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College Cavaliers: A summer in the civil war

By Paul Heller
For The Times Argus
This improbable tale could have been lifted from an old dime novel: college boys from rival New England schools raise their own company of cavalry to fight in the Civil War during their summer vacation. Amazingly, students from Dartmouth College and Norwich University put their adversarial relationship to bed for 90 days to seek glory on the battlefields of northern Virginia in the year 1862.

Norwich University was located in Norwich, Vermont, until 1866, when it moved to Northfield.

After the assault on Fort Sumter in South Carolina, the nation was obsessed with war and the fate of the union. It was no exception on the campuses of the nation’s colleges as students argued tactics, troop strengths, and the relative merits of general officers. At Dartmouth the minds of excitable young men were taken with this great cause. The few students from the south left campus immediately after the first shots were fired in April, 1861, and a company of Dartmouth undergraduates had begun drilling the following year led by a Lt. C.B. Stoughton from Norwich University, the military college on the Vermont side of the Connecticut River. A copy of Scott’s Military Tactics was purchased for $5, circulated among the student militia, and “carefully studied.”

Sanford Burr was a Dartmouth junior from Foxboro, Massachusetts, who was obsessed with the conflict. He reportedly “talked war night and day.” An accomplished horseman, Burr kept a mount in Hanover and excitedly convinced his schoolmates to form a unit of cavalry. He recruited a hundred like-minded students. Burr petitioned the governors of New Hampshire and Vermont for recognition of his nascent company of cavalry but was rebuffed by both states. In Rhode Island, however, Governor Sprague had recently been called upon to raise a squadron of cavalry with 90-day enlistments and was eager to accept Burr’s offer. He telegraphed the young man that he would accept the company if they would come to Providence immediately.

An excited Burr stepped into the classroom where Fairbanks was lecturing on electromagnets. William Hill reported the event in Dartmouth Traditions (1901) “Burr had a broad smile on his face; instantly the boys suspected that he had received some important news. … He told them Gov. Sprague had agreed to accept the company of cavalry, if he would organize at once, for a three months campaign.

As the boys wrote home for permission, their parents became alarmed and some forbade their enlistment but feared the company would be mustered into the Union Army before their objections could be received by return mail. Dartmouth faculty were also against what they perceived as a rash and irresponsible act, and publicly opposed Burr’s scheme. As reasonable arguments were made, the company diminished in number from 100 to 35 and had to be supplemented by 23 military cadets from Norwich, long the arch rival of Dartmouth.

For years, the bridge over the Connecticut River between Norwich and Hanover had been contested territory between forces representing the two schools. Battles were routinely fought with eggs, cabbages, and even stones for the prized objective. Lesser pranks, reprisals and humiliations were stuff of legend.

Laying aside their intercollegiate enmity, the Dartmouth troops acknowledged the superior military training and knowledge of the Norwich Cadets and assigned them the command rank in the company’s cadre except the captaincy, which they bestowed on their charismatic founder, Sanford Burr. As final preparations were made, their ranks were supplemented by a handful of recruits from Union, Bowdoin, Amherst, and Williams colleges. While Dartmouth histories refer to them as the “Dartmouth Cavalry,” Norwich accounts sometimes use the appellation, “Norwich Cavalry” but generally they became known as the “College Cavaliers,” the title of Sam Pettingill’s memoir of his days as the sole representative of Amherst College in this extraordinary unit.

On June 18, 1862, the troops boarded carriages in Hanover and, to the cheers of their classmates, made their way to White River Junction for the train ride to Rhode Island. Nathan Lord, Dartmouth president, delivered a memorable prayer in their honor at chapel exercises the next morning that was characterized as “marvelous, devout, eloquent, and patriotic.” He also prayed that those who remained behind would come to see the wisdom of that decision. Lord was unique among his New England college contemporaries by being pro-slavery. When he was inaugurated in 1828, he was a typical New England abolitionist, but some 20 years later he read a religious tract, which had a profound influence upon him and came to believe that slavery was God’s will. He wrote numerous pronouncements to that effect. Although his views were a source of embarrassment to the faculty, students, and trustees, he remained president until 1863 when his opposition to granting an honorary degree to Abraham Lincoln cost him his job.

