Scope and Contents The Thomas B. Davis collection contains two items. The first is a letter from Davis to his sister, Mrs. Camillus Christian, dated March 22, 1863. This letter was written while Davis was a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, VA. In this letter he mentions activities at VMI, Civil War news ("a considerable cavalry fight on the Rappahannock"), the unusual late snows, and provides an early use of the term rat as a reference to new cadets ("The legislature is still cutting up...