"Marion Military Institute: The Military College of Alabama" by Joseph W. ("Bill") Mathews Jr.

S I X D OLL A R S

NUMBER 115, W I N T E R 2015

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Table of Contents FEATURES FLORENCE: DISCOVERING ALABAMA’S RENAISSANCE CITY

BY CAROLYN M. BARSKE

Cover: The Marion Military Institute Color Guard at the 2013 Alabama Military Hall of Honor Induction ceremony.

See article, page 38. (Marion Military Institute Foundation)

In 1818 the Cypress Land Company held the first auction for land in a new town on the banks of the Tennessee River in northwest Alabama.

Since then, Florence has grown into a thriving community with strong educational, agricultural, and industrial roots.

SARAH GAYLE AND VIOLENCE IN THE OLD SOUTHWEST

DEPARTMENTS 4 Southern Architecture & Preservation The Tabernacle: Centerpiece of Alabama’s Early Camp Meetings 46 Becoming Alabama Quarter by Quarter Calendar of Events 52 Alabama Governors William Wyatt Bibb and Thomas Bibb 54 From the Archives “Alabamians in the Great War”

BY SARAH WOOLFOLK WIGGINS

An early nineteenth-century journal illuminates the dangers facing those who lived in Alabama during its earliest years as a state.

20 ALABAMA’S OWN HENRY B. WALTHALL

BY JOANNA JACOBS

For a brief moment toward the beginning of the motion picture industry, one of the biggest stars in the world was a slight, refined, serious-looking farmer’s son from central Alabama.

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58 Alabama Women The Crusade of “Mrs. Moses”: Ida Mathis and the Cotton Crisis of 1914

MARION MILITARY INSTITUTE: THE MILITARY COLLEGE OF ALABAMA

BY JOSEPH W. (“BILL”) MATHEWS JR.

62 Nature Journal Sundown at Sauta Cave 66 Reading the Southern Past Freedom Summer—1964 www.AlabamaHeritage.com

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The history of Marion Military Institute was profoundly shaped by a single family—the Murfees.

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The Marion Military Institute Corps of Cadets march in the 2014 National Veteran’s Day Parade in downtown Birmingham. (All photos Marion Military Institute Foundation unless otherwise indicated)

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T H E M I L I TA RY C O L L E G E o f A L A B A M A

The history of Marion Military Institute was profoundly shaped by a single family—the Murfees.

By Joseph W. (“Bill”) Mathews Jr.

I

n the forty-six years since its  founding, Howard College in Marion, Alabama, had survived financial difficulties, two fires, and even an invading Union Army, but its final undoing in Marion came at the hands of the Alabama Baptist State Convention (ABSC).

In 1887, after W. W. Wilkerson and J. B. Lovelace, Marion residents and Howard trustees, had purchased the campus at a sheriff ’s sale held to pay a judgment against the school, they deeded the land back to the ABSC to allow the college to continue to operate in Marion. However, the ABSC decided to relocate the Baptist-founded school to Birmingham (where it would become Samford University), leaving Marion behind.

The ABSC, however, returned the pair’s gift. During its annual session in July 1887, the group decreed “that brethren Wilkerson and Lovelace are hereby authorized, for the current year, beginning October 1st, next, in case said [Howard] college is removed from Marion, to make such use of the property described in said deed, for educational purposes, as may seem to them proper and beneficial to the community at Marion.” Although the school itself was moving to Birmingham, its property and facilities would remain available.

One other resource remained in Marion: Howard’s president, Lt. Col. James Thomas Murfee. Over the next sixty-six years, he and his descendants would prove as valuable as any real estate in shaping what would become of that re-gifted property.

For forty-six years, the community at Marion had provided loyal support to Howard College, which had complemented the Judson Female Institute (now known as Judson College), a Baptist school for young women. Wilkerson and Lovelace decided that

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Murfee’s educational ideas, formed as he taught, defended, rebuilt, and led institutions both state- and church-run, could finally be implemented free from interference by either state or church.

a replacement for Howard College would be the se of most “proper and beneficial” educational use the property.

Wilkerson and Lovelace set themselvess to establishing a new school for young men to operate in the vacated buildings.

Murfee resigned his position as president of Howard and began planning with Wilkerson and Lovelace the use of the soon-to-be-vacated campus.

Born in Virginia, Lt. Col. James T. Murfee had graduated at the top of the class of 1853 at Virginia Military Institute (VMI), where Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson was his professor. He had studied d civil engineering, served as first captain, and left the school without earning a single deols in merit. After graduation, he taught at schools

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Above: Howard College in Marion had followed a military mode of education under the leadership of J. T. Murfee (left). He would follow the same model when he founded Marion Military Institute. Opposite page: The MMI faculty of 1891–1892. (Virginia Military Institute Archives) Pennsylvania and Virginia before taking a position as a professor of mathematics at the University of Alabama.

