Qualla: Virginia Military Institute

Virginia Military Institute: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sarah Stierch, CC BY 4.0. On May 15, 1864, ten teenage cadets walked across a muddy field at New Market, Virginia, and into rifle fire. Five did not walk back. Another five lived a few days more before their wounds killed them. General John C. Breckinridge, the Confederate commander who had held them in reserve as long as he could, watched them go and said: "Put the boys in, and may God forgive me for the order." The field is now owned and operated by VMI as the Virginia Museum of the Civil War. Every May 15, the cadets at Lexington call the roll for the ten who died at New Market. Since 2021, the ceremony has expanded to include every VMI graduate who has died in service to the United States. That "United States" includes the country those boys at New Market were fighting against. The institution has spent 160 years learning how to hold both halves of that fact at once.

Image: Sarah Stierch | CC BY 4.0

Virginia Military Institute: Guarding the Arsenal

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Morgan Riley, CC BY-SA 3.0. Lexington didn't want a military school. Lexington wanted its arsenal guarded properly. After the War of 1812, Virginia had stashed weapons in a building here against the possibility of invasion or slave revolt, and the soldiers assigned to watch over them spent their off-duty ho...

Image: Morgan Riley | CC BY-SA 3.0

Virginia Military Institute: The Field of Honor

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William Maury Morris, Public domain. In 1851 a major named Thomas Jackson took the chair of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at VMI. The cadets found him strange, devout, and absent-minded. He taught at the Institute until 1861, when Virginia seceded and he went to war with the army that would soon call him Stone...

Image: William Maury Morris | Public domain

Virginia Military Institute: Rats and Brother Rats

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zeete, CC BY-SA 4.0. First-year cadets at VMI are called Rats. The term has been used since the 1850s. Folklore traces it to the gray uniforms that, from a distance, looked like a colony of small mammals; the cadets in turn called the wealthier Washington College students next door Minks. Rats spend ...

Image: Zeete | CC BY-SA 4.0

Virginia Military Institute: Who Belongs Here

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mgirardi, CC BY-SA 3.0. The U.S. Department of Justice sued VMI in 1990 over its all-male admissions policy. The case took six years. On June 26, 1996, in a 7-to-1 decision in United States v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that a publicly funded school could not exclude women. The first co-ed class ...

Image: Mgirardi | CC BY-SA 3.0

Virginia Military Institute: What the Sentinel Watches

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown engraver (MacFarlane & Ferguson, Richmond, Publishers), Public domain. VMI's alumni list includes George C. Marshall, the architect of the postwar order and Nobel laureate; Ralph Northam, the recent governor of Virginia; thirteen Rhodes Scholars; Medal of Honor recipients; and an Academy Award winner. About 65 percent of every graduating class accep...

Image: Unknown engraver (MacFarlane & Ferguson, Richmond, Publishers) | Public domain