118-456: The Blacksburg Electronic Village ( BEV ) was conceived as a project of Virginia Tech in 1991 and officially born in 1993. The goal of the project was to develop an online community linking the entire town. Extensive outside research had been done by sociologists and computer scientists on this project. Some believe that this is one of the most important assets that Blacksburg has besides Virginia Tech itself. In 1995, around 30,000 out of
236-581: A United States senator from Mississippi and served as U.S. Secretary of War under 14th President Franklin Pierce . On March 1, 1861, on behalf of the new Confederate States government, Davis assumed control of the military situation at Charleston Harbor in Charleston, South Carolina , where South Carolina state militia had besieged the longtime Federal Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, held by
354-519: A fight song when the Hokies scored a touchdown. A large Confederate flag also hung inside Cassell Coliseum where Virginia Tech basketball games are played. Since 1963, "Skipper" , a replica of a Civil War cannon has been fired at football games by members of the Corps of Cadets when the team scores. The Confederate Flag was also prominently featured on all Virginia Tech class rings . The display of
472-508: A $ 1 billion graduate research center adjacent to the facility. The Virginia Tech Innovation Campus will be housed at a million-square-foot campus in Alexandria. It is expected to educate hundreds of graduate students. The Innovation Campus will focus on computer science and software engineering, with specializations in areas including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and data analytics. Due to rapid growth of incoming freshmen classes,
590-633: A bill into law that lifted Ohio's statewide ban on firearms on college campuses, leaving the decision to the institutions. In 2017, Georgia became the tenth state to prohibit colleges and universities from banning concealed weapons on campus. Virginia law allows individual institutions to make the decision whether to allow concealed weapons on campus, but Virginia Tech continues to ban concealed carry permit holders from carrying guns on campus. After Amazon unveiled its second headquarters in Crystal City, Virginia , Virginia Tech announced plans to build
708-610: A commercial area that would soon become Christiansburg 's main shopping district to a group of developers for the historic but long fallow 1,785-acre Kentland property. The developers on the other end of the swap, one of whom was a former Tech athletics official, quickly sold 40 acres of the former university farmland for $ 2.7 million. News of the land swap, and especially the fact that it was done behind closed doors, with no input from College of Agriculture faculty sparked outrage. Also in 1986, Virginia Tech became embroiled in an athletic scandal sparked by allegations of illegal recruiting,
826-417: A few hundred students. In 1992 the alumni organization-initiated Corps Review, a newsletter that was expanded to a magazine in 2004 and targeted corps alumni. In the mid-1990s, the corps alumni organization set a goal of "1000 in 2000" and initiated a major campaign to push the number of cadets to 1,000 by the turn of the century. The goal was not reached, but membership in the corps did increase substantially by
944-538: A few weeks. Tensions on campus reached the boiling point several days following the Kent State Shootings when on May 12, 1970, a large mob including students and a number of non-student anti-war protesters enraged by the Kent State incident and angered by the administration's disciplinary actions in response to a number of recent infractions by protesters including; vandalism of university property,
1062-441: A group of anti-war protesters including students and faculty members disrupted a Corps of Cadets drill on campus. The Virginia Tech administration under Hahn took swift action. The students involved were suspended and the faculty members involved were fired from the university and the administration went to court and obtained an injunction to prevent them from repeating the act. This succeeded in calming tensions on campus, but only for
1180-475: A high-school grade point average of 4.00, with the middle 50 percent ranging from 3.84 and 4.27. The average cumulative SAT score was 1250 (out of 1600), with a middle range ranging from 1160 to 1340. Of the 5,518 students who accepted the offers of admission (for an admissions yield of 38%) , 18 percent accepted under the Early Decision Plan. The Office of Undergraduate Admissions is located within
1298-609: A higher rate than poor men because they had more to lose. Slavery helped provide them with wealth and power, and they felt that the Civil War would destroy everything that they had if they lost because they saw slavery as the foundation of their wealth, which was under threat and caused them to fight hard. At many points during the war, and especially near the end, the Confederate armies were very poorly fed. At home their families were in worsening condition and faced starvation and
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#17327904590281416-546: A home in the heart of Washington, D.C. Its sixth president, Paul Brandon Barringer , was a son of Confederate General Rufus Barringer and a nephew of Confederate Generals Stonewall Jackson and Daniel Harvey Hill . In a nod to this southern heritage the Confederate Battle Flag was traditionally waved by cheerleaders at Virginia Tech football games and the Highty-Tighties played Dixie as
1534-547: A lower grade officer. Barring the same type of circumstances that might leave a lower grade officer in temporary command, divisions were commanded by major generals and corps were commanded by lieutenant generals. A few corps commanders were never confirmed as lieutenant generals and exercised corps command for varying periods as major generals. Armies of more than one corps were commanded by (full) generals. There were four grades of general officer ( general , lieutenant general , major general , and brigadier general ), but all wore
1652-830: A machine shop for working on VTTI's vehicle fleet. VTTI develops and tests advanced transportation safety devices, techniques, and innovative applications. VTTI's research impacts public policy in transportation, notably through research into distracted driving and commercial hour-of-service. VTTI conducts applied research to address transportation challenges from various perspectives: vehicle, driver, infrastructure, materials, and environment. Most notable among VTTI endeavors are its naturalistic driving studies. These studies particularly utilize VTTI's data acquisition systems, which gather continuous video and driving performance data in real-world driving conditions. These systems have been installed in nearly 4,000 passenger vehicles, commercial trucks and motor coaches, and motorcycles. Since 2005,
