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(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 edu-
cational 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 appro-
priately 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 prac-
tical sense and knowlege of affairs find it commands itself as
reasonable, as in no sense Utopian as feasible, as a thing emi-
nently to be desired as demnded by a state of things already