was scarce, labor was hard, and pleasures were few. When the war ended, United States troops occupied North Carolina, and Benjamin Aycock’s slaves, who had numbered thirteen in 1863, departed from the farm as free people. Under the Congressional program of reconstruction, with the state government administered by scalawags, carpetbaggers, and Negroes, Benjamin Aycock retired from office-holding to the farm. Charles Aycock, as soon as he passed the stage of infancy, spent most of his time listening to the talk of his elders, working on the farm, and attending school.

Some aspects of life on the Aycock farm have been described by J. T. Hooks, who wrote, Charles Aycock lived quite a busy life as a boy, had but little time for sport; raised by parents who realized that life was real, and but little foolishness was permitted. All of the boys did manual labor, working hard to rebuild the waste that war had created. Each boy was provided with only one pair of shoes a year and their clothes were all home made by their mother. After the war, seven of the eight boys attended school together, and in the evenings, Serena had them all gather around her and after an hour or two of studying, would have them recite their lessons to her.¹⁵

As an adult, Aycock occasionally reminisced about his childhood. Once he remonstrated with one of his children who complained of the food set before her at mealtime 3 during the Civil War, Aycock said, food was so scarce that he had been happy to be served simple dishes of biscuits and peas. Aycock also remembered having played with a Negro slave named Ike. Sometimes, Aycock recalled, his mother served a single dish of peas to the two boys, and they ate peacefully until one pea remained; then they fought for possession of the last pea.¹⁶

Aycock’s formal education was not seriously obstructed by the war. One boyhood friend, Zadok Marquis de Lafayette Jeffreys, has stated that Aycock’s education began in 1862 in Peeler School House, in a wooded area about two miles from Fremont.¹⁷ The general consensus, however, is that Aycock first attended school in 1867 in the Nahunta Academy, or Old Lodge School, in Fremont.¹⁸ Founded through private subscription by members of the community, Nahunta Academy was conducted by J. B. Williams, who taught in Fremont for many years. Williams was a grave, muscular man with a closely trimmed beard. A strong disciplinarian, he lifted troublesome boys by their collars and hit their rumps solidly with a paddle made from a barrel top. Williams emphasized Latin, English, and mathematics.¹⁹ Aycock attended Nahunta Academy until 1872.

A quaint description of Aycock as a student at Nahunta Academy was written by R. Daniel Collier, a fellow pupil.

My first knowledge of Mr. Aycock, was when we were both lads I probably eleven and Mr. Aycock, twelve years old. … In all public exercises such as commencements he took the lead in his part of the exercises, as to how little Charlie Aycock, rendered his declaimations [sic] or acted in the dialogues twas a frequent comment. Oh, how manly and grand did little Charlie acquit himself. He will be an orator some day, would be the frequent expression made by some who attended on the exercises.²⁰

At home, Aycock was the pet of the family, according to J. T. Hooks. Hooks often saw the Aycock boys walking to school. It was no unusual sight, he asserted, … to see Frank the oldest have Charles on his shoulders, carrying him along and Charles called himself ‘Little Sandy,’ and Frank ‘Big Sandy.’ Aycock’s keen intelligence and eagerness to learn convinced his brothers that he should be educated so that he might read law, and for this reason their interest centered in him. Aycock’s position as favorite son did not, however, preclude his sharing in the family tasks. During vacation he performed all manner of farm tasks as diligently as any boy raised in the community. Aycock was bright, cheerful and industrious. He enjoyed harmless fun, Hooks observed, and from boyhood demonstrated a keen sense of humor.²¹

The activities of politics, in which his father was deeply immersed, aroused a precocious interest in Aycock. His father frequently entertained, not in the formal sense, but simply by opening his home to traveling political leaders who sought a night’s lodging and to neighbors who came, for a few quiet hours in the evening, to exchange thoughts. At the end of warm summer days, Benjamin, Serena, and the boys conversed with their visitors on the cool porch. Aycock later recalled a visit by William The-ophilus Dortch, eminent attorney from Goldsboro and a member of the Confederate Senate. Aycock wished to join the group on the porch, but he was shy of the prominent guest. He solved his problem by crawling under the porch, where he remained quietly and listened until late into the night to the conversation between his father and that great man.²²