1770-583: A month later in May 1865. By the time Abraham Lincoln took office as President of the United States on March 4, 1861, the seven seceding slave states had formed the Confederate States . They seized federal property, including nearly all U.S. Army forts, within their borders. Lincoln was determined to hold the forts remaining under U.S. control when he took office, especially Fort Sumter in
1888-621: A provisional volunteer army and gave control over military operations and authority for mustering state forces and volunteers to the newly chosen Confederate States president, Jefferson Davis (1808-1889),. Davis was a graduate of the United States Military Academy , on the Hudson River at West Point, New York , colonel of a volunteer regiment during the Mexican–American War (1846-1848). He had also been
2006-637: A research center in Punta Cana , Dominican Republic , and a study-abroad site in Riva San Vitale, Switzerland . Through its Corps of Cadets ROTC program, Virginia Tech is a senior military college . Virginia Tech offers 280 undergraduate and graduate degree programs to its 37,000 students; as of 2016, it was the state's second-largest public university by enrollment. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". The university's athletic teams are known as
2124-506: A scion of one of Montgomery County's wealthiest families, in his campus home on faculty row. Heth, who lived at Whitethorne , an antebellum mansion on a 1,500-acre estate near Blacksburg, later died of his wounds in a Roanoke hospital. Due to the Heth family's wealth and political connections, Vawter's position as head of the VPI physics department, and the scandalous extramarital affair that led to
2242-470: A series of potentially dangerous fires set on campus, breaking and entering into a university building, and a sit-in in Cowgill Hill, seized Williams Hall and barricaded themselves inside. The administration responded quickly calling in law enforcement and early the following morning Virginia State Police forced their way into Williams Hall and began rounding up the protesters. Once inside the building
2360-609: A small U.S. Army garrison under the command of Major Robert Anderson . (1805-1871). By March 1861, the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States meeting in the temporary capital of Montgomery, Alabama , expanded the provisional military forces and established a more permanent regular Confederate States Army. An accurate count of the total number of individuals who served in the Military forces of
2478-414: A small, historically white, predominately male, military institute with a primary focus on undergraduate teaching into a major co-educational research university. The student body that had been approximately 5,682 in 1962 increased by roughly 1,000 students each year, new dormitories and academic buildings were constructed, faculty members were added – in 1966, for instance, more than 100 new professors joined
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#17327904590282596-493: A soldier, and his rejection of a Southern identity as a professional author. Because of the destruction of any central repository of records in the capital at Richmond in 1865 and the comparatively poor record-keeping of the time, there can be no definitive number that represents the strength of the Confederate States Army. Estimates range from 500,000 to 2,000,000 soldiers who were involved at any time during
2714-589: A squad or platoon, the smallest infantry maneuver unit in the Army was a company of 100 soldiers. Ten companies were organized into an infantry regiment, which theoretically had 1,000 men. In reality, as disease, desertions and casualties took their toll, and the common practice of sending replacements to form new regiments took hold, most regiments were greatly reduced in strength. By the mid-war, most regiments averaged 300–400 men, with Confederate units slightly smaller on average than their U.S. counterparts. For example, at
2832-699: A wide range of other engineering, scientific, social science, and creative fields. This research led to 36 patents and 17 license and option agreements in fiscal year 2013. The Fralin Life Science Institute is an expansion of the Fralin Biotechnology Center, which was established in 1991. Research at the institute is focused on the areas of vector-borne disease; infectious disease and microbial sciences; plant sciences; obesity; cancer biology; and ecology and organismal biology. The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI)
2950-699: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Virginia Tech ( VT ), officially the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University ( VPI ), is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia , United States. It was founded as the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1872. The university also has educational facilities in six regions statewide,
3068-651: Is a public university and one of Virginia's two land-grant institutions . Its academic programs are administered by nine colleges, the Graduate School, and the Honors College. Virginia Tech offers 116 bachelor's degree programs through its nine undergraduate academic colleges, 160 master's and doctoral degree programs through the Graduate School, and a professional degree from the Virginia–Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine . In addition,
3186-481: Is a ready explanation for this apparent paradox. Emancipation was a salient issue for Union soldiers because it was controversial. Slavery was less salient for most Confederate soldiers because it was not controversial. They took slavery for granted as one of the Southern 'rights' and institutions for which they fought, and did not feel compelled to discuss it. Continuing, retired Professor McPherson also stated that of
3304-576: The Army of Tennessee and various other units under General Joseph E. Johnston , surrendered to the U.S. on April 9, 1865 (officially April 12), and April 18, 1865 (officially April 26). Other Confederate forces further south and west surrendered between April 16, 1865, and June 28, 1865. By the end of the war, more than 100,000 Confederate soldiers had deserted , and some estimates put the number as high as one-third of all Confederate soldiers. The Confederacy's government effectively dissolved when it evacuated
3422-558: The Carilion Clinic and the governor of Virginia. These years also brought about the rapid development of the university's professional schools of graduate education and business programs. Virginia Tech brought in over $ 500 million in research expenditures in 2014. The establishment of scholarships for cadets and a resurgence of national patriotism after the September 11 attacks helped the corps recruit new cadets, increasing
3540-488: The Civil War as did many of its early professors including the first Commandant , James H. Lane , a VMI graduate and former Confederate General who taught civil engineering and commerce at the college and is the namesake of Lane Hall, one of the oldest buildings on campus, built in 1888. Its third president, Thomas Nelson Conrad , was a notorious Confederate spy who ran a covert intelligence gathering operation from
