Sunday, June 3, 2018

William T. Sherman to Ellen Ewing Sherman, November 12, 1859

Alexandria, La., Sunday, Nov. 12 [1859].

I wrote you a hasty letter yesterday whilst the stage was waiting. General Graham and others have been with me every moment so that I was unable to steal a moment's time to write you. I left the wharf boat at the mouth of Red River, a dirty, poor concern where I laid over one day, the stage only coming up tri-weekly, and at nine o'clock at night started with an overcrowded stage, nine in and two out with driver, four good horses, Troy coach, road dead level and very dusty, lying along the banks of bayous which cut up the country like a net work. Along these bayous lie the plantations rich in sugar and cotton such as you remember along the Mississippi at Baton Rouge.

We rode all night, a fine moonlight, and before breakfast at a plantation we were hailed by Judge Boyce who rode with us the rest of the journey. His plantation is twenty-five miles further up, but he has lived here since 1826 and knows everybody. He insisted on my stopping with him at the plantation of Mr. Moore, who is just elected governor of Louisiana for the coming four years, and who in that capacity will be President of the Board of Supervisors, who control the Seminary of Learning, and whose friendship and confidence it is important I should secure. He sent us into town in his own carriage. Alexandria isn't much of a town, and the tavern where I am, Mrs. Fellow's, a common rate concern, as all southern taverns out of large cities are. Still I have a good room opening into the parlor.

General Graham came in from his plantation nine miles west of this, and has been with me ever since. At this moment he is at church, the Episcopal. He will go out home tonight and to-morrow I go likewise, when we are to have a formal meeting to arrange some rules and regulations, also agree on the system of study. He is the person who has from the start carried on the business. He was at West Point, but did not graduate, but he has an unlimited admiration of the system of discipline and study. He is about fifty-five years, rather small, exceedingly particular and methodical, and altogether different from his brother, the general.1

LOUISIANA STATE SEMINARY IN 1860
Sherman's office was the room to the left of the entrance.
The building is a gorgeous palace, altogether too good for its purpose, stands on a high hill three miles north of this. It has four hundred acres of poor soil, but fine pine and oak trees, a single large building. Like most bodies they have spent all their money on the naked building, trusting to the legislature for further means to provide furniture, etc. All this is to be done, and they agree to put me in charge at once, and enable me to provide before January 1 the tables, desks, chairs, blackboards, etc., the best I can in time for January 1, and as this is a mere village I must procure all things from New Orleans, and may have to go down early next month. But for the present I shall go to General Graham's tomorrow, be there some days, return here and then remove to the college, where I will establish myself and direct in person the construction of such things as may be made there.

There is no family near enough for me to board, so I will get the cook who provides for the carpenters to give me my meals.

It is the design to erect two buildings for the professors, but I doubt whether the legislature will give any more, $135,000 having already been expended. The institution, styled by law the Seminary of Learning, has an annual endowment of $8,100, but it is necessary for the legislature to appropriate this annually, and as they do not meet till the third Monday in January, I don't see how we can get any money before hand. I think when the appropriation is made, however, my salary will be allowed from November 1.

When I first got here it was hot, but yesterday it changed, and it is now very cold. I have a fire here, but several windows are broken, and the room is as cold as a barn, and the lazy negroes have to be driven to bring in wood.

I expect plenty of trouble from this source, the high wages of servants and the necessity to push them all the time to do anything. I would hire whites, but suppose it would be advisable and good policy to submit to the blacks for the present.

On arrival here I found your and Minnie's2 letters, seven days in coming, which is better time than I expected. Mails come here tri-weekly by stage by the route I came. . .
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1 General R. B. Mason, Sherman's commanding officer in California. — Ed.

2 Sherman’s eldest daughter.

SOURCE: Walter L. Fleming, Editor, General W.T. Sherman as College President, p. 47-52

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