Crippled Corps and V.M.I. Cadets Form Inner Defenses in Old City Cemetery

A week before Lynchburg was invaded by 18,000 Union troops, the city lay vulnerable and unprotected by Confederate forces. Brigadier General Francis T. Nicholls, a double amputee recovering in a Lynchburg hospital, organized a corps of convalescing Confederates from the city’s numerous hospitals to defend Lynchburg during that critical week. More than 700 of this “cripple corps” manned the barricades along with 200 Virginia Military Institute cadets who had rushed to the city. The initial line of inner defenses ran through Old City Cemetery, where the V.M.I. cadets bivouacked for the night. The cadets and convalescents protected Lynchburg until the Confederate Second Corps and other units arrived to repel the Union attack the next day.

Lynchburg, Virginia · United States