The Heroics of the Class of 1904
One of Clemson College’s first large-scale insurrections occurred as a result of the punishment of Cadet Edward Allison Thornwell. According to Jerome V. Reel, author of The High Seminary: History of Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina chemistry professor R. N. Brackett “charged E. A. Thornwell with taking a test tube from the chemistry laboratory to his laboratory bench without permission, an issue of academic dishonesty.”[1] Subsequently, Thornwell was suspended from school by President Henry Simms Hartzog; as a result, the sophomore class countered fiercely. According to Reel, “student petitions noted that the practice engaged in by Thornwell had gone unpunished in the past, and that, wrong though Thornwell’s action was, the punishment far exceeded the alleged offense.”[2] The faculty, including President Hartzog, declined even to consider the petition and on April 29th, 1902 sixty-nine of the seventy-four sophomores left campus.[3] Standing in firm opposition against President Hartzog, members of the sophomore class, now plagued by a dishonorable discharge from Clemson College, took their plea to the Board of Trustees. The Board found in favor of Cadet E. A. Thornwell and decided to reinstate him, and the sixty-nine cadets who had left campus in protest of what they believed was an unjust treatment of a fellow cadet. According to Michael F. Kohl, author of A Youthful Administrator: Henry Simms Hartzog, following the decision of the Clemson College Board of Trustees to reinstate E. A. Thornwell and sixty-nine other sophomore cadets, President Hartzog tendered his official resignation.[4]
The Oconeean of 1903, the yearbook of Clemson College paints a vivid image of the ‘struggle’ faced by cadet E. A. Thornwell and those sixty-nine other members of the sophomore class. An author, only known as J.M. states in an excerpt “One struggle stands out boldly against the rest. In the early part of June 1902, we came upon against the combined forces of evil. We fought as we had not fought before… we wage within our own garrison walls…we were the conquerors.”[5] The following year, the heroics of the Class of ’04 were once again noted in their senior yearbook. Under the brash letters reading “The Class ‘04” a motto reads “Doing the right as we see the right.”[6] The excerpt continues by stating “How many of our class will ever forget that memorable day, April 29, 1902? Of that brief, bitter struggle between love of class and love of college no one can ever fully know who has not been similarly place." The unidentified author continues by quoting Brutus from Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar “’Not that I love Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.’"[7]
For Clemson College cadets, specifically the ‘class of ‘04’ loyalty did not entangle with duty and honor, duty and honor rested with pursing just actions. This belief parallels with that of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who in the South under the ideas of the ‘Lost Cause’ was revered as a holy symbol. In a penned a letter to fellow Confederate General P.E.T Beauregard during the Civil War Lee states “I need not tell you that true patriotism sometimes requires men to act exactly contrary…and the motive which impels them – the desire to do the right thing is precisely the same.”[8] Victoriously standing, sheltered by the ideals of Southern agitation and embraced by the principles of the ‘Lost Cause,’ seventy cadets ushered in an era of Clemson College
[1] Reel, The High Seminary, 135.
[2] Reel, 136.
[3] Reel, 136.
[4] Kohl, A Youthful Administration: Henry Simms Hartzog, 1893-1997, 37.
[5] Clemson University, Oconeean, 1903, 37.
[6] Clemson University, Oconeean, 1904, 26.
[7] Clemson University, 26.
[8] Gallagher and Glatthaar, Leaders of the Lost Cause, 35.