TYRONE, LA.,
Wednesday, Feb. 6, 1861.
DEAR COLONEL: . . . Those
cartridges1 are the wretched (as I am sorry to learn from you they
turn out to be) remains of my old company, “The Rapides Horse Guards.” The
vaulting ambition of a succeeding company and the characteristic legislation of
the police jury got the carbines, sabres, pistols, and accoutrements burned up;
the small box of cartridges which I have here being perfectly sound, it had not
occurred to me that, put up as they are, they could be damaged; those you got
have always remained in the railroad warehouse, and I am sorry to hear from you
that they have become useless; it is not a matter of so much consequence now to
either of us as it was a few months ago.
Your letters have
given me much food for sad reflection. I have tried in various ways, after my
quiet fashion, during thirty odd years of residence here, to do these people
some good. The organization of this Seminary, with yourself at the head of it —
I had hoped something from it in the way of elevating their social and mental
conditions, but it is ever casting “pearls before swine;” for the future I
shall “let Ephraim alone, for he is wedded to his idols.”
All of these
proceedings! people in their sovereign capacity assembled in convention, and
legislature in session at the same time! What do we want with both? — to make
more taxes to feed hungry Locofocos.
I have been trying
for more than three months to get off to New Orleans. On Sunday sent my trunk
to Alexandria, expecting to go on Monday. Now my passage is taken for to-morrow
on the "Burton" (couldn't go to the party at Joe Hynson's last night
for want of clothes, for the road is in too impassable a condition to send for
my trunk and then send it back again), so that I cannot await the uncertainty
of a meeting of the board on Saturday.
I sent yesterday
your last letter, informing me of the call of the meeting, up to Sanford and
Whittington, requesting them to attend, and to insist on the passage of a
resolution directing the vice-president to pay you your arsenal salary up to
the day of your withdrawal, out of Seminary funds, and take your warrant on the
auditor for the amount when appropriated by the legislature, to be thus
returned to the Seminary funds. If I was certain that there would be a full
quorum and a boat on which I could get off on Saturday afternoon, much as it
would inconvenience me, I should remain for this purpose. . .
1 See pages 317 and 328. - ED.
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