The colleges and the War.
30th Regiment Virginia Volunteers, September 18, 1861.
Editor of the Dispatch: You will confer a favor on me by giving a place to a few lines in your columns.
They are in reference to a subject which I had hoped to see taken up and treated of by a more able pen than mine, and by one whose personal influence would justify his publishing his name in connection with it, and I can only hope by this feeble effort to induce such an one so to do.
What I have reference to is the continued publication of the re-opening of schools and colleges in Virginia, even for young men capable of bearing arms against the enemies of our country, and holding out inducements to endeavor to escape a plain duty, and a plausible excuse for so doing under the color of authority.
And we now candidly ask of the former students of the University of Virginia, or of any other college of this State, can any one of them dare intrude on those classic shades, and go through with the daily routine of lectures, and follow the avocations of a peaceful life, presuming upon the strong arms and stout hearts of their former school-mates for protection?
And suppose such a protection were possible beyond a doubt, can you be men and submit to such an indignity?
For indignity it is, though you may not now feel it. Do you wish your liberty purchased by the blood of your former associates?
And when that blood calls to you in thundering tones from many a battle-field for vengeance, can you refuse to shoulder your musket and go seek that vengeance?
We cannot believe that there are any who, if left free to act, will dare to darken with their presence the threshold of any college this session, under the present prospect of affairs.
And we must say that whosoever will screen himself from military duty under the walls of a college or University in this time of our country's distress, is a poltroon and a coward, or else not a single spark of love for his country continues to glimmer in his bosom.
Let superannuated men teach children up to sixteen, but let not able-bodied ones in the shape of Professors, or in any other shape, remain in colleges or elsewhere to entice young men from the known path of duty by giving them a plausible excuse for so doing.
It will doubtless be said, ‘it is very impertinent and self-important in this fellow to say anything of the noble corps of Professors of the University of Virginia, especially as the Legislature has seen fit to continue its $15,000 appropriation; and shall this up-start rise and dictate what the Commonwealth of Virginia shall do with and for her colleges and schools?’ --Honored band!
I know some of you, and am happy to esteem you as my friends; and if you knew, as I do, how this money is to be raised, (partly, I mean,) you would disdain to touch one cent of it, or you are meaner, more avaricious, and less feeling than Shylock, the Jew, and each deserves to meet a worse fate than he. I can give no details in regard to the condition of tax-payers on the Potomac; but I can assure you that in many cases, to raise the tax levied, will involve a great sacrifice of property, and that, too, of families where the whole male portion is in the service of the Southern Confederacy.
This can be borne if we know that it is for the good of our common country; but when it goes for such appropriations as the one above-mentioned, it makes the volunteer's blood boil in his veins; and never, never — whether during the silent vigils of the night we watch the bright bosom of our noble Potomac, once peaceful, but now furrowed by many a hostile keel, while its banks reverberate to the roar of the deafening cannon, or take our station on the daily parade ground to prepare ourselves for the shock of battle — will our
hearts nerve to duty with that alacrity which they would, did we feel that all, and especially those who pride themselves as the elite of our native State, were unshrinkingly doing their duty also.
I could write more; but as this is my first attempt for the press, (for which intrusion I can offer the occasion as my only apology, and I fear has already exceeded the limits you would like to assign it,) I must now close.
Yours. &c., A. B. W. 