 nomination of candidates by each of its
two factions. This triumph of the Republican party increased anxiety
and apprehension in the people of the South as to their institutions
and rights.

Then followed the assembling of the National Congress on the first
Monday in December; the secession of South Carolina, December 20th,
1860; of Alabama, January 11th, 1861; of Georgia, January 19th;
Louisiana, January 26th; Texas, February 1st; the evacuation of Fort
Sumpter by the Federals, April 14th; the call by Lincoln for troops to
coerce the seceded States April 15th; the secession of Virginia, April
17th; of Arkansas, May 6th; of North Carolina, May 20th; of Tennessee,
June 24th; and by acts of the Provisional Congress Missouri was
admitted as a member of the Confederate States of America, August 20th;
and Kentucky on December 10th,--and of these States the new nation was
organized.

Leaders in the field and not on the forum were now being considered and
looked to. Sons of the South who had been trained at West Point and a
long list of trained soldiers from the Virginia Military Institute, as
well as its professors, educated and trained in the science of war,
were justly of first consideration. Many of these and many laymen,
as well as many members of the then corps of cadets, won enviable
distinction in the four ensuing years. The V. M. I., the West Point of
the South, now disclosed its inestimable worth to the new nation born
at Montgomery, February 18th, 1861. It may be of interest to relate
here an incident which disclosed in advance a military chieftain
of whom but little was known until the opportunity came for him to
discover his merit. Men before this period who had filled mediocre
places, began to burst forth in new light as opportunity came. An
incident of one, then a quiet V. M. I. professor, now known to history
and the world, is worth preserving. It occurred in March, 1861, at
Lexington.

The secession of Virginia had not then occurred, but the step was being
hotly contested on the hustings between opposi