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I’ve attended the College of Mississippi three totally different instances. Although I all the time hated faculty and was by no means simply lyrically good at it, I’ve certainly achieved it so much. I’m additionally descended from Ole Miss royalty.
Mother was Miss College. She deserved that. She was and is attractive. Dad performed tight finish for Johnny Vaught from 1958 by way of 1962. His staff received the nationwide championship and went undefeated. The argument could possibly be made that it was that magnificent soccer staff that saved the place from actually burning to the bottom through the 1962 riots. That was when James Meredith grew to become the primary black scholar admitted to any Mississippi state college.
Gray House
My family displays the bizarre dichotomy that’s Ole Miss historical past. I’m extremely happy with my mother and father. They’re each such wonderful folks. They love Jesus, they usually did a superlative job of elevating me and my brothers. Neither of them is racist, regardless of having spawned from this morally ambiguous establishment at a very morally ambiguous time.
You possibly can see one thing related on a a lot grander scale embodied throughout the conflicted historical past of the college itself. Although the nuances are misplaced on a contemporary era of lamentably binary People, imbedded throughout the faculty’s historical past we see the likelihood that excellent folks would possibly help some very unhealthy causes. In the present day I intend to try the unimaginable. I’m going to attempt to paint the younger males who went off to battle and die for the Confederacy in a optimistic gentle. Strap in. Right here we go…
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Younger Individuals are Silly
There’s a motive our society doesn’t let kids purchase beer or handguns. In our youth, each final one in all us was irretrievably silly. Don’t imagine me? Look no additional than the current protests over the Israeli incursion into Gaza.
A lot of life is sophisticated. This isn’t. On 7 October 2023, Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 Israelis. Scaled up for our inhabitants, that may be the equal of 44,000 lifeless People…in a day. In response to the 911 assaults that claimed the lives of two,977 of our countrymen, we immediately and not directly killed almost 1,000,000 folks.
I daresay many of the faculty children out protesting can’t intelligently articulate the finer theological variations between Sunni and Shia. They might doubtless wrestle to establish the West Financial institution on a map. But they’re screaming concerning the injustice of leveling a spot the place the rank and file inhabitants nonetheless actively helps Hamas.
Maybe silly is just too sturdy a phrase. Gullible is likely to be extra correct. Nevertheless, this tragic, deadly, intractable gullibility is certainly a timeless scourge. It was actually most profoundly manifest on the Ole Miss campus again in 1861.
The College Origins
The College of Mississippi accepted its first freshman class of 80 younger males in 1848. They finally known as the place Ole Miss. The time period, “Ole Miss” originated in 1897 because the title of the college’s first scholar yearbook–The Ole Miss Annual. A coed named Elma Meek received a contest to counsel the identify. She defined that she had oft heard of slaves on Southern plantations referring to the plantation matron as “Ole Miss” to tell apart her from the “Younger Misses.” That strikes me as a curious identify for a faculty, nevertheless it caught nonetheless.
For its first 23 years, Ole Miss was Mississippi’s sole establishment of upper studying. In 1854, it grew to become the fourth state-supported regulation faculty within the nation. That very same 12 months, the college launched one of many nation’s earliest engineering packages. Ole Miss broke new floor in 1882 with the admission of its first feminine scholar. Three years later they employed their first feminine school member. This will likely not seem to be a lot at present. It was fairly the massive deal again then.
Conflict
In late 1860, warfare was looming giant. A lot smarter people than I’ve spilt oceans of ink exploring the various manifest origins of the American Civil Conflict. Apologists give attention to states’ rights. Most understandably fixate on the establishment of slavery. Actuality is little question extra nuanced than both place would possibly intimate. Nevertheless, as I stated, ours is a lamentably binary society as of late. We not do nuance terribly nicely. Regardless, the nation’s ire was rising, and the younger folks particularly have been swept up in its unstoppable fervor.
On 9 January 1861, Mississippi seceded from the Union. This was an unprecedented, heady period for many who lived it. Time had consumed most of those that had identified the earlier warfare of revolution in addition to that of 1812. A whole era had not itself tasted the bitter tincture of fight. That was all about to alter.
Faculty then was not like faculty at present. These days many in authorities have come to view increased schooling as some form of intrinsic pure proper. Again then, nonetheless, faculty was a privilege of essentially the most rarefied type. The scholar physique in 1861 was small, rich, and lucky. They have been additionally headstrong and patriotic. This turned out to be an explosive mixture.
