Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 11.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

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[367] Virginia; twelve or more college presidents, and amongst them Moses Hoge and Archibald Alexander, of Hampden-Sidney, James Priestly, of Cumberland College, Tennessee, and G. A. Baxter and Henry Ruffner (who presided here), and Socrates Maupin, of the University of Virginia. These are but a few of those who here garnered the learning that shed so gracious a light in the after-time on them, their country, and their Alma Mater. And could I pause to speak of those who became valiant leaders of men in battle I could name many a noble soldier whose eye greets mine to-day; and, alas! I should recall the form of many a hero who passed from these halls in the flush of youthful manhood, and has long slept with ‘the unreturning brave’; for in 1861, when the calls to arms resounded, ‘The Liberty-Hall Volunteers’—the students of Washington College—were among the first (and in a body) to respond; and when the quiet professor of your twin institute was baptized in history as ‘Stonewall Jackson,’ their blood o'erflowed the christening urn and reddened Manassas' field, and from Manassas to Appomattox, under Joseph E. Johnston, and Thomas J. Jackson, and Robert E. Lee, the boys and the men of Washington College proved that they were worthy of their leaders, worthy of their State and country, and worthy of all good fame.