of 1861–1865; the University of Alabama campus was burned to the ground by Union cavalry forces in the same week in 1865 that the Civil War was effectively ended by Johnson's surrender in South Carolina of the southern command's Confederacy forces.

After a year of trying to rebuild the university, Garland's dream of making it an institution of discipline and honor (a central theme of the historical south) died along with the Confederacy. Only a single student enrolled for classes