Summary:
Superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute Francis H. Smith writes
Virginia Governor John Letcher in December, 1861, concerning the reopening of
the academy. Smith requests that the commissary at Staunton be instructed to
sell him food and supplies for the incoming cadets.
His Excellency JOHN LETCHER,
Governor of Virginia:
HDQRS. VIRGINIA MILITARY INSTITUTE,
December 19, 1861.
GOVERNOR:
You are aware that the Board of Visitors of this institution, in response to the public demand, and acting under the expressed wishes of the President of the Confederate States, have directed the reopening of the school on the 1st of January next. On that day it will be reopened with 250 cadets. In making the necessary preliminary arrangements for supplies, I find great difficulty in securing the transportation of groceries, from the fact that the Confederate Government, very properly, has the preference for its own supplies. In view of these difficulties, and of the importance of the continued operation of the Military Institute to the military defenses of our common country, I respectfully request that you will solicit from the War Department an order upon the commissary at Staunton to supply me, upon requisition, such an amount of groceries, at cost for cash, as may be required for the conduct of the school, and upon like terms as such supplies are now issued to officers. I would add that besides the general benefit which the Confederate Government is receiving from the Military Institute, there is at this time the special one of a cartridge laboratory, with forty operatives, making some 10,000 cartridges per day, and the order which I have requested will facilitate this important branch of the Ordnance Department of the Confederate States. I will also take this occasion to say that in reopening the Military Institute, during the pendency of the war, the great purposes of the school may be much promoted by some arrangement with the Confederate Government by which a board of examiners may be detailed by the War Department to attend each annual examination, and select from the graduating class such cadets as in the judgment of the board may be found worthy to be recommended to the President for the commission of brevet second lieutenants in the various corps of the Army. Such an arrangement will not only provide the Army with a select number of educated young officers to the extent that may be demanded, but will operate as a most salutary stimulus to the industry and order of the cadets. I ask no exclusive privilege for the Military Institute, and suggest this as one of the ways in which the largest and most efficient military school of the South may be made most effective for the public service. I do not know what legislation, if any, may be necessary should this suggestion meet with favor with the President, but his intimate acquaintance with the subject, in all its bearings, will enable him to point out the best mode of carrying out the plan.
I remain, Governor, very respectfully,
FRANCIS H. SMITH,
Maj.-Gen. and Superintendent Virginia Military
Institute.
Bibliographic Information : Letter Reproduced from The War of The Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series 1, Volume 51, Serial No. 108, Pages 424, Broadfoot Publishing Company, Wilmington, NC, 1997.
