Southern Higher Education and the Civil War

SOUTHERN HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE CIVIL WAR Wayne Flynt Ctvil war history is certainly not an underworked field, and ambitious professors have written university histories with equal gusto. But there has been no attempt to construct an overview of southern higher education during the war years. Perhaps the difficulty rests partly in evaluating the traumatic upheaval of war: the emotional response by the South's educated aristocracy; the psychological strain of the war which left so many potential leaders drained of intellectual ambition; the frustrating physical destruction of tediously constructed facilities. For the historian interested in intellectual history and willing to sift the mass of undigested institutional sources, southern higher education during the war presents many rewards. The growing cleavage between North and South in the decades between 1830 and 1860 was reflected in higher education just as it was in religion, politics, and economics. Pressure was applied to keep southern students in the region, textbooks were censored, and professors were dismissed because of their political views. One "Southern Convention" resolved that the education of southern students in the North was "unnecessary, impolitic, and having a tendency to taint their minds with disloyalty to the South."1 By 1860, this regional patriotism had substantially improved southern colleges in some ways, and they competed with their northern counterparts at least in quantity of students. A sampling of attendance figures reveals the prosperity: the University of Virginia with 417 students and 14 professors; the University of North Carolina, 450 students , 15 professors; Alabama's state university, 120 students; the University of Mississippi, 140; Emory University, 126; Mercer University (Macon, Georgia), 89.2 Yale University, with 502 students and a faculty of 21, was the largest college in the nation. Southern schools realized similar gains in physical facilities and financial support. !Edgar W. Knight (ed.), Educational Theories, Vol. V of A Documentary History of Education in the South Before I860 (Chapel Hill, 1953), p. 302. 2 Most southern colleges included preparatory departments which accounts for part of their enrollment. 211 212CIVIL WAR HISTORY War ended this improvement. Just as the violent decade of the 1860"S marked the transition from magnolia scented plantation and yeoman farm to the limbo of political reconstruction and farm tenancy, so it terminated advances in higher education. The southern armed forces, while attracting many officers from the regular army, also drew die South's elite. One of Thomas J. Jackson's artillery units contained die Rev. Dr. William N. Pendleton, a rector of the Episcopal Church at Lexington, Virginia, and a graduate of West Point. Most of the men in the unit were from the colleges in Lexington, and one battery contained seven Masters of Arts, forty-two other college graduates, and nineteen theological students.3 It was not unusual for an entire class to enlist in the Confederate army after graduation in 1861, and on at least one occasion virtually an entire student body volunteered. Such an emotional response to the events of April, 1861, did not augur well for the future of southern higher education. The reaction to the opening of the war placed a great strain on the colleges. Mock elections at the University of Virginia gave the 1860 presidential race to John Bell and Edward Everett with their slogan of "Constitution and Union." But the months following Fort Sumter saw opinion crystallize in favor of secession. Two military companies were formed, although the faculty at first prohibited them and only reluctantly acceded to student demands. In addition to die 140 boys drilling in these units, many other students returned to their home states in the lower South to enlist.4 The week after Fort Sumter die Virginia companies received their baptism of fire when they took part in a raid on the Federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry. Faculty members, caught up in the youthful enthusiasm , created their own squad, drilling first in private to avoid humiliation, and then venturing boldly into public. Fortunately, the Confederacy never felt compelled to call for their services. Another student company marched off to war after die close of the spring session in July, 1861. The company's fifty members held thirty degrees, including two Masters of Arts...