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twenty-nine years later. May factors blended to produce the Polk phenomenon. He had been a fellow cadet at West Point with Davis and Robert E. Lee. He had a military heritage. He was superbly equipped for the Mississippi duty, having travelled since 1838 by steamer, horse-back, and stage to nearly every part of Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama in the conduct of his episcopal functions. He was a planter, a slave-owner, and a believer in the integrity of state government. In short, he had the confidence of a vital segment of southern leadership. His selection was one of the most promising made by Jefferson Davis.

The cheers which greeted the appointment in the South were countererd by jeers in the North. Some few friends - Bishops Horatio Potter of New York and John Henry Hopkins of Vermont - wrote understanding letters, but the general press and the church press were outraged. A priest of God leading fellow rebels in slaughter? How could he do it?

Polk's agonies of decision are reflected in letters collected by his wife and published by his son. He reasoned that the political division of the formerly united states was a fact. He drew a parallel between the position of the Anglican Church in the colonies during the Revolution and the Southern church after the Montgomery congress which established the Confederacy. He took first the public stand which all Southern bishops later took, that a church in one country, the Confederate States of Ameria, could not possibly maintain a primary loyalty to another country, the United States of America, particularly if the two countries were at war. He pointed out that the leadership of the Episcopal church had done much to preserve unity. Indeed, such outspoken defenders of the Union as Bishop James H. Otey of Tennessee had brave censure, if not scorn, at the hands of the fire-breathers. The drum-beating which came from other Protestant pulpits in the late 1850's was