TYRONE PLANTATION, February 9, 1860.
MY DEAR SIR: Although well aware of all the troubles, perplexities, worriments and annoyances to which your new career of executive life subjects you in its outset, yet here is a matter, which with all my repugnance to be obtrusive, my sense of everything that is right will not allow me to refrain from inflicting on you.
You will see from the enclosed copy of a letter received last night, with some official communications from Major Sherman, and which I have risen at five o'clock this morning to copy, that we are in imminent danger of losing our irreplacable superintendent, the apprehension of which has kept me awake for more than half the night.
Although coming to me under the injunction implied by the mark “confidential,” I have felt that a higher duty required that I should communicate it to you in both of your official capacities, saying to you at the same time that I have no objection to your using it with the same discreet confidence among those you may desire to confer with. Particularly I would be glad that you would show it in this manner to Doctor Smith, Doctor Clarke, and Mr. Wise. I would also be gratified that you would confer with Colonel Bragg because he has known Major Sherman intimately for twenty years and understands his character and qualities better than I do.
I have seen enough, however, to satisfy me that we could not hope to get again exactly such another man for the position — one of so clear, quick, and decided a mind — such practised administrative and executive qualities – such experienced and varied knowledge of men, the world and its business, combined with such kindliness of heart and parental care and thoughtfulness. I have found fully realized in him all which General Gibson, Colonel J. P. Taylor (brother of the late president), and other gentlemen told me in Washington last September, when they said, in the words of Colonel Taylor, “if you hunted the whole army from one end of it to the other, you could not have found a man in it more admirably suited for the position in every respect than Sherman."
In this connection also I beg to ask your perusal of the enclosed letter from Major Buell, one of the assistant adjutants-general of the army, at present and for sometime past occupying the position of confidential military adviser to the secretary of war — I also beg to enclose you the first letter I ever received from Major Sherman, regretting that I have not also to send you his letter of application to the Board.
Now! What is to be done? I wish to be prepared for Mr. R—n's arrival, hoping that the accidents of travel and business may have delayed him long enough for me to hear from you in the meantime. Already too prolix, I will answer my own question in brief. Let us offer Major Sherman, if necessary to retain him, five thousand dollars a year, and as an excuse for doing so let us add to his duties those of treasurer and purser, which now he in reality discharges. And I assure you that the State of Louisiana will never have invested money that will pay a better interest. Many men may be capable to make laws for a nation, to govern a state, to preside on the bench, but I tell you a man competent to govern, control, instruct a large educational institution is of rare occurrence. And if we throw away this one there is but little likelihood that we can replace him. This is but fifteen hundred dollars more than he now receives, and whilst I am satisfied that no such idea as increased compensation, with such a view, has entered his mind, for he has repeatedly said “you pay your professors very liberally, and have a right to expect them to work” and I have never known a more unsordid and unselfish gentleman, yet I think that an assurance of that amount, with a comfortable house for his family, will decide him immovably against Mr. R.'s offers. Action in this matter either by the General Assembly, or by the Board of Supervisors, cannot be had immediately, but if you and Dr. Smith determine that it shall be done, there will be but little difficulty in effecting it, and in the event of such determination, let us three, you, Smith and I, guarantee to Major Sherman five thousand dollars a year for five years, conditioned of course, on the retention during that time of his health and efficiency.
It will not be this amount of money which will influence him so much, as the relief he will thereby experience from the apprehension which is becoming somewhat morbid with him, that occurring political events, and the position of his brother in the U.S. Congress, may or do conspire to affect his position and impair his usefulness here. This is the feeling which unless clearly and decidedly removed from his mind, will compel him to accept R.'s offer.
I heard authentically of this association, and its offers to Major Sherman, in Washington in September, with many of the names, of whom I only recollect now those of Rupell, the great Utah army contractor, Roelofson of Cincinnati, where two or three others of them reside, and Beverly Tucker, U.S. Consul at Liverpool. Professor Smith told me on his arrival here, that when Mr. Tucker came over to Paris to attend the obsequies of the late American Minister, he told him, Mr. S. of this association and its proportions, which comprise an interest also without capital on his part, in the business to Major S., remarking to him that he could well see therefore, that if our Sherman and their Sherman was one and the same man, he would not be able to retain him. Begging to hear from you in this matter after no more delay than may be absolutely necessary, for Mr. Roelofson may be here, and Major Sherman's decision made in a very few days (tho' I will interpose all the delays that I can).
[Endorsement on retained copy of the above letter] Wrote the Governor again on February eleventh of the arrival of Mr. Roelofson, and that although very urgent for the Major to make an immediate acceptance and go right off with him, I had obtained from him a delay of ten days within which the Major would give his answer. This was to enable me to hear from Baton Rouge, whither on fourteenth Major Sherman proceeded himself.
SOURCE: Walter L. Fleming, General W.T. Sherman as College President, p. 155-8
