In 2017, the Nau Center began to recover the stories and experiences of those University of Virginia alumni and students who fought for the Union during the Civil War. The Center hopes that “UVA Unionists” will complicate the traditionally Confederate-dominated local history of Charlottesville and UVA during the war.

We, however, were not the first to notice the lack of attention to “Cavaliers” in blue. More than one hundred years ago, in October 1913, the Staunton Daily News published an anonymous editorial criticizing this “grave oversight.” About two weeks later, the University of Virginia’s Alumni News responded, admitting that “no complete list has been made of the University alumni who saw service in the Union army.” Because we have referenced these two articles in a number of blog posts, lectures, and conference papers, we wanted to present both of them in full for the benefit of the UVA, local, and scholarly communities.

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The Staunton Daily News
Tuesday, October 14, 1913
Editorial Section, p. 4
Neglected Alumni

            The University of Virginia Alumni News of October 1, 1913, contains a notice of the death of Brigadier General Charles Irving Wilson, U.S.A., which occurred at his home in New York on September 22 last. General Wilson graduated from the University in 1857. He was a native of Washington and of northern parentage, so when the Civil War broke out, he followed his own people and entered the Federal Army. His career was creditable, as was shown by the rank to which he rose, but we have no intention of tracing his life history. What we wish to do is to call attention to what in our opinion has been a grave oversight on the part of our Virginian schools and colleges. They have paid much attention to collecting the data in regard to those of their alumni who served in the Confederate service, but they have almost entirely overlooked their sons who were in the Federal forces. There must have been numbers of northern boys and young men who attended the University of Virginia, Washington College, (now Washington and Lee University), and the Virginia Military Institute, and who stuck to their people and their native land when the war broke out, but these institutions say nothing of them.

            It would be more be more than passing interest to know something in regard to the alumni of the Virginia Military Institute who entered the Federal army. We would like to know what sort of officers they made, and how they compared with the West Point graduates. If they distinguished themselves, their fame would be reflected back on the school where they were trained, and in this day when we rejoice in a re-united land, when Lee’s statue lies in the capitol at Washington, and when the bitterness of a half-century old strife has been forgotten, our Virginian schools can surely remember with pride their sons who saw the path of duty differently from the way that most of their brother alumni did.

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University of Virginia Alumni News
Wednesday, October 29, 1913
Notes and Comment Section, front page

            An editorial which appeared in a recent issue of the Staunton Daily News develops a line of thought of more than passing interest to University of Virginia alumni. The article is entitled “Neglected Alumni.” The editor states in the introductory paragraph that the subject was suggested to him by reading the announcement in the Alumni News of the death of Brigadier-General Charles Irving Wilson, U.S.A. The editorial is as follows:

“What we wish to do is to call attention to what in our opinion has been a grave oversight on the part of our Virginian schools and colleges. They have paid much attention to collecting the data in regard to those of their alumni who served in the Confederate service, but they have almost entirely overlooked their sons who were in the Federal forces. There must have been numbers of Northern boys and young men who attended the University of Virginia, Washington College (now Washington and Lee University), and the Virginia Military Institute and who stuck to their people and their native land when the war broke out, but these institutions say nothing of them. * * * In this day, when we rejoice in a reunited land, when Lee’s statue lies in the capitol at Washington, and when the bitterness of a half-century old strife has been forgotten, our Virginian schools can surely remember with pride their sons who saw the path of duty differently from the way that most of their brother alumni did.”

            The News must confess that no complete list has been made of the University alumni who saw service in the Union army. The roster of Confederate veteran alumni has been carefully compiled; the names of those who fell on the field of battle or died in hospitals have been inscribed on the bronze scroll on the south face of the Rotunda. There must have been many former students who could not in honesty follow the Stars and the Bars but responded to another call, equally as patriotic and heroic. There leaps to the mind at once the memory of that stern figure that played so conspicuous a part in the legislative phase of the war—Senator Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland. But what of the other alumni of Union sentiments who volunteered for military service?

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The unnamed Staunton editorialist would be glad to know that in recent years Virginia’s colleges and universities finally have taken steps to honor their Union alumni. In addition to the Center’s works on UVA’s Unionists, both the Virginia Military Institute and the College of William and Mary have compiled lists of Union naval and army personnel from the Civil War. Such efforts to recognize the importance of southern, college-educated Unionists challenge popular notions of a White South united in defiance of the federal government during the conflict.

While most of UVA's White students, alumni, and professors sided with the Confederacy, the at least 69 men who enlisted in the Union army, navy, or loyal state militias shows that there is more to the University's Civil War story than the Confederate-focused histories and the Lost Cause memorial landscape that dominated the memory of the war at UVA for much of the twentieth century.

(Updated April 27, 2021 by digital historian William Kurtz)

Image: Henry Winter Davis (courtesy U.S. National Archives).