Mr. Manning's whole course of conduct, his verbal profession to the contrary notwithstanding, shows a deep rooted hostility, embittered by personal pique, to the military government and character of this school. To the superintendent he seems to have a badly concealed personal, sectional, political antipathy. I have tried to shut my eyes to this, and to think differently, but the conviction is irresistible. The sneering tone and manner in which he said to me last winter, when I submitted to his inspection my draft of an act for the organization and government of the Seminary as a State Military Academy, “he is to be a Colonel, is he!" was alone enough to satisfy me of this, without the one thousand other evidences that he has given.
How inconsistent with the dignity, gravity, caution, and circumspection which should surround him in his character, as a member of the Board of Supervisors, is his boasting declaration in the Board, that he had advised Dr. Vallas orally, and in writing, to disobey an order of the superintendent, thus striking at the very roots of all government, of any kind whatever, in the institution! And then telling us that he had that morning insulted Dr. Vallas for not following his advice.
His added remark that now that he had found he was wrong he must apologize to Dr. Vallas is no palliation for so total a want of every attribute becoming a member of the Board of Supervisors. His declaration that he was ignorant of the existence of the regulation under which the superintendent issued the order to the professors which he advised Dr. Vallas to disobey, is no palliation.
It is his duty to know the regulations. He had the regulations in his possession for more than a month last winter, when he took advantage of my courtesy and confidence in placing them in his hands for his perusal, and refused to deliver them up when I wrote to the superintendent to call on him for them for the purpose of taking them with him to New Orleans. . . to have printed ready for the use of the school on 1st January last.
So far from apologizing to Dr. Vallas, as he had said in the Board he should have to do for speaking to him so insultingly as he said he had done in the forenoon, I am informed by gentlemen who were on the outside of the hall, that on the night of 31st July that he spoke to both Dr. Vallas and the superintendent in regard to matters pending before the Board in a most imperious and dictorial tone and manner, amounting in the whole to a prohibition to them to take any further step in regard to those matters in opposition to his wish, although all that they had done was simply in compliance with instructions to them from the Board of Supervisors. But as Mr. Manning was not present at the session of the Board at which these instructions had been given they had not received the imprimatur of his sic volo, sic jubeo.
As to Mr. Manning not understanding the impropriety of his course towards Dr. Vallas until after he was in the session of the Board on Tuesday afternoon, he was first met on his arrival there on Monday forenoon by another professor to whom he expressed his surprise at seeing him in his uniform. That professor explained to him the authority of the superintendent for issuing the order to the professors to wear their uniform at the examination, and the propriety of their doing so. Mr. Manning and myself had had a similar conversation at his office several days before. So that he understood the whole thing [before] he met Dr. Vallas, and before he came into the session of the Board on either Monday or Tuesday afternoons – and it all only strengthens my conviction that the whole thing was only intended as a lever with which to impair the authority, influence, and usefulness of the superintendent with a view to producing as soon as possible a dissolution of his connection with the institution, and the overturning of its practical, utilitarian, and military character, and establishing on its ruins a high sounding program for a grand university of empty halls, for that programme requires a larger acquaintance with Latin and Greek before a young man can enter it, than the most of our southwestern young men have acquired when they leave college.
Dr. Smith has never concealed his opposition to the military character of this institution, but only relaxed it under the influence of a conviction of its popularity. He has said openly “it will break down in a year or two, and then we'll take hold of it and make something out of it.” The fullest meeting of the Board that we have ever had has after ample discussion, declared with only two dissenting voices that this shall be "a Literary and Scientific Institution under a Military System of Government on a Programme and plan similar to that of the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington.” The people of the state have sanctioned, and the legislature has ratified it.
Doctor Smith and Mr. Manning have both admitted to me that they believed it was the popular idea. Is it right in them then – shall they be permitted to continue to pursue this step-father course towards this institution of undermining it in this stealthy manner by giving it every side blow that their position enables them to inflict on it? For I warn gentlemen now, who desire to maintain the present character of the school, but yet who may be carried away by other considerations to vote for these measures, that that will be the inevitable result of them. Let them not then say hereafter that they would not have voted for them if they had thought that such would be the result. I tell them now that these are but the entering wedge, blow after blow on which will be struck, until the present superintendent of the institution is driven from it, the friends of its present form of government around this Board either entirely withdrawn, under the influence of that power behind the throne which is so manifestly anxious to have itself considered greater than the throne itself, or else reduced to so helpless a minority as to form no obstacle to the designs of its stepfathers on this institution.
But I have too much confidence in the present governor of the state not to hope and believe that he will not countenance any measures calculated to frustrate the wish of the people, or to impair the usefulness to them of this institution. I claim as much right to speak to and of the present governor as any other man in the state – all my interests are in it - my manhood's life has been spent here, my children are born here - what of property I possess has been acquired here. On another, but in my estimation inferior, score I claim to stand in that respect on a footing of perfect equality with any other citizen of the state. I voted to place him in his present position, and I recommended every other man that I could to do the same thing. I have known him longer, with one exception, than any other member of this Board – for thirty-one years I have watched his course with kindly interest, and there is no man in the state who feels less unpleasantly than I do at the success and prosperity with which a kind providence has rewarded the exertion of his energies. I repeat then that I have too much confidence in the present governor to believe that what I am satisfied are the misguided designs of Dr. Smith and Mr. Manning in regard to this institution, will meet with his approbation, and I trust that the members of this Board will not suffer themselves to be influenced by any outside considerations to vote for measures of so fatal a tendency to the success and the usefulness of this institution.
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