When Alabama seceded and the Civil War began in 1861, the male students fformed the Alabama Corps of Cadets.

M Murfee became commandant of the Corps, and he led them in the ill-fated defense of the University of Alabama campus against Croxto Croxton’s Raiders in the final days of the war.

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After the war, Murfee worked as an architect, helping rebuild the destroyed campus. He designed Woods Hall, built in 1868, to be part of a quadrangle of buildings patterned after the quadrangle at VMI. In 1871 he accepted the position of president of Howard College, becoming its sixth president; by staying with the campus when Howard relocated, he would become the first president of this new educational institution, named after the town, and called Marion Military Institute (MMI).

In a letter to alumni of the school, published in the Alabama Baptist on August 5, 1887, Murfee expressed his good will toward Howard College and stated his goals for the new school in Marion for young men. “I shall aim to train other young men as you were trained,” he wrote, “and to make them like you in character, popularity and usefulness. The memory of your good deeds shall be preserved, and your worthy examples held up as models for your successors.”

Murfee’s educational ideas, formed as he taught, defended, rebuilt, and led institutions both state- and church-run, could finally be implemented free from interference by either state or church. He would employ at MMI the same system of military discipline and methods of instruction that he advocated at the University of Alabama in 1867 and had imposed at Howard College in 1871 to train young men in character and service.

MMI opened the doors of the former Howard College campus to new students on October 4, 1887. In establishing a new educational institution, Murfee had the advantage of taking over a campus in a community where he had been highly successful in attracting faculty, students, and strong local support. After MMI began operations, a casual observer would scarcely have noticed any difference from the prior operation of its campus. Military uniforms were prominent both before and after Howard College's move. (Howard College followed the military model for several years after its move to Birmingham.) From Murfee’s perspective, he had contributed to the heritage of Howard College in Marion for his sixteen

years as that college’s president, and he was still the president of an educational institution on that same campus. He never left the campus or the community—Howard College had.

Murfee was a consummate administrator and educator of young men. MMI’s reputation, as well as his, grew throughout his presidency. As far back as 1867, he had concluded that it was a mistake to think that the “chief excellence” of military academies was found on the parade field and in barrack discipline. Instead, he believed that military academies developed educated students by classroom discipline, constructive rewards and punishments, and by example.

After the institute’s first session, Wilkerson and Lovelace deeded the campus to a trust and established a self-perpetuating board of seven trustees charged with a duty to hold the land and buildings for educational purposes for an institution of learning of a high moral character “for the education of white children and students only.” (Now members of any sex or race may attend.) The deed also contained a requirement that appointments to the sevenmember board of trustees would be made so that “four members of the Board shall also be members of the Baptist Church in Marion called Siloam Baptist Church.” Though he sought to educate students free from the influence of either religion or state, Murfee seems to have accepted this church oversight without protest, although it would lead to legal action over a century later. The deed expressly allowed for the incorporation of the institution with such provisions as the board deemed advisable. MMI was incorporated by Act No. 322 of the legislature of Alabama and was approved on February 20, 1889, with essentially the same provisions contained in the deed.

After a lifetime of experience with the military academy approach, Murfee sought to create a new vision of education.

He changed MMI into a civilian school by removing the military parades and barrack discipline but retaining and enhancing the classroom experience. These things were bolstered by character building based on studying the Bible, implementing an honor system, and encouraging students to develop a

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“A Cadet does not lie, cheat or steal” is considered to be the heart of MMI. J.T.’ s original aspiration to turn the school into the American version of Eton, guided by his sons, was becoming reality. system of student government based on a student-developed constitution. As a sign of the change, the word “Military” was deleted from the name of the school. By a later amendment to the articles of incorporation the name was changed back to "Marion Military Institute." Even today it is not uncommon for the school to be referred to by either name.

While shaping the future of the school, Murfee also ensured that his family would maintain its influence. Both Hobson Owen (H. O.) and Walter Lee (W. L.) Murfee attended MMI while it was still a military school and later graduated from the University of Virginia; H. O. graduated with a BS in 1892, and W. L. graduated with a BS in 1896.

Their father groomed them to become future presidents of the school, and both sons were given executive responsibility well prior to their father’s retirement in 1906. While J. T. Murfee was still president, he put his two sons jointly in charge of the executive functions of the school. H. O. Murfee built relationships with educational and political leaders in the United States and abroad, while W. L. Murfee spent considerable time visiting and studying Eton College (founded in 1440 by King Henry VI) as well as several other prestigious schools for boys in the United Kingdom.