3658-461: The College of William and Mary (now Old Dominion University ). This program eventually developed into a two-year engineering program that allowed students to transfer to VPI for their final two years of degree work. The first women's dormitory at VPI, Hillcrest Hall, was built in 1940. In 1943, VPI merged with Radford State Teachers College in nearby Radford , which became VPI's women's division;
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3776-760: The Confederate Army or the Southern Army , was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting against the United States forces to win the independence of the Southern states and uphold and expand the institution of slavery . On February 28, 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress established
3894-867: The Potomac River in his first invasion of the North in the Antietam campaign in Maryland in September 1862. The Confederate States Army did not have a formal overall military commander, or general in chief, until late in the war. The Confederate President, Jefferson Davis , himself a former U.S. Army officer and U.S. Secretary of War , served as commander-in-chief and provided the overall strategic direction for Confederate land and naval forces in both eastern and western theaters. The following men had varying degrees of control: The lack of centralized control
4012-471: The United States Army (established 1775 / 1789). It was to consist of a large provisional force to exist only in time of war and a small permanent regular army. The provisional, volunteer army was established by an act of the Provisional Confederate Congress passed on February 28, 1861, one week before the act which established the permanent regular army organization, passed on March 6. Although
4130-961: The University of Texas tower shooting in 1966. Although it was at the time the deadliest mass shooting committed by a lone gunman in U.S. history, it has since been surpassed by two shootings at an Orlando nightclub and an outdoor music festival in Las Vegas . It is the second-deadliest school massacre in U.S. history, surpassed only by the Bath School bombing in 1927 that killed 44. The Virginia Tech massacre led to an intense nationwide debate over gun rights, gun safety and efficacy of gun-free zones. It prompted many states to introduce legislation to prohibit public colleges and universities from banning concealed weapons on campus for permit holders. In 2013, at least 19 states introduced legislation to allow concealed carry on campus in some form, and in
4248-966: The Virginia Tech Hokies and compete in Division I of the NCAA as members of the Atlantic Coast Conference . In 1872, with federal funds provided by the Morrill Act of 1862 , the Reconstruction-era Virginia General Assembly purchased the facilities of Preston and Olin Institute , a small Methodist school for boys in Southwest Virginia's rural Montgomery County . That same year, 250 acres (100 ha) of
4366-502: The "flimsy and abstract idea that a negro is equal to an Anglo American". One Louisianan artilleryman stated, "I never want to see the day when a negro is put on an equality with a white person. There is too many free niggers ... now to suit me, let alone having four millions." A North Carolinian soldier stated, "[A] white man is better than a nigger." Decades later in 1894 , Virginian and former famous Confederate cavalry leader, John S. Mosby (1833-1916), reflecting on his role in
4484-683: The 2.2-mile (3.5 km), two-lane, fully instrumented Virginia Smart Road ; connected-vehicle test beds in Southwest and Northern Virginia; more than 83,000 square feet of office and laboratory space; the VTTI/Center for Injury Biomechanics Crash Sled Lab; and the National Tire Research Center in Southern Virginia. These laboratories include an asphalt lab, fully equipped garages, instrumentation bays, and
4602-510: The 2014 legislative session, at least 14 states introduced similar legislation. In December 8, 2011, a campus police officer Deriek Crouse was fatally shot by Radford University student Ross Truett Ashley, 22, before he took his own life. In 2016, Tennessee passed a bill permitting faculty members to carry handguns on campus after notifying local law enforcement. In 2015, Texas became the eighth state to allow concealed weapons on college campuses. In December 2016, Governor John Kasich signed
4720-583: The 70,000 residents had access to the Internet . Two-thirds of users used the university's web servers . That means that approximately 42.86% of the town's population was on the World Wide Web . The BEV was so thoroughly integrated in the Blacksburg community, that in 1998, the town was chosen by Guinness World Records as the "Most Wired Community." This computer networking article
4838-563: The American Civil War's soldiers, noted Princeton University war historian and author James M. McPherson (born 1936), contrasts the views of Confederate soldiers regarding slavery with those of the colonial American revolutionaries of the earlier 18th century . He stated that while the American rebel colonists of the 1770s saw an incongruity between owning slaves on the one hand, and proclaiming to be fighting for liberty on
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4956-594: The Confederacy passed the first conscription law in either Confederate or Union history, the Conscription Act, which made all able bodied white men between the ages of 18 and 35 liable for a three-year term of service in the Provisional Army. It also extended the terms of enlistment for all one-year soldiers to three years. Men employed in certain occupations considered to be most valuable for
5074-752: The Confederacy: Control and operation of the Confederate army were administered by the Confederate States War Department , which was established by the Confederate Provisional Congress in an act on February 21, 1861. The Confederate Congress gave control over military operations, and authority for mustering state forces and volunteers to the President of the Confederate States of America on February 28, 1861, and March 6, 1861. On March 8,
5192-589: The Confederate Congress passed a law that authorized President Davis to issue proclamations to call up no more than 100,000 men. The C.S. War Department asked for 8,000 volunteers on March 9, 20,000 on April 8, and 49,000 on and after April 16. Davis proposed an army of 100,000 soldiers in his message to Congress on April 29. On August 8, 1861, the Confederacy called for 400,000 volunteers to serve for one or three years. Eight months later in April 1862,
5310-494: The Confederate States (Army, Navy and Marine Corps) is not possible due to incomplete and destroyed / burned Confederate records; and archives. Estimates of the number of Confederate soldiers, sailors and marines are between 750,000 and 1,000,000 troops. This does not include an unknown number of Negro slaves who were pressed into performing various tasks for the army, such as the construction of fortifications and defenses or driving wagons. Since these figures include estimates of
