The Young Lions: Confederate Cadets at War

Stackpole Books, 2019. Paperback. New. New softcover in glossy printed wraps. Text is clean and free of marks or underlining. Includes bibliography, index, photos, and maps. 224 pp.
Fast shipping in a secure book box mailer with tracking. The legend of Confederate cadets is one of untrained boys wastefully flung in the path os Yankee armies, a process Jefferson Davis described "grinding the seed corn." But the reality is, these highly trained young men--from the Virginia Military Institute, the South Carolina Military Academy, the Georgia Military Institute, and the University of Alabama-rendered valuable service from the earliest days of the war through the Battle of New Market and beyond, and when confronted with the enemy on the battlefield, they fought as well as veterans troops.

Focusing on the South's four major military colleges-the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), the South Carolina Military Academy (later The Citadel), the Georgia Military Institute, and the University of Alabama-The Young Lions is the story of young Confederate military cadets at war. From the opening of VMI in 1839 through the struggles of all the schools to remain open during the war, the death of Stonewall Jackson (a VMI professor), and the Pyrrhic victory of the Battle of New Market to the burning of the University of Alabama in 1865, this book reveals the everyday dramatic actions of cadets on battlefield and beyond.