University of Virginia Library

XXXII. Major Offenses: Riots, Continued

The riotous humor which had been so often displayed
before 1836, swelled to the proportions of a small rebellion
in the course of that year. In September, on the
threshold of a new session, the military company had been
formed as usual, but had intentionally neglected to ask
for the Faculty's approval. The captain, when summoned

by the chairman to explain this omission, coolly
said that he was not aware that the Faculty's consent was
required either for the organization or for the use of
the muskets. He was informed that he must obtain this
consent at the Faculty's next meeting, but, in the meanwhile,
the drills would be permitted to continue. When
application was finally made (October 29), the conditions
that had been always imposed on the company were renewed,
—these were, that the University uniform should
be worn; that no musket was to be fired on the Lawn or
in the Ranges; that this weapon was only to be handled
in the course of military exercises; that the company was
to be dissolved if it violated any of these regulations; and
that the muskets were then to be returned to the armory
in Charlottesville,—which, it appears was the common
jail.

Early in November, the chairman was told that the
company had not accepted the conditions imposed: and
when the Faculty assembled the same day, they sent for
Captain Morris, who, when questioned, replied nonchalantly
that, while the company had not actually rejected
the conditions, it had taken no action on them
simply because the Faculty's right to prescribe them was
disputed. Indeed, the company went so far as to claim
that it existed as a State military body independently of
the University, and even in opposition to it. The Faculty
emphatically denied this, and ordered the company
to return the muskets at once to their place of safe-keeping
in Charlottesville. Those who should hold back the
firearms were to be summoned, on the ground that they
had violated the ordinance which expressly prohibited such
retention.

As the military company had not accepted the conditions
so plainly laid down, it was, in reality, not a legal

organization at all, and, therefore, there was no reason
why it should be formally broken up. The only step
necessary to be taken was to deprive its members of the
muskets. To disband it was to recognize its legality.
The members of the company met, and no patriotic association
in the War of the Revolution ever breathed
forth more burning sentiments of defiance to tyranny
than they did in their speeches and resolutions. It was
the spirit of 1776 in a perverted form, and in a very
small teapot. They pledged themselves by a solemn
oath to stand together. A committee of six, with
Captain Morris at their head, was appointed to lay
an ultimatum before the Faculty. This ultimatum consisted
of three clauses: (1) the company would not
disband; (2) it would attend the drill as usual without
the least regard to the Faculty's command to the contrary;
(3) every member having bound himself to remain
faithful to his comrades, the action of the Faculty against
one would be accepted as action against all.

When the committee called on the chairman to submit
this ultimatum, the firing of muskets had again started on
the Lawn, and the sound of the explosions was so loud
and continuous that the indignant protest of that officer
was drowned in the uproar. The firing was prolonged
for two hours, and was finally only stopped by the rain
that began to fall. The proctor was ordered to search
the dormitories to find out whether the muskets were still
held back, and he discovered that the very first member of
the company whom he visited still retained one in his
possession. The proctor's purpose of ferreting out
others becoming known, Captain Morris sent to the
chairman a full roster of his men, with the announcement
that, if one gun was to be removed, all must be
removed. The Faculty convened on November 11 to

examine this roster, which they found to comprise seventy
names,—among them, some of the most prominent
in the contemporary social and political life of the State.
It was determined to call upon each in turn for an explanation
of his use of a musket at an unlawful hour.
The first on the roster was Thomas S. Walker, and the
janitor was dispatched to summon him to the Faculty's
presence. "He cannot come. He is on parade," was
Captain Morris's curt reply.

The Faculty then decided to ascertain who were the
students participating in the drill, and to institute action
against them all in a body. The proctor, with the roster
in his hand, went to the spot where the drill was taking
place; Morris, with studied politeness, called out the
names from this roster; and then quietly offered the following
brief and emphatic resolution, which was adopted
with unanimous voice: "We have our arms and intend
to keep them." The proctor having returned to the
Faculty a list of the sixty-six members present at the
drill, that body at once recorded the statement that these
young men had, without lawful authority, brought firearms
into the University grounds, and had since announced
their intention of retaining them there without
permission. The organization had thus become a combination
that illegally defied the valid commands of the
University's officers. The entire company was then
formally expelled.

