Arthur S. Colyar Biographical Files

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Pages That Mention Col. H. R. Moore

Arthur S. Colyar Biographical Files Document 21

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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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