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"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
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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!"
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Perhaps the same fair question has occurred to some of you as you have contemplated the circumstances under which you are being addressed this evening -- a Yale alumnus bearing the name of Sherman is invited to speak at the Harvard Club on an occasion honoring a Bishop who was also a Confederate General! While in the last analysis what brought me here is known only to Providence, I wish to go on record as being grateful not only to Providence but also to Mr. John Duncan and to my friend and colleague in the Anglican Society, Mr. James T. Williams, Jr., for this delightful association. I am glad also of this opportunity to state publically that in Long Island we are keenly aware of the high calibre of the contribution which Sewanee has made and is making to our diocesan and community life through the splendid priests who are graduates of her School of Theology and through laymen, leaders in their professions, who proudly bear their degrees from the University of the South.
[] "Let us now praise famous men, and our
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fathers that begat us.... Leaders of the people by their counsels, and by their knowledge of learning meet for the people, wise and eloquent in their instructions." (Ecclesiasticus 44:1,4.)
When we associate these familiar words of the son of Sirach with the history of the University of the South, what a galaxy of famous men -- bishops, priests, laymen -- rises before our eyes. As we glance backward along the illustrious line we recognize among others William Porcher DuBose, eminent theologian, founder of the School of Theology; John McCrady, Professor of the Relations of Religion to Science; Telfair Hodgson, Dean of the School of Theology and Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Polity; General Edmund Kirby-Smith, Professor of Mathematics; Major George R. Fairbanks, Commissioner of Buildings and Lands and Historian of the University; Charles Todd Quintard, Bishop of Tennessee, first Vice-Chancellor of the University and prime mover in its re-establishment following the War between the States. To these and to a host of other
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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