A STRONG ENDORSEMENT OF A STRONG MAN: READ IT
The Robesonian (Lumberton, North Carolina) March 11, 1920

The Hon. W.C. Dowd, Ex-Speaker of the House of Representatives and Editor of the Charlotte News, Powerfully presents 
Candidacy of Hon. Cameron Morrison for Governor.

Hon. Cameron Morrison

The early history of Hon. Cameron Morrison is one of struggle with difficulties that were hard to overcome. 
He was born in Richmond County in 1869, and his youth was spent during a  … … in which an education was 
not easily obtained by any save those of wealth. The free schools of the country community in which his parents 
lived were open for only a month or two during each year, and the best Cam could do was to attend one of these 
schools in a log school house for a brief period each year. His father was a carpenter, and a man of great industry; 
but in those days wages were low and work not easily obtained.
	
At about eight years of age, after the death of his mother, he was placed under the tutelage of M.C. McCaskill a 
noble old Scotchman, who ran a little school at Ellerbe Springs in Richmond County. Board was obtained for him at 
a nearby home, where he helped about the house and on the farm during the hours when he was not in school. At the 
end of the first year McCaskill moved his school to the old Terry school house near Roberdel factory in Richmond 
County. Board was secured for young Morrison with a farmer named C.P. Dawkins, who lived about two miles distant 
from the school. Cam worked on the Dawkins farm at odd times. After a year at this school it became necessary for 
him to go to work. His father was struggling to support three other small children in addition to Cam. Work was 
obtained in Wolf Pit Township, in a country commissary and on a farm. This continued for a year or two, the boy earning his support.

Then for four years, with one year intervening in which he clerked in a grocery story, he attended school in the town of Rockingham, having 
the great pleasure for the first time in several years of boarding at the same place with his father. He was a hard student and at the end 
of that period his teacher, the late William Carroll, declared him to be well prepared for college. A college career was impossible. It was 
absolutely necessary for young Morrison to go to work and help his father take care of the other three children. All who knew the struggling 
youth knew that he would have worked his way through college, but for the necessity of helping to support the family.

Denied his cherished ambition to go to college, young Morrison went to work. During the next four or five years he worked at different jobs, 
and all the while studied with great avidity. Among other things he worked as a clerk in the office of the register of deeds for a year at 
a salary of $30 per month. At other times he taught in the free schools at $40 per month.

Young Morrison's father was during this period, a republican. He had been a brave Confederate soldier, and during the days of Vance he was 
a Democrat, and helped to redeem the state; but, like a great many good men have done, he fell out with the Democratic Party over some local 
matter, and became a republican. Thus, as young Morrison approached manhood, he was under republican environment. In 1890, and before he was 
21 years of age, he joined his father in a local political fight and went to Raleigh as a delegate to a republican state convention. He 
returned home and shortly thereafter informed his father that he could not be a republican; that if the Republican Party ever got in power 
in North Carolina they would ruin the state. The elder Morrison was at that time postmaster of Rockingham and Cam was working with him in 
the post office for his bread and clothes. He was at the same time studying law and was about ready to go to a law school. He had hoped that 
his father would help him, but Cam's change of politics, of which he had notified his father, caused a temporary, but bitter breach between 
them. Upon his father declining to do anything for him, he left the post office and secured a position as teacher in a public school and made 
sufficient money to attend the law school of Judge Dick in Greensboro. He studied law under Judge Dick for twelve months. A few months after 
Cam was 21 years of age, he publicly announced that he was a democrat. This was before he obtained his license to practice law.

Young Morrison was licensed to practice law in February, 1892, and immediately opened an office in Rockingham. His knowledge of the law, 
combined with unusual abilities as an advocate, quickly obtained for him high rank at the bar. These qualities were supplemented by literary 
attainments that were a surprise to those who did not know him intimately. These were the result of a wide reading that had been carried on 
privately by young Morrison through the years of struggle. 

The bar at that time in Richmond County was an unusually able one, composed of Major John D. Shaw, Hon. James T. LeGrand, Franklin McNeill, 
the younger Shaws, Judge Walter H. Neal, T.C. Guthrie and others.

Morrison was not only a powerful advocate and a trial lawyer without superior in his county, but his general ability was such that his services 
were sought by the larger business interests of his county, by many of which he was retained as general counsel.

Morrison's natural love for the public service manifested itself early. In the spring of 1892, in the democratic convention, he made his first 
democratic speech. This speech was made under dramatic circumstances. The whole country knew the struggle Cam was having on account of his 
father's resentment at his course. He commenced his speech by a quotation from Demosthenes: "Man is born not unto his parents alone, but unto 
God and his country as well." Richmond County was at that time overwhelmingly republican. In the campaign which followed, young Morrison 
canvassed the county. His speeches marked him as a young political leader of great ability.  …

Young Morrison was threatened with violence time and again in both campaigns. In 1894 he not only spoke all over Richmond County but in surrounding 
counties, and in Richmond County came near being killed in Beaver Dam Township … On the night of the election he and a republican leader had a 
desperate encounter over Morrison's campaign speeches. They fought fairly. Both were good men physically, and they fought till both had to be put to 
bed. The times were dangerous and Morrison lived for years in constant danger of personal violence.  (much additional. see newspaper)

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