How an American College Supported the War Effort #2: Clemson College

Clemson's Corps of Cadets Before the War

What is now known as Clemson University in South Carolina was founded in 1889 through a bequest from Thomas Green Clemson, a Philadelphia-born, European-educated engineer, musician and artist who married John C. Calhoun’s daughter, Anna Maria, and eventually settled at her family plantation in South Carolina. A longtime advocate for an agricultural college in the Upstate (Western part), Clemson left his home and fortune to the state of South Carolina to create the institution that bears his name.

In November 1889, Gov. John Peter Richardson signed a bill accepting Clemson’s gift, which established the Clemson Agricultural College and made its trustees custodians of Morrill Act and Hatch Act funds, federally provided for agricultural education and research purposes by federal legislative acts.

Initially an all-male, all-white military school, Clemson College, as it was generally known, opened in July 1893 with 446 students.    In the early years of Clemson, the Board of Trustees decided that Clemson would use a system of military discipline similar to most land-grant colleges of the time.   Students were required to wear uniforms, lived in barracks, held rank, and practiced military tactics.  The Clemson Board of Trustees asked the War Department for the detail of an officer to act as Commandant, responsible for life of cadets outside of the classroom. Clemson became a coeducational, civilian institution in 1955 and the corps of cadets disbanded. With academic offerings and research pursuits, the institution became Clemson University in 1964.

Clemson Students on Military Duty at the Guard Post

The National Defense Act of 1916, which brought all college military training programs under the federally-controlled Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), had just been implemented.   All freshmen and sophomores were required to participate in ROTC.  Juniors and seniors who passed rigorous requirements continued to the advanced ROTC program with the hope of receiving an officer’s commission.  Students not accepted for advanced ROTC still participated in the college’s military program.  

By 1917, Clemson College had just under 1,000 students, approximately 70 faculty members and several dozen other employees.  All the students, faculty and administrators, and most of the staff, were white males. Frequently called Clemson Agricultural College, the school’s main areas of study were agriculture, engineering and textiles. There were five varsity teams – football, basketball, baseball, track and tennis — and inter-class athletic competitions in the same sports.  Literary societies and the YMCA were other popular extracurricular activities. 

Clemson Tiger, 11 April 1917

In April 1917, the entire senior class sent President Woodrow Wilson a telegram, volunteering its services to the United States' World War I effort.   In early May 1917, forty-eight Clemson seniors and twenty-one juniors left campus to go to the Reserve Officer Training Camp at Fort Oglethorpe in northwestern Georgia near Chattanooga, Tennessee. Several were selected to be instructors because of their Clemson military training. By the end of 1917, several hundred Clemson students had entered military service. They were joined by many of the school’s approximately 1,500 alumni and other “Clemson men” who attended the college but never graduated. Clemson’s programs in engineering and mechanics gave many soldiers and sailors an advantage with the new and developing technologies of war. Other graduates participated in important war work, including research in agriculture and mechanics.

From the class of 1917, 79 of the 110 men who volunteered that April day put on the uniform during a time of  war. Their service record speaks for itself; at least 22 saw combat service in France, no less than three confirmed air to air victories by Class of 1917 aviators, three Distinguished Service Crosses, one Navy Cross, four Silver Star Citations, one French Legion d’Honneur and at least four French Croix de Guerre. In addition to students, a number of faculty members, extension workers and other employees left their positions with Clemson College to serve their country in the military or related war work. Other faculty, staff and students who did not enlist were drafted and sent to training camps to prepare to go overseas.

An Everyday Scene During the War at the Campus

After military service created a shortage of male faculty members nationwide, Clemson administrators hired the college’s first women faculty members in Fall 1918. In one case, Rosamond Wolcott replaced her brother Wallace who left his position teaching architecture to join the Army. Wolcott had a B.A. and Master of Architecture from Cornell University. 

The Student Army Training Corps

With the rapid expansion of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe, the U.S. War Department needed more officers and technical experts. Colleges with housing, equipment and expertise for training large numbers of students were seen as ideal places to meet this need with the establishment of the Student Army Training Corps (SATC) program.

Young men at least 18 years old who had not been drafted could apply to one of two tracks of study:

Section A: Men who had completed a grammar school education could enroll in short-term trade and technical classes comparable to college vocational courses.

Section B: Men who had completed a standard high school course of study could study either standard college courses or special war courses in subjects such as engineering, mining, chemistry, physics, bacteriology, and sanitation.

