Episode Details

In May 1864 Ulysses S. Grant's coordinated offensive sent Franz Sigel south up the Shenandoah Valley toward Staunton, aiming to cut the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad and the farms feeding Robert E. Lee's army. John C. Breckinridge could gather only about 4,100 men against roughly 6,300, so he called up the Virginia Military Institute Cadet Corps: 247 students under Lieutenant Colonel Scott Shipp, average age 18 and some as young as 15. John Imboden's cavalry slowed the Union advance at Rude's Hill, and on May 15 Breckinridge drove the Union off Manor's Hill with a frontal assault and a flank attack across Smith's Creek.

Sigel reformed on Bushong's Hill, and massed canister broke the 51st Virginia, opening a gap Breckinridge could fill only with the cadets. Shipp fell wounded, Captain Henry A. Wise took over, and the cadets crossed a rain-soaked plowed field that pulled the shoes from their feet. The Union line broke and the cadets captured a cannon. Ten cadets died and 50 more were wounded. Weeks later David Hunter took Staunton anyway, and VMI turned the day into lasting ritual.

• Sigel reportedly shouted orders in German, which helped paralyze the Union response.
• Union losses were 841 and Confederate losses 520, both about 13 percent of each army.
• Grant relieved Sigel, and Hunter won at Piedmont on June 5 and occupied Staunton the next day.
• Cadet Moses Ezekiel later sculpted Virginia Mourning Her Dead, where six of the dead cadets are buried.
• Since 1887 VMI's New Market Day roll call has been answered with died on the field of honor, sir.