5428-401: The Confederate flag at athletic events ended in the late 1960s after Marguerite Harper, a black woman attending Virginia Tech on a Rockefeller Scholarship for culturally disadvantaged students, was elected to the student senate during her sophomore year and made a successful resolution to end the practice. Following the resolution there was a large demonstration in opposition to the removal of
5546-487: The Confederate flag. The campus was covered in Confederate flags and Dixie was blasting from dormitory windows. Harper and her white roommate received hate mail and threatening phone calls, but the resolution stood, and the display of the rebel flag ended in 1969. The Confederate flag on Virginia Tech class rings became optional in 1972 and could be left off of the ring at the student's request. The Confederate flag has since been removed from class ring designs entirely. Under
5664-558: The Confederate sample. Indeed, while about one-third of all Confederate soldiers belonged to slaveholding families, slightly more than two-thirds of the sample whose slaveholding status is known did so. In some cases, Confederate men were motivated to join the army in response to the United States' actions regarding its opposition to slavery. After the U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 - 1863 , some Confederate soldiers welcomed
5782-534: The Episcopalians, Methodists, and Lutherans. One result was wave after wave of religious revivals in the Army, religion playing a major part in the lives of Confederate soldiers. Some men with a weak religious affiliation became committed Christians, and saw their military service in terms of satisfying God's wishes. Religion strengthened the soldiers' loyalty to their comrades and the Confederacy. Military historian Samuel J. Watson argues that Christian faith
5900-502: The Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS) has made efforts to build capacity at the intersection of engineering, science, biology, and the humanities. Thrust areas include nuclear engineering, nanoscale science and engineering, nano-bio interface, sustainable energy, safe and sustainable water, national security, cognition and communication systems, renewable materials, and emerging technologies. Confederate States Army The Confederate States Army , also called
6018-526: The Union. They felt that they had no choice but to help defend their homes. President Abraham Lincoln was exasperated to hear of such men who professed to love their country but were willing to fight against it. As in the U.S. Army , the Confederate Army's soldiers were organized by military specialty. The combat arms included infantry, cavalry, and artillery. Although fewer soldiers might comprise
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#17327904590286136-686: The Upper Quad of campus commemorates Add's journey to enroll. First-year cadets and their training cadre re-enact Addison Caldwell's journey every year in the Caldwell March. They complete the first half of the 26-mile march in the fall and the second half in the spring. The first five presidents of Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College served in the Confederate States Army or the Confederate government during
6254-623: The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors for the scandal and warned other state-supported institutions in Virginia not to put athletics ahead of academics. Lavery developed a reorganization plan for the troubled Athletic Department, and Frank Beamer was hired to replace Bill Dooley as head football coach, but with negative publicity continuing to swirl within and around the university, he announced his resignation on October 16, 1987, effective December 31, 1987, to prevent polarization of
6372-525: The Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and Research Institute is a public-private partnership jointly managed by Virginia Tech and the Carilion Clinic founded on January 3, 2007. Virginia Tech received a record number of nearly 22,500 applications for the fall 2015 freshman class, an increase of 7.6% from the previous year's 20,897 applications for an overall admissions rate of 65.8%. The typical student offered admission had
6490-479: The Visitor and Undergraduate Admissions Center. Virginia Tech offers a highly selective Honors College , which provides undergraduate students 11 different ways to earn Honors credits towards one of the five Honors degree options. Once admitted, Honors students are required to maintain a 3.6 GPA in order to remain in the program. Roughly one-fourth of the approximately 1,600 University Honors students live in one of
6608-611: The adjoining Solitude Farm including the house and several farm buildings on the estate were acquired for $ 21,250 from Robert Taylor Preston, a son of Governor of Virginia , James Patton Preston . The commonwealth incorporated a new institution on the site, a state-supported land-grant military institute named Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College . Virginia Tech's first student, Addison "Add" Caldwell registered on October 1, 1872, after hiking over 25 miles from his home in Craig County, Virginia . A statue, located in
6726-510: The bitter departure of two athletic directors in less than a year and millions of dollars of debt run up by the university's sports program due to mismanagement of financial resources, million dollar coaching contracts, and lavish expense accounts for athletics officials that led to a rebuke from Governor of Virginia , Gerald Baliles in 1987. Baliles, the featured speaker at the Virginia Tech's 115th annual commencement exercises, scolded
6844-548: The campus. He was succeeded as president by James Douglas McComas who served until 1994. Due to the unpopularity of US involvement in the Vietnam War enrollment in the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets spiraled downward through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. In 1991 through the efforts of Henry Dekker (Class of 1944) The Corps of Cadets Alumni Inc. was created to save the corps, whose numbers had declined to only
6962-454: The city harbor began bombarding bombarding Fort Sumter on April 12–13, 1861 and forced its capitulation on April 14. The remaining loyal United States in the North, outraged by the Confederacy's attack, demanded war. It rallied behind new 16th President Lincoln's call on April 15 for all the loyal states to send their state militia units avolunteer troops to reinforce and protect the national federal capital of Washington, D.C. , to recapture
7080-479: The college switched from semesters to the quarter system, which remained in place until the late 1980s. Under the 1891–1907 presidency of John McLaren McBryde , the school organized its academic programs into a traditional four-year college and a graduate department was founded. The evolution of the school's programs led to a name change in 1896 to Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute . The "Agricultural and Mechanical College" portion of
