University of Virginia Library

III. Antecedents of the Students

There were more than six hundred students domiciled
within the precincts at the beginning of the session of
1860–1, and although this assemblage dwindled as each
of the Gulf States seceded and summoned its absent citizens,
old and young, to its defense, nevertheless when the
conflagration at last burst out with the explosion at Fort
Sumter, the number of young men remaining at the University
was a very large one; and that number still comprised
many who had come up from the Southern region
beyond the borders of Virginia. From every point of
view, these young men were representatives of the very
best element of the Southern communities. With the exception
of a small minority, they belonged to the widely
known families which had always controlled the social
and political destinies of that broad division of country.
Imbued to the finger tips with the free, virile, and chivalrous
spirit which had been nurtured by the plantation
system, they were at once democratic and aristocratic in
their feelings. Their childhood and youth had been
passed in a rural environment; and to that life each returned

during his vacation. They had been accustomed
there to all the invigorating exercises of that life,—to
riding, to shooting, to fishing, to tramping; and there too
they had been inured by exposure to every change of season
and to every vicissitude of weather. If impatient
of restraint, it was because they had been always at
liberty to follow as they chose the manly pursuits and
the hardy recreations which this independent life had to
offer in such abundance. Even in boyhood, they had
been conscious of that pride of race which the presence
of slavery was so calculated to accentuate, and also of
that corresponding emotion which recognized that this
pride was only justifiable if sustained by a high sense of
personal honor, and an unshakable devotion to country.

No people have been more completely permeated with
love of home than the Southerners. They were a rural
people who, with no accession or infusion of alien blood,
had, from the colonial period, occupied the residences inherited
from their fathers. These roofs had been made
sacred by the long family story, and by the accumulated
traditions of many generations. Each was so secluded
in its site as to have long ago assumed an individuality
of its own. The history of these houses,—their heirlooms,
their surroundings, their occupations, their atmosphere,
—had left a permanent impression on the spirit
of the young men who went straight from those thresholds
to be educated in the University of Virginia.
Their loyalty to their respective States, in consequence
of this affection for their birthplace, was a passion as
ardent as that which the Swiss felt for their mountains,
or the Highlanders for their glens. The romances of
Scott, Lever, and Jane Porter, the tales of Maryatt,
Cooper, Simms and Kennedy,—Ivanhoe, Charles
O'Malley, Thaddeus of Warsaw, Yemassee, Jacob

Faithful, Horseshoe Robinson, and the Last of the Mohicans,
—were known by heart to most of them; and few
indeed were those among them who could not declaim
Hohenlinden, the Burial of Sir John Moore, Marco
Bozaris, and the Charge of the Light Brigade. The
bloody adventures of the pioneers in Indian warfare
along the dark frontier, the exploits of the soldiers of
the Revolution from King's Mountain to Yorktown,
the victories of Andrew Jackson over the redcoats and
the Cherokees, the incursions into the Everglades in
the Seminole revolt, the charges of the Southern regiments
at Monterey and Buena Vista,—such was the
food which had fed their youthful imaginations.[5]

All these martial impressions, this love of home, this
intense emotion of local patriotism, had exercised a
powerful influence over the minds of the young soldiers
who were now about to pass from the quiet dormitories
and lecture-halls of the University into scenes of battle
and wounds and death. The lofty principles of personal
honor inculcated in those lecture-rooms, the instinct
of manliness fostered under the arcades, in spite
of occasional turbulence and intemperance, fortified further
those silent lessons of courage, and fidelity, and loyalty
which they had first learned in the social circle of
their native households. "The University of Virginia,"

we are told by Randolph H. McKim, a matriculate of the
institution during that eventful year, and one who was
deeply responsive to the spirit of enthusiasm and self-sacrifice
that then prevailed, "had, from the first, succeeded
in the high endeavor to fix the gaze of her students
upon the achievements of intellect and generous
manhood rather than on the material prizes and rewards
of the world. She had set herself to cultivate manhood
in the young men who came to her. She had treated
them as men. She had trusted to them. She had appealed
to their sense of honor, their love of truth. The
students and alumni of the University did not stay to celebrate
the chances of success in the struggle to which
they were summoned, nor did they count the cost of
obedience to the clarion call of duty, but sprang forward
with alacrity, eager to offer their all in defense of their
homes and their firesides."