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