7198-559: The depredations of roving bands of marauders. Many soldiers went home temporarily (A.W.O.L. - " Absent Without Official Leave ") and quietly returned when their family problems had been resolved. By September 1864, however, President Davis publicly admitted that two-thirds of the soldiers were absent, "most of them without leave". The problem escalated rapidly after that, and fewer and fewer men returned. Soldiers who were fighting in defense of their homes realized that they had to desert to fulfill that duty. Historian Mark Weitz argues that
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#17327904590287316-572: The early 1970s, but none turned violent. The university continued to expand through the last quarter of the 20th century. In 1975 William E. Lavery , who had joined the Virginia Tech faculty in 1966, took over as president when Hahn left the university to join Georgia-Pacific . Desperate for additional farmland for the support of teaching, research, and extension programs in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Virginia Tech acquired Kentland Farm on December 31, 1986. Virginia Tech secretly traded about 250 acres of research orchards adjacent to
7434-403: The end of the decade. The early decades of this century have seen expansion across the university's institutions in both physical and population sizes. In 2001, Virginia Tech acquired 326 acres of the Heth Farm adjacent to campus, increasing the College Farm to over 3,000 acres. The Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and Research Institute was created with a strategic partnership with
7552-458: The extent the word " battalion " was used to describe a military unit, it referred to a multi-company task force of a regiment or a near-regimental size unit. Throughout the war, the Confederacy raised the equivalent of 1,010 regiments in all branches, including militias, versus 2,050 regiments for the U.S. Army. Four regiments usually formed a brigade , although as the number of soldiers in many regiments became greatly reduced, especially later in
7670-442: The faculty – and research budgets were increased. During Hahn's tenure, not only did the university graduate its first Rhodes Scholar , W.W. Lewis, Class of 1963, the requirement for male students to participate in the Corps of Cadets for two years was dropped in 1964. Beginning in the fall 1973, women could participate in the Corps, making Virginia Tech among the nation's first senior military colleges to integrate women. In 1970,
7788-426: The first African American to graduate from VPI. Yates earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering , with honors, and was hailed as the first African American "to be graduated from any major Southern engineering institute," according to news reports at the time. VPI President T. Marshall Hahn , whose tenure ran from 1962 to 1974, was responsible for many of the programs and policies that transformed VPI from
7906-426: The following rankings from The Princeton Review in its 2017 Best 380 Colleges Rankings: Virginia Tech's research and development expenditures (R&D) were $ 542 million in fiscal year 2019, which ranked 48th among education institutions in the nation and 2nd in the state of Virginia according to the National Science Foundation . As a result, Virginia Tech marked its 15th consecutive year of research growth, with
8024-408: The formal name. Similarly, the abbreviation "VT" is far more common today than either VPI or VPI&SU. During the Vietnam War , students on college campuses across the nation protested the draft and U.S. involvement in the conflict. Despite its long history as a military school , Virginia Tech was no exception. Most protests at Virginia Tech were small sit-ins and teach-ins, but In mid-April 1970
8142-421: The four-year old capital of Richmond, Virginia on April 3, 1865, and fled southwest by railroad train with the President Jefferson Davis and members of his cabinet gradually continuing moving southwestward first to Lynchburg, Virginia and lost communication to its remaining military commanders, and soon exerted no control over the remaining armies. They were eventually caught and captured near Irwinville, Georgia
8260-422: The harbor of Charleston, South Carolina . On February 28, shortly before Lincoln was sworn in as president, the Provisional Confederate Congress had authorized the organization of a large Provisional Army of the Confederate States (PACS). Under orders from Confederate President Jefferson Davis , C.S. troops under the command of General Pierre Gustave Toutant / P. G. T. Beauregard military forces surrounding
8378-407: The heritage of 1776 in opposite ways. Confederates professed to fight for liberty and independence from a too radical government; Unionists said they fought to preserve the nation conceived in liberty from dismemberment and destruction ... The rhetoric of liberty that had permeated the letters of Confederate volunteers in 1861, grew even stronger as the war progressed. Before and during the Civil War,
8496-618: The home front (such as railroad and river workers, civil officials, telegraph operators, miners, druggists and teachers) were exempt from the draft. The act was amended twice in 1862. On September 27, the maximum age of conscription was extended to 45. On October 11, the Confederate States Congress passed the so-called " Twenty Negro Law ", which exempted anyone who owned 20 or more slaves, a move that caused deep resentment among conscripts who did not own slaves. The C.S. Congress enacted several more amendments throughout
8614-446: The hundreds of Confederate soldiers' letters he had examined, none of them contained any anti-slavery sentiment whatsoever: Although only 20 percent of the soldiers avowed explicit proslavery purposes in their letters and diaries, none at all dissented from that view. McPherson admits some flaws in his sampling of letters. Soldiers from slaveholding families were overrepresented by 100%: Nonslaveholding farmers are underrepresented in
8732-414: The leadership of seventh president Joseph Dupuy Eggleston , who held the position from 1913 to 1919, the university established a Reserve Officer Training Corps to support national efforts during World War I . Early on the morning of March 13, 1917, physics professor Charles E. Vawter, Jr. (son of Charles E. Vawter, who had served on the VPI board of visitors from 1886 to 1900), shot Stockton Heth, Jr.,
8850-473: The merger was dissolved in 1964. Today, Radford University is a co-educational research university that enrolls nearly 10,000 students and offers more than 150 undergraduate and graduate programs. In 1953, under the leadership of President Walter Stephenson Newman , VPI became the first historically white, four-year public institution among the 11 states in the former Confederacy to admit a black undergraduate. Three more black students were admitted in 1954. At
