Table of Contents
Graham Guard
The Graham Guard was a student military organization which operated during the Civil War. Subsequent military groups were formed during World War I and World War II. Sources written by William Cogswell, Class of 1861, refer to the organization as the “Daves Guard.”
Background
There was a vested interest in instilling military training at Trinity College since its earliest days as Washington College. “Bishop Brownell had hoped that military exercises and drill would find an important place in the curriculum,” even going so far as to hire a Professor of Mathematics and Engineering trained at West Point “with a view of his employing the students in military exercises, during a portion of their leisure hours; as conducive to their health, and as subservient to their better government.” While this did not come to fruition (and neither did his dream of mandatory uniforms) Brownell did organize the Phalanx (later, Archers), the College's first ceremonial drill team. Other efforts to incorporate military drill, uniforms, and training would follow in the coming decades, and Trinity's motto, “Pro Patria et Ecclesia” was often invoked in reference to student military training.
The Guard
Two weeks after Abraham Lincoln's election on November 6, 1860, it became apparent that the South would secede from the rest of the United States.
In response, thirteen Trinity students organized a military company with the assistance of Trinity College Greek Professor, Edward Graham Daves, who had joined the Trinity faculty after graduating from Harvard Law in 1856. Daves originated from New Bern, North Carolina; his younger brother, Graham Daves, graduated from Trinity in 1857 and subsequently joined the Confederate army in 1861.
“Daves was interested in the proposed organization to the extent of presenting to the Company the flag and all other things necessary to make the undertaking a military success,” wrote W. B. Penfield, Class of 1862, in the April 1908 Trinity Tablet, “hence the name, 'Graham Guard,' was the courteous return for his generous offer.”
Several of the students organizing the Guard had attended military school before Trinity College and instructed their fellow students in Hardee's Tactics. Fowler was elected captain, William Cogswell, Class of 1861, was first lieutenant, and Webster second lieutenant. The other students were: William H. Birckhead, Allyn, Norris, and Hawley, Class of 1861; Penfield and Smith, Class of 1862; Leonard Kip Storrs, Class of 1863; J. F. Ely, Fordham Morris, Wells, and Huntington, Class of 1864. The Parthenon Society donated the use of their society room for drill and meetings, and the Connecticut Adjutant General supplied the Graham Guard with 10 cadet rifles from the State Arsenal.
By 1861, Trinity College's Union loyalty, despite being declared by students, was under scrutiny: College President Samuel Eliot refused to fly an American flag on campus, Professor Daves was writing Southern-sympathetic editorials to the Connecticut Press, and there were still Southern students in residence.
A rumor began to form that a mob was coming to destroy Trinity's buildings due to harboring secessionists and traitors. Cogswell states that despite the “rumor of threats made by the 'Townies'…All of the professors and a very large number of the students were known to be staunch Unionists.” 1) No such mob attack occurred.
Following the fall of Fort Sumter in April 1861, the governor called for volunteers. “There was much discussion among the members of the Daves Guard about enlisting or tendering their services to the state, but the depletion in its ranks and by the loss of its members going south, and the enlistment of others in the volunteers resulted in no action being taken, and before the close of the term it had ceased to exist.” 2) The state armory recalled its muskets, the Southern states recalled their students, and Professor Daves took a year's leave of absence before resigning in 1862.
The Trinity College Trustees considered the creation of a Military Science Department, which is detailed in the 1862-63 catalogue. The “course of instruction” was “to include physical exercises, tactics, and such scientific studies as are fully adapted to secure the end in view.” However, the Department was never created.
In 1917, Cogswell wrote in to the Tripod to remind students that Trinity's military history did not start on the new campus nor during World War I: “Some of [the Graham Guard] members are still 'present in the flesh' and we are proud of the patriotism of the sons of Trinity of today and look with confidence for them to prove that now as ever 'Pro Patria et Ecclesia' is a living principle actuating their minds and hearts.” 3)
Sources
Trinity Tripod, 11/14/1972.
The History of Trinity College (1966) by Glenn Weaver, pp. 130-132.
The Trinity Ivy, 1919.
"A New Military Company", The Hartford Courant, 11/29/1860.