University of Virginia Library

1. THE WAR

THE WAR began during the university session of
1860–1861. By that time the Faculty had increased
to thirteen Professors, with five Instructors or
Demonstrators; and in that session there were 604
students enrolled. None of the eight members of the original
Faculty remained at the University. By contrast this
Faculty was, in background and training, a more homeogeneous
group. Two of the thirteen had been born abroad,
and three had studied in English and German Universities.
But the large majority were Southern, and seven had been
students at the University of Virginia. There was a still
greater sectional preponderance in the student body. Of
the 604, there were 339 who came from Virginia homes;
and a dozen other Southern States were represented. From
north of the Potomac there were ten students from the District
of Columbia, thirty from Maryland, two from Delaware,
two from Pennsylvania, and one from Massachusetts.
There were no foreign students, but four had made the
long journey from California. Politically this academic
community was composed in large part of Southern sympathizers.

Within this sectional loyalty there were, however, differences
of opinion. The chief difference was in the attitude
towards secession. The two Professors of Law, John B.
Minor and James P. Holcombe, were recognized as the
leading spokesmen for the opposed points of view. Professor
Minor deplored the act of secession, and the majority
of the Faculty were in accord with his moderate position.
Professor Holcombe, however, gave voice to a more drastic
attitude, and many of the students were inclined to follow
Holcombe. Yet in the heated arguments in the debating
societies and in articles contributed by students to the literary
magazine, there was, up to this session, no lack of appeal
for the preservation of the Union. But the events connected
with the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861 ended the
period of debate. From that moment there was a united
and extraordinary response on the part of the University of
Virginia—its faculty, its students, and its alumni—in consummate
and unqualified service in the cause of the Confederacy.

The expression “from that moment” is not merely
rhetorical. Four days after the fall of Fort Sumter, the State
of Virginia seceded. On that same day two companies of
students, which had been drilling on the university
grounds, received orders from Richmond, and were given
leave by the Faculty, to proceed to Harper's Ferry and
there take possession of a Federal arsenal. The arsenal, however,
had been destroyed ere the contingent from Charlottesville
arrived, and these young soldiers were sent back
within a week. But one can well imagine that there were
difficulties in their adjustment thereafter to classroom routines.
This was within the session of 1860–1861. Immediately
after the final exercises in July, a third company left
for a short campaign in West Virginia. But that company,
like the other two, was thereafter disbanded in order that
the students could join with forces from their own home

localities. From that time the University's participation in
the war was not in separate units but penetrated into all
the military and administrative functions of the Confederate
Government. The story has been nobly told in volume
three of the official history of the University of Virginia by
the late Philip Alexander Bruce. Poignant accounts of many
of those who gave their lives are recorded in a memorial
volume by John Lipscomb Johnson; and two tablets on the
southern wall of the restored Rotunda silently preserve the
names of nearly five hundred members of the University
who made the supreme sacrifice for the Southern cause.

At the University the ending of the period of prosperity
was abrupt. For the session of 1861–1862 there were only
sixty-six students enrolled; and for the next three sessions
the totals were forty-six, fifty, and fifty-five. These were
mainly youths too young for military enlistment and,
toward the close of the war, veterans whose wounds had
left them incapable of further active service. Such of the
Faculty as remained took on extra assignments because of
Professors absent on war duties; they were themselves busily
engaged in various wartime occupations; and they found it
increasingly difficult to subsist on decreased salaries which,
as time went on, were paid in well-nigh worthless paper
script. It has been estimated that in the last wartime session
the average annual faculty salary was equivalent to $31.95
in gold. But whenever the proposition emerged that the
doors of the University be closed, the Faculty firmly arrayed
itself in opposition. In the summer of 1862 the military
authorities commandeered some of the university buildings
for hospital purposes for the wounded in the campaign in
the Shenandoah Valley. Beginning with the engagement at
Port Republic early in June, the wounded poured in until
there were some 1,400 being cared for in crowded buildings
and in tents. Notwithstanding the danger of having their
motives misunderstood, both Faculty and Visitors protested

against the prolongation of this arrangement. It was realized
that continuance by even the slenderest thread was preferable
to closing of the University. In an atmosphere of
anxiety, of daily emergencies, and widespread bereavements,
there persisted the hope of future service.

As time went on, the buildings began to suffer from lack
of repair. But they were still intact. It was not until the
beginning of 1865 that the lines of actual fighting neared
Charlottesville. In March of that year they swept down over
Albemarle County from the Blue Ridge hills to the northwest.
But the small Confederate force was then in rapid
retreat; and when the Northern soldiers, under Generals
Sheridan and Custer, pursued them into and past Charlottesville,
a stalwart trio, composed of the Rector, the
Chairman of the Faculty, and Professor Minor, met the
invaders with a flag of truce and requested a guard for the
university grounds. The request was courteously granted;
and by constant vigilance for the next few hours, the
dangers of looting and destruction were averted. By another
month the articles of surrender had been signed at Appomattox.
Though the University of Virginia was located
at the center of a State which during those years of armed
conflict had been strewn with battlefield devastation, its
buildings were still standing, and within them thin classes
were still receiving instruction from a weary but resolute
Faculty.

