Citadel Will Receive Sword of Confederate Officer Killed in Action Without Mention of Confederacy
The Citadel, South Carolina’s military academy has a proud unsurpassed history that has inspired students and graduates to achieve heroic excellence in battle since the early days of the Republic. Sadly, political correctness that has spread Confederaphobia throughout academia has now infected the formerly proud Citadel.
Next week, the current caretakers of the Citadel will degrade the memory of a graduate of the first Citadel class who died heroically in battle. Some Alumni are unhappy and will not attend the event.
In 1846, Charles Courtenay Tew was graduated from the first class at the Citadel and afterward taught there. In 1857, he was Captain Tew, Superintendent of the Arsenal Academy, a preparatory school for the Citadel in Columbia. In 1858, Tew resigned to found the North Carolina Military Academy in Hillsboro.
At his departure from the Arsenal Academy, the Arsenal cadets presented him with a Model 1850 Foot Officers Sword with a presentation plate on its scabbard.
A talented mature officer, Tew was promoted to the grade of Colonel. In 1862, at the Battle of Sharpsburg, Tew, commanding Anderson’s Brigade, was shot through his head, and carried into the Sunken Lane to die. There he was sitting up, barely conscious, holding his sword. A soldier of the 8th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrested the sword from Tew’s hand whereupon Tew died. His burial place is unknown.
Tew’s sword was in an Odd Fellows Hall in Norwalk, Ohio for more than twenty-two years, later owned by a family of collectors in New York. In 1963 the family donated it to a Canadian Army veteran group that displayed it in its hall, so high that nobody read the presentation plate. In 2009, when moving the sword, its presentation plate attracted some attention . In March, the veterans’ group disbanded. Having learned that its sword had a connection to The Citadel, it arranged the gift.
On Friday, September 18th, The Citadel will have a ceremony receiving the gift of the sword that was taken from the hand of a member of The Citadel’s first class as he, a Confederate Brigade Commander, was wounded and dying on the battlefield.
A Canadian Army General will attend the presentation with a Canadian Colour Guard. The Citadel has decreed that there be no Confederate flag in sight and no mention of the Confederacy, consistent with its recent removal of its Confederate flag from its chapel.
Many loyal alumni of The Citadel are unhappy that the Current administrators of The Citadel would take such extreme measures to demonstrate that they are indeed politically correct.