With his successors in place, J. T. stepped down as president of MMI in 1906, having guided the school in its various identities for almost four decades. His accomplishments for education in the South at three cornerstone educational institutes so impressed the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching that in 1906 it granted him a “retiring allowance” for “long and distinguished service to the cause of education in Alabama.”

Col. H. O. Murfee served as assistant superintendent of MMI from 1897 to 1906. Upon his father’s retirement, he was elected president. Although Howard College had transformed into a military school under his father, H. O., with his father’s approval, helped MMI slowly evolve away from that model.

H.O.’s dream was for MMI to become the “Eton of the South” or the “American Eton,” a stateside version of the august British academy. H.O.’s brother W. L. had visited sev-

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Above: H. O. Murfee (second from the left) attended MMI and later became president upon his father’s retirement. Opposite page: William Howard Taft served as the president of MMI’s national board of directors. (Library of Congress) eral leading schools for young men in other English-speaking countries, and his studies revealed many similarities between England’s Eton and their father’s views. Both placed considerable emphasis on developing a boy’s mind, body, and soul through individual attention toward a goal of enlightened leadership and public service.

Towards that end, military structure, which J. T. Murfee had deemed so important for discipline on the campus and in barracks, was replaced by H. O.’s “Marion Plan,” which proposed a southern school for boys from twelve to eighteen years of age. The school was to be an academy to prepare young men for university and professional schools.

Its purpose was “to increase the lad in body, in mind, in morals and in taste.” Students would be housed in “the masters’ lodges.” Artificial barriers between tutors and students would be removed. Students would themselves maintain a

system of self-government pursuant to a student-created constitution.

The cover of the April 1907 Bulletin of the Marion Institute quoted the English school reformer Thomas Arnold as a model for the institute’s priorities: “What we must look for here is first, religious and moral principles; secondly, gentlemanly conduct; thirdly, intellectual ability.” These concerns would become the focus of the school over the next decade.

Many reforms changed the way the school worked. Since students in Eton College did not wear military uniforms, under the “Marion Plan,” students at the Marion Institute would not wear military uniforms. Although civilian clothing became the new dress of choice for the students, military uniforms were still worn in the Marion Institute’s Army-Navy Program, which prepared candidates for West Point and Annapolis.

In addition, a structure of student selfgovernment pursuant to carefully written regulations began on campus. Although this student leadership was subject to careful adult supervision, this system formed the basis for one of the first student governments in the South. An honor code also emerged as one of the reforms. “A Cadet does not lie, cheat or steal” is considered to be the heart of MMI. J. T.’s original aspiration to turn the school into the American version of Eton, guided by his sons, was becoming reality.

The institute’s reforms attracted national attention. In 1905 Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton University (and future president of the United States), spoke in the institute’s chapel. In honor of Wilson’s visit, H. O. changed the school’s colors to orange and black and its mascot to the tiger—those of Princeton.

In March 1910 MMI acquired lands east of the original campus on Washington Street, Marion’s main north-south street. H. O. had plans drawn to transform those lands into a vast English formal garden, presumably to make the campus look more like Eton. He also planned to expand and improve the physical plant.

These new initiatives were expensive, and the school was incurring numerous debts. In addition, as public schools improved, the need for private schools fell. By 1910 only

eighteen such schools remained in the Black Belt, down from twice that number just six years earlier.

Driven by financial needs, H. O. sought a broad-based board of directors from among the politicians, university presidents, and world-class scientists he had long courted.

This was apparently an effort to create a more prestigious and wealthy source of support than could be provided by the local sevenmember board of trustees, four of whom had to be members of the local Baptist church, in keeping with Wilkerson and Lovelace’s deed. Members of an advisory board could add prestige as well as financial support to the school without violating the terms of the trust that created the school. The Marion Institute Bulletin reported that “supreme control of the corporation and its property is vested in the board of seven Trustees, who are self-perpetuating; and associated with the Trustees are a Board of Directors.” Bulletins from 1909 through 1916 listed a board of trustees with seven members and a board of directors with up to sixteen members. Thanks to the Murfee family, Pres.

William Howard Taft was invited to join the board, agreeing to serve as its president.

Although the First World War put a hold on H.O.’s grand plans for the school, it did open new opportunities for military programs for schools. In 1916 the Reserve Officers Training Corps was established at the school, and the school’s focus returned to its military heritage. As a result, the national board of directors faded away.

