Читать книгу Last in Their Class - James Robbins - Страница 14

FLIRTATION WALK

THE ACADEMY THAT HENRY HETH arrived at in 1843 looked much like the school that Nathaniel Wyche Hunter had left ten years earlier, but day-to-day life had gradually improved for the Corps. North and South Barracks were still in use, and small groups of cadets still roomed with Mrs. Thompson, known as “Old Manny,” in her cottage with her three now aging daughters. They were given permanent residence in recognition of the gallant sacrifice of her son at the Battle of Okeechobee. Beds appeared in all the rooms. Cadets had to pay a rental fee and buy the bedclothes, but it was better than sleeping on the floor. Yet the beds grew less comfortable once the mattresses began to wear out; Cadet William Dutton complained that he awoke each morning with traces of the iron bars on his body, since his mattress “has been lain on 8 years & is about 3 inches thick.”¹ George Pickett sought to solve that problem and received three demerits for “having more bedding in use than is allowed by orders.” All cadet furnishings and toiletries were standardized to the extent they could be, which made it harder for cadets to find items for barter, since things might turn up missing in any of the multiple daily inspections. Barter remained a necessity; cadets were paid $28 per month (until 1845, when their pay was reduced to $24), but were still not allowed to keep cash. All money was kept on account, and was not issued until graduation. Those who had to make purchases at the cadet store did so against their accounts, which were monitored by the Supe. Those who sought to make other purchases adapted as best they could.

Rooms were still crowded, with up to six per room for the larger spaces. They heated them by wood fire, though coal was now permitted, which was warmer and burned more evenly but did not give sufficient light to study. Whale-oil lamps were used for illumination, “the smell of which was, similar if not worse than that which Jonah must have experienced during his sojourn in the whale’s belly.”² There was still no running water, and cadets would line up at the old wooden pump every morning to carry buckets back to their rooms. The cadet latrine, “a place of barbaric filthiness, whose odors, but not those of Araby, pervaded the whole neighborhood around,” was referred to as “Number Ten” due to its proximity to sentry post no. 10, and the term became slang for latrines throughout the Army.

The food that Wyche had complained about had improved slightly, but was still not praised by cadets. In one letter home, Cadet George Derby noted that “India rubber boiled in Aqua forte could give no idea of the toughness of our roast beef, and we are so accustomed to stale bread that the sight of a hot biscuit might occasion hysterics.”³ Bread was as a rule served cold, except, as the joke went, when a cat had slept on a loaf. Fruits and green vegetables were unknown in the mess hall.⁴ Coffee and tea were in abundance, as were dairy products from local farms. Fish was served on Friday, frequently sturgeon caught in the Hudson and known as “Albany beef.” But Tidball noted that there was at least a purpose to the culinary poverty. It was “still the epoch when soldiers—and with them were classed cadets—were fed with Spartan simplicity, so that their stomachs might be trained to meet every vicissitude of service, even to subsisting for a fortnight by chewing a greasy rag, or to enduring the fare of a rebel prison. All beyond the bare necessaries of life were deemed effeminacies unworthy of a solider.”

Cadets continued to make hash in the winter, despite stern warnings from the authorities. In fact, the illegality of the act improved the taste of the fare. The hashes consisted of bread, meat and potatoes, “mashed and mixed together with plenty of butter and seasoned generously with pepper; the whole cooked in some kind of a vessel, generally a frying-pan.” The tall, aptly named “forage hat” in use at the time provided a useful means of smuggling or “hooking” food from the mess hall, and “a steady marching cadet, one who could preserve a level head, could carry at one time enough of bread, potatoes, meat, and butter as was necessary for a very respectable hash for himself and a half dozen or so of his friends.”⁵ Frying pans were in short supply and were passed from cadet to cadet as the need arose. Most feasts were planned for Saturday night, when officers were more likely to be engaged in their own diversions and there were no lessons in the morning. Sentinels were bribed with portions of the hash. But the hash feast was not a bacchanal; cadets could not risk having the smell of the hash alert the authorities, so the meal was “scooped hot from the frying-pan and eaten on slices of bread or toast with a relish equaled only by the dispatch with which it had to be done; and then the guests flitted to their rooms with the innocence of uncaught thieves.”⁶

