Welcome to Saint Vincent Archabbey

By Jerome Oetgen, author of "An American Abbot; Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B., 1809-1887" and a forthcoming "History of Saint Vincent."
The American Civil War slowed but did not severely inhibit the development of the college. There were hardships, of course. Several of the Benedictines were drafted into the northern army, including a number of professors. The Saint Vincent community paid the standard fee of $300 to have four of these monks released from service, and Wimmer petitioned President Lincoln to release the others. " I cannot believe," he wrote to Lincoln," that the law intends to press clergymen (of any denomination) into military service, because as a general matter these men are very warlike indeed if the fight has to be done with their tongues or pens, but otherwise they keep at a good distance from danger, and what should the government gain if some hundred cowards were in the army?" The petition was only partially successful. The monks were not released but transferred to hospital duties.
Father Emmeran Bliemel, a professor in the college who had been sent to work as a parish priest in Tennessee shortly before the outbreak of hostilities, joined his male parishioners as chaplain when they formed part of the 10th Tennessee Regiment of the Confederate Army, and was killed at Jonesboro, Georgia, in 1864 while administering last rites to a soldier on the battlefield.
At Saint Vincent itself the war brought scarcity. Funds were depleted, and the administration found it difficult to obtain the necessary supplies to feed the students adequately. Twenty-three students from southern states were stranded at the college and could not pay their fees. Wimmer supported them out of the college's dwindling funds for four years, flinching only when the patriotic fervor of the southern boys led them to raise the Confederate battleflag over the college, bringing the wrath of a platoon of armed local farmers down upon Wimmer and the Benedictine community.

The Civil War Era