Over fifty applicants for cadetships have been received and
warrants issued for them. This, with other appointments, will insure an opening
number of about seventy-five, and we feel confident that ere this session shall
have closed the buildings will be filled. There were some misgivings, early in
the fall, that the State Seminary would not be ready to commence operation on
the first of January, but it is now settled, and everything is prepared that
the institution will open on the day mentioned.
[The faculty] have been selected from over eighty applicants
marked for distinguished merit and ability, and, as far as we are competent to
judge from a short personal acquaintance, we honestly assure all parents,
guardians, or others who may have charge of the education of youth, that if
their sons or wards are placed in the State Seminary, if they are capable, they
will be returned to them thorough scholars.
We would also, in this connection, disabuse the public, or
at least a portion of it, of the idea that a school organized upon a military
basis must needs make only soldiers. It is a false notion that because a youth
is compelled to be methodical, to learn to obey, and at the same time, keep his
self-respect, that all this is to be done at the sacrifice of time which should
be devoted to study. A military school differs from other colleges, in a
single, but very material particular, only: the time which is generally given
up to the student to be used in any manner his natural proclivities may suggest
is, in the State Seminary, economized in the shape of military duty, and though
it may at first work a little harsh, yet after a time, with a proper thinking
youth, it becomes a pleasure, and as it does not in any measure interfere with
his scholastic duties, we do not see why any objection could or should be made
against it-certainly it does not detract from the merits of any gentleman to be
considered to have a savoir faire in the matter of handling arms.
The late events1 which have, in some degree,
agitated the public mind certainly indicate the necessity of each slave-holding
state encouraging and supporting at least one military school within its own
limits. We know that others of the Southern States have made it a matter of
such consideration that these institutions are looked upon as a chief feature
in their defensive material. Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas,
Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, and of late Missouri have all appropriated certain
sums for the establishment of like institutions and in Virginia, Kentucky, and
Tennessee these schools have for a period of years been working with complete
success.
If we admit the facts, and certainly we can consistently do
so, where they are self-evident, that such establishments are necessary and
that the terms of scholar and soldier are not incompatible, then the success of
our State Seminary is no problem. . .
The plan upon which the State Seminary is to be worked is so
methodical that it will be found to be the cheapest school in the country. We
don't mean cheapest in an immediate dollar and cent signification, but cheapest
because of the paramount advantages it offers. A youth's time is so regulated
that dissolute and expensive habits cannot be contracted. Expensive dress,
dogs, horses, billiards, etc., will certainly be myths with a cadet at the
State Seminary, and parents will find that in the end they will have saved a
considerable item in this particular. In most colleges, the modern languages,
drawing, book-keeping, etc., are charged as extras . . . which when paid for as
such at the termination of a four years' course, will be found to amount to
quite one-third of the regular tuition. . . The particular location of the
school, three miles from this place, is a matter of some moment. The cadets
cannot be subjected to the malarious influences of the low lands of the river,
as the buildings are situated on an elevated stretch of table land, surrounded
by a healthy growth of pine forest, together with the best of water. There
cannot be any possible chance of an epidemic reaching any of its inmates;
though we may be visited, as any part of the state is more or less liable, by
an epidemic disease, still we confidently believe that with anything like
consistent precaution the State Seminary will always escape. . .
_______________
1 The John Brown raid into Virginia. — Ed.
SOURCES: The article is abstracted in Walter L.
Fleming’s, General W.T. Sherman as College President, p. 66-8
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