Читать книгу Last in Their Class - James Robbins - Страница 10

BENNY HAVENS’

BENJAMIN J. HAVENS WAS BORN in Orange, New York, on January 6, 1787.¹ Though he has gone down in history as an Irish-American folk hero, he was actually a fifth-generation American whose great-great-great-grandfather William Havens immigrated to Rhode Island around 1635. Furthermore, the founder of the Havens line came not from Ireland, but from Aberystwyth, Cardiganshire, Wales. Benny first began providing solace to cadets shortly after the Academy’s founding, as an assistant to the West Point sutler. He was fired when he was discovered selling rum to a cadet, and he took the opportunity to join the New York militia, serving as a first lieutenant during the War of 1812. After the war, he ran a delicatessen with his wife, located just off the post on property owned by Mr. Gridley, over the boundary known as the “Gridley line.” Gridley’s hotel was generally off limits to cadets, but the chance to add variety to their menu proved an irresistible temptation.

The passage to Gridley’s was through the border fence, an eight-foot-high flat-panel barrier, difficult to scale but with a hidden passage. Cadets had rigged some boards “hung by a single nail at the top with a secret fastening at the bottom . . . so innocently and smoothly as to defy the eyes of the most cute inspector ignorant of their secret.”² Consequently, there were parties from West Point at Gridley’s nearly every night. Old Grid’s selections of food and especially drink were popular with cadets, but less so with the Academy. Rather than reinforce the perimeter, Thayer sought to remove the cause of the problem. In the winter of 1824–25, Congress appropriated $10,000 to purchase the property, and “Old Grid” moved to Newburgh. The hotel became the post hospital. Unemployed but still undeterred, Benny relocated further south, to a two-story tavern about two miles from the gate, in the town of Highland Falls, situated on a bluff above the Hudson below Buttermilk Falls. Thus the legend of Benny Havens’ began.

Passage to the tavern was difficult. Heavy woods lay between the Point and Highland Falls, which was little more than a flour mill and a few houses. There was an unimproved wood road south and a rough footpath down to Benny’s. It was hard going in the dark or in bad weather, but the regulars soon learned the way. Others traveled down the Hudson, either by boat when available or over the ice in winter.

Those who braved the journey were amply rewarded. The specialty drink of the house was the “hot flip,” made of rum or cider, beaten eggs, sugar and spices. It was heated by dousing a red-hot poker or “flip dog” into an enormous flagon from which the drinks were served. The key to the “flip” was knowing when to remove the “dog” to produce the distinctive caramel-like flavor, a skill that Old Ben had perfected. However, while Benny Havens was most notorious for serving alcohol, his tavern was truly a haven in many respects. Cadets enjoyed home-cooked meals and were able to relax, unwind and spend a few hours free of the demands of the Academy. Wyche, in the following letter to his sister, captures the mood of the cadets for whom Benny Havens’ was a cherished sanctuary:

There are about a dozen of us in the Corps who have of our weekly suppers [together] (you must not infer that we get drunk—make beasts of ourselves etc.). We eat and drink (wine) moderately, talk of home of graduating and politics toast the girls and return to barrack about 3 A.M. This helps very much to pass away the time until June or May when I intend to commence studying. I have told you of Benny’s and of the many pleasant hours I have spent there. I hope yet to spend many more before I take my final adieus. However anxious I am to leave this place there are many things from which it will almost rend my heart to be separated forever and among these Benny’s holds a very conspicuous place. The old man and his wife, and the chimney corner in which I have smoked many a pipe, and the blazing log fire, and the clean table and tablecloth, and buckwheats and butter cakes, and beef steaks, ham and eggs, all so much remind me of bygone and happier days that I would willingly cling to that forever.³

When too few cadets were venturous enough to make the expedition southward, Old Ben would come to them. He would load a small boat with provisions and row upriver, making landfall at a quiet spot beneath the Academy. If no cadets were waiting along the shore, he would pack his wares uphill to a gathering place near the North Barracks called Rinsler’s Rock, a granite outcropping that had been the scene of late-night happenings since before the Academy existed, when Native Americans gathered there to dance and tell stories by firelight.

