"By the end of the war 1,796 cadets and former cadets had served the Confederacy. This was ninety-four percent of the Institute's living matriculates. In the sizable group of Institute men in the Confederate service were three distinguished major generals- Robert E. Rodes (Class of 1848, hereafter cited by year only), William Mahone (1847), and William Y.C. Humes (1851). General Rodes' leadership at Chancellorsville won for him "the nearest approach the Army had known to promotion on the field of valor," and he was the first non-West Point graduate to command a division in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia."