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not characteristic of Episcopal clergy. There were hardly a true secessionist among the Southern bishops until after South Carolina's disunion legislation.

The reasoning by which Polk followed the injunction, "Render unto Caesar," was accompanied by emotion too. The South was to Polk a dear and native land. Its principles were his own. The slaves he tended with much sacrifice were a yoke and a burden, but still they must be cared for. He did not favor slavery as an institution. He predicted its gradual collapse by economic unfeasibility. Meantime, the only attitude for the church and churchmen in the South was Christian concern for the slaves' physical and spiritual well-being. Half of the Episcopalains in his diocese of Louisiana were Negro.

An incident just before his acceptance of a thrice-offered commission has led to an emotion which was understandable, if not pardonable. His taking up arms for the "defense of fireside and family" had pseronal validity. Mrs. Polk and the children barely escaped with their lives when their homes at Sewanee, and that of their episcopal neighbors, the Stephen Elliotts, of Georgia, had been destroyed by fires set simultaneously by unknown persons, thought to be Union sympathizers from the Tennessee hills.

One can only speculate on the part Polk might have played in the Confederacty if he had not "buckled his sword over his gown." He and Stephen Elliott had in March, 1861, issued from Sewanee a letter to the bishops whose dioceses were in the Confederate States, calling a convention in Montgomery in July, to consider the relationship of the Southern dioceses to the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Before the convention met, Polk was in uniform. His diocese of Louisiana and the diocese of Tennessee were early occupied by federal troops. Neither officially became part of the Confederate church, as neither diocesan