By George Edmonston Jr.

OSU's Connections to the American Civil War

"The volley from the Georgia regiment struck the 3rd Wisconsin and the 27th Indiana regiments (in "The Cornfield") with a terrible force, but did not rout them. Stubbornly and methodically, the Union soldiers loaded and fired into the smoke to their front while an equally determined enemy replied in kind. Weapons became intolerably hot among the ranks of the 27th Indiana. Skin stuck to rifle barrels and faces became charred from premature discharges. Men were dropping too fast to count. Corporal Edmund Brown of Co. C of the 27th was stunned by it all. A man near him burst out laughing. A second later he dropped. Another soldier warned a buddy not to fire so close to his face. Both fell simultaneously." Editor's note: This quote is from John M. Priest's Antietam: A Soldier's Battle, Oxford University Press, 1989. In the midst of all this hell-on-earth was John McKnight Bloss, who from 1892-96 was president of Oregon Agricultural College.

This week marks the 131st anniversary of the Battle of Antietam (Sept. 17th to be exact), the bloodiest one-day fight in American history, and presents a good opportunity to review brief biographies of four OSU professors and administrators who fought in the Civil War, then came West to play prominent roles in the development of what we know today as Oregon State University.

That old soldiers of the Union and Confederacy would become educators after the smoke of battle had cleared was quite common throughout the last four decades of the 19th century. Maybe the best known example is that of Robert E. Lee, who became president of what we know today as Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. On the side of those who wore Blue, Gettysburg Medal of Honor awardee Joshua Chamberlain, after serving four consecutive terms as governor of Maine, returned to his pre-war teaching post at Bowdoin College to assume the presidency in 1876. Confederate physician Dr. Hunter McGuire would go on and establish the College of Medicine at the University of Virginia, and Major General Daniel Harvey "D.H." Hill would become the president of the University of Arkansas in 1877.

In the case of OSU, this story of soldier-turned-professor has a bit of the fantastic sprinkled in, if for no other reason than the distance these individuals had to travel to get back to the classroom. It takes little knowledge of American geography to know how far removed Corvallis sits from the battlefields of the Eastern Theater (Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, the Carolinas) and how difficult a trip to the Far West must have been at the time. A few chanced it, and Oregon State has never been the same.

When OSU’s first president, the Methodist-Episcopal minister turned professor William A. Finley, resigned his job in 1872, the position was given to Virginia native Benjamin Lee Arnold, a Confederate soldier who spent time in service with the 38th Virginia Regiment of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

President B. L. Arnold served the College through twenty years and at his early death in 1892. Photo from the 1938 Orange & Black.

The faculty in 1883. Left to right, E.E. Grimm, Ida B. Callahan, B.L. Arnold, B.J. Hawthorne, Joseph Emery, W.W. Bristow. Photo from the 1938 Orange & Black.

Holding the presidency of what was then known as Corvallis College for almost 20 years, Arnold remains a giant figure in the history of this university. For starters, he introduced the study of scientific agriculture at OSU and was the first president to authorize agricultural experiments for the purpose of assisting the farmers of the state. In fact, it was Arnold, with help from Corvallis College alumnus Edgar Grimm, who established OSU’s first Agricultural Experiment Station. Arnold also introduced coursework in military science, the precursor to what we know today as ROTC. To head the program, he hired Army second lieutenant B.D. Boswell, the first instance in the nation of a commissioned officer serving on a college campus as a professor of military science while on active duty. In February 1873, Arnold gave birth to what we know today as the OSU Alumni Association and served as the organization’s first president.

With tomorrow being the fourth football Saturday in the Beavers’ 2003 season, it’s also important to remember that Arnold is the president who introduced college athletics to OSU. In 1884, he allowed the formation of a baseball team to play other Willamette Valley schools, thus breaking a long-standing tradition at the college in which debate, and its attendant activities, was the only authorized social activity permitted to students outside the classroom.