Aycock learned the vernacular of politics quickly and easily. His family observed this aptitude and encouraged his interest. His father took him to political rallies and introduced him to the speakers. At the age of nine, Aycock made his first political speech. The speech was merely an imitation of an address he had heard at a political debate, but in rendering his own version, Aycock exhibited a distinct flair for political oratory. The circumstances out of which Aycock’s speech grew, from a single impromptu display of mimicry into a practiced performance, have been described, perhaps without complete factual accuracy, by William Woodard, who became Aycock’s father-in-law.

His uncle Larry Newsome who was a strong democrat, took Charles to Nahunta depot, which is now Fremont, to hear a joint debate between Maj. John W. Dunham, a democrat and Jas. Wiggins, more familiarly known as Jimmie, a Republican. Maj. Dunham was a member of the Wilson bar at that time, and had quite a reputation as a speaker, especially on the stump. Mr. Wiggins was a native of Wilson county, and had only a very limited education, and used very broken language. He was not accustomed to public speaking and his gestures and manners were very awkward.

Dunham spoke first and made a good speech. He spoke about an hour. Wiggins followed in a speech of twenty-five or thirty minutes. Charles said that Dunhams speech did not make any impression on him, but the moment that Wiggins commenced to speak, his attention was rivited [sic] on the speaker, he followed him so closely that, when the speaker had finished, he, Charles, could repeat the speech verbatim.

Mr. Newsome soon learned that Charles could repeat Wiggins speech and on several occasions, at Goldsboro, and other places, where he could get a crowd, he would put Charles on a goods box and call on him for Wiggins speech. He would repeat the speech in the same tone of voice, as it was originally delivered, using the same manners and making every gesture just as Wiggins did. Charles said he always brought the house down.²³

Aycock’s childhood in an agrarian environment supplied a fruitful source of the basic economic concepts to which he adhered in manhood. He encouraged industrialization as a desirable element in the economy, but he displayed a romantic notion of agriculture as the core of the ideal culture. He ardently advocated laissez faire, and until late in life, he envisioned in concentrations of government more danger to freedom than in concentrations of wealth. The business activities of his family were so diverse that he developed little consciousness of economic class distinctions. Two of the economic groups that precipitated great controversies in his later years caused scant conflict in the years of his childhood. In North Carolina railroads were then regarded as instruments of progress, not of oppression, and labor unions were familiar but locally unimportant organizations.

Farming was Aycock’s heritage from both sides of his family. His colonial ancestors settled in the short-leaf pine belt of the coastal plains, in North Carolina’s plantation area. Their farms contained wide varieties of soils. Most of the land possessed low natural fertility, but clearing, compared to clearing on lands further west, was easy, and the soil responded quickly to treatment. When properly cultivated, cotton and tobacco thrived.²⁴ Aycock learned to know the difficulties involved in making a living by tilling the soil. He worked and perspired in the hot summer sun; plowed the earth, planted corn, and chopped cotton; knew the seriousness of a dry spell, a low market, or a crop failure; and also developed a taste for the pleasures of farm life. He relished the freedom and independence, the presence of farm animals, and the expansive distances between houses, in which neighbors lived close enough to each other to be neighborly, but not so close as to interfere with each other’s privacy. Although Aycock never farmed after leaving his birthplace, he always cherished the farm atmosphere. His profession kept him in towns and cities, but whenever possible he chose a home on the outskirts, where he could create a semblance of farm life. Although he welcomed industrialization, not until his last years did he begin to grasp the full implications of its class frictions and social disruptions. Near the end of his life, he was slowly perceiving the new developments in the state and nation and gradually modifying his ideas. Death came prematurely, however, preventing him from seeing far beyond the traditions of laissez faire and Jeffersonian agrarianism in which he was originally trained.

