of the student body enrolled in Confederate military units. In 1862, 18-year-old Confederate captain Gratz Cohen became the first known Jewish student. He was also elected president of the Jefferson Society. He was killed three years later at the Battle of Bentonville. Unlike many other colleges in the South, the university was kept open throughout the conflict, although in 1863 and 1864 there were only about 50 students, most of them wounded Confederate soldiers. In March 1865, Union General George Armstrong Custer marched his troops into Charlottesville, bringing with them the Emancipation Proclamation and freeing all the enslaved. Faculty and community leaders convinced Custer to spare the university. Though Union troops camped on the Lawn and damaged many of the Pavilions, Custer's men left four days later without bloodshed and the university was able to return to its educational routines. 20th century The university's first president Jefferson, ever the skeptic of central authority and bureaucracy, had originally decided that the University of Virginia would have no President. Rather, this power was to be shared by a Rector and a Board of Visitors. As the 19th century waned, it became obvious this cumbersome arrangement was incapable of adequately handling the many administrative and fundraising tasks that had become necessary to support the growing University. In 1904, Edwin Alderman resigned as President of Tulane University to take the same position at the University of Virginia. As the university's first president, he embarked on a number of reforms for both the university and the state of Virginia's public educational systems in general. A reform specific to the University of Virginia was one of the first school-sponsored financial aid programs in all of higher learning and, though primitive by today's standards, it included a loan provision for needy men who were unable to pay. Initially controversial and opposed by many at what had become a very traditional school, Alderman's progressive ideas stood the test of time. He remains the longest-tenured president in the university's history, having served for twenty-six years until his death in 1931. Alderman Library is named in his honor. World War II During World War II, Virginia was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission. William Faulkner Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner became a writer-in-residence at the university in 1957,