Hazing had become more prevalent over the years, but had not reached the severity it would in later decades. It was an initiation ritual, “just sufficient to awaken alertness on the part of the new comers, but seldom anything malicious.”⁷ Before encampment, prospective plebes were called “things” and “beasts” (which is the origin of the contemporary term “beast barracks”) and their ignorance of the rules made them prime targets for all kinds of mischief. Many incoming plebes wore their hair long, which was the fashion, and helpful cadets would direct them to a room in the old North Barracks where another cadet, posing as a barber, would proceed to give them a most uneven and unattractive cut.⁸ Cadet Jesse Valentine from North Carolina was the victim of an elaborate haze authored by Henry Heth, who pretended to borrow Valentine’s civilian clothes to facilitate a visit to Benny Havens’. The two were “discovered,” placed under arrest, and taken to the hot, musty cockloft of the old North Barracks, a windowless gathering spot unknown to the Tacs, for immediate court martial. A cadet sat as president of the body at the head of a long table, with twelve others wearing blue furlough coats, sashes and plumed hats arrayed about him. A long list of invented charges was read, the prosecution and defense made speeches, and Cadet Valentine nervously pleaded his case. The prisoner was removed to the passage while the court deliberated; he was called back in and the sentence was read: “Plebe Valentine, the court, after mature deliberation, have pronounced in your case the following sentence: that you be taken tomorrow morning to the statue of the great and glorious Washington, and at sunrise precisely you be shot to death with musketry, and may God have mercy on your soul.” The blood drained from Valentine’s face; outside the room he collapsed to his knees, bemoaning his foul fate. Presently he was called back into the court and told that he had been given a reprieve. He was sentenced instead to stand all night with his head in a mortar. The next morning an officer came upon the curious site, and when he heard Valentine’s story he told the plebe that he had been the victim of a prank.⁹

Not every plebe was as ingenuous as Cadet Valentine. In another case, some upperclassmen feigned offense at a plebe’s behavior and arranged for a duel. They met just after reveille, and the plebe was given his choice of loaded muskets. The duelists marched fifteen paces, turned and fired. The upperclassman fell and lay still. The seconds and spectators stood by mournfully; but the plebe began to reload his musket.

“What are you doing plebe?” one of the upperclassmen said. “Don’t you see you have killed your man?”

“Well,” the plebe responded, “if he is dead, a little more killing won’t do him any hurts.” The “dead man” jumped up and the assembled apologized to the plebe.¹⁰

William Gardner explained, “With us [hazing] was rough horse play and fun, and the cadet who showed himself to be equipped with a powerful pair of fists and a strong disposition to use them on provocation was usually exempt from annoyance. Any such brutal violence as is not uncommon nowadays would in my time have been checked summarily by the student himself, with a bayonet thrust, knife stab or pistol shot.” He was not engaging in hyperbole. In the summer of 1844, Heth and some companions were deviling a plebe on sentinel duty, who became so enraged he threw his musket, bayonet first, at his tormentors. The weapon struck Heth in the thigh, narrowly missing his femoral artery, the point emerging from the other side. “I fell as though I had been shot by a cannon ball,” he wrote.¹¹ The wound put Heth in the hospital for weeks. The plebe in question was punished severely—not for wounding Cadet Heth, but for parting with his weapon.

There were occasional personal disputes, which could lead to violence. One such altercation involved Derby and Cadet William Logan Crittenden, a member of the famous Crittenden clan, who came to West Point from Kentucky in 1839. He was the son of Henry C. Crittenden, who had been murdered by a noted desperado of the time named John A. Waring. Henry’s brother was John Jordan Crittenden, an 1812 war vet who served as governor, U.S. attorney general, congressman and senator. It was in the latter capacity that he formulated the “Crittenden Compromise,” a failed last-minute attempt to stave off the Civil War. John’s sons served on both sides in that conflict—George Bibb Crittenden (USMA 1832) was a Confederate general who resigned his commission in 1862 after his forces were badly mauled at the Battle of Mills Springs. His brother Thomas Leonidas Crittenden rose to the rank of major general in the Union army. Their cousin Alexander Parker Crittenden graduated from West Point in 1836; he soon resigned his commission and later became a politician and lawyer in San Francisco. He was gunned down by his mistress Laura Fair in 1870, and her highly publicized trial featured a pioneering defense linking the insanity plea to the menstrual cycle.¹²

William Logan Crittenden was a mediocre student—he entered with the Class of 1843 but was turned back twice, graduating as the Goat of 1845. His disciplinary record was not remarkably poor, but the incident with Derby almost led to his expulsion. One Sunday morning in 1844, Derby was returning to North Barracks after church when he passed Crittenden, who was a cadet lieutenant. The two were not on good terms, and they caught each other’s glance.