Aycock’s father set an example of industry, ingenuity, and prudence in economic affairs. Beginning with the fifty acres he inherited in 1836, Benjamin added steadily to his estate by buying from his neighbors, and he acquired slaves. By 1850, he owned real estate valued at $1,600 and four slaves; by i860, he owned 1,036 acres valued at $10,000 and nine slaves worth another $10,000. During the Civil War, land values decreased, and in 1862, Benjamin’s farm, still containing 1,036 acres, was appraised at $6,216 for local tax purposes, but Benjamin was not suffering financially. He then owned ten slaves, employed three Negroes as farm laborers, and drew interest on a loan of $6,000. By 1863, the number of slaves had increased to thirteen.²⁵

The collapse of the Confederacy led to the diminution of Benjamin’s wealth but did not deplete it. He lost slaves, equipment, and intangible property, and in 1865, he planted his crops largely by hand. Eighteen sixty-five is known to this day as a wonder year, Charles Aycock said later. Crops grew without cultivation and the harvest was abundant. We struggled through the spring and summer with scant food and less clothing, but with the fall came a bountiful crop.²⁶ After 1865, however, Benjamin Aycock began once more to prosper. While many large planters lost their property, Benjamin enlarged his farm. In 1869, he bought 254 acres and, by 1870, he valued his personal property at $1,500 and his real estate at $8,000. His wealth permitted him to hire a housekeeper to live in the home to help Serena with the housework.²⁷

Benjamin Aycock succeeded financially for many reasons. He held at least two public offices which supplied him with a steady income. For eight years he was clerk of court of Wayne County, and for three years he served in the North Carolina Senate. In his absence, Serena managed the farm ably and worked at the chores along with the servants and the children. Benjamin’s corps of sons, hired laborers, and slaves constituted a productive labor force. Thrift was as important to Benjamin’s success as was industry. Life was frugal on the Aycock farm. The smallness and bareness of the home as indicated by the relics surviving today contrasts sharply with the wealth that Benjamin Aycock accumulated. He economized wherever possible. During his years of service as clerk of court, Benjamin roomed in Goldsboro, the county seat, during the week and returned home for the week end. In order that one of his horses should not be idle and away from the farm, Benjamin walked—so his descendants have been told—the twelve miles from Fremont to Goldsboro and back again each week.

Charles Aycock’s brothers followed diverse careers in agriculture, business, and politics. They did not become rich or even moderately wealthy, but they provided comfortably for their families. John and Jesse devoted themselves almost exclusively to farming; William went to Florida and entered the turpentine business; and James engaged in business in South Carolina.²⁸ Francis was co-operator of a general store in Fremont, experimented with tobacco, built the community’s first tobacco barn,²⁹ and served one term in the North Carolina Senate. Benjamin F. farmed in the Nahunta township, established a lumber mill in Whiteville,³⁰ and participated extensively in politics. Although Benjamin F. rose to political prominence and held several state offices earlier than Charles, he never reached Charles’s ultimate level, but he showed no resentment toward the quickly acquired fame of his younger brother. On the contrary, he soon yielded to Charles the position of leadership in their mutual political affairs and supported him with obvious pride and loyalty.

Charles Aycock emerged from childhood with narrower views of politics than of economics. He distrusted the North, the Republican party, and the tendency toward centralization of government on a national basis. He believed that in the Civil War the South had fought for state rights. It was not a fight for slavery, he insisted, "… the fight was a fight for local self-government, without which in all its fulness [sic] and power there can be no such thing as a Union of coequal states. It is the old doctrine of States’ Rights… ."³¹ As a boy, Aycock sensed, and as a man he never forgot, the hatred that the people of the two warring sections felt for each other. … I remember how the people hated Abe Lincoln, and … I remember how the Yankee folks hated Jeff Davis, he said. Their pictures appeared in all of the papers, they were caricatured and cartooned from one end of the country to the other. Abe Lincoln’s face lent itself to the facile pen of the cartoonist, to make it look hideous, while Davis’ face was easy to be made monstrous.³²

