University of Virginia Library

XXX. Major Offenses: Assaults

The drinking habit, which was so general among the
students at this time, was the principal cause of the reckless
violence that was so often exhibited by them. A
furtive device employed in several instances,—at long
intervals, fortunately,—was to fill a bottle with powder,
insert a quill in the cork, pack this quill with a slow-burning
fuse, fire the fuse, and set the bottle on the windowsill
of a pavilion occupied by an unpopular professor.
If this little infernal machine was not soon detected by a
passerby, or an inmate of the house, the explosion that
followed was certain to disrupt the window frame and
shutters and shatter every pane of glass. But flights of
stones were the means ordinarily employed in such malicious
enterprises. "Last night," records Professor
Davis in October, 1835, "the glass and sash of a window
of the hotel in which the proctor had his office was broken
by a party of students," and this outrage was repeated
at a later date in the smashing of the front windows of
the same building, and of the front windows of Colonel
Ward's hotel. But the attacks were not confined to windows
and doors. Servants, for real or supposed impertinence,
were sometimes viciously assaulted. In 1828, a
student struck a negro who was taking his order in
Minor's dining-room. Minor was justly indignant and
complained to the Faculty. The student, hearing this,
threatened to flog Minor; and his friends loudly backed
him up in the menace: "I was anxious," was the cool testimony
of one of them, "that Minor should be whipped,
for he had acted in an ungentlemanly way in not suffering

Boyd to lead the servant outside to chastise him."

Another scene with a servant characteristic of the intemperate
spirit of the age, occurred near the entrance to
the precincts in 1839. Several negroes began to fight in
the street, and when two students sprang forward to stop
them, Bonnycastle's servant interfered. "These men,"
he shouted, as he waved his stick, "are free, and they
shall fight as much as they choose." The students
promptly turned on the intermeddler, and while one hit
him repeatedly with a cane, the other pommeled him with
his fists. They ordered him to leave the ground and as he
slunk away, he picked up a stone. This was a signal for
one of the students to strike him again with the cane,
and for the other again to beat him about the head with
his fists. Bonnycastle now came up in a state of excitement,
but when he endeavored to defend his servant,
he was seized by the collar, roughly shaken, and threatened
with further violence, in the midst of a shower of
oaths.

The collegians never failed to rush to the rescue of
any one of their number, who, whether wantonly or unwittingly,
had become mixed up in a quarrel with strangers.
In 1832, three students were passing down the road
in front of Keller's shop on their way to Charlottesville,
and their boisterous singing, broken by drunken hallooing,
aroused the dogs belonging to a couple of wagons that
had halted by the roadside. One of the wagon boys, in
the ignorance and irresponsibility of youth, set the barking
dogs on the noisy students without being aware that
he was throwing a stone squarely into a hornets' nest.
Within a few minutes, thirty or forty young men, hearing
the uproar, ran up, and attacking the wagoners with
fists, stones, and sticks, forced them to fly for safety, like
so many rats, to Keller's cellar. When the frightened

and battered teamsters ventured out again, they found
that all their harness had been cut to pieces and their vehicles
damaged. But it was not simply insolent slaves
and incautious country folk who knew how heavy was the
hand of the angry student. During a lecture in 1838,
Blaettermann ordered one of his class, who had been impertinent,
to leave the room. The young man quietly
arose from his seat, put his hat on his head, and walked
in front of the professor's chair on his way to the door.
As he passed by, probably with an air of bravado, Blaettermann
made a pass at the hat and knocked it to the
floor. The student quickly turned upon him, and in the
midst of a scene of extraordinary confusion, struck him
repeatedly.

Professor Harrison, who bore himself always with dignity,
though sometimes impulsively, did not escape.
There were two reasons for this: (1) he served many
terms as chairman, and as such was an inflexible custodian
of order, which made him very unpopular with the
lawless students; and (2) he was, in the beginning, very
young, even for the position of teacher. Indeed, he was,
previous to 1830, of the same age as many of the members
of his own or other classes; and he was also then,
as afterwards, very candid and emphatic in the expression
of his condemnation of all forms of evil doing.
Sometime during that year, he happened to overhear
loud and indecent talking at his door, and in a state of
indignation, he went out to put a stop to it. He chided
one of the young men with vehement severity for his conduct;
nothing was said by the latter at the moment; but
after lecture on the following day, he walked up to the
professor, told him that he would not tolerate a rebuke
from him, his former fellow-student, and struck him.
The student was promptly expelled, and a few hours

later, his friends assembled in the Rotunda in a body
and passed a resolution justifying the assault and reflecting
upon Harrison. But they were too prudent to send
a copy to the Faculty.

This assault, indefensible as it was, was not so aggravated
as the one which occurred in 1839, when Harrison
was serving as chairman. He had left his lecture-room
only a few minutes when he was confronted by two students,
one of whom had been recently expelled and the
other suspended. One of the couple was very much
larger and stronger than the professor. While this one
roughly seized him and held him tightly in his arms,
the other laid on vigorously with a stout horsewhip. At
least an hundred students rushed from all sides to the
spot, but only two or three offered to interfere, and these
so timidly and half-heartedly as to be brushed aside.
Finally released, Harrison vehemently denounced the
outrage of which he had been the victim as the assault
of two cowards, whereupon the attack was violently renewed.
Interrupted, the desperadoes immediately took
horse and fled towards Lynchburg. Pursued, they were
overtaken, and one was shot in the shoulder. Both,
who had been aiming to escape to Mississippi, were captured
and brought back. The following day, the friends
of the wounded man endeavored to arouse sympathy for
him and excite hatred against the Faculty by exhibiting in
the dormitories the coat which he had been wearing when
he was struck by the bullet, now stained with his blood.