Three years before his death in January 1892, President Arnold was successful in moving Oregon Agricultural College from its original downtown location on 5th Street to OSU’s present campus location. He also supervised the fund-raising and building of OSU’s first building at the new site, known then as the College or Administration Building and today as Benton Hall.

Newton A Thompson and George P Lent with their teacher of fifty years ago B.J. Hawthorne (center). Photo from the June, 1926 OAC Alumnus.

Arnold was also successful in bringing to Corvallis two other faculty members with strong Civil War connections. The first was B.J. Hawthorne, who served the college for many years as professor of languages. Hawthorne was an army buddy of Arnold’s in the 38th Virginia and over the years became one of several "legendary" faculty members most sought out by alumni returning to campus for Homecoming and class reunions. The second was John D. Letcher, who amazingly enough, was the son of the man who had served as governor of the state of Virginia during the War. The circumstances surrounding Letcher’s decision to teach in Oregon have not been researched, but what is known is that from his arrival sometime around 1886-87 to teach mathematics and military science, he became a great favorite to the campus community. So much so that immediately after the death of Arnold, Letcher was asked to head the college as interim president until a successor could be found. He became a candidate for the job but was passed over, after which he stayed on in Corvallis for a short time before moving on to, of all places, the University of Oregon.

John McKnight Bloss is shown here in a rare campus photo taken during the last year of his OSU presidency. He is pictured wearing his Union officer's "Great Coat." Photo from the September 1993, Oregon Stater.

The person chosen over Letcher remains the marquee figure in OSU’s connection to the War. His name was John McKnight Bloss who, at the time he came West to lead Oregon Agricultural College, was the most celebrated enlisted man to have served the Union Army during the great conflict. As a sergeant assigned to Co. F of the 27th Indiana Regiment, it was Bloss, along with Corporal Barton Mitchell, who was given credit for the discovery of "Lee’s Lost Order 191," found by the pair just three days before the opening shots at Antietam. Issued as "Special Order 191" on Sept. 13, 1862, Lee’s dispatch contained a detailed description of how the Confederate commander planned to disperse his army in preparation for the coming battle. Written on a piece of paper wrapped around three cigars, it had been somehow been left behind in an abandoned Confederate campsite Bloss’ unit occupied shortly after. The incident, then and now, is considered one of the greatest security leaks in American military history. That Bloss was president of Oregon State from 1892-96 makes this story a fascinating piece of state and local history.

Bloss’ connection to Oregon State became known in January 1992 when then OSU President John Byrne received a letter from the widow of John M. Bloss, a grandson named for his famous Civil War grandfather-turned-college president, offering the university the use of photographs and documents she had found while going through family papers. Toward the end of her correspondence, almost written as an afterthought, she wrote, "As you probably know, John M. was a Civil War veteran and the finder of Lee’s ‘Lost Order’ at Antietam."

The rise of this celebrated army sergeant to college president is a tale of considerable professional and personal achievement. For 25 years after the close of the War, Bloss, an 1860 graduate of Hanover College, worked in a variety of top administrative positions in public schools systems stretching from Muncie, Indiana, to Topeka, Kansas. During this time he became known as the educator who "invented" the concept of the "consolidated" public school.

While president of OSU, Bloss increased the size of the campus from two to four buildings and increased the size of the faculty and operating budgets. To Beaver fans, Bloss is the father of OSU football, having given permission to the student body in 1893 to field a team. His son, Will Bloss, both played on the team and served as its head coach, the first in school history. Bloss changed the color of OSU’s military uniforms from gray (under Arnold) to blue and was the president during whose administration the school adopted the colors orange and black.

Bloss arrived in Oregon a widower, a fact he shares with Arnold, and like Arnold, remarried while he was in Corvallis. In 1896, probably due to some health issues (Finley the same), OSU’s third president resigned and moved back home, where he died on his family farm, "Blossom Acres," in 1905.

George Edmonston Jr. is editor of the Oregon Stater and Eclips.