V.M.I. Remembers: The Battle of New Market

BOOM! sounded the cannons. Crack! went the rifles. As the smoke settled over the calm greensward of New Market, Va., a ragged gray line of ersatz Confederates marched on the Yankee guns. In accordance with the script, the Bluebellies died in a heap of splendid tragedy. As one mock Union soldier put it: "I'm a Confederate. But there weren't enough real Yankees to man the cannon."

The cannon needed manning for the annual re-enactment of the 1864 Battle of New Market, one of the Civil War's most unusual clashes. The 200 participants were mostly Southern Civil War buffs who turn out annually to honor the Virginia Military Institute cadets who glorified their school's name during the battle. As history has it, the V.M.I, cadets returned to their barracks at Lexington one night after a commemorative ceremony for their old professor, General Stonewall Jackson, who had died the previous year at Chancellorsville. Then the boys got the word: they were needed to help stave off the Yankee advance.

The young cadets--247 in all--marched 80 miles in four days through rain and mud before the battle at New Market. They plunged into battle and acquitted themselves admirably. The North was defeated, but V.M.I, paid its toll: ten were killed and 47 wounded. Their youthful heroism even spawned a poem by one Irving Bacheller:

One night when the boys were all abed, we heard the long roll beat, And quickly the walls of the building shook with the tread of hurrying feet; And when the battalion stood in line we heard the welcome warning, Breckinridge needs the help o' the corps; be ready to march in the morning.

Thousands of Southerners turn out each year to see the drama re-enacted, but the cadet corps of V.M.I, stages its own commemoration. Last week, in splendid array, the seven companies of cadets swept onto the V.M.I, parade ground in full regalia: black-plumed shakos, gray coatees, white crossbelts, white ducks. They stood near a statue of Stonewall Jackson, flanked by four cannons named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. As each name of the ten honored dead was called out, a cadet from the young soldier's company answered: "Died on the field of honor, sir!"

By companies, the corps paraded past another statue, Virginia Mourning Her Dead. Flowers were placed on the graves of the six young Confederates who are buried at the foot of the monument (the other four were buried elsewhere). A squad of hand-picked cadets fired a three-volley salute, and the bugler sounded taps. Then cadets and guests heard The Tribute, V.M.I. Spirit and of course Dixie.

Dixie sticks in a few craws--particularly those of the 13 black cadets. Now that campus protest has become a commonplace, even such a staid institution as V.M.I. is susceptible. Black cadets, who were first admitted in 1968, do not appreciate the playing of what they term a "racist" song such as Dixie--even though they realize that it is an inseparable part of the ceremony.

They are not the only ones who find such traditions oppressive. First classmen are beginning to call many of V.M.I.'s rules "Mickey Mouse"--an odd appraisal from young sons of the school attended by George Catlett Marshall and four generations of Pattons.

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