These activities did not go unnoticed. The cadets’ primary nemesis was Quartermaster Sergeant Owens, or as they called him, “Bum.” He was a “bombardier,” a member of the artillery company posted at West Point, whose nightly duty was to watch the South Gate and generally to make life miserable for the more enterprising souls in the Corps. He spent decades at the task and came to know all the cadet haunts and escape routes. Owens kept at his task stubbornly, and sometimes he “skinned” the cadets with a sense of humor. On one occasion he fashioned a dummy to look like the Superintendent and placed it at a landing spot on the river where he knew a large group of cadets would be returning from Benny Havens’. The sixteen shipmates panicked when they saw what they thought was the Supe and rowed quickly away, switching to a route up the cliffs and overland to the barracks, where they were met by Tacs whom Owens had alerted.

“Bum” was responsible for having Benny Havens banned from the post after reporting several of his riverborne excursions. Old Ben accepted his banishment; but Owens went too far when Mrs. Havens, who was traveling up the Hudson by riverboat, landed at West Point and attempted to cross the post to get home. Owens detained her and had his men row her across the river to Constitution Island, over her strong protests. She was later rescued by friends, but a few days later Benny ran across Owens in Cold Spring and beat him severely. Owens sued and was awarded five hundred dollars, which nearly drove Benny Havens out of business. Naturally, the cadets did not approve of Bum’s efforts. If they spotted him at a distance in the moonlight nearing their position, they would pelt him with rocks. When Owens interrupted a group of masked cadets who had hoisted the reveille cannon to the roof of one of the barracks as a joke, the malefactors grabbed Bum, bound and gagged him, and left him on the roof with the gun. He was also the object of more serious schemes; Cadet Henry Clay Jr., son of the famous politician, was suspended from West Point for, among other things, firing a pistol at Bum Owens.⁴

The Court Martial of Jefferson Davis

ON THE EVENING OF JULY 31, 1825, during encampment, a massive downpour flooded the Plain. Unable to sleep, their tents a muddy mess, cadets began to wander the post, and a small group made their way south to Benny Havens’. There they dried off and enjoyed the specialties of the house. Meanwhile a formation had been called, and a tactical officer, Captain Ethan Allen Hitchcock, noted their absence. As a former cadet (Class of 1817), he may have had an idea what the group was up to, and he headed for Buttermilk Falls. Hitchcock caught the five wanderers in the act, and Theophilus Mead, James Allison, James F. Swift, Samuel J. Hays and the future Confederate president Jefferson Davis became the first cadets ever to be court-martialed for carousing at Benny Havens’.⁵

The five cadets were victims of bad timing. Spirits had only recently been banned at West Point, the result of a raucous Independence Day celebration that same year. There was a cadet tradition to host a July Fourth dinner for the officers and faculty. Alcohol flowed, and the feasts usually degenerated into some form of excitement. In 1825, the dinner was “more than usually joyous” and late in the evening the cadets carried Major William J. “Haughty Bill” Worth, the Commandant of Cadets, to camp on their shoulders. Thayer, who made it a point to be absent on July 4 to maintain plausible deniability, finally put his foot down and banned the dinners, and also the consumption of intoxicating beverages on the post. Cadet Davis and the others were charged with two specifications of the new regulation, namely, “drinking spirituous and intoxicating liquor” and “going to a public house or place where spirituous liquors are sold,” as well as leaving post without permission.

Davis, who was then eighteen years old and had just completed his plebe year, defended himself with the skill of a natural legal mind. He first questioned the legitimacy of the charges, since the new regulations had not been communicated to the Corps, and “isolated as we are from the rest of the world,” such orders could not be considered valid. Nor, he said, were they even given a chance to obey them, in their ignorance. He pleaded guilty to the charge of leaving the post, which was a well-known provision of regulations, but noted the special circumstances—the flooding rain, the sounding of the dispersion bugle, and general confusion over what was required. In seeking shelter, he and his comrades “thus urged by circumstances without premeditation wandered too far.”

Davis decried the “weak evidence” that had been put before the court, especially on a charge “so contrary to the principles of a soldier and man of honor.” He pointed out that Hitchcock had not witnessed him in the act of drinking—and if he was behaving like a man who was intoxicated, it was due to the embarrassment of being caught, “which was certainly enough to have confused any cadet.” Davis denied that the regulation even covered Benny Havens’, saying that it depends on what the definition of “public house” is. Furthermore, he questioned the logic of a literal interpretation of the rule against being where spirits are sold, since, as he pointed out, the stores on post sold liquors and the cadets were clearly permitted there. He also argued that wine and beer could not rightly be called “spirituous liquors,” just to be on the safe side.