Clemson SATC Students in Training to Be
"Topographic Draftsmen"

The program also included military training and regulations. Students inducted into the SATC were given uniforms, free tuition, room and board and the usual soldier's pay of $30 per month. In May 1918, Clemson began offering short-term courses in auto mechanics, radio operation, blacksmithing and carpentry to men enrolled in SATC Section A. After a number of delays, Clemson began a Section B program on October 1, 1918 with regular college courses in Agriculture, Engineering and Chemistry for over 400 SATC students. The SATC students also had two and a half hours of military training each day and marched to and from classes.  Clemson also had a Naval Section of the SATC with about 80 men. Although uniforms were to be provided, they didn’t arrive at Clemson until the program was almost over.

The Spanish Influenza struck America in the Fall of 1918.  At Clemson, influenza spread through the SATC ranks and into the local community with over 150 cases within a couple of weeks. All healthy non-SATC students were sent home, where some then contracted the disease anyway.  Faculty and staff members’ wives and daughters, local Red Cross volunteers and a few of the students’ mothers helped care for the sick. The Textile Building, Chapel and Trustee House all were used as temporary hospitals. 

With the Armistice,  Clemson's SATC program ended at the close of the Fall 1918 semester. Many students who left for military service gradually returned  to campus to continue their studies. In early 1919, Clemson President Walter M. Riggs was asked to go to France for six months as an Educational Director for the Army Educational Overseas Commission (AEOC). Riggs was stationed at a large university established by the War Department in Beaune, France to teach agricultural and basic mechanics. Clemson professor William H. Mills also went to France to teach with the AEOC.

Memorialization of Clemson's War Sacrifices

World War I Memorial in the Chapel

Approximately 800 Clemson students, former students and graduates served in the military during World War I. Thirty-two men with Clemson connections lost their lives. Clemson held its first memorial service for "The Great War" on March 7, 1919. A tree was planted for each Clemson man who died in service. The area became known as Memorial Grove. 

The afternoon was beautiful and warm and at four o’clock the people had assembled. The cadets marched to the grove in a body with the band…Each of the trees had a United States flag on it. The program was short, but impressive.  First the audience sang ‘America,’ then were led in prayer by Mr. Davis, then Gov. Ansel made his address, which was very good. The planting of the trees came next, this being done by members of the alumni on the faculty, and the Presidents of the Senior and Freshman Classes, each of whom had lost a member in the service. At the conclusion, The Band played ‘the Star Spangled Banner’. 

Letter to College President  Walter Riggs (Serving in Europe), March 8, 1919

Over time, several World War One commemorative plaques were dedicated on the campus. The one displayed above is in the Memorial Chapel. A bridge built over the Seneca River near campus in the 1920s also was dedicated to Clemson men who died in World War I. The bridge is no longer standing.  Similary to other colleges across America, Clemson’s football stadium was named Memorial Stadium as a tribute to the Clemson students who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to the United States. 

Click on Image to Enlarge

The Scroll of Honor

Clemson's service and sacrifices in the Great War has been incorporated into the university's unique and beautiful Scroll of Honor. It honors 498 Clemson students and graduates who have been killed in this nation’s wars and in peace-time operations. Funded With the gifts from thousands of alumni and friends of Clemson,  the Memorial was dedicated in April 2010. The mound is circular in design to represent that duty, honor, and country are values that transcend time.  The names of the fallen and their class years are engraved on stones in random fashion, just as the men fell on the battlefield. The stones are mounted in the barrow at an angle so that visitors must bow their heads to read the names on the stones – as if in reverence to the memory of the heroes.

Cadet Carlos Golightly Harris

In 2014 graduate of the class of 1917,  Carlos Golightly Harris, was added to the wall.  He was discovered to have died from wounds in 1926 that he had received while serving as an officer with the 371st Infantry in France.  In February 1917 Harris contributed an editorial to Chronicle, a school publication on the possibility of prospects of America entering the war.

What will the United States do?’ is the question of the day. . . There seem to be two great motives effecting the minds of the people of the United States. The first is, to avoid war at any price; which motive seems to me to be either the outgrowth of a false and erroneous imagination of honor and credit or the manifestation of the weakest and lowest principles one could imagine – that of utter selfishness. The second and higher motive that effects us is, that motive which prompts us, as a nation, to uphold our honor and prestige for which we have so often fought and bled to obtain. Which would be more honorable, to enter the war as the deciding factor of bringing about world wide peace, and uphold our nation’s rights, or sit by with weakness and patience, and afterwards suffer the less of our prestige, and hear the character of our nation ridiculed with indifference by all the world?

Clemson University Today

Visit How an American College Supported the War Effort #1: Penn State, HERE.

If you have information on your school during World War I please send it along.  I'd like to continue this series. EMAIL

Sources: World War I and the Clemson Community; Tigers in the Trenches: The Clemson College Class of 1917 in the First World War by Alan C. Grubb and Brock Lusk; NARA; and various Clemson University websites.

Thanks to James Patton and Abby Rich, Clemson ’21, for bringing the Clemson story and resources to our attention.