been in
successful operation for about fifty years. As this institution had been
organized by a graduate of West Point, and in some respects resembled
the United States Military Academy, it was hoped that in Alabama good
results might be secured by the adoption of similar methods.

Military drill is taught at the present time in many schools and
colleges, but the intention of the Alabama University authorities was
not merely to drill students, but to hold them under military restraint,
as is effectually done at West Point, and, I may add, as cannot be done
in any college designed to qualify young men to become civilian members
of a great republic.

West Point and Annapolis have proved themselves noble institutions for
the purpose for which they were designed--that of training young men to
become officers over other men--but the mission of these schools is not
to fit young men for civil life. Their methods cannot be grafted upon
literary or technical civil institutions, and it is not desirable that
they should be applied to civil colleges or schools of any kind. But the
University of Alabama was a military college so far as concerned
discipline, and to this end I was given a Colonel's commission by the
Governor of the State, with two assistants, one a major, the other a
captain. Tents, arms and infantry equipments were purchased of the
United States Government, and a uniform similar to that of the West
Point cadets was adopted. The students were assembled on the first of
September, and a camp established on the University grounds. Drills were
inaugurated at once and regular camp duties were required and performed.

Everything seemed to be progressing very satisfactorily till one day,
some three weeks after the pitching of the camp, the President of the
University (Dr. Garland) desired to see me at his office. On entering I
found him and a trusted professor awaiting my coming, with disturbed
looks. No time was wasted in the preliminaries; Dr. Garland came to the
point at once by telling me that there was a mutiny brewing in my camp
which it would be impossible for me to quell. He then explained that the
cadets were dissatisfied because I was a northern-born man; that they
called me a d----d Yankee, and intended running me out of the State. He
thought they would be successful, for the ringleaders were old students
who had given a great deal of trouble before I came, and, what made the
matter worse, these students were so