The courageous efforts of the southern people to win their independence indelibly impressed Aycock. In manhood he regretted that he had not been old enough to experience the war fully. I am getting old now, sirs, he said in an address in 1911, but I wish I were older. It has been the deprivation of my life that I haven’t within my heart and memory a recollection of those great days which glorified humanity and made the South immortal.³³ He was less interested in the causes of the war, and the motives of the participants, than in the struggles and sacrifices of the people. We cannot forget, and will not, their sufferings, their trials and their fidelity. We do not stop to ask whether they were right or wrong, he said. We merely inquire how did they bear themselves when the hour of peril came, and when we make this inquiry we are proud of the glorious men who made the charge at Gettysburg and laid down their arms at Appomattox.³⁴

Aycock’s favorite hero of the war was Robert Edward Lee. He considered Lee to be the greatest leader of soldiers, the highest type of Christian manhood, the purest and truest and best of men.³⁵ He admired Lee’s loyalty to his home state of Virginia and strove to emulate him by keeping foremost his own loyalty to North Carolina. The love of home, of family, of neighborhood, of county, of State, was predominant with him, Aycock said of Lee. The elemental foundation of all free government is found in this vital fact. There can never be a free people save those who love and serve those closest to them first, and those farthest away afterward.³⁶

Aycock’s unfaltering admiration for the Civil War heroes of North Carolina significantly influenced his political tendencies. He responded to the needs of Confederate veterans, supported the ambitions of former Confederate leaders, and emphasized Confederate history heavily in his political addresses. Two of his heroes were Zebulon Baird Vance, colonel of a North Carolina regiment and governor of the state during the Civil War, and Matt Whitaker Ransom, major general in the Confederate army. As political leaders after Reconstruction, Vance and Ransom, both of whom were elected to the United States Senate, occasionally became involved in factional controversies within the Democratic party. On such occasions, Aycock refused to join any faction that would prevent him from supporting both men.

In the Aycock home, Benjamin Aycock created an atmosphere of ardent enthusiasm for the Confederate cause. He served in the North Carolina Senate from 1863 until 1866, when the United States Congress formulated its plan for reconstructing the South. During the war, the membership of the North Carolina Senate divided into three distinct factions, two small radical factions and a large, dominant moderate faction. At one extreme, a small faction yearned to make peace with the North and return North Carolina to the Union. At the other extreme, the second small faction, in which Benjamin Aycock was a conspicuous leader, wished to win the war at almost any cost. The large moderate faction, cooperating with Governor Vance, hoped to contribute to the winning of the war but at the same time to withhold sovereignty and national power from the Confederate government. Benjamin Aycock frequently voted in opposition to the Vance faction. He supported, and the Vance faction resisted, the Confederacy’s attempts to raise an army by conscription and to quell disloyalty through suspension of habeas corpus writs.³⁷ Benjamin consistently distinguished himself by his efforts to persuade the North Carolina legislature to cooperate with the Confederate administration. Either he did not fear centralization of power in the Confederate government, or he was willing to risk the perils of centralization in order to win the war.

Charles Aycock’s distrust of the North and of the Republican party grew primarily from North Carolina’s experiences, not in war, but in Reconstruction. When the Reconstruction plans were initiated, Aycock’s father retired from office-holding to the farm. Although he continued to dispense counsel and hospitality to political colleagues, Benjamin Aycock never again held public office. As an adult, Charles Aycock found no justification for the Congressional program of Reconstruction. We were in the Union, he said. Law and order prevailed everywhere… .³⁸ The Republican leaders in Congress were not satisfied, however, and established military occupation in the South. In 1901, Aycock described conditions in North Carolina, subsequent to the inauguration of Reconstruction, in the following words:

