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September 16, 1963

The Rt. Rev. Daniel Corrigan
Episcopal Church Center
815 Second Avenue
New York 17, New York

Dear Bishop Corrigan:

Your letter of September 6 is most thoughtful. You credit me
with more than I deserve.

It certainly would be a pleasure to talk with you about Leonidas
Polk. I don't think I am going to be in New York before your deadline,
October 13, but if I am I will certainly look forward to a visit with you,
evben a brief one.

By today's standards Polk made two great mistakes. He did
not free his slaves (nor did he sell them and use the money to build
churches) and he accepted a commision to the Confederate Army. In
judging him, we must be disciplined by his alternatives.

To free a large number of slaves, in the period 1835 to 1860
in the deep South, was no favor to the slaves. Among Polk's slaves,
probably ten percent were literate. A few others had skills with some
economic value. THe great majority of them could do absolutely nothing
except hoe cotton under close supervision. We have numerous accounts
of slaves pleading not to be freed by their masters, and unless a slave
owner were financially prepared to give each of them some sort of dowry
for their journey into freedom, they were usually much worse off with-
out a master to whom they could look for protection. Polk's letters and
diaries are full of references to his tremendous humanitarian concern
for his slaves' welfare. My personal feeling is that he accepted slavery
as the least bad of several alternatives.

The matter of selling slaves was even worse. The slave of
the deep South had a terrible horror of "being sold down the river" at
the New Orleans slave market. It was probably the uncertainty of the
future situation which was so appalling to him. If Polk had inherited
stocks and bonds instead of slaves, and if his wife's fortune had consist-