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name. At the time the name of the postoffice here was
"University Place." The matter was dropped, and upon investigation
we found that there was a little hill down in West
Tennessee, in the Mississippi bottom, where a post office had
been established and called Sewanee. In a few years, however,
that post office was abandoned, and the name again became open.
Before we found it out, however, Maj. Fairbanks discovered the
fact and made application to the post office authorities at
Washington City and had the name "University Place" changed
to "Sewanee." I think this gives me the right to say that you
are guilty of larceny.

This place is entitled to the credit of being the origin
and originator of what is known as the "Four Mile Law", perhaps
the greatest temperance law that has ever been passes, and is the
basis of all the temperance laws that have been passed in this
State since that time. Soon after the constitutional convention
of 1870 Maj. Fairbanks came to me and stated that he wanted a bill
drawn to prohibit the sale of whisky within four miles of this
institution, in ever direction. In looking into the question
I discovered that we could not pass a bill prohibiting the sale
of intoxicating liquors within four miles of the University of
the South
, but that we could pass a bill prohibiting the sale of
whisky within four miles of an incorporated institution of learning,
outside of the corprate limits of any city or town. Col. H. R.
Moore
of this County was then a member of the Tennessee Senate.
The bill was drawn, and my recollection is that at the first
session of the first session of the legislature it failed to pass
for the want of constitutional majority. It, however, passed
at the next session of the legislature.

For some years this was known as a bill that was passed
exclusively for the benifit of the University of the South, and no
other institution in the state attempted to take advantage of it
until the fact dawned upon them that any school, by becoming an

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