William T. Sherman to George Mason Graham, January 31, 1861

ALEXANDRIA, January 31, 1861.

DEAR SIR: A meeting of the Board of Supervisors is called by instruction of Dr. S. A. Smith, vice-president, at 11 a.m. Saturday, February 9, in Alexandria.

May I ask your attendance, and your influence, with your neighbors for their attendance, as Dr. Smith's absence will make a quorum hard to get.

Business of importance will be laid before you, embracing the steps made imperatively necessary, by my withdrawal from my present duties of superintendent and treasurer. I have a sealed letter from Dr. Smith to the Board, and I cannot tell whether he intends to be present or not.

NOTE BY GRAHAM ENDORSED ON THE ABOVE

Have you received notice to attend any such meeting? This letter of Colonel Sherman's is all I know about it. I fear Sherman is to be chiselled out of the five hundred dollars a year engaged to be paid him in the Arsenal bill of last year. That bill authorizes it “to be paid quarterly on his own warrant.” The auditor, or treasurer, one or the other, I understand will not pay it because it was not in the Appropriation Bill, thanks to the experience and sagacity of some of our friends. Once Colonel Sherman leaves here, he will neither come back, nor send back to ask for it.

I am going to New Orleans, whither I have been trying to get off for more than three months. My trunk has been in Alexandria for that purpose since Sunday, and I must go on the "Burton" on Thursday — but I wish that you gentlemen would do what I should do myself if present: propose to and urge on the Board the passage of a Resolution directing the vice-president to pay Colonel S. the full amount due him on that score up to the day of his withdrawal, out of the Seminary funds, and then take Colonel Sherman's warrant, on the auditor for the amount, which when appropriated by the legislature would thus be returned to the Seminary funds.

The increase of his salary in that manner, was a part of the inducement to him to decline the appointment to London, and I am sure there was no intention any where to deceive or disappoint him, and under all the attendant circumstances now no consideration whatever ought to be allowed to interfere with his immediate reception of it, and I hope you gentlemen will urge and insist on it. 

SOURCE: Walter L. Fleming, General W.T. Sherman as College President, p. 354-6