The Vice President:-Gentlemen, you have heard the motion that we adopt the report of the Committee, and the second to that motion. What is the pleasure of the Association with reference to this motion. I wish to say that this Association is going to stand adjourned at 4:30. It is going to be adjourned whether there is a quorum present or not. You may have about twenty minutes in which to discuss the matter. Which method do you desire to pursue-do you wish to take it up as a whole, or take it up seriatim? Mr. Shelton:-I move that we postpone action or discussion until tomorrow morning. It seems to me this is a serious matter, and one that should not be acted on hastily. Motion seconded. Mr. Biggs:-I move to amend that motion to the effect that this report be printed, and mailed out immediately to the members of the association, and that action thereon be deferred until the next meeting. I do that in view of the many radical changes recommended therein, and I take it that the members of this Association can not intelligently vote thereon unless they have an opportunity to read the report and digest it. Amendment seconded. The Vice President:-The question to be presented to the House is that the Secretary of this Association be required to order this report printed, and that a copy of it be sent out to each member of the Association, and that the further consideration of this report-and I suggest that the report of the whole committee might be carried with it. Mr. Biggs:-I accept that amendment to my motion. Judge Davis:-Inasmuch as we are going to have those reports printed in the proceedings, which every member will receive, I hardly see any use of having them printed specially. The Vice President:-I think the suggestions of Mr. Biggs are very appropriate for the reason that it brings the matter specifically to the attention of the Bar. If we expect them to read it after it is embodied in the report of these proceedingsthe general report sent out by the Secretary. The Secretary: Judge Davis really suggested what I was going to say, and that is, the proceedings of this Association will all be printed, just as last year, and inasmuch as this Association is not over-burdened with money, it seems to me that it would be a useless expenditure of the funds of the Association to have the report printed now and mailed out, when a copy of the report will go to every member of the Association, and the report will be out within sixty days. The Vice President:-Has the amendment been seconded? (Amendment seconded.) It was moved and seconded that the motion to amend the resolution be laid on the table. Carried. The Vice President:-Now, recurring to the original proposition wherein it has been moved and seconded that the Secretary be required, at his earliest convenience, to have printed copies of the report of this committee. and send them at once to the members of this Association, and further that all discussion of this matter be postponed until the next meeting, and it is suggested to me that a committee of six, composed of two from each Grand Division of the State be appointed as a special committee to consider this matter and make such report and suggestions as they deem proper at the next meeting of the association, all those in favor of the resolution make it known by saying aye. After the vote of aye and nay, the Chair declared the motion carried. Moved and seconded that the report be published in full in the Commercial Appeal, in this City, and that it also be sent by the Secretary to the newspapers in Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga. Motion carried and Secretary so instructed. SECOND DAY. MORNING SESSION, JUNE 26TH, 1913. President Albert W. Biggs called the Association to order and introduced the Rev. T. E. Sharpe, Pastor St. John's Methodist Church, who opened the meeting with prayer. Dr. Sharpe:-Holy Father: Before we begin the activities of the day, we pause to worship Thee, and to remember our indebtedness to and dependance upon Thee. We give Thee thanks for Thy great love to us shown in the gift of Christ for us, and in the message He brought us from Thee, —the proffer of forgiveness to the penitent and help for every soul struggling after righteousness; especially do we thank Thee for the contribution the Legal Fraternity has made in giving us a Government by Law, and that no man rules over us in the assumption of a Divine right; but that we are freemen, and all equal in rights under the Constitution. May Thy blessing rest upon these men in all their efforts to maintain justice among men, especially in the enactment and enforcement of laws upon which Thy approval shall rest. Bless them in their deliberations and in their Association together this day. Help each of us to stand in our place and live lives that are worth while, and in the great end receive us unto Thyself, we ask in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen. The Central Committee recommended the following for membership in this Association: J. S. Allen, Memphis. D. B. Puryear, Memphis. L. E. Guinn, Covington. It was moved and seconded that the gentlemen named be elected to membership. Motion carried and they were declared duly elected by the Chair. The President:-It affords me very great pleasure this morning to be able to present to you as the first speaker the Dean of one of the Departments of the great University of Virginia. Dr. Thornton, the speaker, is not a lawyer. Yet I am sure that fact will rather add to your interest in his paper. He has chosen as his subject "Who Was Thomas Jefferson?" and it gives me pleasure to present to you Dr. William M. Thornton. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Thornton. WHO WAS THOMAS JEFFERSON? BY WILLIAM M. THORNTON, LL.D "If Jefferson was wrong, America is wrong. -Parton One hundred and sixty-six years ago there was born at the foot of Monticello Mountain in Virginia the great apostle of American Democracy, Thomas Jefferson. Eighty-three years later he died on the summit of that mountain after a life crowded with unselfish labors for his fellow-countrymen, crowned with achievements unparalleled for number and for weight, and consecrated through all its busy years to the noblest ideals of public service. Eighty-three years again have passed, and we may well gather here to review those labors, to evaluate those achievements, to renew our devotion to those ideals in virtue of which "Thomas Jefferson still survives." He who ventures on such an essay may well stand abashed before his task. The theme is too vast, too extended. The fourscore and three years of Thomas Jefferson's life were, it is true, bound together into one splendid concord of high endeavor. Yet he touched our national life to nobler issues at so many points, that in the brief compass of such an address as this the mere enumeration of his services to his country would be impracticable. Let us rather strive to discover the man in his works, to reveal the wellspring of his moral energy, to disclose the method of his strangely varied activities. Who then was Thomas Jefferson? Of whom was he born and what was his descent? Into what sort of a community did he come? What influences moulded that penetrating genius, that capacious brain, that ardent soul, during the plastic years of childhood and youth? PARENTAGE. Imagine a vast belt of primeval forest, stretching from the upper limit of tidewater in Virginia back to the crest line of the Blue Ridge, a region which was still the hunting ground of Indians, where no axe had been heard, where no plough had yet been seen. Parts of this wonderful forest stands today and the people who dwell among them call them the Tallwoods, from the soaring height of the great trees which unviolated nature has nursed into a divine dignity and beauty. Virginia had been settled about a century before Governor Spottswood with his "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe" made their jovial expedition through this forest to the azure summits of that great mountain chain. Ten years later (about 1727), the lands of Tidewater, Virginia, having been all taken up, patents began to be issued for these lands in the Piedmont. At first the great gentlemen of the Colony took out such patents for large tracts as a hopeful speculation; Nicholas Meriwether for 18,000 acres, Secretary John Carter for 9,300, Francis Eppes for 6,400, and so on. A tenant or two came up to make a clearing and validate the title, but these old Virginia aristocrats were too comfortable and happy on their big plantations to go out into the wilderness and give the Indians a chance at their scalps. In 1732, however, bona fide settlers began to come in. They followed the river valleys, first the James itself, then its various tributaries, bringing axes and the tools of carpentry and husbandry and a few slaves. They felled the stately trees, whipsawed the logs into planks, split the butts into shingels, built themselves houses, cleared a few fields and settled down to create a commonwealth. To the place where the Rivanna, one of the tributaries of the James, breaks through the Southwest mountains-an irregular chain of rugged hills parallel to the Blue Ridge-came in 1735 one Peter Jefferson. Some trace his blood back to that Jefferson who in 1619 sat in the choir of the little church at Jamestown and with his fellow-burgesses then and there planted the tree of representative government in America. It seems not unfitting that Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of American Independence should spring from such a stock. But of this, |