From today’s Tennessee Baptist newspaper, although apparently written a few days or weeks earlier, an article entitled “The Mary Sharp College and the War”:
We have just returned from Winchester. On our way there we met with Prof. McCall, and some students of Union University returning home in the South, and learned from them the sorrowful news, that the Union University had been disbanded, and would not resume its studies before next September. While in Winchester, we learned that the Boys’ school in that place had been dismissed till more peaceful times would allow closer attention to the duties of the school room. We heard the question asked again and again, will not Mary Sharp be obliged to suspend? Will not the war destroy our great and unequalled college for the education of our daughters? We answered NO. So far from it, the war will build it up. We say so because we think so, and we think so for the following reasons.
1st. We have been witness of the fact that while other schools in Tennessee and other States have been diminished in numbers, and some of them obliged to suspend altogether, the number of pupils in the Mary Sharp has been regularly increasing even up to the present month, April, 1861. New scholars have been coming in almost every week, and there are more students on the seats to-day than there have ever been since the school was organized.
2d. We have been witness of the fact, that although a few young ladies have been taken home on account of the present excitement, there have a larger number come to take their places, and these from the Confederate States.
3d. We have been witness of the fact, that from the very first, the sympathies of the President and the Faculty of the school, as well as of the citizens of Winchester, have been with the South, with the Confederate States. Here, so far as we know, was the first volunteer company raised for the Confederacy in the State of Tennessee. We think it was the first offered and accepted by President Davis. We saw the flag presented by the young ladies of Mary Sharp. Heard the address full of noble, heart-stirring words, which accompanied its presentation—and a day or two afterwards saw that beautiful banner floating in the College yard, while the President in behalf of the young ladies bade its bearers and defenders god speed in their glorious work of defending our homes. No one heard that soul thrilling address, whose heart did not beat faster and higher for the land we live in—our own loved South—and the loud hurrah, again and again repeated at its close, told as the quivering lip and tearful eye had told, while they were listening, that those who love that flag, would never forget the lovely faces, and beaming eyes of the 300 beautiful creatures who bade them go and fight for them, and for their country.
4th. We think the war will build up the school, because we know that its patrons are mostly in the more Southern States, where the young ladies will be less safe from insurrection or invasion, than they will in Winchester. This place is in the heart of a population, which is not only now, but has been with almost entire unanimity, with the South from the first. It is well prepared to resist any attack from within or without.—The location is within the mountains and inaccessible to any Northern force, except in directions where they would have a long and fearful contest to wage before they could reach Winchester. And there could be nothing to induce an invading force to wage such a contest to attack a school of unarmed girls.
5th. It is a point where those who desire to send their daughters from the low country, can not only place them in safety from a hostile foe, but from any danger of disease. No more healthful location is to be found in this or any other country.
Here then we have a school more deservedly celebrated than any other in the whole land, North or South, located in a position unrivalled for healthfulness and safety.—Protected on three sides by the mountains and on the other by some of the most warlike and loyal citizens of the South—in the very CENTER of what soon will be the Southern Confederacy—distant alike from the Northern borders and the Southern coast; from the sea board on the East, and the Mississippi on the West—and hence removed as far as possible from the seats of actual contest. Is it not probable, nay, is it not certain that it will be selected by the Parents of daughters from all parts of the land as the home of their girls while the war shall continue. Especially as it has long been notorious that they will here enjoy intellectual, moral, and religious advantages, such as they will hardly find in any other place in all the country. A. C. D.
There is great irony in the positioning of Mary Sharp College as a loyally Confederate school: the institution, in fact, was named after an abolitionist. Sharp was the niece of Granville Sharp, the co-founder of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.
Founded in 1850 by Winchester’s Baptist church, Mary Sharp was the vision of Z. C. Graves, originally of Vermont, and brother of the well-known Landmark Baptist preacher and editor, J. R. Graves. Graves served as the school’s first president.
The Baptist school offered degrees for women that were equivalent to men’s degrees, ten years before Vassar College in New York. According to Graves, his goal was to provide girls a “classical education; an education as thorough as their brothers had been acquiring at their colleges and universities.” He believed women should have the
same knowledge, literary, scientific and classical, that had been for so many generations the peculiar and cherished heritage of the other sex; that the sister should be placed on an equality with the brother, for the development and unfolding of all the qualities of her mind, thus making her what she was designed to be by her Creator, a thinking, reflecting, reasoning being, capable of comparing and judging for herself, and dependent upon none other for her free, unbiased opinion.
Despite the upbeat assessment in the Tennessee Baptist, the college closed during the war, and was occupied by federal troops. Reopening afterwards, Mary Sharp College closed for good in 1896 due to a national economic depression.
Source: “The Mary Sharp College and the War,” Tennessee Baptist, May 4, 1861 (link); general Mary Sharp information (link); Sharp the abolitionist (link); biography of Z. C. Graves (link)
