Leonidas Polk Family Papers

"Leonidas Polk, Father and First Founder of the University of the South" Sesqui-Centennial Address by The Right Reverend Jonathan Goodhue Sherman, S.T.D. Suffragan Bishop of Long Island at a dinner of The John H.P. Hodgson Chapter The Associated Alumni of the University of the South at the Harvard Club of New York City April 10, 1956

Mr. Toastmaster, Bishop Donegan, Bishop Boynton, Dr. McCrady, Right Reverend, Very Reverend and Reverend Sirs, General Crittenberger, Mr. Duncan, Members of the John H.P. Hodgson Chapter of the Associated Alumni of the University of the South, Gentlemen of Sewanee, and distinguished guests:

I have always known that my brother, the Suffragan Bishop of New York, was a man of wide experience but I had never realized until this evening the extent and the intimacy of his contacts in Ireland!

In the year 1839 when Bishop Polk was making his first episcopal visitation as Missionary Bishop of the Southwest, it is recorded that he had some rough experiences. The Republic of Texas had at that time a reputation for being a place of refuge for insolvent debtors and fugitives from justice, and the Bishop was suspected of belonging to one or the other of those classes. A rough and ready Texan, hearing that the Bishop was one of the Polks of Tennessee, said to him, "Well, stranger, if it is a fair question, I would give a heap to know what brought you here!"

-4-

famous men the University of the South rightly holds first claim. But Sewanee's title must not be allowed to be exclusive. These men belong also the the Protestant Episcopal Church; they belong to the Anglican Communion; they belong to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of the ages. And at the head of their line we rejoice to recognize that grand triumvirate of Bishops and Fathers in God -- James Hervey Otey of Tennessee, Stephen Elliott of Georgia, and, in their center, Leonidas Polk, Missionary Bishop of Arkansas and the Southwest, first Foreign Missionary Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, first Bishop of Louisiana, and, in the words of Bishop Quintard, "the projector, originator, and real founder of the University of the South."

The life of Leonidas Polk was impressed from the beginning with a military character. Both his father and his grandfather had been soldiers of the Revolution. Born on April 10, 1806, in Raleigh, North Carolina, he received

-6-

he was ready to admit any interest in religion but because he had promised his father to call on the chaplain. McIlvaine presented him with two tracts, requesting him to read one himself and to drop the other into the hand of someone who would benefit by it. The cadet promised compliance, and, perhaps in the spirit of sport, dropped the second tract, and popular summary of the evidences of Christianity, into the room of Leonidas Polk.

One week later Polk appeared in McIlvaine's quarters too choked with emotion for coherent speech. After several ineffectual attempts to make himself understood, he was finally able to stammer: "Tell me what I must do -- I have come about my soul. I know not what I want -- I am entirely in the dark. What must I seek? Where must I go?" He left the chaplain's study a confessed Christian, and forty days later he was baptized, together with another cadet, in the presence of the entire corps. The service for adult baptism had never been witnessed there before. It was an impressive scene, and all

-8-

lifetime in the ears and hearts of those who heart it!

Polk is said to have been the first cadet ever to kneel down during chapel services at West Point. His conversation was the signal for a dramatic revival of religion which swept the whole institution. When it was known that this dashing and handsome cadet, a leader among his fellows, had dared to declare for Christ, others who had, perhaps, been too timid to speak out before, no longer lacked the courage to come forward, and conversion followed conversion until it seemed that the entire corps had been touched. Leonidas Polk's career as a soldier of Christ and as a pioneer of the Gospel was settled at West Point. Before graduation, he announced hhis intention of resigning from the army in order to enter the ministry of the Church.

The atmosphere of the Virginia Theological Seminary in 1828 was strongly Evangelical and missionary, but with the formal teaching of the classroom Polk was not greatly impressed. In