Davis’s clever wordplay did not impress the court. He was found guilty of all charges and specifications, and sentenced to be dismissed. However, the court added “in consideration of his former good conduct [it] respectfully recommend the remission of said sentence.” Hays was also recommended for clemency, and both he and Davis were pardoned and reinstated. Mead and Allison were dismissed. Swift was acquitted outright. He was the son of General Joseph G. Swift, the first graduate of the Military Academy, former Commandant of the Corps of Engineers, former Superintendent, and at the time the chief revenue officer for the Port of New York. Cadet Swift might have learned a lesson from his near escape, but instead he was emboldened, and after another court martial in September he was expelled. Hays may have owed his lenient treatment to the fact that he was the nephew and ward of Andrew Jackson. He too had difficulties adjusting to cadet life, and in the spring of 1826 he went AWOL. Of all the Benny Havens’ Five, only Jefferson Davis graduated.

In January and February 1826, and again in September and October, Davis was “distinguished for correct conduct,” a recognition given to cadets who had no disciplinary infractions for a given month. Davis’s disciplinary record in general was above average. He was promoted to sergeant of the Color Guard, and was for the most part behaving himself. But he soon became involved in one of the most notorious episodes in West Point history, the Eggnog Mutiny of 1826.

Christmas Eve had traditionally been a time when cadets would gather for festivities, usually involving alcohol and frequently overlooked by the authorities, if done in moderation. Even given the climate of Thayer’s anti-alcohol crackdown, some cadets planned an evening of frolic. On the nights leading up to the party, emissaries were sent to Benny Havens’ to provision, acquiring perhaps a gallon of spirits or more. One cadet, allegedly William Burmley, bribed a sentinel at the public wharf for the use of a boat to fetch the necessary supplies. Eggnog was prepared, and on the 24th, the cadets gathered to greet the Christmas holiday in the traditional way.

The celebration commenced in the evening and gathered steam as it went. Eventually the revelry attracted the attention of Captain Hitchcock, who went to room number 5 in North Barracks and listened at the door for a few minutes before bursting in on the party in progress. The two candles in the room were quickly extinguished and some cadets ducked out in the darkness. Hitchcock was about to break up the crowd when Davis, who had gotten wind of the Tac’s interest but did not know he was already there, rushed into the room saying, “Put away the grog boys, Old Hitch is coming!” Hitchcock immediately placed Davis under arrest and confined him to his room. Davis complied, and Hitchcock ordered the revelers to disperse. The partygoers wandered off, and after inspecting the room, Hitchcock returned to his quarters.

A few minutes later there was shouting in the barracks. Pieces of wood were thrown against Hitchcock’s door and stones rained against his windows, breaking most of the panes. A drum started beating in the guardroom, where Hitchcock found Cadet Lucien Bibb, one of the cadets from number 5, who had just broken the drumhead. He ordered Bibb to go to his room under arrest. Hitchcock went back out into the hallway and was met with a fusillade of firewood. He took cover in his room, barring the door and abandoning the barracks to the mutineers. Someone shouted, “The bombardiers are coming! Turn out the Corps! Turn out the Guard!” Cadets milled about in the hallways, shouting and demonstrating, waving swords and clubs, and calling Hitchcock out with threats. It was a night of uninterrupted bedlam. The rioters shattered windows, smashed furniture, broke off the stairway banisters and discharged firearms. Cadet Richard B. Screven was particularly wild, shouting, breaking tables and brandishing a musket.

Seventy cadets were arrested for the mutiny, and detailed proceedings were held from January to March 1827. For his part, Davis was never brought up on serious charges. He had obeyed Captain Hitchcock’s order to repair to his room, and he remained there under arrest throughout the night. He testified during the trials, but as in the previous case, he worded his responses carefully to protect his friends. He was released from arrest on February 8, 1827. Scores of cadets were called as witnesses, including Davis’s friend Robert E. Lee, who of course was uninvolved. Of the seventy originally arrested, nineteen were sentenced to be expelled. Richard Screven was found guilty of disorderly but not mutinous conduct, and was likewise sentenced to dismissal, but because of his excellent character and “frank admission of his errors,” the court recommended remission of the sentence, and Screven was allowed to stay at West Point. President John Quincy Adams, who had followed the case, noted the painful duty of dismissing so many young men “from whom their country had a right to expect better things.” He hoped that the example would “not be lost upon the youths remaining at the Academy,” and that they would be “admonished to the observance of all their duties,” lest they bring similar shame onto themselves, their virtuous parents and their dearest friends.

