Photo courtesy of the National Park Service
On April 9, 1865, at 2:08 p.m. General Robert E. Lee and General Ulysses S. Grant met at the Appomattox Court House. The two agreed to end the hostilities which had gripped the nation for four years.
Today, 150 years later, bells will toll for four minutes at Appomattox, one for each year of the war. The Bells Across the Land program will have bells ringing throughout the nation at 2:15 p.m. (CDT), 3:15 p.m. (EDT).
The American collegiate social fraternity system took hold in 1825 with the founding of the Kappa Alpha Society, the first of the Union Triad, the three men’s fraternities founded at Union College in New York State. The Civil War put a large damper on the fraternity system as men left to fight in the war. After the war, several fraternities were founded in southern colleges and they expanded throughout the south. Alpha Tau Omega was founded at Virginia Military Institute in 1865 with the prime objective being to “restore the Union by uniting fraternally the young men of the South with those of the North.” Later this year, Alpha Tau Omega will celebrate its sesquicentennial.
The war also contributed to women being admitted to colleges, especially small colleges in the west (now the midwest). With men fighting in the war, the funds the women paid to study helped some colleges make it through the war.
One of the founders of Pi Beta Phi, Rosa Moore, grew up near Gettsyburg, Pennsylvania, and saw the war’s carnage first-hand. In 1867, she went to Monmouth to visit an aunt and get a change of scenery. She spent a year at Monmouth College and while there, joined 11 friends in founding the organization. In her last years, her fraternity took care of her and paid for her burial near her birthplace and the battlefields of the Civil War.
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Happy Founders’ Day to Sigma Lambda Gamma National Sorority, Inc. founded 25 years ago at the University of Iowa. “Culture is Pride, Pride is Success” is the sorority’s motto. Its founders are Gloria Cuevas, Julieta Maria Miller-Calderon, Maria Ester Pineda, Danell Marie Riojas-Carbajal, and Guadalupe Cruz Temiquel.
(c) Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2015. All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/
