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3 A Much Pleasanter Service Following the 1860 presidential election and the secession of South Carolina, students at the University of Virginia organized two military companies comprising over one-quarter of the student body. Student military companies had been part of the academic culture since the founding of the university, but the faculty had disbanded them in an era of student riots. Now, the faculty granted permission for students to again form military companies. Law student Capt. Edward Hutter commanded the Southern Guard, ninety-nine students strong. They wore black trousers, light blue shirts trimmed with brass buttons and dark blue collars and cuffs, and light blue or gray caps. The Sons of Liberty, named by law professor James Holcombe and comprising seventy-four students, wore black trousers and red shirts trimmed with black velvet. Chapman joined the Southern Guard as a private. Among his fellow students was Robert E. Lee Jr., whose father expressed displeasure over the rush of the young students to join the coming war. The students gathered every afternoon except Sunday to drill on the Lawn and Carr’s Hill. There, equipped by the governor with old flintlock muskets, bayonets, and cartridge boxes, but without flints or cartridges to fire their weapons, the students were instructed by officers in infantry drill. At some point, military fever also intoxicated the faculty, who gathered to practice in their own drill.1 During the 1860–61 session, Chapman lived in a boardinghouse and roomed with law student Wayland Fuller Dunaway. As Dunaway later recalled, John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry and the election of Lincoln aroused martial fervor . Speeches by James Holcombe, Albert Bledsoe, and John Buchanan Floyd, former governor of Virginia (1849–52) and secretary of war in the cabinet of James Buchanan, further inflamed passions. Several students broke into the Rotunda one night in early March to raise the first Confederate flag over the university. The next morning, as dawn broke, the sight of the Confederate flag fluttering in the breeze caused a sensation. A large crowd of students abandoned their classes and gathered at the Rotunda to hear speeches in favor of secession. Though faculty chairman Socrates Maupin ordered the flag removed, students and faculty alike, including Dunaway, could not help but be inspired by this symbol of the new nation flying defiantly in the wind.2  a much pleasanter service  On 13 April 1861, the university held its annual Founder’s Day celebration of Thomas Jefferson’s birthday. The two student military companies united with two companies of local militia, the Albemarle Rifles and Monticello Guards, in a military parade. To a throng of onlookers, Chapman and some 400 other men displayed their military proficiency in an afternoon parade and drill on the Lawn. During the celebration, a telegram arrived from Richmond announcing the fall of Fort Sumter. The crowd erupted in cheers as Edward Hutter, given honorary command of the combined military companies, proclaimed, “Fort Sumter has surrendered and the Palmetto flag now floats over its walls.”3 Four days later, on 17 April, Virginia seceded from the Union. Securing arms and munitions became an immediate concern of the state government, and the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, nestled at the fork of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers, presented a tempting target. On the night of the sixteenth, when it became evident that secession was likely, military authorities hatched a plan to size the arsenal. With the approval of the governor, the Staunton Artillery, led by Capt. John Imboden, and the West Augusta Guard left Staunton for Harpers Ferry late in the afternoon of the seventeenth by way of the Virginia Central Railroad. The Albemarle Rifles, Monticello Guard, and the two student companies joined the expedition when the train pulled into Charlottesville. The students so enthusiastically supported the plan that the faculty did not intervene. Maupin granted students a leave of absence of one week, but in the rush of preparations Chapman and many other students did not obtain their leave. Late that evening, with their old flintlock muskets in hand but neither flints nor ammunition, the students gathered at the railroad depot to board boxcars. Before embarking, Holcombe read the announcement of secession to the eager young warriors.4 Without rations, blankets, overcoats, haversacks, or canteens, the students huddled in two dark boxcars. They passed through Gordonsville and headed north on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, picking up another infantry company in Culpeper. They reached...

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