BATON ROUGE, February 13, 1860.
MY DEAR SHERMAN: Your two favors are received, the last this morning with its enclosures. I find a general feeling in favor of the Seminary; and most of its friends, as far as my acquaintance extends, are decidedly in favor of military organization. Still there is great cause to fear a failure of every efficient measure for its organization and support. All agree when the subject is mentioned that it is all right and proper that they will vote for it, etc., but all this amounts to nothing. Nobody seems to work, and the subject is not yet even before a committee, and the session is half over. One such man as General Graham in the legislature would do more to forward its cause than forty lukewarm friends who are content to say “I agree with you and will vote for it when it comes up.”
Dr. Smith is strongly for the Seminary, by no means in favor of the military organization except as a mere incident, and I conclude from what he has said to me, very willing to see a failure of that part. He wants a great Seminary to make learned men, its operations to commence just where nineteen-twentieths of our young men end. The thing is a myth, an ignis fatuus and a dead failure certain, for want of means if nothing else. It would cost us from fifty thousand to one hundred thousand dollars a year, and you can't get it. In a conversation with the doctor a few days since, I regretted to observe what I took to be a lurking satisfaction at the troubles you had in enforcing what he called rigid military discipline. I most emphatically expressed my hope that you would carry the thing out in its fullest extent, and I am glad to find I was not mistaken in you and show the boys at the start that you were their commander and intended to be so. Unless this is done in the outset we had as well give up the experiment for it must share the fate of all previous efforts in the state.
The more you see of our society, especially our young men, the more you will be impressed with the importance of a change in our system of education if we expect the next generation to be anything more than a mere aggregation of loafers charged with the duty of squandering their fathers' legacies and disgracing their names. I hoped, and still hope, your Seminary may be the entering wedge for a reformation, but should it fail under the auspices now before us I shall despair. A few weeks will determine whether the state intends to sustain it. Suspend your decision, if possible, on the advantageous offer made you. Under any circumstances I would not advise you against closing with such an advantageous offer. I can only hope we may be enabled to make your present position more desirable.
At the request of Dr. S. and some other gentlemen, I have given them a rough sketch of a bill for establishing an arsenal with you, and making your cadets the military guard of the “Munitions of War” belonging to the state. I hope it may pass. As we are now, our arms are thrown away as fast as received.
I am getting heartily tired of the honors of office. Of all the loose, disorganized, mal-administered state of affairs I have ever seen, the public affairs of this state are the worst. Nobody is responsible, every disbursing officer keeps his own accounts, draws his own warrants on the treasury, and if he can only get a dishonest man to consent to sign a voucher and a warrant, they draw the money and there is the end of it. No one ever settles an account with the state. One of our Board, dismissed from the army as a defaulter, with these visions before him, is giving us infinite trouble. So far, he has failed in every effort, but he has kept the board from any duty. The other members are tender toward him, and hope to conquer by mildness. I prefer the military system and go at him rough shod.
My regards to General Graham, and thank him for his bill. I am for it first and last, but still am willing to take less if we can't get all. But like Oliver Twist I should “ask for more.”
SOURCE: Walter L. Fleming, General W.T. Sherman as College President, p. 161-4
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