Philosophy
Human beings are tribal. This peculiar sense of tribalism is what makes you climb as much as scrub your sister’s identify off an overpass, even when she was a turd to you if you have been children. It drives us to take satisfaction in our households, our nation, and our sports activities groups. It additionally sends younger males off to warfare.
As quickly as warfare clouds appeared on the horizon, the Ole Miss scholar physique started to organize. They organized into models, privately bought arms and uniforms, and started drilling within the grassy circle in entrance of the Lyceum, the college administration constructing. When these younger males started to volunteer to go off to battle, there have been voices suggesting that maybe the Ole Miss scholar physique was too worthwhile to lose.
If this factor went sideways, the South would want a seed–a core of clever, pushed younger males to restore and rebuild. These voices opined that the Ole Miss scholar physique ought to maybe sit this one out. These misguided younger studs have been having none of that.
College Aspirations
These college students really went to nice lengths to earn the privilege of spending themselves on the battlefield for his or her nation. The letters of entreaty they penned to Governor JJ Pettus have survived. They mirror a naïve, misplaced fervor widespread to all younger males. With the advantage of hindsight, additionally they merely drip with pathos. Right here is an instance dated 19 March 1861—
Sir:
I’ve discovered that an try has been made to rule out this regiment, Capt. Lowry’s Firm, right here on the College after they’ve been repeatedly mustered into service and obtained their arms. I believe it could be an amazing injustice to take action. They’re all younger males it’s true, however a lot of them are of authorized age, all of them eligible for army service, and they’re exceedingly anxious to enter the service. As an organization they’re actually higher expert in army ways than any firm I do know of. A lot of them have been educated at army colleges. I hope due to this fact they won’t be dominated out.
With highest respect I’ve the respect to be your
Obt. Servt.,
Wm. Delay, Capt., Comdg. Lafayette Guards
P.S. This Firm has additionally been at appreciable expense in procuring uniforms &c.
Captain Delay finally received his want.
Campaigning On Campus
On 4 Might 1861, two months after William Delay’s letter was posted to the governor, your entire scholar physique save 4 souls mustered in entrance of the Lyceum and enlisted within the Accomplice Military en masse. These remaining 4 college students have been insufficient to justify the resumption of courses, so the college was briefly shuttered. Previous to this second, these 135 younger boys have been faculty college students drawn from all around the state. Afterwards, fifty-five of them grew to become Firm A of the eleventh Mississippi Infantry assigned to Lee’s Military of Northern Virginia.
This firm was designated the College Greys. An additional seventeen served with the Lamar Rifles, an area militia drawn from the Lafayette County space surrounding the college. The remainder have been assigned piecemeal to different state regiments. Of these fifty-five authentic Greys, forty-eight got here from slave-owning households.
College Greys
The Greys noticed motion in a number of campaigns. Nevertheless, destiny positioned them within the vanguard of Heth’s Division of AP Hill’s Corps in the summertime of 1863. The College Greys led the notorious Pickett’s Cost that got here so near breaking the Union traces on the third bloody day at Gettysburg.
The final man standing fell some twenty yards from the far proper fringe of the Union line. 3-inch ordnance rifles parked hub-to-hub poured double canister into the rows of butternut, chopping the Rebels down by the handfuls. These final to fall have been Firm A of the eleventh Mississippi. The College Greys superior farther than every other Accomplice fight unit through the American Civil Conflict. Incomes that distinction value them each single member of the corporate. The Greys have been obliterated to a person.
Of the thirty-one college college students who began the cost throughout that bloody area at Gettysburg, fourteen died the place they fell whereas the opposite seventeen have been grievously wounded. The few who finally recovered have been folded into the Lamar Rifles. The College Greys had been attritted to actually nothing.
Ruminations
Nice hay has been revamped the veneration of Accomplice luminaries from the Civil Conflict. Statues have been defaced, displaced, defamed, and toppled. Forts Bragg, Benning, Hood, and Rucker are all known as one thing else at present. There’s a concerted effort in our myopic binary world to obliterate the reminiscences of those younger males together with these of the opposite 258,000 patriotic Southerners who gave their lives for his or her misguided trigger.
READ MORE: Main William Gail White: The Frag Magnet
Politicians and Generals make technique. Troopers provide the blood. Within the trenches, younger males not often battle and die for lofty causes. They bleed for his or her brothers on both facet. They perish not for his or her international locations however for his or her buddies. In the summertime of 1863, the College Greys fell to a person. Whereas the righteousness of their trigger is actually ripe for debate, none ought to ever doubt the purity of their devotion.
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