What of the Library during these destructive years?
Well, one is reminded of the frequently quoted reply of
Sherlock Holmes to the Police Inspector in Conan Doyle's
story of the “Silver Blaze.” The Inspector inquired of
Holmes:

There are two accounts of the University. of Virginia during
the war years by members of the Faculty who were eyewitnesses
throughout. One is the journal of Socrates Maupin,
Professor of Chemistry, who kept a record of the
events that occurred in connection with his office as Chairman
of the Faculty; the other is composed of the reminiscences
contributed by Francis Henry Smith, Professor of
Natural Philosophy, to the massive work on the University
which was issued in two volumes in 1904. In neither is
there a single mention of the Library. At least one pleasant
inference may be drawn from this silence. The Library was
actually in operation, though with shortened hours of
opening, all through the war sessions. But in a time when
difficulties were rife, the Library presented no problems
that had to be met and recorded. When Thomas Holcombe
departed at the end of 1861, supervision of the Library was
added to the responsibilities already being borne by the
Proctor, Robert Riddick Prentis. Perhaps it is not so much
curious as it is creditable that during his period as Acting
Librarian, 1861 to 1865, there was no barking of the dog.

The question might naturally arise as to why the
appointee was not William Wertenbaker. Wertenbaker
could hardly have been overlooked since he was Secretary
of the Faculty, and there is no indication that he was absent
from the meeting at which action was taken. But the
appointment of a Librarian was a function of the Visitors,
and in naming Holcombe four years before, the Visitors
had been separating the posts of Librarian and Secretary of
the Faculty. Therefore, in taking upon itself the emergency
action of designating Proctor Prentis “to take charge of the
Library until the return of Mr. Holcombe,” the Faculty
was less open to the accusation of usurping or contravening
the authority of the Visitors than it would have been had
it taken the more obvious course of placing Secretary Wertenbaker
back in the library post. No further action was

apparently taken by either the Visitors or the Faculty;
though in September 1862 the Board of Visitors did authorize
its Executive Committee to employ a Librarian for the
next year “whenever in their judgment it may be proper.”
The circumstances, financial and otherwise, being what
they were, the Executive Committee seems to have decided
not to disturb the existing condition.

As for the administrative duties in the Library, they
were of course greatly reduced. Work on the new catalogue
ceased; and as early as May 1861 appropriations for the
purchase of books were suspended. In that summer, the
Board of Visitors experimented with the opening of a
special School of Military Science, and the Faculty voted
that the Library should, for the benefit of students of that
School, be kept open two hours daily during what would
normally have been a vacation period. But nothing much
came of that experiment. As a result of the annual inspection
of the Library in July 1863, the Library Committee of
the Board of Visitors reported that “The Library has every
appearance of being kept with neatness, system & care, & is,
we think, in good condition.” As for the Rotunda itself, the
committee reported that there was a serious leak in the
dome. It was recommended for the following session (1863–
1864) that there be a return to the original schedule of
having all books borrowed or brought back within one
stated hour each week. Toward the end of that session the
forward-looking Faculty recommended to the Visitors that
omitted library appropriations should later be made up.
They also indicated their awareness of present dangers by
asking the Visitors for discretionary authority to remove
the books to places that should appear more safe should
“incursions of the enemy” seem imminent. There was no
attempt, however, to carry out such a plan during the
excitement of General Sheridan's invasion of March 1865.

It is true that toward the end there was a voiced criticism

of lax administration of the Library. This came from
William Wertenbaker who had continued as Secretary of
the Faculty, with such supplementary duties as he could
accomplish. It was a complaint which revealed his dominant
and laudable concern for the books which had so many
years been guarded by him. He had observed that during
the heat of the summer, when the University was not in
session, it had been permitted that the library room be
kept open. That room, protected by thick walls and rising
to the curved dome, was perceptibly cooler than the
neighboring buildings. To it the ladies of the Professors'
families were wont to come for relaxation and companionship;
and some of the war victims, who had taken refuge in
the vicinity, found there an asylum during daylight hours.
To Wertenbaker this meant the danger of misplaced and
mutilated and missing books. The picture, however, also
affords an appealing suggestion of service to a war weary
community. What we do not know is the intangible effect
of that storehouse of the wisdom of the past on the spirits
of these frequenters, anxious and despairing over the present.
There may be some shadow of excuse for the arrangement
permitted by the Acting Librarian, busy elsewhere
over his proctorial and other duties. He may have chosen
the better part.

Before we pass on to the continuing struggle for the
maintenance of the University of Virginia and its Library
during the years of adjustment and reconstruction, there
should be mention of a proposal made to the Faculty by
George Frederick Holmes at a meeting on 1 March 1861,
on the eve of the outbreak of the war. This was a preamble
and set of six resolutions, ponderous in language and displaying
the encylopaedic knowledge of the Professor of
History and General Literature. Beginning with Thucydides,
it recounted the value, proved through the ages, of
the contemporary collecting of historical papers. It called

for a systematic effort to assemble for a special collection,
which Professor Holmes chose to name “The Memorials of
the American Disruption,” everything that should have a
bearing on “the great political dissilience of the formerly
United States of America,” this collection to be zealously
preserved “as a priceless and everlasting possession” and one
that “would afford the only trustworthy means of ascertaining
and appreciating the right, and of commemorating and
censuring the wrong, which may be involved in this mighty
political discussion.” This was a project which would
undoubtedly have received commendation from Thomas
Jefferson. It did meet with the approval of this 1861 Faculty
of the University of Virginia, and copies were posted widely
to Federal and State officials, both North and South. A
single acknowledgment was returned—from the Hon. Simon
Cameron, Secretary of War in President Lincoln's Cabinet;
but not one item was ever received in response to this plea.
The Holmes proposal thus died of inanition—and it was at
a Northern institution, the Boston Athenaeum, that a
surpassingly fine Confederate collection was gathered and
preserved. At the University of Virginia seventy years were
to pass before, in 1930, there was to be concentration on
systematic efforts to conserve and make available material
in the broad fields of human relationships.