Despite these brushes with authority and President Adams’ entreaties, Davis continued his forays to Benny Havens’, and one such outing almost cost him his life. He was at the tavern when someone warned that an officer was coming. Davis and Cadet Emile Laserre quickly ducked out a back way and scrambled back to the Academy along the cliffs above the river.⁶ At some point, Davis slipped and fell sixty feet towards the rocks below, but his fall was broken by a stunted tree, and he lay on the ground semiparalyzed. Laserre looked down over the embankment and called out, “Jeff, are you dead?” Davis wanted to laugh but was suffering too much to say much of anything. They made it back to post, Davis stumbling and with his hands cut severely. He was ill for weeks—close to death, his wife later wrote—and he acquired a limp that was with him for months after.

“The sole congenial soul in this God-forsaken place”

ANOTHER REGULAR DENIZEN OF Benny Havens’ who would also one day rise to prominence was Cadet Edgar Allan Poe.⁷ Compared with the average cadet, Poe was a remarkable oddity. He entered West Point a former sergeant major of artillery. He was a published though as yet little known poet, grandson of Quartermaster General Poe who fought in the Revolution, and a relative of General Winfield Scott’s, whom he claimed helped secure his appointment. Poe told his fellows romantic tales of his past: of running away from home and sailing to Europe in a coal ship on a Byronic quest to fight for the Greeks in their continuing war of independence from the Turks; being detained in St. Petersburg, Russia, for passport irregularities but being rescued by the American consul; spending time as a crewman on a whaling vessel; signing on to a merchantman and sailing to the Mediterranean; debarking in the East and touring Egypt and Arabia; living in London as a writer; being wounded in a sword duel over a lady’s honor in France; and publishing a fictionalized account of his adventures in French under the pseudonym Eugene Sue.

It would have been a marvelous story, if true. But Poe’s autobiography was largely a work of fiction. He had lived in England for five years as a boy, and the events in Russia may have happened to his brother, but the rest of his travels were pure invention. He had lied about his age to secure his appointment to the Academy—he was in fact almost twenty-two and beyond the legal age of admission. General Scott, whom Poe had never met before going to West Point, was uncle to the second wife of Poe’s adopted father, John Allan, a wealthy Richmond tobacco trader, and had no role in his appointment.

Poe did, however, serve in the Army from 1827 to 1829, and rose in rank from private to sergeant major in nineteen months. He was a disciplined worker and respected by his superiors. His immediate commander, Lieutenant John Howard, wrote favorably of Poe, stating that “his habits are good, and intirely free of drinking.” Armed with this and other recommendations, Poe sought an appointment to West Point shortly after the death of his stepmother Fanny in February 1829. His initial attempts met with failure, perhaps due to a particularly frosty testimonial from his stepfather, who mentioned Poe’s gambling habit at the University of Virginia—the debts he had accrued there having become a matter of some contention between them. A year later Poe came to the attention of Senator Powhatan Ellis of Mississippi, who was Mr. Allan’s business partner’s younger brother. Ellis wrote a letter of inquiry to Secretary of War John Eaton in March 1830, and Poe received his appointment within a few weeks. He was admitted as a member of the Class of 1834 on July 1, 1830.

When Poe arrived at West Point, he wrote his stepfather hopefully that while the discipline was strict and many new cadets failed, “I find that I will possess many advantages & shall endeavor to improve them.” After camp he was assigned to Old Barracks, room 28, with Thomas W. Gibson and one other roommate. Gibson wrote that “Poe at that time, though only about twenty years of age, had the appearance of being much older. He had a worn, weary, discontented look, not easily forgotten by those who were intimate with him.” One joke had it that Poe was actually the father of a cadet who had died and he had taken the appointment in his son’s stead; another, that he was a descendant of Benedict Arnold.

