Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis — Key Ideas to Explore

She had only two children, Henry Winter, and Jane, who married Rev. Edward Syle.

The education of Henry Winter began very early, at home, under the care of his aunt, Elizabeth Brown Winter, who entertained the most rigid and exacting opinions in regard to the training of children, but who was withal a noble woman. He once playfully said, "I could read before I was four years old, though much against my will." When his father was removed from St. John's, he went to Wilmington, Delaware, but some time elapsed before he became settled there. Meanwhile, Henry Winter remained with his aunt in Alexandria, Virginia. He afterward went to Wilmington, and was there instructed under his father's supervision. In 1827 his father returned to Maryland and settled in Anne Arundel county.

After reaching Anne Arundel, Henry Winter became so much devoted to out-door life that he gave small promise of scholarly proficiency. He affected the sportsman, and became a devoted disciple of Nimrod; accompanied always by one of his father's slaves he roamed the country with a huge old fowling-piece on his shoulder, burning powder in abundance, but doing little damage otherwise. While here he saw much of slaves and slavery, and what he saw impressed him profoundly, and laid the foundation for those opinions which he so heroically and constantly defended in all his after-life. Referring to this period, he said long afterward, "My familiar association with the slaves while a boy gave me great insight into their feelings and views. They spoke with freedom before a boy what they would have repressed before a man. They were far from indifferent to their condition; they felt wronged and sighed for freedom. They were attached to my father and loved me, yet they habitually spoke of the day when God would deliver them."

He subsequently went to Alexandria, and was sent to school at Howard, near the Theological Seminary, and from Howard he went to Kenyon College, in Ohio, in the fall of 1833.

Kenyon was then in the first year of the presidency of Bishop McIlvaine. It was the centre of vast forests, broken only by occasional clearings, excepting along the lines of the National road, and the Ohio river and its navigable tributaries. In this wilderness of nature, but garden of letters, he remained, at first in the grammar school, and then in the college, until the 6th of September, 1837; when at twenty years of age he took his degree and diploma, decorated with one of the honorary orations of his class, on the great day of commencement. His subject was "Scholastic Philosophy."

At the end of the Freshman year, a change in the college terms gave him a vacation of three months. Instead of spending it in idleness, as he might have done, and as most boys would have done, he availed himself of this interval to pursue and complete the studies of the Sophomore year, to which he had already given some attention in his spare moments. At the opening of the next session he passed the examination for the Junior class. Fortunately I have his own testimony and opinion as to this exploit, and I give them in his own language:

"It was a pretty sharp trial of resolution and dogged diligence, but it saved me a year of college, and indurated my powers of study and mental culture into a habit, and perhaps enabled me to stay long enough to graduate. I do not recommend the example to those who are independently situated, for learning must fall like the rain in such gentle showers as to sink in if it is to be fruitful; when poured on the richest soil in torrents, it not only runs off without strengthening vegetation, but washes away the soil itself."

His college life was laborious and successful. The regular studies were prosecuted with diligence, and from them he derived great profit, not merely in knowledge, but in what is of vastly more account, the habit and power of mental labor. These studies were wrought into his mind and made part of the intellectual substance by the vigorous collisions of the societies in which he delighted. For these mimic conflicts he prepared assiduously, not in writing, but always with a carefully deduced logical analysis and arrangement of the thoughts to be developed in the order of argument, with a brief note of any quotation, or image, or illustration, on the margin at the appropriate place. From that brief he spoke. And this was his only method of preparation for all the great conflicts in which he took part in after life. He never wrote out his speeches beforehand.

Speaking of his feelings at the end of his college life, he sadly said: