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by Mary Elizabeth Sergent
War differing loyalties north, others south, but survived the conflict
does come down to us!
Yet there were others, once well-known, all still deserving of remembrance; and they were a fated group, for a pathetic conflict of loyalties and emotions was their lot when they left the Military Academy. In all the long history of West Point no cadets had gone forth into a more tragic world than the ones who left in the spring of 1861.
There is a strange and romantic haze resting on the high plain that overlooks the Hudson at West Point?that plain where so many of America?s greatest soldiers, living briefly in a world apart, learned the rudiments of their demanding profession. But there is an especially somber and haunting hue to the atmosphere of the late 1850?s, for the country was breaking apart and the line of fracture ran straight across the special world inhabited by young West Pointers.
Many things are learned at West Point; among them, the great fact of comradeship, the bond that ties together men dedicated to a common calling. And in the spring of 1861 the southern states were seceding from the Union, and war was upon the land,
John Pelham?who quit the Academy to join the Confederate Army?and S. Dodson Ramseur.
CSA
TOP: MARY PELHAM GRAVES COLLECTION, COURTESY OF MARY ELIZABETH SERGENT; BOTTOM: CONFEDERATE MUSEUM
CIVIL WAR CHRONICLES 5