At USMA he was a popular composer of japes and songs, and was soon well known as a wit with an edge. Many of his verses made fun of faculty and students, and George W. Cullum wrote that “these verses were the sources of great merriment with us boys, who considered the author cracked, and the verses ridiculous doggerel.” One example skewered Lieutenant Joseph Locke, an 1828 grad and Tac who showed an inordinate interest in inspecting barracks for cadet misconduct:

John Locke was a very great name;

Joe Locke was a greater in short;

The former was well known to Fame,

The latter well known to Report.

Locke spent a great deal of time looking in on the irrepressible residents of Number 28. Poe had quickly discovered Benny Havens’ and by the fall of 1830 was a regular visitor. He described Old Ben as “the sole congenial soul in this God-forsaken place.” Poe and Gibson had established a contraband commissary of sorts, and their room became a storehouse for supplies procured at Benny’s, including food, spirits, and other necessaries. Gibson tells that “many a thirsty soul, with not enough of pluck to run the blockade himself, would steal into our room between tatoo and taps to try the merits of the last importation.”

On one such occasion, Poe showed that his sense of the macabre was not limited to his literary pursuits. One cold, wet November night, the brandy bottle empty, Poe and Gibson drew straws to see who would make the run to Benny’s. Gibson lost and loaded up with four pounds of candles and Poe’s last Mackinaw blanket for barter. He set out to the sound of the bugle calling to quarters. “It was a rough road to travel, but I knew every foot of it by night or day, and reached my place of destination in safety, but drenched to the skin.” Benny was in a bad mood for bargaining—he had accepted far too many barter items already and was overstocked with cadet candles and blankets. Gibson finally made a deal for a bottle of brandy and an old gander, which Benny obligingly decapitated for the journey back, a squawking fowl being an unacceptable security risk.

Gibson made it to post by nine o’clock, having sampled the brandy en route. His shirt, hands and face were streaked with blood from the bird, which he had carried slung over his shoulders. Poe met him outside, and upon seeing his friend’s grisly condition formulated a plan. They tied the bird up in a ball with feathers bristling, and Poe returned to the room, taking the brandy for safekeeping. Back in Number 28, Poe’s other roommate was sitting in a corner trying to study, and another cadet awaited Gibson’s return to share in the bounty. Poe said nothing but sat down and pretended to read. Moments later Gibson staggered into the room, covered in blood, empty-handed, seemingly drunk.

“My God! What has happened?” Poe exclaimed, feigning horror.

“Old K! Old K!” Gibson said, calling out the nickname of Lieutenant Zebina J. D. Kinsley (USMA 1819), then an artillery instructor who was notorious for reporting cadets, and who was active in the temperance movement, which was perhaps a greater sin.

“Well, what of him?” asked Poe.

“He won’t stop me on the road any more!” Gibson growled, brandishing a large, bloodstained knife. “I have killed him!”

“Nonsense!” Poe retorted. “You are only trying one of your tricks on us.”

“I didn’t suppose you would believe me,” Gibson said, “so I cut off his head and brought it—here it is!” He reached out the door, grabbed the gander by the legs and swung it into the room over his head, knocking out the only candle and scuttling it across the floor. The room instantly went dark. Gibson was barely visible, holding aloft his ghastly prize. The visiting cadet panicked, leapt out the window into the slop tub below, and ran to North Barracks screaming that Kinsley was dead and his head was in Number 28. A general excitement began to spread outside, but soon subsided. After a few moments Poe relit the candle. He and Gibson found their roommate sitting in the corner, staring blankly, paralyzed in utter horror. “It was some time before we could restore him to reason,” Gibson said.

Poe’s humorous rhymes, mischievous nature and access to contraband made him a favorite among the Corps, but few took him very seriously as a student. David E. Hale, a yearling, wrote that Poe “is thought a fellow of talent here but he is too mad a poet to like mathematics.” Gibson recorded that Poe “utterly ignored” his studies. Cullum called Poe a “slovenly, heedless boy, very erratic, inclined to dissipation,” who “of course, preferred making verses to solving equations.” But Poe’s peers underrated him. He may have been eccentric, whimsical, and ill disciplined, but academically Poe was in the first section. At the board meeting of January 4, 1831, he placed 17th out of 87 cadets in mathematics, and third in his class in French. By contrast, twenty-seven plebes were “found” that January and sent home. Poe might have looked forward to a successful stay at the Academy. Yet one month later, he was brought up on multiple charges of “gross neglect of all duty” and “disobedience of orders.” He pleaded guilty to most of them and was dismissed. Poe left West Point on February 19 and headed for New York with a terrible cold, no overcoat, and twelve cents in his pocket.

