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Burlington Vt Feby 14 1867.
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My dear Friend,
I wish that I could give a more satisfactory reply to your interesting letter. Your noble-hearted husband, the lam ented Bishop Polk, held a very high place in my esteem and affection; but my local position was so far removed that my op portunities of private intercourse with him were few and brief, although they all tended to conform my opnion of his elevated charac ter.
I enjoyed the genial and refined circle of his hospitable house in New Orleans for some three weeks and was with him afterwards, at Sewanee, for one week, where he was accom pained by his most intimate
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and attached friend and as sociate the admirable Bishop Elliott. My own visit to the grounds intended for the great University of the South was the result of your dear husband's kind partiality. The grand en terprise itself was suggested by his mind, and his extraordinary influence and zeal had alrea dy secured for it, within his own diocese, half a million of dollars. He brought with him to Sewanee, at that time, a large box, entirely filled with the results of correspon dence with the leading men in Eu rope and the scholastic institutions of the old world, as well as the laborious and thoroughly digested places projected for the Southern University, which, when completed, was to the be the noblest and best en dowed
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in Christendom. And as he unfold ed the design, and gave me some idea of the vast amount of toilsome work accomplished by Bishop Elliott and himself in its preparation, I was amazed and delighted at the combination of original genius, lofty enterprise, and Christian hope, with the utmost degree of practical wisdom, cautious investigation, exquisite tact, and indefatigable energy, which far surpassed all that I could have con ceived, within the bounds of human efficiency. In fact I was almost carried away by my admiration of the grand conception; and if circum stances had tendered it possible, I should have understood it possible, I would have been willing to enlist my own productive ability under his mas ter mind, to aid with its execution.
But that was the last occasion of personal intercourse with either of
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those gifted and admirable men. The terrible crises came. The war began its mournful work, and in communion with very many of his warmest friends, I deeply regretted your dear husband’s act, in accep ting a General’s commission in the Army. But I never doubted that he was governed by the freeest conscientious desire to do what he regarded as his duty to God and his Country. The spirit of a Christian martyr was am element in his lofty character. And while I could not have seen the case in the same light, I was well persuaded that he regarded his course as a sacrifice laid on the altar of truth, and went forth believing himself called to wield “the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.”