Virginia Military Institute - Bomb Yearbook (Lexington, VA)

Page 27 text:

ilitarp taff COLONEL A•. T. P0AC4UE TKEASURER AND MILITARY STOREKEEPER MAJOR J. H. LAIRD, M. D. SURGEON CAPTAIN ST, J. E. JIARSHALL POST ADJUTANT CAPTAIN J. W. C4ILiI0EE COMMISSARY AND QUARTERMASTER CAPTAIN J. A ' , GILLOCK ASSISTANT JlIILITARY STOREKEEPER Kesimied Jaiuiaiv 1. IIIOII. Sueeeedeil by Dr. Reid ' hite. il. D.

Page 29 text:

A History of the Foundation and Development of the Virginia Mihtary Institute THE eleventh day of November, 1839, was a day big with rfate for the educational and material interest of the good old Commonwealth of Vir- ginia, at least, so think the cadets and alnmni of the Virginia Military In- stitute, which was founded on that day. The Institute was a military school from the start, in a sense in which no other school in the country was a military school, not even West Point. Like the Institute, West Point started from a very small beginning, but the cadets of that institution never did duty as garrison of a military post; this duty was performed by soldiers of the army. At the Institute the cadets relieved the enlisted men in the service of the state, who were the guards of the Western Arsenal of Virginia, and thereafter performed all the military duties of the soldiers, at the same time pursuing the prescribed course of scientific and military studies. The first Board of Visitors met in May, 1839. The president of the board was Col. Claude Crozet, a higlily educated and accomplished French soldier who had served in the disastrous Russian campaign of 1812, under the great ISTapoleon. Coming to this country, he was professor of mathematics, and civil and military engineering, at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Having resigned this position, he took service under the State of Virginia as chief engineer. There were other distinguished soldiers on this first board, three of whom had served as officers in the War of 1812 ; one of these three, Captain Wiley, had marched with his company from Petersburg, Virginia, to Quebec, Canada. Then there were jDrominent and able men who had not been soldiers, most prominent amongst whom were Governor James McDowell and John T. L. Preston, Esq., of Lexington, Virginia. The latter, a highly educated and ciiltured gentleman, may, in a marked sense, be re- garded as the founder of the Institute. It was he who most earnestly and ably argued with voice and pen during those three years in which was pending the question of supplanting the garrison of soldiers with a garrison of young Vir- ginians, who should do the duty of the soldiers and at the same time qualify themselves by study to do their part as teachers and workers in the great in- dustrial development about to da vn upon the old State. The primary idea was to get rid of the rather vagabondish old soldiers, and to educate, in their places , twenty young men, to be boarded and educated