… the carpetbagger came and with him begins our real sorrow. The negro, newly enfranchised, voted as one man and the designing stranger, intent only upon making a fortune for himself, soon took charge of the State and made her desolation more desolate. From 1868 to 1870 we had in North Carolina an era of corruption, of extravagence, and of lawlessness which came near to the destruction of all that was best. Appropriations were made for internal improvements amounting to more than $30,000,000 to be paid by a people who were absolutely without means. These internal improvements were in the main railroads, and Senator Vance, the most beloved of all North Carolinians, once said that he could drag a dog down hill by the hind legs and remove more dirt than was moved by the $30,000,000. In 1870 our people had come to the conclusion that they must rescue the State and we elected a Legislature made up of native born North Carolinians. From that time on to the present we have been struggling with difficulties.³⁹

Aycock’s disapproval of the Negro’s role in North Carolina during Reconstruction strengthened the white supremacy doctrine with which he was already imbued. His father had established a pattern of firm resistance to racial equality. Despite his intense desire to win the war, Benjamin Aycock voted against a legislative proposal to arm slaves as soldiers.⁴⁰ At the end of the war, he yielded to emancipation but joined with a majority in the senate to adopt a Black Code which established a restricted citizenship for the Negro.⁴¹ He opposed Negro suffrage and helped to defeat a plan for a college to train Negro teachers and ministers.⁴² Charles Aycock, throughout his life, clung to the idea of the inherent superiority of the white race over the Negro race. Eventually, he recognized the advantages that Negro education offered the whole community, but he always rejected the idea of social equality of the races as a potential or desirable end.

Aycock’s opinion that the Civil War was fought for state rights rather than slavery is not corroborated by his father’s attitudes. Benjamin Aycock was clearly willing to sacrifice state rights, at least temporarily, in order to win the war, and he was definitely unwilling to give slaves the status of soldiers for the same purpose. He perceived fewer threats to his way of life in yielding sovereignty to the Confederate government than in giving sudden freedom and responsibility to the slaves. Furthermore, after the war, he sought to restrict the liberties of the Negroes. These actions, however, do not demonstrate conclusively that he fought to preserve slavery rather than state rights. His attitude toward secession is not known, and his course during the war could have been determined by the dangers involved in giving abrupt privileges to the Negroes and by his desire to win. If Charles Aycock spoke for his father, Benjamin Aycock was one of those bewildered people who, when confronted with the disruption of the Union, said:

We don’t want war. We love this Union. It’s ours. Our fathers made it. They cemented every brick of the foundation with their own blood. We love it and we want to maintain it. But if we have got to fight, we are not going to fight South Carolinians and Georgians and Mississippians and Virginians. We are neighbors. If we have got to fight, we will fight some folks we don’t know.⁴³

The fundamental view of life which enabled the Aycock family to endure the hardships of war, defeat, hostile occupation, political frustration, and racial strife was expressed in the doctrines of the Primitive Baptist Church. The church building in which the Aycocks worshipped still stands near Fremont. Benjamin Aycock was a deacon in the church and was active to the point of attending services, not only in his own church, but also in neighboring communities. Primitive Baptist virtues, exemplified in the Aycock family, included great industriousness in addition to great piety.⁴⁴ In this atmosphere, Charles Aycock learned to regard idleness as being sinful and toilsome work, accompanied by suffering and pain, as having moral excellence. He absorbed Biblical terms and phrases until they became a part of his everyday vocabulary, and he acquired the habit of reading the Bible for solace, enlightenment, and inspiration.

As Aycock passed from childhood and matured intellectually, he grew away from the Primitive Baptist doctrine. While attending the University of North Carolina, he joined the Missionary Baptist Church and remained a member of that denomination for the rest of his life. Emotionally, however, despite his intellectual sophistication, he was always bound to the Primitive Baptists and showed more pleasure in attending the Primitive Baptist service than in attending the services of his own church. Aycock impressed his children with his admiration for the profound faith of the ‘hard-shells.’ They were, he often said, the salt of the earth, and he always felt at home with them.⁴⁵

