Seminary Of Learning, near Alexandria, La., Nov. 27, 1859.
DEAR SIR: . . .
Congress granted to Louisiana long ago, some thirty years, certain lands for a
Seminary of Learning. These lands have been from time to time sold and the
state now holds the money in trust, giving annually the interest sum $8100.
The accrued interest
and more too has been expended in an elegant structure, only too good and
costly for its purpose and location. The management has after a series of
changes devolved on a Board of Supervisors, composed of fourteen gentlemen of
whom the governor is ex-officio president and the superintendent of public
education a member. These have selected five professors to whom is entrusted
the management of the Seminary. The state has imposed the condition of
educating sixteen free of charge for rent, tuition, and board. . .
This building is
three miles from Alexandria in a neighborhood not at all settled, as the land
here is poor and unfit for cultivation, all the alluvial land being on the
south side of the Red River. There are therefore no houses here or near for
families, and to remedy this an appropriation will also be asked to build two
suitable houses for the married professors, Vallas and myself.
Governor Moore, just
elected for four years, says that all educational attempts in Louisiana
hitherto failed, mostly because religion has crept in and made the schools and
colleges sectarian, which does not suit the promiscuous class who live here. He
doubts whether at the start the legislature will feel disposed to depart from
recent custom of refusing all such applications, but doubts not if we can for a
year or two make good showing, and avoid the breakers that have destroyed
hitherto endowed colleges, that this will be fostered and patronized to a high
degree.
I shall therefore
devote my attention to success, before I give my thoughts to personal
advantage; and I find too much reliance is placed on me. I have no doubt I can
discipline it and maybe control the system of studies to make it a more
practical school than any hereabouts. And as parents are wealthy and willing to
pay freely it may be we can get along for a time with little legislative aid
further than we can claim as a right.
A small balance of
the last appropriation still remains which I am now expending on the necessary
furniture, and the Board of Supervisors being now in session at Alexandria I
expect they will send me to New Orleans to procure the necessary outfit, in
which case I will go down the latter part of this week, being absent about ten
days. Red River is now low, still boats go and come with considerable
regularity.
I met to-day among
the Board of Supervisors a remnant of the old congressional times, Jesse A.
Bynum, a little dried up old man, who moved to Louisiana from North Carolina,
and who has a horror of an abolitionist. I was told he was angry at my
election, because he thought all from Ohio were real abolitionists, but to-day
he was unusually polite to me, and told me much of his congressional
experience. . .
Yours affectionately,
W. T. Sherman.
SOURCES: The
article is abstracted in Walter L. Fleming’s, General W.T. Sherman as
College President, p. 62-4