8968-511: The move, as they believed it would strengthen pro-slavery sentiment in the Confederacy, and thus lead to greater enlistment of soldiers in the Confederate armies. One Confederate soldier from the West in Texas gave his reasons for fighting for the Confederacy, stating that "we are fighting for our property", contrasting this with the motivations of Union soldiers, who, he claimed, were fighting for
9086-486: The name was popularly omitted almost immediately; in 1944, the name was officially changed to Virginia Polytechnic Institute ( VPI ). VPI admitted its first female students in 1921 as civilian day students ; they did not live on campus. In 1923, VPI changed a policy of compulsory participation in the Corps of Cadets from four years to two years. In 1931, VPI began teaching classes at the Norfolk Division of
9204-592: The need to protect or to destroy slavery. Others point to less overtly political reasons to fight, such as the defense of one's home and family, or the honor and brotherhood to be preserved when fighting alongside other men. Most historians agree that, no matter what he thought about when he went into the war, the experience of combat affected him profoundly and sometimes affected his reasons for continuing to fight. Educated soldiers drew upon their knowledge of American history to justify their costs. Historian James M. McPherson says: Confederate and Union soldiers interpreted
9322-464: The official count of 103,400 deserters is too low. He concludes that most of the desertions came because the soldier felt he owed a higher duty to his own family than to the Confederacy. Confederate policies regarding desertion generally were severe. For example, on August 19, 1862, famed General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson (1824-1863), approved the court-martial sentence of execution for three soldiers for desertion, rejecting pleas for clemency from
9440-405: The other, the later Confederacy's soldiers did not, as the Confederate ideology of white supremacy negated any contradiction between the two: Unlike many slaveholders in the age of Thomas Jefferson, Confederate soldiers from slaveholding families expressed no feelings of embarrassment or inconsistency in fighting for their liberty while holding other people in slavery. Indeed, white supremacy and
9558-552: The percentage of Confederate Army soldiers who were drafted are about double the 6 percent of Union Army soldiers who were drafted. According to the National Park Service, "Soldier demographics for the Confederate Army are not available due to incomplete and destroyed enlistment records." Their estimates of Confederate military personnel deaths are about 94,000 killed in battle, 164,000 deaths from disease, and between 25,976 deaths in Union prison camps. One estimate of
9676-451: The pivotal Battle of Chancellorsville , the average U.S. Army infantry regiment's strength was 433 men, versus 409 for Confederate infantry regiments. Rough unit sizes for CSA combat units during the war: Regiments, which were the basic units of army organization through which soldiers were supplied and deployed, were raised by individual states. They were generally referred by number and state, for example 1st Texas , 12th Virginia . To
9794-571: The police discovered bomb making materials and determined that the students had apparently intended to build a firebomb . The first few protesters were dragged out of the building; the rest left peacefully and were arrested and taken to the Montgomery County jail. The students involved in the seizure, were suspended from Virginia Tech and given twenty-four hours to remove their belongings from campus after being released from jail. Several more anti-war protests occurred at Virginia Tech during
9912-469: The popular press of Richmond, including its five major newspapers, sought to inspire a sense of patriotism, Confederate identity, and the moral high ground in the southern population. The southern churches met the shortage of Army chaplains by sending missionaries. The Southern Baptists sent a total of 78 missionaries, starting in 1862. Presbyterians were even more active, with 112 missionaries sent in early 1865. Other missionaries were funded and supported by
10030-404: The rank of (full) general; the highest-ranking (earliest date of rank) was Samuel Cooper , Adjutant General and Inspector General of the Confederate States Army. Officers' uniforms bore a braided design on the sleeves and kepi , the number of adjacent strips (and therefore the width of the lines of the design) denoting rank. The color of the piping and kepi denoted the military branch. The braid
10148-450: The ranks to 1,127 by 2018—the largest corps the university has seen since the mid-1960s. The Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets is poised to increase enrollment to 1,400 in coming years. On April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho fatally shot 32 faculty members and students and wounded 17 others in two locations on campus before killing himself. The massacre is the deadliest mass shooting on an American college campus, surpassing
10266-443: The right of property in slaves were at the core of the ideology for which Confederate soldiers fought. McPherson states that Confederate States Army soldiers did not discuss the issue of slavery as often as the opposing United States Army soldiers did, because most Confederate soldiers readily accepted as an obvious fact that they were fighting to perpetuate slavery and thus did not feel the need to debate over it: [O]nly 20 percent of
10384-409: The same insignia regardless of grade. This was a decision made early in the conflict. The Confederate Congress initially made the rank of brigadier general the highest rank. As the war progressed, the other general-officer ranks were quickly added, but no insignia for them was created. (Robert E. Lee was a notable exception to this. He chose to wear the rank insignia of a colonel.) Only seven men achieved
10502-422: The sample of 429 Southern soldiers explicitly voiced proslavery convictions in their letters or diaries. As one might expect, a much higher percentage of soldiers from slaveholding families than from non-slaveholding families expressed such a purpose: 33 percent, compared with 12 percent. Ironically, the proportion of Union soldiers who wrote about the slavery question was greater, as the next chapter will show. There
10620-587: The shooting, the resulting murder trial was one of the most sensational in Virginia history (Vawter was acquitted, and left the school). Eggleston attempted to suppress news of the affair in the media with considerable success, most likely due to the Russian Revolution and the US declaration of war on Germany that stole the headlines in the spring of 1917 , rather than his efforts to protect VPI's reputation. During Thomas Nelson Conrad's tenure as president,