The precepts of the Primitive Baptist Church, by stressing the importance of reading the Bible, focused attention on the need for elementary education, and in the Aycock family, Serena’s ignorance supplied a graphic example of the practical handicap imposed by an inability to read and write. In later years, Aycock told a few friends that he had been present when a county squire asked Serena to sign a land deed. I cannot write my name, Serena confessed, I will have to make my mark. Charles was deeply moved. I then and there made a vow, he said later, that every man and woman in North Carolina should have a chance to read and write.⁴⁶

Despite its susceptibility to being categorized as myth, the story of Aycock’s boyhood vow to build a public school system in North Carolina has been generally confirmed by his family and his friends.⁴⁷ Furthermore, in defending his gubernatorial administration before the Democratic State Convention in 1904, Aycock spoke of having been committed from early boyhood to work for education.⁴⁸ This vow is highly pertinent to an understanding of his later career. Aycock’s boyhood response to the problems of illiteracy, so vividly demonstrated by Serena, was deep and lasting. He chose law as a profession, but as citizen and political leader, he became and remained a champion of public education. Throughout his life, Aycock’s attitude toward the need for a public school system was a driving force that motivated many of his thoughts and actions. At each period in his career in which other interests seriously distracted him, circumstances beyond his control combined to weaken those interests, to refresh his memory of the tragedy of ignorance, and to revitalize his feeling concerning education. On two occasions before becoming governor, he indicated a desire to win a seat in Congress, but in both instances, events defeated his ambition and forced him back into his original role as state leader and advocate of education. Each time he resumed his old position enthusiastically. The boyhood experience had stirred strong feelings, and they never failed to revive.

Aycock’s total experience in childhood yielded most of the basic ideas which guided him in his political career. Eventually he evolved a philosophy of life that combined the religious concepts of brotherhood, work, worship, pain, and sacrifice; the economic doctrines of laissez faire and individualism; and the political principles of state rights and democratic government through a system of political parties. He interpreted these general maxims to harmonize with strong specific loyalties: loyalty to the Anglo-Saxon race as opposed to all other races, loyalty to a predominantly agricultural society as opposed to a predominantly industrial society, loyalty to the Democratic party as opposed to the Republican party, and loyalty to North Carolina as opposed to the nation. In application, these diverse components occasionally conflicted with each other, and Aycock had difficulty reconciling them. The conflict distressed him at times, because he recognized the narrowness of some of his attitudes, but he also recognized that the narrowness could be attributed to the peculiar and trying experiences of the South. Furthermore, he perceived that in North Carolina the lack of educational facilities prevented the people from understanding their past, discarding their provincial outlook, and achieving material and cultural progress. The best hope for change, he concluded, lay in a system of public education. With this conviction to guide him, he accepted the basic structure of the North Carolina community and made no effort to change it radically. He worked hard at his profession, joined the movement to build a system of public schools, and looked to the future for wise and orderly changes by an educated people.

Notes

1. Charlotte Observer, Oct. 23, 1901.

2. Robert Digges Wimberly Connor and Clarence Poe, The Life and Speeches of Charles Brantley Aycock (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1912), pp. 3-4.

3. Richard W. Sawyer, Jr., unpublished notes on Charles Brantley Aycock. Mr. Sawyer, Historic Sites Specialist, North Carolina State Department of Archives and History, collected genealogical and historical data for use in connection with the restoration of the Aycock home.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. The names, and dates of birth and death, of the members of the Aycock family have been taken from tombstones in the Aycock Cemetery near Fremont, N.C., and from the Aycock family Bible, now possessed by Mrs. Frank (Rina Aycock) Peacock. A niece of Charles Brantley Aycock and a granddaughter of Benjamin and Serena Aycock, Mrs. Peacock lives in Fremont, N.C.

7. Frances Renfrow Doak, Comments on Charles Brantley Aycock (unpublished notes given to the author by Mrs. Doak).

8. Arthur Best, interview, Goldsboro, N.C, June 10, 1948. Mr. Best was a friend of the Aycock family.

9. Frank Arthur Daniels, Address by Judge Frank A. Daniels, Presentation and Unveiling of Memorial Tablet: Charles Brantley Aycock, Goldsboro, North Carolina, November 1, 1920 (n.p., n.d.), p. 9.