In 1918, a year after President Wilson sent American troops “over there” to fight in Europe, H. O. Murfee resigned as president of the Marion Institute due to ill health. His younger brother W. L. would be elected to replace him in 1919, taking over an institute that had grown to include a high school, an army and navy college, and a junior college with programs in engineering, arts and sciences, pre-law, pre-medical, and business.

The First World War had already changed the direction of the Marion Institute from the “Eton of the South” model, and during W. L. Murfee’s tenure as president, he completed the transformation of the school back to a military academy. He

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At the end of the twentieth century, Marion Military Institute would face a potential relocation to Anniston as well as a legal challenge from Siloam Baptist Church. did not, however, abandon the emphasis on character, gentlemanly conduct, and intellectual ability.

The cover of the Marion Institute catalog for 1921–1922 highlighted these virtues, announcing the institute’s rank as “one of the ten best military schools of the Nation” via a telegram from the adjutant general of the United States. There was no mention of the national board of directors, and the catalog listed only seven trustees, four of whom were members of Siloam Baptist Church.

Tellingly, there was no mention of any plan to become the “Eton of the South.” The school had returned to its martial roots.

The 1921–1922 catalog also included, under the description of the Marion Institute’s offerings, the High School Department (“four years of standard high school work”), the General College (“four years of standard work leading to the Arts and the Science degrees”), and the Army and Navy College (coaching and college courses “to insure success in the Naval and Military Academies of the United States”). Included under the “General College” was an offering of two years of standard college work to enable “young men to make the transition from high school to college methods without difficulty.”

W. L.’s tenure as president started just after the end of the First World War and ended just before the end of the Second World War. The Marion Institute Bulletin of Information for the 1946–1947 school year notes that during the years of World War II, the school had offered an accelerated program of three academic semesters in each calendar year to assist students in furthering their education as much as possible before entering the armed forces, but for the 1946–47 academic year, the school returned to the “customary academic schedule.”

W. L.’s son James Thomas (J. T.) Murfee II followed his father as the fourth president of MMI. With WWII over, a population accustomed to rationing unleashed pent-up

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Above: A family portrait of the Murfees, taken on the occasion of J. T. and his wife Laura’s fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1911, surrounded by their children and grandchildren. J.T. and Laura are at the top in the center, H. O. is seated on the bottom step, on the left, and W. L. is in the upper right, holding a child. Opposite page: Despite a major building program following WWII, and many other new buildings since, the Chapel still serves as the centerpiece of the MMI campus. desires to buy and build. Colleges shared the same desire to “catch up” after delaying campus improvements.

During the period that followed WWII, J. T. introduced a major building program—but one based on a military model, not an English civilian model.

Prior to the start of WWII, the campus had consisted of primarily three buildings: the Chapel, North Barracks (Wilkerson), and Old South (Lovelace) Barracks. Unfortunately, North Barracks had burned in the early forties, leaving only the Chapel and South Barracks. In order to meet

the demand for education after WWII, the school replaced North Barracks and added the new West Barracks, adding both the Alumni Memorial Gymnasium and a chemistry building. Howard College began as a civilian school, evolved under J. T. Murfee into a military school, and eventually returned in Birmingham to its roots as a civilian school. MMI began as a military school, evolved under H. O. Murfee into a British– style civilian school, and eventually returned to its roots as a military school. Howard College, now known as Samford University, is the largest private university in Alabama, and MMI is now one of the premier military junior colleges in the nation.

J. T. passed away in 1953, ending over eight decades of the Murfee family at the helm of the institute.

In subsequent years, the school expanded even more, adding a Memorial Library, Trustees Hall, the Excess House, and a golf course. In later years, the institute would have a lieutenant general, a rear admiral, three major generals, a brigadier general, and two colonels as presidents, all with distinguished military records, and one a holder of the Medal of Honor.

At the end of the twentieth century, MMI would face a potential relocation to Anniston as well as a legal challenge from Siloam Baptist Church. The church, acting on behalf of the community at Marion, alleged that MMI had violated the charitable trust established in the 1889 deed from Wilkerson and Lovelace by expanding the board of trustees far beyond seven and by failing to have even one member of Siloam Baptist Church on its board of trustees. The litigation was settled with an agreement that the school would remain permanently in Marion. In the settlement Siloam Baptist Church agreed to give up its right to have a majority on the board, or even to have any members on the board, in exchange for having at least four members from Perry County or a surrounding county.

In 2006 Alabama Gov. Bob Riley signed Senate Bill #364, and MMI became a member of the Alabama Community College System and the Department of Post-Secondary Edu-

cation, integrating MMI’s junior college into the state system and phasing out its high school department.