At White River Junction the boys boarded the train for Providence at 2 a.m. on June 19. That afternoon they were mustered into the Seventh Squadron, Rhode Island Cavalry and marched to the quartermaster to be dressed in the blue of the Union Army.

They marched proudly to the campground as “men on the streets cheered and ladies at the windows waved their handkerchiefs as it had been noised about that they were a company of college students.” Drilled daily for the next 10 days they were guests of honor at a strawberry festival, regaled with patriotic speeches and met the other company that comprised their squad. One student described them as “the common sort, such as could be picked up in Providence. A coin toss determined that the non-college boys would be Company A and the boys from Norwich and Hanover, Company B.

Finally, they embarked on a troop train for Washington, stopping in New Jersey for horses. “On their way through Philadelphia they were treated with great hospitality by the ladies, who furnished them with hot coffee and good things to eat.” On the night of June 30 they slept soundly in camp while the horses were fed and watered in the stables. With reveille the next morning they commenced cavalry training.

Wilder Luke Burnap was from Grafton. The son of a sawmill operator, he discovered early that his aptitude was for books rather than the business of running a mill. An early recruit to Sanford Burr’s company of “College Cavaliers” Burnap had no experience with horses. The first time he heard the call, “‘Boots in Saddle!” “He obeyed the order although he had never ridden horseback before. He leaped into the saddle and stuck his legs out too loosely. Then he hugged his legs too tightly and thrust his spurs into the horse’s sides which caused the horse to rear up on his hind legs and then on his fore legs. Wilder tried to hold on, but he was rolled off over the horse’s head and fell sprawled on the ground. The horse left him there and galloped off to the stables,” according to Dartmouth Traditions.

During their 10 days encampment on the “sacred soil of Virginia” they enjoyed themselves very much, as they had “been under drill and practice long enough to bear the hardships with equanimity and could see the fun of the business; but they were glad when the order came for them to go to Winchester, as they wanted to see something of active service as well as the daily drill in the camp … Their journey to Winchester was a dreary and tiresome task although they traversed a region that has some of the finest and grandest scenery in this country; they had to travel in dirty stock cars, with no accommodations for sleep or rest except the straw covered floor, and at a slow rate of speed.”

According to Dartmouth Traditions, “On the very first night … they were aroused at midnight by an attack of guerillas and had to keep guard the rest of the night in the darkness, and such darkness; it was difficult to tell whether the man next to you was friend or foe; every one felt, as one of the boys said in a low tone, “There is something in the word ‘home.’”

In September, Miles encountered Stonewall Jackson’s overwhelming force at Harper’s Ferry surrendering his entire infantry. His cavalry, however, was given permission to escape and the company of college boys was able to elude capture and even seize a supply train belonging to General Longstreet. Although their 90-day enlistment had expired, they remained under arms until General Lee’s army withdrew from Maryland.

Arriving in Providence in late September, they were mustered out of the Union Army and started for Hanover, where they were received as heroes.

The Dartmouth faculty made one last attempt to assert control over Burr and his troops by insisting that they sit for exams on the classes they had missed during their enlistment. But when Burr informed them that they had all been provisionally accepted by Brown University in Providence, the faculty abandoned that requirement in an effort to return the campus to its usual routine. At the military college across the river the terms were much more generous. The Norwich faculty promised degrees to those who would enlist, and many Norwich alumni achieved great distinction during their Civil War service.

Scales noted that only one man was lost from the company. Arthur Coombs, of Thetford, died of typhoid fever at Winchester, Virginia, on Aug. 15, 1862. Two men were taken prisoner but released in time to return to Hanover with their company.

Paul Heller is a writer and historian from Barre, Vermont.

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