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As a good pledge at the Omega Chapter,
I memorized that Psi U had numerous US Civil War
participants. 27 or 29 Union Generals, I believe was the
fact we had to retain or face the wrath of the infamous
Omega Brother Dr. McDougal. We also had to know that Psi U
had two Confederate generals (a major general and a
brigadier general to be exact) so we could avoid the vitriol
of one of the few Southern Omegas, Brother P. Jackson. (The
Omegas know his pledge name well but I will leave that for
another article). So the Psi U Civil War connection was
evident from the beginning of my Psi U career and has always
remained of interest to me. Now as a director of the Psi
Upsilon Foundation I have access to the old fraternity
archives and have dug a little deeper into what I believe is
an interesting aspect of our fraternal history.
All told, Psi U had 614 brothers in the
Union Army and 36 that were Surgeons or served in the Navy.
63 Psi Us served in the Confederate Army. Psi U had 2,447
initiates by 1861, so roughly 30% of our fraternity was
under arms in the War Between the States, with about 10%
fighting for the South. The actual percentage would most
likely be higher given mid 19th century mortality rates, a
known fact and one attested to by this author’s reading of
various early chapter rolls. Many brothers died within 10
years of graduation, with consumption (tuberculosis) being
most often named as the culprit. (I know Brother Swanke, Rho
‘80, is currently working on an article entitled Psi U
Actuarial Tables in 1833 - 1883. We will see if his in depth
study confirms these observations).
Given the large number of brothers
under the flag and unfortunately no lists that state
specific Psi U military members, the task of identifying who
served, and in what units, requires one to pore over each
chapter roll, name by name. (“The Tenth Catalogue of the Psi
Upsilon Fraternity -- 1888” being the best source). So for
my first shot at Psi U history I selected the Alpha Chapter
at Harvard, as my beloved Omega was not founded until 1869.
The Alpha Chapter had 23 brothers in
Blue and 9 in the Gray, thus 28% of the Alpha initiates were
under arms. However, the ratio of brothers in arms at
Harvard was less than the Beta at Yale that had 40% (178
Union and 29 CSA and as a percentage of Beta initiates from
1839 to 1861). The Beta was 15% Rebel and 85% Yankee while
the Alpha, in the abolitionist hotbed of Boston, was about
30% Confederate. Both these levels of Confederate
participation were greater than the fraternity as a whole
(approx. 3%).
One can only speculate as to the reason
for such percentages. Did Harvard draw undergraduates from
further afield than the rock-ribbed Yankees at Yale? The
overall participation rates can perhaps be attributed to
Harvard’s high percentage of professorial and legal degrees
-- typically fighting less? The Beta reported that 10% of
its brothers were clergymen vs. Alpha clergy being at 5%.
Beta had 11 military chaplains while Alpha had none. Perhaps
religious fervor had something to do with the participation
rates?
(Author’s note: the Alpha went inactive
in 1856 and only started in 1850. The following chapters had
no Confederate members: Theta, Lambda, Psi, Upsilon, Iota,
Phi and Pi.)
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