capital gratitude

Union take on Virginia’s State arms

150 years ago this week VMI cadets were in Richmond, where the were thanked for their valor in helping the Confederates win the Battle of New Market. Governor “Extra Billy” Smith also presented them with a new flag.

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch May 28, 1864:

The Lexington Cadets — Presentation of a flag.

The Cadets of the Virginia Military Institute were last evening the recipients of well-deserved honors at the hands of the State authorities. At about half-past 6 o’clock they marched into Capitol Square, headed by Smith’s band, and were drawn up in line on the avenue fronting the Governor’s mansion. They bore with them their tattered colors, which waved triumphantly through the battle in the Valley, and which were soon to be replaced by a new and handsome flag. Governor Smith, General Bragg, and General E. L. Smith (of the Institute) soon made their appearance in front, and the Governor unfurled a flag of blue silk, bearing the State arms of Virginia, which he presented to the Cadets with appropriate remarks, in which he told them that he placed implicit confidence in their ability and determination to defend it. The flag was gracefully received by the color bearer. The corps was then reviewed by General Bragg, who seemed much pleased with its fine soldierly bearing. After this the Cadets marched to the east front of the Washington Monument, and were addressed by Speaker Bocock. He told them of the resolution, unanimously adopted by the House of Representatives, thanking them for their gallant conduct in the battle of the 15th of May, under General Breckinridge, and added that the country expected them to maintain the reputation they had so heroically won. He continued some fifteen or twenty minutes in a strain of patriotic eloquence, and closed by invoking the blessing of God upon their future movements.–This over, the Cadets marched back to their quarters.

The ceremonies throughout were of a highly interesting character, and were witnessed by an immense throng, including a large number of ladies.

From Encyclopedia Virginia:

Shortly after three o’clock, the Confederate general ordered another attack on Bushong Hill, this time calling in the boys from VMI. “They are only children,” he had told an aide earlier in the day, but in fact their average age was eighteen, and reminiscent of the “foot cavalry” made famous two years earlier by Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson they had marched eighty miles from Lexington to New Market in just a few days. When a hundred-yard-or-more gap in the Confederate lines opened up where the Virginians had retreated under heavy artillery fire, Breckinridge used the cadets to plug the hole and sent them after the Union battery. The cadets charged across a field so muddy that some of their shoes were sucked off their feet—hence the legendary “Field of Lost Shoes”—and eventually they were able to take Kleiser’s battery and even a few members of the 34th Massachusetts. Sigel’s men began to panic, with Sigel himself riding up and down the line, “all jabbering in German,” as one of his officers recalled, so that “the purely American portion of his staff were totally useless to him.”

Moses Jacob Ezekiel, one of the wounded cadets, eventually sculpted “Virginia Mourning Her Dead”, which is still situated at VMI:

“Virginia Mourning Her Dead”