10. Frank Arthur Daniels, Governor C. B. Aycock, North Carolina University Magazine, XVIII (April, 1901), 208.

11. Samuel A’Court Ashe, Charles B. Aycock, Biographical History of North Carolina from Colonial Times to the Present, 8 volumes. Edited by Samuel A, Court Ashe and others (Greensboro: Charles L. Van Noppen, 1905-17), I, 77.

12. John T. Kennedy to the Delegates of the Democratic State Convention, published in the Goldsboro Daily Argus, Mar. 24, 1900.

13. F. A. Daniels, Address, pp. 9-10.

14. Jonathan Thomas Hooks to R. D. W. Connor and Clarence Poe, April 27, 1912, in Charles Brantley Aycock Papers, North Carolina State Department of Archives and History.

15. Ibid.

16. Patrick Murphy Pearsall, untitled reminiscence, in Aycock Papers.

17. Z. M. L. Jeffreys to R. D. W. Connor and Clarence Poe, April 23, 1912, in Aycock Papers.

18. Ibid.; J. T. Hooks to R. D. W. Connor and Clarence Poe, April 27, 1912, in Aycock Papers 5 Raleigh News and Observer, Sept. 7, 19525 Connor and Poe, Aycock, p. 17.

19. Arthur Best, interview, Goldsboro, N.C., June 10, 1948. Mr. Best was a student under J. B. Williams.

20. R. Daniel Collier to R. D. W. Connor and Clarence Poe, April 15, 1912, in Aycock Papers.

21. J. T. Hooks to R. D. W. Connor and Clarence Poe, April 27, 1912, in Aycock Papers.

22. F. A. Daniels, Aycock, p. 217.

23. William Woodard to Albert Anderson, April 19, 1912, in Aycock Papers.

24. Samuel Huntington Hobbs, Jr., North Carolina, Economic and Social (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1930), pp. 5-6.

25. Sawyer, notes on Aycock, in Sawyer Papers.

26. Charles Brantley Aycock, address to the North Carolina Society of New York, May 20, 1901, published in Raleigh News and Observer, May 21, 1901.

27. Sawyer, notes on Aycock, in Sawyer Papers.

28. F. A. Daniels, Aycock, p. 209.

29. Raleigh News and Observer, March 3, 1935.

30. Archibald Henderson, North Carolina, the Old North State and the New, 5 volumes (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1941), IV, 87-88.

31. C. B. Aycock, Robert Edward Lee, in Connor and Poe, Aycock, pp. 312-13.

32. C. B. Aycock, closing address for the defense, delivered July 11, 1911, in MS volume, United States Circuit Court, Ware-Kramer Tobacco Company, Plaintiff v. the American Tobacco Company and Wells-Whitehead Company, Defendants, VI, 2794-95, in Aycock Papers.

33. Connor and Poe, Aycock, pp. 154-55.

34. C. B. Aycock, address to the North Carolina Society of New York, Raleigh News and Observer, May 21, 1901.

35. C. B. Aycock, The Genius of North Carolina Interpreted, in Connor and Poe, Aycock, p. 257.

36. Connor and Poe, Aycock, pp. 311-12.

37. Albert Burton Moore, Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1924), pp. 279-965 Frank Lawrence Owsley, State Rights in the Confederacy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925), pp. 150-202; Samuel A’Court Ashe, History of North Carolina, 2 volumes (Raleigh: Edwards and Broughton, 1925), II, 889-903 Senate Journal (Adjourned Session, 1864), pp. 22, 39-40, 42, 50-51 j Senate Journal (Adjourned Session, 1865), p. 31; Public Laws (Adjourned Session, 1864), pp. 23-25. The author uses designations such as Extra Session or Adjourned Session in citing legislative documents to indicate that the page sequences are separate for each session of the legislative term, rather than continuous through all sessions of the term.

