Everybody regarded the change of Government as final; that Louisiana, by a mere declaration, was a free and independent State, and could enter into any new alliance or combination she chose.

Men were being enlisted and armed, to defend the State, and there was not the least evidence that the national Administration designed to make any effort, by force, to vindicate the national authority.  I therefore bade adieu to all my friends, and about the 25th of February took my departure by railroad, for Lancaster, via Cairo and Cincinnati.

Before leaving this subject, I will simply record the fate of some of my associates.  The seminary was dispersed by the war, and all the professors and cadets took service in the Confederacy, except Yallas, St. Ange, and Cadet Taliaferro.  The latter joined a Union regiment, as a lieutenant, after New Orleans was retaken by the United States fleet under Farragut.  I think that both Yallas and St. Ange have died in poverty since the war.  Major Smith joined the rebel army in Virginia, and was killed in April, 1865, as he was withdrawing his garrison, by night, from the batteries at Drury’s Bluff, at the time General Lee began his final retreat from Richmond.  Boyd became a captain of engineers on the staff of General Richard Taylor, was captured, and was in jail at Natchez, Mississippi, when I was on my Meridian expedition.  He succeeded in getting a letter to me on my arrival at Vicksburg, and, on my way down to New Orleans, I stopped at Natchez, took him along, and enabled him to effect an exchange through General Banks.  As soon as the war was over, he returned to Alexandria, and reorganized the old institution, where I visited him in 1867; but, the next winter, the building took fire end burned to the ground.  The students, library, apparatus, etc., were transferred to Baton Rouge, where the same institution now is, under the title of the Louisiana University.  I have been able to do them many acts of kindness, and am still in correspondence, with Colonel Boyd, its president.

General G. Mason Graham is still living on his plantation, on Bayou Rapides, old and much respected.

Dr. S. A. Smith became a surgeon in the rebel army, and at the close of the war was medical director of the trans-Mississippi Department, with General Kirby Smith.  I have seen him since the war, at New Orleans, where he died about a year ago.

Dr. Clark was in Washington recently, applying for a place as United States consul abroad.  I assisted him, but with no success, and he is now at Baltimore, Maryland.

After the battle of Shiloh, I found among the prisoners Cadet Barrow, fitted him out with some clean clothing, of which he was in need, and from him learned that Cadet Workman was killed in that battle.

Governor Moore’s plantation was devastated by General Banks’s troops.  After the war he appealed to me, and through the Attorney-General, Henry Stanbery, I aided in having his land restored to him, and I think he is now living there.