The South Carolina Military Academy was a predecessor, two-campus institution to The Citadel.
It was established in 1842 by the South Carolina Legislature and classes began at the Arsenal (Columbia) in 1843.
[1] South Carolina had constructed a series of arsenals around the state after the Denmark Vesey planned slave revolt of 1822; these were consolidated into Columbia and Charleston arsenals.
During the Civil War students from both served as the Battalion of State Cadets; SCMA cadets were among the battalion which fired the first shots of the Civil War on January 9, 1861 while manning a gun emplacement on Morris Island, South Carolina which shelled the Union steamship Star of the West; the Battalion of State Cadets made up over a third of a Confederate force that defended a strategic rail bridge in the Battle of Tulifinny in 1864.
[1] The Arsenal Academy was burned by Union troops in 1865 and never reopened; the only surviving building became the South Carolina Governor's Mansion.