Boyd, James (1888-1944) was born in Pennsylvania and brought up in North Carolina. At Princeton he wrote verse and fiction for the Tiger and was its managing editor in his senior year. After graduation in 1910, he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and served overseas with the Army Ambulance Service in World War I. He then returned to North Carolina, where he wrote five historical novels. His two best known are laid in North Carolina, Drums (1925), during the American Revolution, and Marching On (1927), during the Civil War. Roll River (1935) is about his native Harrisburg, Long Hunt (1930) and Bitter Creek (1939) about the frontier West.
The Manuscripts Room of Firestone Library is dedicated to Boyd's memory. Inscribed on a silver tablet are these words of his:
``The belief that leads to a democracy is this: that every man has something sacred about him. This sacredness is held to be inherent and perpetual: no ruler, no religion, no group of men, no government is justified in violating it. It is the first principle of man's life and nothing takes precedence over it.''
From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton
University Press (1978).
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