10738-459: The soldiers' regimental commander. General Jackson's goal was to maintain discipline in a volunteer army whose homes were under threat of enemy occupation. Historians of the Civil War have emphasized how soldiers from poor families deserted because they were urgently needed at home. Local pressures mounted as Union forces occupied more and more Confederate territory, putting more and more families at risk of hardship. One Confederate Army officer at
10856-488: The solidarity of the Confederacy was dissatisfaction in the Appalachian Mountains districts caused by lingering Unionism and a distrust of the power wielded by the slave-holding class. Many of their soldiers deserted, returned home, and formed a military force that fought off Regular Army units trying to capture and punish them. North Carolina lost nearly a quarter of its soldiers (24,122) to desertion. This
10974-509: The state capital of Virginia in Richmond. Both the United States and the Confederate States began in earnest to raise large, mostly volunteer, armies, with the opposing objectives: putting down the rebellion and preserving the Union on the one hand, and establishing Southern independence from the northern United States on the other. The Confederate States Congress provided for a regular Confederate States Army, patterned after its parent in
11092-417: The state legislature allowed VPI university status and gave it the present legal name, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University . In the early 1990s, university administration authorized the official use of Virginia Tech as equivalent to the full legal name; it has been used as the first-reference name for the school's athletic teams since the 1970s. However, diplomas and transcripts still spell out
11210-455: The subsequent acts came before five state supreme courts; all five upheld them. In his 2010 book Major Problems in the Civil War , historian Michael Perman says that historians are of two minds on why millions of men seemed so eager to fight, suffer and die over four years: Some historians emphasize that Civil War soldiers were driven by political ideology, holding firm beliefs about the importance of liberty, Union, or state rights, or about
11328-411: The time Virginia still enforced Jim Crow laws and largely practiced racial segregation in public and private education, churches, neighborhoods, restaurants, and movie theaters and these first black students at VPI were not allowed to live in residence halls or eat in the dining halls on campus. Instead, they boarded with African American families in Blacksburg. In 1958, Charlie L. Yates made history as
11446-456: The time noted, "The deserters belong almost entirely to the poorest class of non-slave-holders whose labor is indispensable to the daily support of their families" and that "When the father, husband or son is forced into the service, the suffering at home with them is inevitable. It is not in the nature of these men to remain quiet in the ranks under such circumstances." Some soldiers also deserted from ideological motivations. A growing threat to
11564-401: The total Confederate wounded is 194,026. In comparison, the best estimates of the number of Union military personnel deaths are 110,100 killed in battle, 224,580 deaths from disease, and 30,218 deaths in Confederate prison camps. The estimated figure for Union Army wounded is 275,174. The main Confederate armies, the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee and the remnants of
11682-535: The total number of soldiers who served at any time during the war, they do not represent the size of the army at any given date. These numbers also do not include sailors / marines who served in the Confederate States Navy . Although most of the soldiers who fought in the American Civil War were volunteers, both sides by 1862 resorted to conscription as a means to supplement the volunteer soldiers. Although exact records are unavailable, estimates of
11800-761: The two University Honors residential halls, the Honors Residential College located in East Ambler-Johnston and the Hillcrest Honors Community . For the 2013–14 academic year, the Graduate School at Virginia Tech enrolled 6,723 graduate students (4,465 full-time; 2,258 part-time) in its masters and doctoral programs. The Pamplin College of Business received 381 applications for its incoming Evening MBA program and offered admission to 142. The class's average GMAT
11918-400: The two forces were to exist concurrently, little was done to organize the Confederate regular army. Members of all the military forces of the Confederate States (the army, the navy, and the marine corps) are often referred to as "Confederates", and members of the Confederate army were referred to as "Confederate soldiers". Supplementing the Confederate army were the various state militias of
12036-579: The undergraduate architecture program 3rd nationally among both public and private universities. The graduate architecture program ranked 9th in the nation. For 2013, DesignIntelligence ranked the university's undergraduate and graduate landscape architecture programs No. 2 in the nation. In addition, DesignIntelligence ranked the university's undergraduate interior design program 6th and undergraduate industrial design program 3rd. The Planetizen 2012 Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs ranked Virginia Tech's MURP program as 19th. Virginia Tech's MURP program
12154-459: The university announced in 2019 that it would offer 1,559 incoming, in-state freshmen financial incentives to skip the 2019–20 school year in Blacksburg. Expecting a larger-than-planned class size, the university budgeted $ 3.3 million for the endeavor. Virginia Tech also waived the requirement that freshmen live on campus for the 2019–20 school year, leased an off-campus Holiday Inn , and converted its on-campus hotel to house students. Virginia Tech
12272-781: The university's research portfolio more than doubling from $ 192.7 million in fiscal year 2000. The only Virginia institution in the top 50 of the NSF's rankings for research expenditures, Virginia Tech is No. 23 among public universities. The university's research expenditures rank it in the top 5 percent of more than 900 research universities and colleges. Each year, the university receives thousands of awards to conduct research from an ever-expanding base of sponsors. Researchers pursue new discoveries in agriculture, biotechnology, information and communication technology, human health, transportation, energy management (including leadership in fuel-cell technology and power electronics), security, sustainability, and
12390-443: The various forts, arsenals, shipyards and other seized federal installations from the secessionists, to put down and suppress the rebellion and to save the Union. Four more upper border slave states (North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas and finally Virginia) then joined the Confederacy, making eleven seceded states rather than fight fellow Southerners. The Confederacy then moved its national capital from temporary Montgomery, Alabama to