“What do you mean, sir?” Crittenden demanded.

“Mean by what, sir?”

“By looking at me, sir.”

“Do you consider yourself too good to be looked at, sir?” Derby said.

“Yes sir, I do,” Crittenden said, “and if you give me any more of your words, God damn you, I’ll run you through.” Crittenden placed his hand meaningfully on the pommel of the sword on his belt. Derby, smaller, lighter, but with nerve, was not intimidated.

“You must be a miserable coward,” he snapped, “to threaten an unarmed man with a sword.” Crittenden did not hesitate. He drew his weapon and slashed three times at Derby, cutting his chin and throat, right arm and shoulder. Derby was put in the hospital for three weeks. Crittenden was placed under arrest, and Superintendent Delafield recommended dismissal to Secretary of War William Wilkins, but the request was not approved—political connections, Derby reasoned. Instead, the Superintendent restricted Crittenden to West Point, reduced him to the ranks, and relieved him of his sword and chevrons.¹³ All things considered, he got off easy.

Crittenden later had a dispute with Cadet Winfield Scott Hancock, which they resolved to settle by fisticuffs. But Crittenden was so much larger than Hancock that the fight was deemed unfair, so by mutual agreement his place was taken by Cadet Alexander Hays. The resulting contest was said to have lasted three hours and been given to Hays on a decision. The authorities never found out about it and no one was punished.¹⁴

“Benny Havens’, Oh!”

THE CADET’S LIFE WAS STILL regimented, moving cyclically day in and out to the beat of a drum. They marched to and from mess, had parade every afternoon, and manned regular tours of sentry duty. The only officially sanctioned variation in the schedule came when it rained and drill was canceled. Tidball called rain “a veritable Godsend—a positive intervention of Divine Providence in behalf of cadets.” Free time was limited and closely proscribed, at least officially. Cards and other games were still prohibited.¹⁵ The Dialectic Society debated, and hunting, fishing, hiking and swimming were permitted. Hiking was a popular escape; cadets were allowed to fish in the river or in the nearby mountaintop lakes, and a tradition grew of leaving a stone on the cairn at the top of the prominent peak north of the Academy called the Crow’s Nest.

Smoking had been forbidden at the Academy since 1823, and the smell of tobacco in a room would quickly lead to demerits and extra guard tours on the weekend. But banning smoking only increased the desire of cadets to get away with it. Cadet Grant, later famous for his cigar habit, noted that “the fact that tobacco in every form was prohibited, and the mere possession of the weed punished, made the majority of the cadets . . . try to acquire the habit of using it.”¹⁶ Cadets would make bargains with tobacco traders in New York to buy cigars and pipe tobacco on credit and pay after graduation when they were given the balance of their accounts. “The very recklessness of it was captivating,” Tidball wrote.¹⁷ Some were more reckless than others—George Pickett received eight demerits one fall day for “highly unsoldierlike conduct walking around parade ground smoking tobacco improperly dressed.”¹⁸

Alcohol and the means of obtaining it still commanded a great deal of cadet energies. DeRussy had loosened the drinking regulations, but Delafield cracked down on alcohol. He opened a “soda shop” at the Academy as a conciliatory gesture, meant to give cadets an alternative to the mess for some treats and hopefully forestall them looking elsewhere. For those who chose to “run it” in search of harder stuff, Bum Owens was still on hand to bedevil them.¹⁹

Benny Havens’ remained very much part of the West Point experience, but by the 1840s Benny had some competition. A tavern had opened across the Hudson in the town of Cold Spring, behind Constitution Island and the site of the West Point foundry, famous for its ordnance production in the Civil War. The tavern was accessible by boat or over ice in the winter, though one was liable to be spotted crossing the barren ice, and furthermore, if the ice broke while a cadet was on the wrong side, he might find himself stranded. A man named Avery opened a tavern between West Point and Benny Havens’, which was also convenient to the prep school established just south of the Academy by former Tac Zebina J. D. Kinsley (whom Edgar Allan Poe’s roommate had pretended to decapitate). Another liquor merchant known as “the Pirate” would periodically appear on the river shore below the hospital (at a spot aptly known as “Pirate’s Cove”) to trade in whiskey, tobacco and other necessities. Tidball noted that “dealings with this individual were considered of a sneaking, low down order as compared with the rollicksome recklessness attending upon running it to Benny Havens.”

