Polk Family Papers Box 9 Document 13

(Letter to Bishop Elliott from Bishop Polk January 31st, 1857) (15)

New Orleans, Jany. 31st, 1857.

My dear Elliott:

You have by this time I presume received the quota of the address of the Bishops. Hooker desired so,e one of the committee to become responsible for the Bill. I engaged he should be paid and he has sent it to me. The amount due by each of the nine is 14.89 (fourteen dolls eighty nine cts.) which you may remit me at your convenience and I will forward to him.

I am desirous to know the feeling among your people as to the movement and they have had time to reflect upon it. How do you find them thinking & speaking? And what do you hear as to the feeling about it among your neighbors in So. Ca. & Florida? We have been agitating in this quarter through the press and so far we find he interest in the matter deepening and widening in the most satisfactory way. The truth is, if this matter is to be carried that must be done which carries every other matter, and without which nothing can be carried, to wit, there must be work done in its behalf. The parties converned in its success, must put their shoulders to the wheel and shove it forward with sturdy vigour, and that without hesitation or pausing. Never was there such and open door for any church as there is for ours in those two states at the present moment in the direction of which we are speaking. Of this the public is itself satisfied. The Southern States are resolves to look out fot themselves henceforth, and in nothing more than in the education of their children. This is certainly a foregone determination. This determination has created a demand for edcational facilities and facili-

(Letter to Bishop Elliott from Bishop Polk January 31st, 1857) - 2 -

ties of the highest grade and amplest range. We came in with the flood tide of that deman, with a tender of our services to supply all that might be asked for. And heving the entré, we caught and have fixed the pulic attention. Our address has thus gained a great point for us. It presents an imposing array of names, which from their very position to say nothing of personal character and qualification, would force any scheme, to which they stood pledged, very prominently in advance of any other of a similar kind that might be thought of. It has done this effectually, and the overture has been received with the most respectful attention, the feasibility of the plan discussed and granted and a readiness to accept it and cooperate in its execution very generally expressed. I speak of course of those parts of the south with which I am more immediately acquainted and from which I have heard. The fact is, there is no power at the south, civil or ecclesiastical that can do the work we proposed, so effectially as the Episcopal church. The states if they should think they had the constitutional power to vote the money, have not the more important power of voting an administration. They must give of such as they have, and samples or representatives of all they have, and thus bring together a lot of impracticables. It would in the hands of the states be an inevitable failure. The Baptists or Methodists have not the bearing, or the social position, or pprestige, requisite to command the public confidence, the Romanists in such a protestant population are of course out of the question, and the field is left to the Presbyterians and ourselves. They are men of bearing and a certain social position, and of a certain organization too, but in all these, their position in the public

(Letter to Bishop Elliott from Bishop Polk January 31st, 1857)

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mind generally is not superior to ours, with the majority perhaps inferior, certainly greatlly so in the minds of those on whom as a church we act. If then an organization exists in these states capable of taking hold of and founding and administering an educational establishment of the university scale, to the satisfation of the South, that organization is ours. It can be done by no other so well, our heads of dioceses, officials that never die banded together, and supported by co-laborers from the leading clergy and laity elected annually by their several committees found a board of truth giving assurane of as much capacity and integrity and security and permanence, as could be desired by the most eclectic or captious. All that is needed is that the facts of the case should be know, and the obligations and duties of churchmen and others in view of these facts placed plainly and strongly before them, and we shall find no exception taken to our lead in the matter, but a hearty expression of confidence in an ability to discharge the truth and a ready mind and will to help us carry it a successful consummation. The work of doing this is the work of the Bishops, it will not be help as appropriately the work of any others. The people look to us for it. They are willing to be guided. They ask for the indication of something that may meet the present emergency, and they ask it of us their commissioned guides. We have submitted a plan of relief, of ample breadth and comprehensiveness. Let them pick flaws in it. They are challenged to the task. If they cannot, if their practical sense and knowlege of affairs find it commands itself as reasonable, as in no sense Utopian as feasible, as a thing eminently to be desired as demnded by a state of things already

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(Letter to Bishop Elliott from Bishop Polk January 31st, 1857)

upon us presently, then let them approve our judgement and accept our guidance ane come up to our help with the necessary material aid and do their duty as me, as citizens and as churchmen and the thing is done.

But all this requires "agitation". It is not to be accomplished without it. The politicians understand this. Every individual man in America is full of his own particular business or fancy and if anyone wishes to call off his neighbor from such attention to his affairs and fix his mind and enlist his feelings about another matter, he has to go to him and get him to stop and listen, and he has to unfold and explain and enforce; to arouse and instruct and excite, until he gets his neighbors mind so full of what he has to present, that if he does not become a propagandist in turn, he at least becomes an ally, and so the feeble agitator is ultimately the whole pool. I hope you are making good headway in your part of the field, and that when your convention meets you will be able to find your heart encouraged and your hands strengthened and a cordial readiness to respond to any suggestions you may think it expedient to make in its behalf.

I am pleased to say that things around me wear an encouraging aspect. Most of the city papers have notices the address of the Bishops and strongly commended its object, some of them in the most marked manner. The feeling among churchmen and others is of a very cheering kind. I have had many offers of $1,000 each when the time comes two parties have said they would give $5,000 each, one has said he would subscribe $25,000, and I am not in communication with a gentleman who if things fo well, I am not without