n, and striking inland till it
reached the farthest army posts in Texas. In all Louisiana the
Union Government had only forty men. These occupied the Arsenal at
Baton Rouge under Major Haskins. Haskins was loyal. But when five
hundred state militiamen surrounded him, and his old brother-officer,
the future Confederate General Bragg, persuaded him that the Union
was really at an end, to all intents and purposes, and when he
found no orders, no support, and not even any guidance from the
Government at Washington, he surrendered with the honors of war
and left by boat for St. Louis in Missouri.

There was then in Louisiana another Union officer; but made of
sterner stuff. This was Colonel W. T. Sherman, Superintendent of
the State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy at Alexandria,
up the Red River. He was much respected by all the state authorities,
and was carefully watching over the two young sons of another future
Confederate leader, General Beauregard. William Tecumseh Sherman
had retired from the Army without seeing any war service, unlike
Haskins, who was a one-armed veteran of the Mexican campaign. But
Sherman was determined to stand by the Union, come what might.
Yet he was equally determined to wind up the affairs of the State
Academy so as to hand them over in perfect order. A few days after
the seizure of the Arsenal, and before the formal secession of
the State, he wrote to the Governor:

"Sir: As I occupy a _quasi_-military position under the laws of
the State, I deem it proper to acquaint you that I accepted such
position when Louisiana was a State of the Union, and when the motto
of this seminary was inserted in marble over the main door: "By
the liberality of the General Government of the United States. The
Union--_esto perpetua_." Recent events foreshadow a great change, and
it becomes all men to choose.... I beg you to take immediate steps
to relieve me as superintendent, the moment the State determines to
secede, for on no earthly account will I do any act or think any
thought hostile to, or in defiance of, the old Government of the
United States."

Then, to the lasting credit of all concerned, the future political
enemies parted as the best of personal friends. Sherman left everything
in perfect order, accounted for every cent of the funds, and received
the heartiest thanks and best wishes of all the governing officials,
who embodied the following sentence in their final resolution of
April 1