V. Sacrifices for the Confederate Cause
At least two companies were formed for drill during
the remaining months of 1861. But these do not
appear to have retained their organization,—instead,
the students composing them were afterwards drawn into
the war as members of different battalions. One of
these companies was under the command of Robert E.
Lee, Jr., a son of the General of the same name; the
other, of Charles W. Trueheart. Both W. H. Young
and John H. Maury, the son of Matthew F. Maury, the
pathfinder of the seas, were at one time enrolled as the
principal officers in charge. Major George Ross, subsequently
a distinguished physician in civil life, who had
received his military training at the Virginia Military
Institute, served as commandant. Every collegian whose
age was above eighteen was subject to conscription. The
Faculty endeavored to induce the Secretary of War to
put off until after commencement the operation of this
law for all who had passed that age; but their petition
was unsuccessful; and the like failure befell a similar application,
at a later date, which asked for exemption for
all students under seventeen until the end of the session
in which they should reach their eighteenth birthday.
It has been estimated that five hundred and fifteen of
the young men in attendance in 1861 joined the armies in
the field before the close of that year. There were
approximately nine thousand matriculates entered on the
University rolls between 1825 and 1865, and it is calculated
from the records that not less than twenty-seven
per cent. of the survivors of this number,—about
two thousand, four hundred and eighty-one approximately,
—took an active part in the hostilities, whether
occurring on land or sea. About thirteen hundred of this
proportion served in the capacity of officers. It may be
roughly stated that about five hundred of the University
alumni perished in the service. During the session of
1860–61, there were eight hundred and thirty-three matriculates
enrolled at Harvard as compared with six
hundred and thirty enrolled at the University of Virginia,
and yet the loss among these six hundred and thirty alone
was equal to nearly one half of the loss which fell upon
the entire body of the alumni of Harvard so far as they
were eligible for enlistment. There were only nine hundred
and thirty-eight graduates of Harvard in the service.
Of these, only one hundred and seventeen,—according
to the inscription upon the tablets in the memorial
hall at Cambridge,—were killed or died of disease.
It is estimated that about eighty-six of the young men who
left the University of Virginia to enter the war in 1861
perished in the field or hospital. Placing the loss among
the Harvard graduates at one hundred and thirty-eight,
—the figure mentioned in some of the records,—the proportion
of deaths among them was about four and a
half times smaller than the proportion among the sons
of the University of Virginia, in consequence of their participation
in the same conflict.
Among the graduates of the latter institution who
fell were twelve masters of arts, two bachelors of arts,
nine bachelors of laws, and two doctors of medicine.
The heavy mortality among them was chiefly due to the
fact that, in the beginning, the great body of these alumni
took their place in the line along with the gallant yeomen
of the South. If promotion followed, as it did in so
large a number of instances, it was accepted with satisfaction;
but if it did not follow, the duty of the common
soldier was discharged with cheerfulness to the end.
Rarely has there been found in a modern army an element
comparable to this,—an element that could count
upon its roll so many graduates in arts and letters, in
the languages, in the physical sciences, in the higher mathematics,
and in the learned professions.
Apart from the peril to life and health which threatened
these graduates at every step after they were mustered
into service, what were the conditions that surrounded
them? What had they to expect beyond the
gratification of their patriotic ardour and the satisfaction
of their consciences? "Eleven dollars a month was the
stipend," says Randolph H. McKim, one of the bravest
and most devoted of that band, describing his own experience,
which was the experience of all. "Flour, bacon,
and peanut coffee was their bill of fare; the hard earth,
or three fence rails tilted up on end, their bed; their
knapsacks, their pillows, and a flimsy blanket their covering;
the firmament of stars generally their only tent;
their clothes a thing of shreds and patches. There was
no provision in the Confederate army for recognizing,
either by decoration or by promotion in the field, distinguished
acts of gallantry. Scores of these men (alumni
who perished) would have been entitled to the Victoria
Cross if they had been serving in the British Army.
Their only reward was the consciousness of duty done."
The youthfulness of the greater number of the graduates
who perished during the war imparts an additional
pathos to their last crowning act of self-sacrifice. The
ages of at least one hundred and seventy of those whose
names are inscribed upon the tablets attached to the
walls of the Rotunda are known,—only thirty-nine of
that number were over twenty-four years of age when
killed; the remainder were under that age. There
were nineteen under twenty-two years, fifteen under
twenty-one, sixteen under twenty, eight under eighteen,
nine under seventeen, and three under sixteen. It is
reasonable to presume that the same proportions are
true of the entire list preserved upon the eloquent face
of the bronze.
Among the alumni embraced in the roll of youthful and
gallant spirits who rushed to the field with such high enthusiasm,
only to perish there, how is it possible to make
a choice when all were equally unselfish, equally devoted,
and equally brave, and when all, with equal cheerfulness,
offered up their lives upon the altars of their native commonwealths?
In the long series of chapters in which
the services of the South to the cause of freedom and
patriotism are written, there is not one which contains a
more splendid record than that which relates the story
of the sons of the University who died during the War
between the States. The memorial volume descriptive
of their heroic careers has all the romantic flavor of the
legends of the Round Table; and naturally so, for these
men were, in another age, and upon another battleground,
as brave and chivalrous as the shining knights
who followed King Arthur. The epitaph engraved upon
the tomb of Joseph E. Cox, of Chesterfield county, one
of their number, epitomizes the lives of his comrades:
"Born a gentleman, bred a scholar, and died a Christian
soldier." We shall confine our references to a few of
his companions in arms who seem to typify, with most
fidelity, the character and the spirit of that glorious company
of youthful paladins and martyrs.
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