https://www.amazon.com/Address-life-character-Stephen-Ramseur/dp/5518972946/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=William+Ruffin+Cox&qid=1579693234&sr=8-2
1891
William Ruffin Cox was descended from John Cox, a British naval officer of good family and trading inclinations, who settled in North Carolina in the early nineteenth century. His son Thomas, after building up at Plymouth, North Carolina, an important export business with the West Indies, married Olivia Norfleet and became a planter in Halifax County, the home of his wife. Here, at Scotland Neck, their son William Ruffin was born on March 11, 1832.
William graduated from Franklin College in Franklin, Tennessee in 1853. Later he studied law at Lebanon College and practiced at the Tennessee bar for five years.
In 1857 Cox began to develop the fine plantation in Edgecombe County, North Carolina which he retained throughout his life. Soon, however, he became an enthusiastic secessionist. Having organized and equipped a military company at his own expense and having set himself to the study of military tactics, on the outbreak of the Civil War he was appointed by the governor major of the 2nd North Carolina Regiment.
During the next four years, he was with the Army of Northern Virginia continuously, participating in most of its battles and winning an official commendation for the ability to keep his command intact and for skill and intrepidity in the attack. Eleven times he was wounded, five times at Chancellorsville. The temporary command of a brigade came on May 31, 1864. To Cox fell the honor of leading the last organized attack made by his army.
After the war, this military record was an asset of first importance when, having begun again the practice of law in Raleigh, he drifted into politics. For a while, it seemed that original secessionists and the Holden party might unite in support of Cox as a candidate for governor in opposition to Worth, whom old Unionists supported. Instead, however, the former elected to assist in building a party of out-and-out opposition to the Radical régime by standing, in 1868, for the humble, but at that time peculiarly important, the office of a solicitor in the heavily Radical Raleigh district. Winning by the narrowest of margins, he continued to serve in this capacity until 1874, when he was made chairman of the state Democratic committee. Emphasizing fairness of nominations, rigid party discipline, and thorough local organization, this committee under his leadership "redeemed" the state in the three stirring campaigns of 1874, 1875, and 1876.
In 1876 Cox became district judge by appointment. Resigning in 1880 he was elected to Congress from the Raleigh-Durham district and was reelected in 1882 and 1884. Because of his support of civil service reform, he was defeated for renomination by his party, though not until his friends had deadlocked the convention for 197 ballots. In consonance with a common opinion - although Cox indignantly denied that there was any understanding to that effect - President Cleveland offered him a position in the Land Office. This he declined. In 1893, however, he was elected secretary of the Senate, a position which he continued to hold until 1900.
Meantime he was busy with many other affairs. He served as the grandmaster of the Masonic Order, sat in the councils of the Protestant Episcopal Church, served on the executive committee of the State Agricultural Society, and as chairman of the committee that established the North Carolina Journal of Education. He often delivered memorial addresses, the most elaborate of which was "The Life and Character of Ramseur." These addresses disclose no unusual learning or eloquence and tend to confirm Governor Worth’s view that Cox was "a man of slender capacity."
William Ruffin Cox was recognized for his service as a brigadier general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. He fought with distinction during the Peninsula Campaign. He displayed boldness and courage at the battles at Mechanicsville, Wilderness, Chancellorsville, and Malvern Hill.
As chairman of the House Committee on Civil Service, Cox supported President Cleveland’s reform policy, declaring in a set speech (June 1886) that the merit system involved "the very essence and genius of Democracy."
Cox was president of the North Carolina Agricultural Society in 1900-1901 and a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of the South.
Cox was of striking physical appearance, cultured and courtly; and his political choices indicated wisdom as well as character.
In 1857 Cox married Penelope Bradford Battle. In 1883 he was married to Frances Augusta Lyman, who bore him two sons, and in 1905 to Katherine Hamilton Cabell of Richmond, Virginia.
