"The Second American School of Arms": the Virginia Military Institute and the advent of state military education, 1835-1851

Abstract

The Virginia Military Institute, along with other Southern military colleges, is almost always historically viewed within the context of their contributions during the Civil War. VMI, and other "West Points of the Confederacy," were founded long before sectional tensions between North and South called these schools to provide officers for the Confederate armies. This thesis examines the social, political, and cultural factors leading to VMI's founding and initial success, not as a professional officer's school, but as a multi-faceted institution created as a solution to a collection of social, economic, and educational problems. The Institute sought to develop educated and honorable men who would provide the state with a new class of productive male citizens while using their military training to protect Virginia as officers in the militia. Those poorer youths who could not afford an education were offered a state supported tuition at VMI in exchange for teaching at a Virginia school for two years. While attending the Institute, cadets were also in charge of guarding the weapons stored in the arsenal from which the school was converted. VMI offered a multi-beneficial program in order to gain support from a state that was cynical of government-funded education. VMI was also created in response to national criticisms of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Using West Point as a model, VMI sought to create citizen-soldiers, not professionals, in their military training and aimed to educate cadets for various civilian occupations, not just that of army officers. The Institute also sought to counter the Academy's monopoly on engineering education by offering a similar curriculum to provide engineers for Virginia's internal improvements. In the decade following VMI's founding, other Southern states would utilize Virginia's archetype in creating their own state supported military schools in the hopes of reaping the same benefits.