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On May 2, 1863, LT. General Tomas Johnathan “Stonewall” Jackson penned a note to General Robert E. Lee
General, The enemy has made a stand at Chancellors’s which is about 2 miles from Chancellorsville. I hope as soon as practicable to attack. I trust that an Ever Kind Providence will bless us with great success. Respectfully, T.J. Jackson Lt. General
Genl. R.E. Lee – The leading division is up & the next two appear to be well closed. T.J.J.
For the next two hours, Jackson waited. The commanding general passed the time with General Stuart and staff officers, resting in the trees’ shade. His troops lined up in their battle positions as quietly as possible. Rodes’s division, then Colston’s, followed by Pender and Lane’s brigades. Nearly 21,000 men total, creating a layered battle line about one and half miles long.
Just prior to 5 P.M., Jackson’s staff officer, Sandie Pendleton, brought word: the battle lines were ready. The general rode to Luckett’s Farm to take advantage of the high ground. There, he surveying the situation and remarked, “The Institute will be heard from today.”
That “Institute was, of course, VMI, Jackson had taught there and now, 17 commanders under him were to take part in a great military victory. Emerging Civil War describes it this way
For example, two of the leading division commanders for the attack had direct connection to VMI. Robert E. Rodes – leading the forward division in this Chancellorsville attack – had graduated in the Class of 1848, then taught at the Institute for two years before pursuing a career in engineering and teaching. During the Civil War, he fought during the Peninsula Campaign and Fredericksburg before his promotion to major general just prior to Chancellorsville. Rodes went on to fight on other battlefields until his death at the Battle of Winchester in 1864.
Raleigh E. Colston graduated in the VMI Class of 1846, then taught French at the Institute until 1861. He started the Civil War as the colonel of the 16th Virginia Infantry, then moved to brigade and division command. Later, he fought in the defense of Petersburg and Lynchburg.
Other VMI alumni in the officer ranks at Chancellorsville included
- Francis Mallory, Class of 1853, Colonel of the 55th Virginia
- Thomas S. Garnett, Class of 1848, Colonel of the 48th Virginia
- Randolph L. Miller, Class of 1863, Lieutenant in the 10th Virginia Infantry
- Thomas T. Munford, Class of 1852, Colonel of Munford’s Cavalry Brigade
- Birkett D. Fry, Class of 1843, Colonel of the 13th Alabama
- John R. Jones, Class of 1848, Colonel of the 33rd Virginia
- James H. Lane, Class of 1854, Brigadier General
- William H. Mahone, Class of 1847, Brigadier General
- James A. Walker, Class of 1852, Brigadier General (Stonewall Brigade)
- Stapleton Crutchfield, Class of 1855, Colonel and Chief of Artillery for Second Corps
Jackson, and those others, of course were to win their most famed battle that day, Jackson, was wounded, and eight days later was no more. VMI, however continued to be heard from, again from Emerging Civil War
VMI alumni have fought in every major war and conflict in U.S. History since the Institute’s founding in 1839. Notably leaders – like General George S. Patton or General George Marshall – came from the Institute along with battlefield commanders, civic leaders, scientific and medical innovators, and educators. Whether in the military or in civilian life, graduates of the Institute have made important contributions to defense, security, politics, and society.
Today, though, VMI is under assault by the cancel culture fanatics who hate Jackson whose statue with that famous quote is gone now, Patton, and of course, America. Daniel Greenfield looks at what the “woke” mindset has done to the Virginia Military Institute
The Virginia Military Institute is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the presence of women at the nation’s oldest state military college with an appearance by Kimberly Dark: a fat rights activist and author of lesbian fanfic who wants to “reimagine masculinity”.
“Why couldn’t we see that America has been racist forever, sexist forever?” Dark ranted in a post titled, “For those who do not want a Trump presidency — this is what we will do now.”
Under Superintendent Cedric Wins, this is what the Virginia Military Institute has become.
“How have you benefited from adherence to your gender role?” a VMI diversity training presentation asks. The resources for it included journal articles like, “How Military Service Members Reinforce Hegemonic Masculinity.” There’s not meant to be any room for “hegemonic masculinity” at an institution whose students experience spartan living and the warrior tradition.
The institution that gave us Patton, Marshall and Byrd now asks about your “gender role”, urges you to reimagine “masculinity” and spews hate toward anyone who happens to be white.
VMI’s Preston Library’s DEI resources features “The History of White People” and “White Guys on Campus” discussing “whiteness” and the “habits of racism among white male undergraduates” along with the racist ravings of Ibram X. Kendi in “How to Be an Antiracist”, Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me”.
In short VMI has been transformed from an institute that trains warriors into a Marxist indoctrination camp. And, unsurprisingly, VMI has seen enrollment fall, by 25 %.
Go read the whole piece by Greenfield. This is sickening, truly a gut punch. It sickens me because I have a deep admiration for Gen. Jackson. That admiration, first sparked as a nine-year-old boy. And it has deepened the more I have studied Jackson, both the soldier and the man. The man who broke Virginia law by educating Blacks to read, at the Sunday school he founded for them in Lexington, Virginia. A military genius, a loving husband, and father, a devoted Christian, a man who loved the Union but shared the military fate of his home, Virginia. A man well worth studying who is just one of many being demonized, then erased. That is how the Marxists treat American icons. Jackson, would never have bowed a knee to such miscreants. Neither shall I.