12508-436: The war to address losses suffered in battle as well as the United States' greater supply of manpower. In December 1863, it abolished the previous practice of allowing a rich drafted man to hire a substitute to take his place in the ranks. Substitution had also been practiced in the United States, leading to similar resentment from the lower classes. In February 1864, the age limits were extended to between 17 and 50. Challenges to
12626-488: The war, more than four were often assigned to a brigade. Occasionally, regiments would be transferred between brigades. Two to four brigades usually formed a division . Two to four divisions usually formed a corps . Two to four corps usually formed an army. Occasionally, a single corps might operate independently as if it were a small army. The Confederate States Army consisted of several field armies, named after their primary area of operation. The largest Confederate field army
12744-590: The war, stated in a letter to a friend that "I've always understood that we went to war on account of the thing we quarreled with the North about. I've never heard of any other cause than slavery." As stated by researcher / authors Andrew Hall, Connor Huff and Shiro Kuriwaki in the article Wealth, Slaveownership, and Fighting for the Confederacy: An Empirical Study of the American Civil War , research done using an 1862 Georgia lottery showed that rich white Southern men actually enlisted at
12862-486: The war. Reports from the C.S. War Department beginning at the end of 1861 indicated 326,768 men that year, 449,439 in 1862, 464,646 in 1863, 400,787 in 1864, and "last reports" showed 358,692. Estimates of enlistments throughout the war range from 1,227,890 to 1,406,180. The following calls for soldiers were issued: The C.S.A. was initially a (strategically) defensive army, and many soldiers were resentful when General Robert E. Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia across
12980-1140: Was 610, and mean undergraduate GPA was 3.4. The Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine in Roanoke, Va., received 4,403 applications for its eighth incoming class, the class of 2021, and offered admission to 42. The class's MCAT scores range was 503–520 (median 512, mean 512), and mean undergraduate GPA was 3.57. In 2023, Virginia Tech became the second public university after the U.S. Supreme Court decided Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard , banning affirmative action in college admissions, to end its use of legacy admissions . The university also ended its binding early decision program because it "created unneeded pressure on students [...] particularly those needing financial aid". In U.S. News & World Report ' s list of "2024 Best Colleges", Virginia Tech tied for 47th overall among national universities, tied for 20th among public ones, tied at 25th for "Most Innovative", ranked 156th in "Best Value Schools", and tied for 207th in "Top Performers on Social Mobility". The Pamplin College of Business 's part-time MBA program
13098-410: Was a major factor in combat motivation. According to his analysis, the soldiers' faith was consoling for the loss of comrades; it was a shield against fear; it helped reduce drinking and fighting in the ranks; it enlarged the soldiers' community of close friends and helped compensate for their long-term separation from home. In his 1997 book For Cause and Comrades , which examines the motivations of
13216-449: Was a strategic weakness for the Confederacy, and there are only a few examples of its armies acting in concert across multiple theaters to achieve a common objective. One instance occurred in late 1862 with Lee's invasion of Maryland , coincident with two other actions: Bragg's invasion of Kentucky and Earl Van Dorn 's advance against Corinth, Mississippi . All three initiatives were unsuccessful, however. Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown
13334-482: Was also rated among the best programs in Technology, Land Use Planning, Environmental Planning, and Growth Management. Kiplinger's Personal Finance places Virginia Tech 20th in its 2019 ranking of 174 best value public colleges in the United States. In 2018, CEOWORLD magazine ranked the undergraduate architecture program 3rd nationally. The graduate architecture program ranked 14th. Virginia Tech received
13452-845: Was an extreme case of a Southern States Rights advocate asserting control over Confederate soldiers: he defied the Confederate government's wartime policies and resisted the military draft. Believing that local troops should be used only for the defense of Georgia, Brown tried to stop Colonel Francis Bartow from taking Georgia troops out of the state to the First Battle of Bull Run. Many of the Confederacy's senior military leaders (including Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston , and James Longstreet ) and even President Jefferson Davis, were former U.S. Army and, in smaller numbers, U.S. Navy officers who had been opposed to, disapproved of, or were at least unenthusiastic about secession, but resigned their U.S. commissions upon hearing that their states had left
13570-535: Was founded as the Center for Transportation Research in 1988 and employs more than 350 personnel. VTTI has more than $ 125 million in active research awards, and has a mission to save lives, save time, save money, and protect the environment . It is the second largest university-level transportation institute in the United States , and the largest group of driving safety researchers in the world. Facilities include
13688-509: Was the Army of Northern Virginia , whose surrender at Appomattox Courthouse in 1865 marked the end of major combat operations in the U.S. Civil War. Companies were commanded by captains and had two or more lieutenants. Regiments were commanded by colonels. Lieutenant colonels were second in command. At least one major was next in command. Brigades were commanded by brigadier generals although casualties or other attrition sometimes meant that brigades would be commanded by senior colonels or even
13806-439: Was the highest rate of desertion of any Confederate state. Young Samuel Clemens (1835-1910, later to be known as Mark Twain ) soon deserted the Southern army long before he became a world-famous writer, journalist and lecturer, but he often commented upon that episode in his life comically, even writing a book about it. Author Neil Schmitz has examined the deep unease Twain felt about losing his honor, his fear of facing death as
13924-713: Was tied for 19th overall by U.S. News & World Report in 2020. The Master of Information Technology program, jointly sponsored by the Pamplin College of Business and the College of Engineering, is ranked No. 4 in U.S. News & World Report ' s Best Online Graduate Computer Information Technology Programs. This interdisciplinary program is offered entirely online. Programs in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies (CAUS) include architecture + design, landscape architecture, urban planning, and public administration. In its 2016 "America's Best Architecture & Design Schools" report, DesignIntelligence ranked
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