8

Polk, on finishing eighth in his class, too a cooling - off
tour of the northern states and Canada. The father's hope that he
would come to his senses and a lieutenancy was shattered by the firm
youngster who entered Alexandria for theological training in 1828 and
was ordained deacon in 1830. "You are ruining a good soldier to make a poor priest" his father said.
A month later he married the talented and wealthy Frances Devereux of Raleigh. The grand tour he took
alone through Europe at this time is chronicled in letters to wife
and friends. Polk used it for post-graduate study as well as for
his health and in both ways it served well. His keen evaluations of
educational institutions presaged the intricate conceptions embodied
thirty years later in his organization and structure of the University
of the South.

Polk's productive life was divided into three parts; his
ministry in Tennessee; his missionary Episcopate in the southwest;
and his bishopric in Louisiana. As sound drama would dictate, the
first two had a unity of their own but were essentially a preparation
for the third, which was enormously successful.

The young priest reluctantly declined to remain at Monumental
Church in Richmond where he had with mutual satisfaction assisted
Bishop Richard Channing Moore. Instead he went for the winter of
1832-33 to Raleigh where for the last time he and his wife fully
enjoyed the company of their respective families in leisurely visiting.
His dear friend Chaplain McIlvaine was elected Bishop of Ohio in the
fall, His doctor, still fearful of his lungs, urged an outdoor life.