Excerpt from General W. T. Sherman as College President: A Collection of Letters, Documents, and Other Material, Chiefly From Private Sources, Relating to the Life and Activities of General William Tecumseh Sherman, to the Early Years of Louisiana State University, and to the Stirring Conditions Existing in The Purpose of the collection. Sherman's plan for such a publication. His brief account of the organization of the Seminary. Sources of the material here reprinted. The organization of the Seminary. The purpose of this work is to bring together upon the occasion of the semicentennial of the organization of Louisiana State University the material, chiefly docu mentary, relating to the beginnings of the Louisiana State Seminary (now the Louisiana State University) and to the life in Louisiana of William Tecumseh Sherman, the first executive of the institution. Late in life General Sherman planned such a collection and gathered material for it, but he did not publish it. In 1889 he wrote the following prefatory statement to a collection of letters and papers which with considerable additions are here published: In Sherman's Memoirs, published by the Appletons, volume i, pages 172-193, will be found a brief statement of the public events in Louisiana with which I was connected, and which im mediately preceded the great Civil War. I now propose to supplement that statement by preparing in advance, not with any purpose of immediate publication, but rather for preservation in a convenient form, a series of letters which seem to me may become of value to posterity. At a meeting of the Board of Supervisors of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning, at Alexandria, Aug. 2, 1859, I was elected professor of engineering, architecture, and drawing and superintendent thereof. The action of the board was wholly the result of the recommendation of Major Don Carlos Buell, then in Washington, and of Gen. G. Mason Graham, half brother to my old chief, Gen. [r. B.] Mason, in California. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.