The reason Poe departed remains a mystery. He later claimed to have left because his stepfather had died and not given him an inheritance. “The army does not suit a poor man,” he wrote, “so I left W. Point abruptly, and threw myself upon literature as a resource.” This was a fabrication. John Allan lived until March 1834, though it was true that Poe received no portion of Allan’s $750,000 estate and should not have expected any of it. Money had been an enduring source of friction between them, and Allan had grown to despise his ward. Poe sent an angry, self-pitying letter to Allan the day before his Academic Boards, asking for money and complaining about his poor treatment. “You sent me to W. Point like a beggar,” he wrote. “The same difficulties are threatening me as before at Charlottesville—and I must resign.” He pleaded with Allan to send a permission letter to the Superintendent. Allan wrote on the back of Poe’s missive, “I do not think the Boy has one good quality,” and he did nothing. Ironically, Poe could easily have attained separation from the Corps by purposely failing the first examination and confirming everyone’s expectations that he was a “January colt.”

Poe seems to have decided to leave West Point the previous October, when Allan remarried and dashed whatever lingering hopes Poe might have had of becoming his heir. He began to amass demerits and commit acts intended to court official retribution. One legend has it that he reported for drill by the letter of the regulation, “with cross belts and under arms,” wearing only white gloves and bandoliers, but not his uniform. The story is not true; but Poe did rack up an impressively poor disciplinary record in a brief time. The final blow was when he simply stopped reporting for formations for the whole month of January 1831. He skipped parades, reveille, classes, chapel and other mandatory gatherings. This brought on his court martial. Two days after he left the Academy, Poe sent a very bitter letter from New York to his stepfather, claiming that he had been dismissed because of illness. Allan described it as “a relic of the Blackest Heart & deepest ingratitude alike, destitute of honour & principle every day of his life.” The two never reconciled. Given the conflicting evidence, most of it from Poe himself, the truth behind why he sabotaged his West Point career may never be known.

That spring a second edition of Poe’s Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems was published in New York, dedicated “To the U.S. Corps of Cadets.” Colonel Thayer allowed the Corps to make an advance purchase at $1.25 per copy, and 135 cadets signed up. They expected to receive a collection of the satirical and humorous poems that Poe had issued in streams from Number 28 during his brief tenure at the Academy. When the books arrived, they were found to be poorly bound, crudely printed on cheap paper, and, to the disappointment and disgust of the Corps, filled with serious poetry. “For months afterward quotations from Poe formed the standing material for jests in the Corps, and his reputation for genius went down at once to zero,” Gibson wrote. “I doubt if even the ‘Raven’ of his after-years ever entirely effaced from the minds of his class the impression received from that volume.” This offense more than anything—willfully inflicting literature on his classmates—forever stained Edgar Allan Poe’s memory at the Academy.⁸

Years later, General Scott, who had met Poe at West Point and been favorably impressed, contributed to a collection for the poet, who was then very ill and in the care of a benefactress, Marie Louise Shew. Scott gave five dollars and stated that he wished he could make it five hundred. He dismissed Poe’s peculiar public persona, observing that he had “noble and generous traits that belonged to the old and better school. True-hearted America,” he added, “ought to take care of her poets as well as her soldiers.”

Noble Hearted Hunter

THE NOTORIETY OF BENNY HAVENS’ notwithstanding, by the 1830s West Point’s reputation as an academic institution was firmly established, particularly in engineering and mathematics. West Point graduates were building the nation’s infrastructure, overseeing the construction of roads, bridges, canals, railroads, lighthouses and harbors. They were surveying and mapping uncharted territories and opening the West to settlement. Graduates of West Point, as serving Army officers or civilians, were making a positive impact on the development of the United States in ways far greater than their numbers would suggest. But criticism of West Point had never abated. Opponents repeated the same arguments made since the Academy’s founding—that it was elitist, antidemocratic, and the potential source of a military class that could threaten constitutional government. Populist congressman Davy Crockett denounced the Academy as a haven for the “sons of the rich.” Alden Partridge, still nursing his grudge against Thayer, wrote an inflammatory pamphlet under the pseudonym “Americanus,” bluntly entitled, The Military Academy at West Point Unmasked: or, Corruption and Military Despotism Exposed.

Criticism coalesced when Andrew Jackson was elected president in 1828. Jackson’s election was a watershed in American politics. “Jacksonian Democracy” was the crystallization of the anti-elite sentiment and radical egalitarianism that typified popular conceptions of government on the frontier. Jackson himself was the embodiment of the idealized citizen-soldier, a Tennessee militia officer who rose to public prominence and the rank of major general by defeating the Creek Indians in 1814, and achieved bona fide hero status by defeating British regulars in the Battle of New Orleans the next year. His outnumbered and decidedly mixed band of western militiamen, Choctaw Indians, pirates, freedmen and local citizens, bested elite British forces led by the brother-in-law of the duke of Wellington, Lord Parkenham, who fell in the battle. To the proponents of militia forces this confirmed the superiority of the doughty backwoodsman over the trained professional. “Old Hickory’s” triumph reinvigorated the American martial myth that had its origins at Lexington and Concord, and capped the unfortunate conflict with an exceptional, if immaterial, U.S. victory.

Jackson had mixed opinions about West Point, and he disliked Thayer particularly. He had something of an expert on Academy life close at hand; his presidential private secretary and nephew, Andrew Jackson Donelson, had nearly been dismissed in the first wave of Thayer reforms. He graduated second in the Class of 1820, and resigned his commission after two years to work with his uncle. Another Jackson nephew, Samuel J. Hays, was granted clemency as one of the Benny Havens’ Five but later fled the Academy. Jackson did not attempt to close the school, despite the political support he might have been able to muster for the move. West Point was useful, and America needed engineers. But he did begin to insinuate himself into the Academy’s administration, and Thayer soon found himself being frequently second-guessed by the president. Jackson was particularly active in overturning the Superintendent’s disciplinary decisions, which had the effect of humiliating Thayer and emboldening the cadets. As Wyche explained, “Servility is not a principle of their nature.”⁹

Thomas Gibson, Edgar Allan Poe’s former roommate, was a case in point. After the poet left West Point, his comrade’s pranks became less imaginative and more destructive. Gibson was a serial arsonist and managed to burn down a small building near the barracks. Thayer twice expelled Gibson, but both times Jackson overruled him and reinstated the cadet. After a third court martial, for attempted desertion, Jackson finally let the sentence stand. There were many other instances of conflict. During the 1832 election, for example, Jackson partisans encouraged supporters to plant hickory trees as a sign of support for the president. Thayer awoke one morning to find a pro-Jackson tree planted in the middle of the Plain. An investigation laid the blame on Cadet Ariel Norris, whom Thayer dismissed. Jackson overruled the decision. Norris, thinking himself untouchable, next came to Thayer’s attention by fashioning a makeshift scatter gun out of a candlestick and some brass buttons, and firing it at a Tac. Thayer expelled Norris, this time for good. After Jackson was elected to a second term in November, many in the Corps believed that drastic changes were soon coming. Wyche wrote his sister in December that Jackson “has long thought that the Cadets have been persecuted by the Superintendent and his tyrannical martinets and he is determined on effecting a radical reformation in the Institution or abolishing it altogether. The Superintendent has already the hatred of the Pres. for his conduct during the [Blackhawk] war and it is presumed that he will shortly feel the effects . . . a step which would meet with the unanimous approbation of the Corps.”¹⁰

Some cadets were bold enough to try to take their cases directly to the president. Francis Henney Smith and a group of a dozen prepared an appeal on behalf of one of their fellows who had been expelled for drinking at Benny Havens’. They wrote a letter to the president, “an earnest appeal to the old hero in behalf of a son of a gallant soldier of the war of 1812,” Smith said, “adroitly framed to touch the tender feelings of this great man.” Cadet Robert McLane, who had been appointed to West Point by Jackson personally, arranged for an audience with the president through his father, Louis McLane, who was the secretary of state at the time. Cadet Willoughby Anderson delivered the letter to the president at the White House. Jackson perused the appeal and then turned to the waiting cadet.¹¹

“Who wrote this letter?” he asked.

