Boyd, the eldest son of Thomas J. Boyd, a wealthy lawyer and railroad promoter, was born in
Wytheville,
Virginia. He studied at the
University of Virginia but failed to graduate. Because of personal difficulties in his native state, he migrated to
Louisiana and, in 1860, joined the faculty of the newly created Louisiana State Seminary of Learning in
Pineville in
Central Louisiana. There, he became a close friend of the institution's superintendent,
William Tecumseh Sherman, who on the eve of the
American Civil War famously warned Boyd, an enthusiastic
secessionist, of the South's folly in pursuing a war with the
North which it could not possibly win. During the war, Boyd fought in the
Confederate army. He initially served in the 9th Louisiana Infantry, a
regiment that was part of the famed
Louisiana Tigers of the
Army of Northern Virginia. He later transferred to the
Western Theater, where he was a
major of engineering. He was captured by
Jayhawker militia and sold to the
Union Army before being exchanged and returned to the South following Sherman's intervention. After the end of the war in 1865, Boyd returned to the Seminary as superintendent and later wrote the charter that transformed the institution into
Louisiana State University, based in
Baton Rouge, under the terms of the
Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act. He was dismissed in 1880 over conflicts with the faculty, but was restored as president of LSU in 1884. During his hiatus, he served a year as the president of
Auburn University in
Auburn,
Alabama. He died in 1899, and is buried in Magnolia Cemetery in Baton Rouge. ==References==