38. C. B. Aycock, address to the North Carolina Society of New York, Raleigh News and Observer, May 21, 1901.

39.Ibid.

40. Senate Journal (Adjourned Session, 1865), p. 29.

41. Ibid. (Special Session, 1866), pp. 241-42; Public Laws (Special Session, 1866), chap. 40.

42. Senate Journal (Special Session, 1866), pp. 235-36.

43. Connor and Poe, Aycock, p. 154.

44. Cushing Biggs Hassell, History of the Church of God, from the Creation to A.D. 1885: Including Especially the History of the Kehukee Primitive Baptist Association. Revised and completed by Sylvester Hassell, Middletown, New York: Gilbert Beebe’s Sons, 1886. Reprinted by Turner Lasseter, Atlanta, Georgia, 1948.

45. John Lee Aycock, I Remember Papa (unpublished MS given to the author by Mr. Aycock). Mr. Aycock is a son of Charles Brantley Aycock.

46. Robert Watson Winston, North Carolina, These United States, 2 series. Edited by Ernest Gruening (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1924), second series, pp. 131-32.

47. Connor and Poe, Aycock, pp. 7-8$ Frances Renfrow Doak, Time Lends Added Import to Aycock’s Creed, Raleigh News and Observer, April 3, 1949.

48. Connor and Poe, Aycock, p. 254.

2

THE SERIOUS STUDENT

Charles Brantley Aycock’s expression of his desire to obtain a full, formal education has not survived, but the outline of the persistent course he followed in pursuing that education is clearly discernible. Of the nine Aycock children who reached adulthood, Charles and Bardin were the only ones to attend school beyond the elementary level offered in Fremont. Charles alone went on to college. In fact, he was one of the few youths in the entire county of Wayne to attend college.

Aycock had, in addition to personal determination, the fortuitous opportunity to attend institutions that were academically creditable and geographically accessible. After the Civil War, the state public school system had virtually collapsed. Private academies, frequently aided by community gifts, offered the best available facilities. By good fortune, two respected academies operated at Wilson and Kinston, and both cities were not over fifteen miles from Fremont. Aycock attended the Wilson Collegiate Institute for three years, 1872-75; then, after remaining at home for a year, he studied at the academy in Kinston for an additional year, 1876-77. During a portion of the year at home, he taught school at Fremont. Ready for college, he enrolled at the University of North Carolina in 1877. By taking a heavy course load, he graduated in 18 80. The University, like the public schools, had suffered from the war and had closed for five years, but in 1877, the institution, though financially poor, had a competent faculty and a strong curriculum in the liberal arts.

Aycock’s youthful personality occasionally reveals itself in the records of his years in school. One fact is clear. The surface traits of Aycock in youth and young manhood differed markedly from those which drew people to him so readily in his later years. Subsequent to his governorship, he impressed people as being essentially cheerful, gentle, and warmhearted. The young Aycock, however, was too serious to be uniformly cheerful, too competitive to be always gentle, and too ambitious to be invariably warmhearted. Josephus Daniels stated frankly that he had not liked Aycock upon first meeting him at Wilson Collegiate Institute. He is too smart, Daniels said to his mother. He thinks he knows it all.¹ Robert Watson Winston remembered Aycock as possessing, when the two first met as students at the University, a manner bold, masterful and aggressive.² Winston was particularly impressed by Aycock’s forcefulness in debate. Aycock was so ardent, Winston noted, that he would not only destroy his adversary but jump on his dead body and punish him after death.³ Another student at the University, Edwin Anderson Alderman, recalled Aycock as having a certain authority, a lilt of the head and a mouth set in grim lines of pride and purpose.⁴

Gradually, however, Aycock’s acquaintances learned to like him. They respected his sincerity, admired his talents, and drew inspiration from his devotion to principle. Josephus Daniels described the change in his attitude toward Aycock: ‘He is not smart at all, as I told you,’ I said to my mother. ‘He just knows more than the rest of us.’ ⁵ Another student at Wilson, Dred Peacock, discovered kindness in Aycock and later wrote, "He was the most