On the ensuing Saturday, the drill was held as usual,
and when the company halted, the proctor informed its
members of the Faculty's decision, which was received
with groans and shouts of defiance. They then marched
to the Rotunda, raised their flag to its top, and deliberately
shot it to shreds. A large number of other students
now joined them, and while one party remained to

ring the bell without any cessation, another hastened to
Charlottesville, and taking the bell from the belfry of
the Episcopal church, carried it away. That night was
marked by ungovernable disorder. The students broke
the glass in the windows of the pavilions, battered the
blinds with volleys of stones, beat violently on the front-doors
with heavy sticks, and fired fusillades of musketry
under the arcades. In several instances, the professors
and their families, in a state of very justifiable alarm,
withdrew to their upper stories for personal safety.
They were threatened, reviled, and hooted. The following
night, which was Sunday, the rioting again grew
furious. The bell had been tolling all day long, and as
darkness fell, the fusillades were renewed and all the
terrifying incidents of the previous night repeated.

The professors now began to arm themselves, in the
expectation that they would be called upon to defend
their families,—not from mere personal assault as before,
but from attacks with deliberate intention to kill.
Two students, well informed as to the spirit of the
rioters, privately told the chairman that the outrages so
far committed were much less heinous than those which
were designed for the future. So soon as he thus heard
that the violent disorders of Sunday and Monday were
to begin again in a more aggravated form, he adopted the
course that should have been followed on the preceding
day: he summoned the civil authority to the Faculty's
assistance. On the morning of the 15th (Tuesday), two
magistrates and the sheriff appeared on the ground; the
grand jury was called; and a military guard was placed
in control of the Rotunda. The students who had been
most deeply implicated in the riot, now, in a state of
consternation, started to scuttle away from the University
precincts. The grand jury convened on the 16th,

examined the professors, and brought in indictments.
By the 19th, under the salutary influence of this firm and
sensible action, order was fully restored.

It shows the perverted spirit of the students who remained
that they had the boldness to assemble and pass
a resolution that the "unhappy difficulty,"—which had
really been precipitated by their own indefensible conduct
alone,—should be "calmly and deliberately reviewed
by the Board of Visitors, and by an enlightened
and impartial public opinion." They magnanimously
promised that, should the Faculty's order disbanding the
military company be confirmed as within the power of
that body to adopt, they would "cheerfully acquiesce in
the decision." They gave their word of honor that no
firearms would, in the interval, be brought by them
within the precincts. Emmet sternly urged that not a
man should be readmitted who was unable to swear that
he had had no part in the disorders. Davis, on the other
hand, advised, in a conciliatory spirit, that none should
be shut out who were willing to make the proper atonements;
and this course was, in the end, followed by the
Faculty. The public journals, as a rule, condemned the
weakness shown by that body in not calling in the assistance
of the civil authority at an earlier hour, and in
inflicting so mild a punishment on the bulk of the culprits.
Smarting under the whip of popular criticism, Davis, as
the spokesman of the Faculty, issued an exculpatory reply,
in which he stated that all the muskets had been
handed in; the company disbanded; and only those young
men readmitted, who had been the least responsible for
the riots, and who had expressed regret for whatever
share they had taken in them. At least thirty of the dismissed
members of the company failed to return, and
their action indicated that they looked upon themselves

as too much discredited to be acceptable to the University
again as students.

A serious riot occurred in the course of 1838 because
the Faculty declined to permit the students to celebrate
Jefferson's birthday with a ball. This refusal was
based on the information that the drunkenness which had
disgraced the similar ball on the previous February 22
was to be repeated. It was known that one of the
young men who had taken part in that entertainment had
had so severe an attack of mania a potu that he was, with
difficulty, rescued from the grasp of death. In retaliation
for their disappointment, the college bell on April
13, was rung throughout the night; tar barrels, taken
from the cellar of the proctor's house, were rolled upon
the Lawn and ignited, thus causing a conflagration that
the wind at one time threatened to spread to the roofs of
the pavilions and dormitories; there were processions up
and down in masks; pistols and guns were fired off in
volleys; the arcades rang with shouts and corn-songs; and
the houses of the professors who had opposed the ball
were attacked. "Most insulting ribaldry was used,"
writes Professor Rogers, who was the most obnoxious of
all for this reason, "and neither I nor my family considered
their persons safe. Hence we got firearms for
defense."