The young men who declined to hold the persons of
their teachers as sacred were not likely to refrain from
equally violent assaults on each other. The pistol, dirk,
bowie knife, and cowhide were properties very much valued
by members of this reckless class. The use of the
cowhide was ordinarily provocative of the use of the pistol.

Many quarrels arose over games of cards, which led
to the flourishing of more than one of these weapons.
One young man testified, in 1836, that he always carried
a dirk because he might have good reason at any moment
for whipping it out. The fact that a dirk had been seen
hidden under a student's coat was sometimes reported
to the Faculty. Sometimes, too, as in a rencontre which
took place on May 20, 1836, a collegian was shown to
have been carrying concealed about his person both a
dirk and a pistol. Should the pistol snap, he could snatch
out the dirk. In the following year, one prominent
student received a wound in the leg from this weapon in
the hand of another, who probably had been thrown to
the ground. A dangerous stab was inflicted with a dirk
in a fight in a dormitory in 1838. A student, summoned
before the Faculty a few months afterwards for carrying
a bowie knife, explained his action with the remark that it
was necessary to take precautions against all contingencies.
When asked to define the contingency that would justify
the use of such a weapon, he replied, "If a man insults
me and refuses to give me honorable satisfaction."

This was probably an extreme method of closing a
violent dispute, for there was as strong a sentiment in
the University in favor of the more orderly duello, as
the proper way of settling an altercation between gentlemen,
as there was, at this time, in the society of the
Southern States at large. Nothing but the strict regulations
for its repression prevented its more frequent recurrence.
As early as 1826, a meeting between Henry
Dixon and Livingston Lindsay was arranged to take place
beyond the jurisdiction of Virginia. The seconds advised
that it should be put off until the session was ended;
but the Faculty got wind of the challenge, and stopped
the impending fight by the interposition of the sheriff.

Slyly aware of the nervous apprehension felt by the
chairman, the students at this time amused themselves
with mock-duels. One such came off in 1831, and another
in 1832. The latter was reported by Professor
Blaettermann, and when the supposed principals were
called before the Faculty, they declared somewhat oddly
that it was a hoax devised to reconcile the seconds, who,
it appears, had been quarrelling. The chairman was as
much shocked by the boyish adventure as if it had been
in mockery of a religious ceremony. He sternly rebuked
the thoughtless participants, on the ground that
their travesty had brought down ridicule on the most
solemn of all the enactments.

In 1834, T. J. Pretlow and Daniel C. Johnson were
put under bond to keep the peace, since information had
been received that they had arranged to fight a duel; and
in the course of the following year, two students,
McHenry and Matthews by name, left the University to
meet on ground in the District of Columbia which had
been made famous by the hostile shots so often exchanged
there by quarrelsome Congressmen.

A duel that was brewing between Hamer and Wigfall
in 1835 seems to have aroused the chairman to an extraordinary
state of perturbation. So soon as the news
of their purpose leaked out, he hurried off word to the
sheriff in Charlottesville to be on the watch to seize the
principals and seconds, for the quartet had got away
unobserved before they could be stopped. Hamer's
room, when visited, had been found empty, and Wigfall
had contrived to escape after being arrested. Warrants
for their capture were issued, and while the proctor
boarded the stage for Washington, the janitor and constable
mounted that for Staunton; but before the coaches
could leave, Professor Davis, coming up in a hurry, announced

that the duellists had gone in the direction of
Lynchburg. He also reported that the weapons to be
used were rifles, which were to be placed on rests at ten
paces. The chairman had hastened after Davis, and
finding out when he arrived in Charlottesville that two of
the blood-thirsty students had turned their faces towards
Scottsville, he sued out additional warrants, and accompanied
by Davis, galloped off down the road that led to
that village. After they had gone five miles from town,
they overtook Wigfall and Cheves, his second, who
promptly disputed the validity of the papers for their
arrest thrust into their hands; but when threatened with
an uprising of the county, Wigfall reluctantly consented
to return, on condition that the Faculty would defer the
question of the penalty to the county court. He and
Cheves asked permission to withdraw at once from the
University, but this was refused. Hamer and his second
turned up again a few days afterwards.

The Faculty's inflexibility in punishing the offense of
duelling was illustrated in the case of B. F. Magill.
Magill, a student, was absent in Staunton on leave, and
while there, went to a ball as the escort of a young lady.
There being a drunken fellow present, he advised his companion
to decline to dance with him, should he ask her
to do so. The man approached her, was refused, and
hearing that she was acting on a warning from Magill,
he called the latter to the door, and being the strongest,
there gave him a severe beating. Magill challenged him
on the following day, but being informed upon, was arrested.
The Faculty, apprised of the challenge and
arrest, expelled him from the University.

A challenge passed between W. H. Armistead and H.
C. Chambers in January, 1840. Although their purpose
was suspected, they were permitted to leave the University

on another excuse. When their real object became
fully known, warrants were issued for their capture,
but Chambers alone was taken. It seems that the
weapons chosen by the challenged party were sticks, but
as the challenger refused to fight with such contemptible
weapons, rifles were substituted. Chambers and Armistead,
and their seconds also, were expelled. This severity
failed to put down the evil, for, in the course of the
following month, Walke and Bell, two students, were
said to have actually fought a duel in the District of
Columbia.