87

William Dillard.

Pair of letters written as a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute during the war.

In and near Lexington, VA, 1863
Pair of Autograph Letters Signed "Willie" to his mother Mary Elizabeth Dillard (1826-1886), 4 and 2 pages; various sizes and moderate wear.

  • Notes: William Terisha Dillard (1846-1898) of Amherst County, VA was a 17-year-old cadet at the Virginia Military Institute when he wrote these letters. His father Terisha Dillard was a militia officer who had recently been killed in an uprising of his enslaved servants.

    During the summer of 1863, the VMI students were stationed at their nearby summer camp, Camp Jackson. They were fully armed and on alert to help protect the Shenandoah Valley against Union raids, and went out on a few patrols, though they saw no combat. See M.M. Wallace, "The Use of the Virginia Military Institute Corps of Cadets as a Military Unit," pages 92-93. The first letter offered here is dated 29 August 1863 from Camp Jackson, discussing the cadets' daily 4-hour drills, and asks that his mother not make a new pair of "white pants this summer as the season is so near out." 

    The second letter is more dramatic, dated 14 December 1863 at the VMI campus in Lexington. "While I was in the section room reciting my math, a courier arrived with dispatches from Gen. Imboden to Gen. Smith, asking him to come on as fast as possible with the cadets and Home Guard, and that the Yankees were crossing the Shenandoah Mountains in considerable force, and would probably advance on Staunton. We are all now in the greatest hurry imaginable, preparing to march. . . . We are much better prepared now for the soldier's life than we were heretofore; we have now knapsacks and haversacks, rifles, and a plenty of ammunition &c. My dear mother, I shall have to go, as I cannot honorably stay behind, though I would prefer to remain where I am. . . . I expect that this trip will prevent us from having an examination in Jan." General Francis Henney Smith was the longtime superintendent of VMI. 

    The cadets, aged 15 and up, were later called up for emergency service at the Battle of New Market in May 1864--the only time in American history a school's student body was pressed into combat as a distinct unit. Dillard would serve as a private in the provisional regiment and was one of the many wounded. The campus was burned by Union troops in June 1864. 

    With--a later receipt to Willie Dillard for a share of stock in the Methodist church of Amherst Court House, VA, 15 February 1868. 

    See lot 75 for letters of his brother-in-law William Wallace Larkin; and 76 for a patch worn at the funeral of father Terisha Dillard. 
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