Seminary, Wednesday, Dec. 28, 1859.
. . . I was disappointed the two last mails at not hearing
from you, but to-morrow I feel certain. I will go to town myself and take this.
The time is now near at hand for opening the Seminary. I have the mess started
in the building, all the carpenters are out, all the furniture ready, a pretty
good stock of wood on hand and generally all things are about as far advanced
as I could expect. Still I am the only one ready. The steward is sick on his
plantation twelve miles off, his son and niggers are here, a good for nothing
set. He has a white under steward who has some work in him and another white
boy to help, and I have three negro women scrubbing out from top to bottom.
The weather is rainy, sloppy, warm and misty, everything is
wet and uncomfortable, yet I have pushed things so that I at least am ready.
Smith is sleeping on the floor in my room on a bed I bought for the cadets and
he is waiting for his furniture from New Orleans. None of the other professors
are here excepting Mr. Vallas whom I have told you about. There have been forty-three
pay appointments and sixteen public, so we may expect fifty or sixty this year,
which is a reasonable number as this is no time to begin. Everybody has made
arrangements for this winter. Had we begun in November it would have been
better. Still as this affair is designed to last forever it may be well to
commence moderately first.
I had rather a lonely Christmas, nobody here but my poor
drummer and myself. The three negro women rushed to my room at daylight and
cried “Christmas gift, Massa,” and the negro boy Henry that chops wood and the
old negro woman Amy that cooks in an outhouse for the carpenters all claimed
Christmas of me thinking I am boss and as rich as Croesus himself. I disbursed
about $5 in halves as each of them had done me some service uncompensated.
The old cook Amy always hid away for me the last piece of
butter and made my breakfast and dinner better than the carpenters’, always
saying she “knowed” I wasn't used to such kind of living. She don't know what I
have passed through. Negroes on plantations are generally allowed holiday the
whole week, but we can't give it here, as this week is devoted to cleaning up
after the dirt of plastering, painting and tobacco spitting over seventy-two
rooms, halls and galleries. An immense quantity of dirt is cleaned away, but
enough yet remains to find fault with.
As to Christmas I had invitation to General Graham's, to a
Mr. Henarie's in Alexandria and Professor Vallas, all declined, because of the
property exposed here, which it was not prudent to leave unprotected. Soon all
these things will be distributed, others will be here and sentinels to guard
when I take my holiday. . .
SOURCES: Walter L. Fleming, General W.T.
Sherman as College President, p. 93-5
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