Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 32.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

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[163] passed his examination before Secretary Mallory and went aboard the school ship, Patrick Henry, at Rocketts, James river, Richmond, Va., where he remained until a few days before the evacuation of Richmond, when, with many of the ship's crew, having contracted dysentery, he was sent to the old Belleview Block Hospital, at which place the ever-memorable morning of the 3d of April, 1865, found him somewhat improved, though by no means sufficiently strong for the journey to his home, after receiving his discharge. He, with two of his shipmates, began a forced and weary tramp, however, up the old Central Railroad for Staunton, Va. They tarried and rested a few hours with his friend, Mr. Pratt, at the University of Virginia, and in due time they reached the old homestead at Mount Solon, Augusta county.

We all know what those days were to older hearts and heads than his, but he carried with him to the end the consciousness that he had stood by his State through her dreadful ordeal. While at the University of Virginia, three years after the war, he formed a lasting friendship with his classmate, the late lamented Henry W. Grady, whose untimely death he deeply mourned. These two friends died of the same disease, only one month apart. Dr. Harris studied the problems of unity between the North and South, and thought that Grady's genius was the touchstone that would be a power in formulating this unity of interests.

During the prevailing epidemic of la grippe, which appeared in Staunton in 1890, Dr. Harris was engaged in taking care of others, and in thus exposing himself to the weather, he contracted cold, which was followed by acute pneumonia, which resulted in heart failure, which was the immediate cause of his death, January 24, 1890. He fell with his ‘harness’ on in the faithful discharge of his professional duties.