The VMI-Approved Way of Dealing with Bullies

Before the War for Southern Independence the famous Confederate guerilla fighter John Singleton Mosby once provided his VMI classmates with a lesson in how to deal with bullies. The campus bully, who towered over the scrawny Mosby, began picking on the man who would come to be known as “the Gray Ghost of the Confederacy,” so it was decided that the two would fight it out in public. Mosby’s classmates were stunned that he would dare to fight a man twice his size. After the bully began wiping the floor with him and Mosby feared for his very life, he did what he had to do: he pulled out a pistol and shot the bully, grazing his head. A VMI faculty/administration tribunal took no significant action against Mosby, understanding that it was only self defense.

Mosby went on to shoot many more bullies (i.e., invading Yankee soldiers), and once snuck across the lines into Fairfax, Virginia and kidnapped a sleeping Union army general, taking him prisoner. There’s a sign on Rt. 123 in Fairfax commemorating this event about 1/4 mile North George Mason University.

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5:59 pm on September 30, 2003