In the years after the War of 1812, the Commonwealth of Virginia built and maintained several arsenals to store weapons intended for use by the state militia in the event of invasion or slave revolt. One of them was placed in Lexington. Residents came to resent the presence of the soldiers, whom they saw as drunken and undisciplined. In 1826, one guard beat another to death. Townspeople wanted to keep the arsenal, but sought a new way of guarding it, so as to eliminate the "undesirable element." In 1834, the Franklin Society, a local literary and debate society, debated, "Would it be politic for the State to establish a military school, at the Arsenal, near Lexington, in connection with Washington College, on the plan of the West Point Academy?" They unanimously concluded that it would. Lexington attorney John Thomas Lewis Preston became the most active advocate of the proposal. In a series of three anonymous letters in the Lexington Gazette in 1835, he proposed replacing the arsenal guard with students living under military discipline, receiving some military education, as well as a liberal education. The school's graduates would contribute to the development of the state and, should the need arise, provide trained officers for the state's militia. | | After a public relations campaign that included Preston meeting in person with influential business, military and political figures and many open letters from prominent supporters including Alden Partridge of Norwich University, in 1836 the Virginia legislature passed a bill authorizing creation of a school at the Lexington arsenal, and the Governor signed the measure into law. The organizers of the planned school formed a board of visitors, which included Preston, and the board selected Claudius Crozet as their first president. Crozet had served as an engineer in Napoleon Bonaparte's army before immigrating to the United States. In America, he served as an engineering professor at West Point, as well as state engineer in Louisiana and mathematics professor at Jefferson College in Convent, Louisiana. Crozet was also the Chief Engineer of Virginia and someone whom Thomas Jefferson referred to as, "the smartest mathematician in the United States." The board delegated to Preston the task of deciding what to call the new school, and he created the name Virginia Military Institute. Under Crozet's direction, the board of visitors crafted VMI's program of instruction, basing it off of those of the United States Military Academy and Crozet's alma mater the École Polytechnique of Paris. | | So, instead of the mix of military and liberal education imagined by Preston, the board created a military and engineering school offering the most thorough engineering curriculum in America, outside of West Point. Preston was also tasked with hiring VMI's first Superintendent. He was persuaded that West Point graduate and former Army officer Francis Henney Smith, then professor of mathematics at Hampden– Sydney College, was the most suitable candidate. Preston successfully recruited Smith, and convinced him to become the first Superintendent and Professor of Tactics. |