Leonidas Polk Family Papers

the beginning of the University of the South. Polk said in public that it would "rival the establishments at Harvard, Yale, Gottengen, and Bonn," and in private that it would be the greatest university in the world. The orator of the day was more prophetic than he know when he said that when it should please "God, your Master, to say your radiant and strong right arm from His battlefields on earth," Polk would be remembered as the foundation of the University of the South.

After a century, the university is still modest, by Polk's standards, but it can claim in 1961 the highest proportionate production in the South of siginificant graduate awards such as Rhodes, Fulbright, Woodrow Wilson scholarships, the largest endowment per student in the Southeast, the oldest literary-critical quarterly in America. The very yellow fever which laid Polk's fortunes low was ultimately conquered by a graduate of his university, William Crawford Gorgas.

There was a postlude in the drama of Polk's life. In the fall of 1865 the General Convention met in Baltimore. Northern bishops had declined to join Presiding Bishop John Henry Hopkins in a letter of invitation to the southern bishops. Only two came, Atkinson of North Carolina and Lay of Arkansas, and one bishop-elect, Charles Todd Quintard of Tennessee, who was to take up Polk;s work at Sewanee. Presiding bishop Elliott of the Confederacy felt he should not attend. The South had consecrated Richard Hooker Wilmer of Alabama without Northern consent. Polk's death had removed another grievous issue of church polity. When a posthumous resolution of censure was proposed, which would have infuriated Southern colleagues, McIlvaine, his West point chaplain, rose to bring perspective. The obstacles to reunion faded. The roll call which began with Alabama set the tone. A united church was restored.

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