Consistent with MMI’s history, its current mission statement pledges “to educate and train the Corps of Cadets in order that each graduate is prepared for study at four-year institutions with special emphasis on providing an intellectual, moral-ethical, physical athletic, and leadership development experience in a military environment.” As it was charged in 1887, MMI has been “proper and beneficial to the community at Marion,” as well the state of Alabama and the nation.

Today, MMI is one of only five military junior colleges in the nation, and through its US Army ROTC commissioning program, cadets can become a commissioned officer in one of the Reserve components in two years, rather than the usual four. It is a designated preparatory school for the US Military Academy, US Naval Academy, US Air Force Academy, and US Coast Guard Academy. To date, more than two hundred MMI cadets have gone on to achieve general officer or admiral rank, and former MMI cadets are represented in all of the US armed services.

Hundreds of MMI alumni have been career military personnel. Thousands are veterans of military service. MMI has also produced hundreds of civilian CEOs, CFOs, entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, accountants, business owners, public servants, and leaders in church and charitable organizations. It has accomplished all of this while located in Perry County, now one of the poorest counties in the state.

A stained glass window in the same chapel where he spoke in 1905 commemorates Woodrow Wilson, enshrining his belief that “America is securely great, not because she has great men in her now, but only as she can make sure of having great men in the next generation.” From its humble beginnings in 1887, guided by the hands of the Murfee family, to its current prominence among American military schools, MMI has dedicated itself to ensuring that great men and ah women will fill the ranks of every generation.

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Contributors Gorgas and Their Family (University of Alabama Press, 2005); and The Journal of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle, 1827– 1835 (University of Alabama Press, 2013).

FLORENCE: DISCOVERING ALABAMA’S RENAISSANCE CITY

BY CAROLYN M. BARSKE Carolyn M. Barske is an assistant professor of history and the director of the University of North Alabama (UNA) Public History Center. A native New Englander, Barske first came south to attend college at Sewanee: The University of the South. She then returned to the North to attend Northeastern University for her MA and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, for her PhD. Since returning to the South, Barske taught at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and Middle Tennessee State University. An accomplished equestrian, Barske also served as the associate director of the Sewanee Equestrian Center from 2008–2011.

Upon moving to Florence, Barske became very involved with the local history community. In 2014 she and three graduate students in the public history program at UNA published Images of America: Florence. She sits on the boards of the Tennessee Valley Historical Society, the Natchez Trace Parkway Association, and the Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area, and also serves on the National Register Review Board for the State of Alabama.

SARAH GAYLE AND VIOLENCE IN THE OLD SOUTHWEST

BY SARAH WOOLFOLK WIGGINS Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins is professor emerita of history at the University of Alabama, a past president of the Alabama Historical Association, and editor of the Alabama Review for twenty years. She is the author or editor of The Scalawag in Alabama Politics, 1865–1881 (University of Alabama Press, 1977); From Civil War to Civil Rights— Alabama 1860–1960 (University of Alabama Press, 1987); The Journals of Josiah Gorgas, 1857–1878 (University of Alabama Press, 1995); Love and Duty: Amelia and Josiah

ALABAMA’S OWN HENRY B. WALTHALL

BY JOANNA JACOBS Joanna Jacobs is the assistant managing editor at the University of Alabama Press. As a freelance writer, her articles and reviews have appeared in Alabama Heritage, Coastal Living, Southern Accents, and The Tuscaloosa News. She has taught about film for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

For assistance on this article, she thanks Anthony Buhr, Jeremy Butler, Curtis Clark, Stephanie Jacobs, Crissie E. Johnson, Vanessa L. Rusch, Ed Sikov, Anna J. Singer, Edward Tang, and Jennifer Taylor, Rachel Cohen, Greg Laughlin, and Edward Craig at the Samford University Libraries, and she offers special thanks to Diana Cueto Dall’Occhio.

MARION MILITARY INSTITUTE: THE MILITARY COLLEGE OF ALABAMA

BY JOSEPH W. (“BILL”) MATHEWS JR. Bill Mathews attended high school and junior college at Marion Military Institute (MMI), where he obtained the rank of cadet colonel and completed senior ROTC. Upon completion of his BA degree from Birmingham-Southern College, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the US Army. After practicing law in a private law firm for thirty years, he served as vice president for business affairs and general counsel at Samford University. After retiring from Samford, he served as vice president and general counsel for Judson College. He is a member of Siloam Baptist Church in Marion and has served on MMI’s president’s advisory council for many years. A member of the Perry County Historical and Preservation Society, his hobby since his first year at MMI has been the history of Howard College, MMI, Judson College, Siloam Baptist Church, Marion, and Perry County.

Please visit www.AlabamaHeritage.com for extended information about our articles and their authors.

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