The disorder continued until midnight. The chairman
was threatened in his office next day by one of the
offenders. The third night a large body of students
made an assault on Professor Rogers's house again.
The front-door was battered in, and a great number
of missiles of all sorts hurled against the four outer
walls. Most of the glass in the windows was broken.
The work of destruction at the back was done by a single
student, who had crept up to the rear of the pavilion,

and hidden himself in the shadow. In vain the sturdy
Rogers watched for him to show his body, for, with his
pistol loaded and cocked, the outraged professor was determined
to shoot the marauder on sight. "Our police
is worthless," he wrote with bitterness afterwards.
"Two or three rowdies can, with impunity, stone our
dwellings, destroy our property, jeopard our lives, and
take away from us that quiet without which the situation
is worthless to a man of science." The Faculty had
learned from experience a practical lesson of importance:
so soon as order was restored, civil process was obtained
against six of the ringleaders in the riot. One of these
took to his heels when he received the summons to court,
while another hurried to the chairman's office and made
him the target of foul abuse.

The spirit of the rebellion of 1836 always flared up
on its anniversary; that event was celebrated by the
students as another Declaration of Independence; and it
was held in as much honor in their college annals as the
glorious Fourth of July, 1776, was in national. This
perverted and intemperate attitude culminated in November
12, 1840, in the murder of Professor Davis, a
man who had shown a forbearing, though firm, spirit
in his relations with the young men, and who, of all the
professors, the least deserved such a fate at the hands
of one of them. Aware of their custom of celebrating
every return of this date, he was always anxious to suppress
the demonstrations that accompanied it, because
he correctly thought that it fostered a hostile and insurrectionary
spirit. Hearing a great noise under the arcade
in front of his pavilion, which was situated on East
Lawn, he went to the door to find out the immediate
cause. Stepping down to the pavement, he attempted
to remove the mask from the face of one of the rioters,

who had taken refuge behind a pillar, and as he did so,
he was fired upon and fatally wounded. After lingering
several days, he expired, amid the grief, horror, and indignation
of the entire community.

So soon as the shooting was known, the young men as
a body showed the most ardent determination to run
down the assassin, and it was through their assistance that
he was detected and arrested. The principal was
proved to be Joseph E. Semmes, a student from the far
South, and the accessory, William A. Kincaid, of South
Carolina. Semmes had remained quietly at the University
the day following the crime. The bullet, when
cut out of Davis's body, was recognized to be one of those
which, on the morning of the fatality, had been given
to the murderer by a friend, who promptly came forward
and testified to this fact. It seems that Semmes had no
reason to nurse a grudge against Davis, but he had been
heard to say that he intended to shoot the first member
of the Faculty who should attempt to tear off his mask
during a riot.

Very able counsel were employed to defend him, and
when the Circuit Court convened, they urged that he
should be released on bail on the ground that his health
was likely to be undermined by close imprisonment, and
that his life even might be put in jeopardy by it. Judge
Lucas P. Thompson, a man of learning and experience,
and remarkable for his common sense, declined to
acknowledge the pertinency of this line of reasoning; he
refused to admit Semmes to bail; and very pointedly intimated
that if his health was really poor, it was due to
his own excesses. The Court of Appeals, unfortunately
for the credit of the judiciary, showed itself to be more
amenable to the sentimental plea of the lawyers, and
liberated the criminal on his giving bond with the penalty

of twenty-five thousand dollars. Semmes failed to appear,
as might have been anticipated; his bond, in consequence,
was forfeited; and he himself afterwards perished
miserably in Texas. Kincaid returned from South
Carolina to Charlottesville to testify at Semmes's trial,
and when that was postponed, decided to remain until
the following October, the time set for the second trial.
He was placed under bond and became an inmate in his
surety's family. He seems to have attended lectures at
the University during several years after the murder, and
apparently he was not again brought up in Court.