“I don’t know sir,” Anderson said.

“Have you read it?”

“No sir.”

“Go back to West Point and report for duty,” Jackson said, “and tell the young man who wrote this letter, if he don’t look out, I will have his ears cut off.”¹² The cadets had courted lèse majesté, and Old Hickory was not to be manipulated.

As the close of the 1833 academic year neared, Wyche remained characteristically pessimistic. He had survived four years of exams, maintained a reasonable disciplinary standing (far higher than he deserved, he admitted), and had only the final examination standing between him and his commission. Nevertheless, he feared the worst. He had become something of a procrastinator, a fact that he freely admitted. When his brother wrote him helpfully suggesting he could use his time better, Wyche wrote back, “As regards a misapplication of my time I admit the fact; and will only say that I cannot be compelled to study.”¹³ He also had an enduring suspicion that the “Yankee” faculty was out to get him. “Nearly all the instructors here are Yankees,” he had written, “and their so partial to the Yankees that it is almost impossible for a Southerner to stay here; if should he happen to stay it is almost impossible for him to have any standing.”¹⁴

When the exam was finally held, the entire class performed extremely well, and Wyche, to his amazement, passed. However, the fates had a final twist for Cadet Hunter. That evening at dinner, Joel Poinsett, the president of the Board of Visitors, a former congressman who would served as secretary of war under Martin Van Buren (and after whom the poinsettia is named) commented that the exams he observed were the best he had ever heard, and added innocently that he did not see how the class could have done so well without knowing the answers beforehand. Poinsett meant this as a compliment to the class, but Colonel Thayer took it as an indictment of the examination. Thayer suggested canceling the results of the exam and testing the cadets again. Poinsett said he did not think that was necessary, that he was really only trying to commend the cadets, not accuse them of cheating.¹⁵ However, Thayer was adamant. Wyche, despairing, faced the Yankee examiners a second time. But luck was with him. He passed, albeit barely, and in the final academic rankings he stood as the Goat of his class. “Noble hearted Hunter,” as Francis H. Smith later described him, had made a lasting impression on his classmates, and they called on him to give a valedictory oration on their leaving West Point. This honor, the recognition of his peers, was a greater tribute than any the institution could bestow. “I had much rather have this expression of their confidence in my ability to perform such a task,” Wyche wrote, “than to be head of the class.”¹⁶

For the Class of 1833, the years of preparation for their careers as officers were over. The night before graduation they went to an outcropping on the Plain known as “cremation rock” and built the traditional bonfire of every article they owned that could be consumed—drawing boards, books, furniture—anything they were not taking with them or handing down. They sang and danced around the fire until retreat, and secret celebrations continued long into the night. The next day they wore cadet gray for the last time. Of the 43 graduates that year, 8 were turnbacks from the previous year’s class, and 12 others graduated the following year. Of the original 120 hopefuls who came in with Cadet Hunter, only 47 received Army commissions, a graduation rate of 39 percent.

Neither Wyche, who disliked Colonel Thayer, nor Smith, who admired and would later emulate him, could have known four years earlier that theirs would be the last class of the Thayer era. Thayer had notified the faculty the previous February that this would be his final term as Superintendent. The political pressures had become too great for him. He had submitted his resignation, which had been accepted. The faculty were stunned. They suggested a ceremony, something to commemorate his leave-taking, but Thayer demurred. Partridge had been sent off to great demonstrations by the cadets; Thayer chose to leave in a more dignified fashion. The evening after commencement, he took his usual walk down to the dock to watch the last ship of the day depart, accompanied by several officers and a few cadets. Just before the gangplank was raised, Thayer turned. “Good-bye, gentlemen,” he said, and as the surprised men on the dock watched silently, Thayer boarded the ship and left West Point.¹⁷ He never returned. The golden age extolled by Smith—the years that had established West Point as an institution on par with any military academy in the world, and had produced Dennis Hart Mahan, who would become Thayer’s intellectual successor; Robert Parker Parrot, inventor of the Parrot Gun, the most effective cannon used in the Civil War; Henry DuPont, who would found an empire in munitions; and the Confederate trinity of Jefferson Davis, Joseph E. Johnston and Robert E. Lee—this age came abruptly to a close.