298 WILLIAM AUGUSTUS STEAENS. 



education elsewhere. He asfaiu served on the State Board of Educa- 

 tion, and it was lie who first proposed the Annual Convention of Col- 

 lege Presidents to compare and discuss opinions as to matters of 

 interest common to them all. 



When the civil war broke out, President Stearns was not slow to 

 discern the needs and the duties of that hour of crisis. Though he 

 calmed the first enthusiasm of his young men who wished to answer 

 at once the first call of the country, yet as soon as the urgency of the 

 case was manifest, and it was clear that an appeal to arms was inevi- 

 table, he encouraged the enlistment of his students, and sent them to 

 the field with his blessing and hearty God-speed. And he did not 

 withhold the sacrifice of his own son when duty to his country called 

 for it. His youngest son, Frazar A. Stearns, then an undergraduate, 

 went to the front as Adjutant of the 21st Massachusetts Regiment. 

 After a brief but brilliant term of service this gallant youth fell at the 

 battle of Newbern on the l4th of March, 1862, in the twenty-second year 

 of his age. His father met this cruel calamity in a true spirit of 

 Christian patriotism. His loyalty to the Union was but strengthened 

 and made more active after it was thus sealed by the blood of his son. 

 He might have said with the old Duke of Ormond on losing his sou 

 the P^arl of Ossory, "I would not exchange my dead son for the living 

 son of any man in Europe ! " General Burnside gave one of tlie guns 

 captured by the men under Adjutant Stearns's command to the Col- 

 lege as an expression of his sense of the merit of the young officer and 

 as a fitting monument to his memory. This household offering to his 

 country gave force and touching energy to the patriotic words which 

 the President never failed to utter in the hour of need. He never 

 failed to enforce the Christian duty of citizens to do their part in the 

 jDolitical as well as the military service of the nation in his Baccalaure- 

 ate and other addresses to the youth who sat at his feet. 



It will be seen, from this impez'fect sketch of the career and the char- 

 acter of President Stearns, that he had been singularly fortunate and 

 happy in his life. And he was equally happy and fortunate in his 

 death. He certainly died at his post, if ever man did. He was con- 

 ducting the college prayers on the morning of his death, when ari-ested 

 by the illness of which he died before the sun went down. In the 

 fulness of his powers, in the bosom of his family, with every consola- 

 tion that religion, domestic affection, and friendship could afford, with 

 little pain and no fear, his useful and honorable life came to a tran- 

 quil and happy close. It was a true Euthanasia. 



The natural endowments and literary attainments of President 



