"Every new cadet, or "Rat" as he is known at the Virginia Military Institute, is required to learn the inscription on the parapet facing Cocke Hall. A portion of this inscription, in the words of its author, Colonel J. T. L. Preston, states that the mission of the Institute is to produce "fair specimens of citizen-soldiers, attached to their native state, proud of her fame and ready in every time of deepest peril to indicate her honor or defend her rights." The Corps of Cadets carried out this mission nobly during the Civil War by answering the call on several different occasions to operate in the field as a separate and distinct military unit, by serving as drill instructors, and by furnishing hundreds of officers and men for the armies of the Confederacy, especially for the famed Army of Northern Virginia. The late Douglas Southhall Freeman, the most famous historian of the Army of Northern Virginia, wrote: "I am convinced that the Army of Northern Virginia owed to the Institute such excellence of regimental command as it had." He even went so far as to say: "I do not believe the campaigns of 1862 could have been fought successfully without the VMI men.""