Benny’s remained the preferred cadet retreat, a tavern that was enshrined in myth and even in song. In the winter of 1839–40, an assistant surgeon named Lucius O’Brien visited some friends at West Point, who decided to show O’Brien where they used to while away the hours back in their cadet days.²⁰ O’Brien was so taken with Benny Havens’ (or so under the influence) that he penned a drinking song to the tune of the Irish standard, “The Wearing o’ the Green,” which he called, “Benny Havens’ Oh!”

Come, fill your glasses, fellows, and stand up in a row,

To sing sentimentally, we’re going for to go;

In the Army there’s sobriety, promotion’s very slow,

So we’ll sing our reminiscences of Benny Havens’, oh!

Oh! Benny Havens’, oh! Oh! Benny Havens’, oh!

We’ll sing our reminiscences of Benny Havens’, oh!

O’Brien’s song became an instant hit among the cadets, and his original few stanzas were supplemented in the scores by succeeding classes. Today the verses read as a compact history of West Point and the Army. One early and tragic addition commemorates O’Brien’s own death in Florida during the Seminole War:

From the courts of death and danger, from Tampa’s deadly shore,

There comes a wail of manly grief, “O’Brien is no more!”

In the land of sun and flowers his head lies pillowed low,

No more he’ll sing “Petite Coquette” or “Benny Havens’, oh!”

Benny remained popular with the cadets, a friendly purveyor of good cheer in many forms. Henry Heth was a regular, along with Pickett and another member of their clique, Heth’s roommate, a tall, handsome cadet from Indiana named Ambrose Everett Burnside. Heth’s first roommate was Augustus H. Seward, son of William H. Seward, recently governor of New York, later a senator and secretary of state under Presidents Lincoln and Johnson (in the latter capacity negotiating the purchase of Alaska from Russia, known then as “Seward’s Folly”). Gus Seward, like Heth, began to accumulate demerits, and the Superintendent decided to separate them and place them with well-behaved cadets so they might learn from their example.²¹ Heth was matched up with the respectable Burnside, but the Supe’s plan backfired. Rather than Burnside reforming Heth, the fun-loving Virginian found “a very ready pupil” in the charismatic midwesterner.

“Burnside had but a few demerits when he came to live with me,” Heth recalled, “in a few months he had over a hundred.”²² Burnside’s total record of delinquencies covered two and a half pages. He stayed very close to the edge; he had 198 his first year and 190 his last. Most were for visiting after hours and being late.²³ In the fall of 1844, he was sentenced to seven days in prison for feuding, allegedly for assisting another cadet, Tom Lowe, in assaulting the unfortunate Derby (who at that point was only days away from his bloody encounter with Crittenden). The Superintendent hoped that the sentence “afforded a favorable time for Cadet Burnside to reflect in the solitude of his prison walls upon the errors and improprieties of his past conduct.”²⁴

Whether Burnside’s imprisonment had any salutary effect is arguable, but it certainly did not end his forays to Benny Havens’. Heth said they would go on a spree at least twice a week. Burnside, with his rich, resonant singing voice, would entertain regularly at the tavern. Benny declared Burnside and Andrew Jackson to be “the two greatest men that ever trod God’s foot-stool.”²⁵ Burnside had a habit of socializing when returning to barracks under the influence, and Heth had to get him back to the room before he was discovered and expelled. “I would put him to bed and frequently stood at my door with my musket clubbed,” Heth said, “threatening to knock him down if he attempted to leave the room.”

During his final encampment, Heth found a means to augment his opportunities for revelry. He was sent to the hospital with swollen glands, and the doctor wanted him to be treated in a ward the entire summer. Heth asked that he at least be allowed to attend military drills, riding and artillery practice, and the doctor consented. “By this arrangement,” Henry wrote, “if the doctor came to my ward and found me absent, I was supposed to be attending some of these duties and nothing was said. I was thus enabled to visit New York and Newburg, and go pretty much where fancy and inclination prompted; of course I was running a great risk, but I was so in the habit of taking risks, that I presume I became callous.”²⁶ Heth was never caught. Burnside, on the other hand, got five demerits that summer for visiting Henry at the hospital without permission.²⁷ Burnside was not the only one to fall victim to Henry’s frolicsome influences. During his hospital stay, Heth made friends with a Scottish steward named Stoddard who became his regular drinking buddy. Stoddard was fired for missing a morning appointment with the doctor after a night of adventures with Heth. But Henry would not expose his friends to risks he would not take himself. One late night during the 1846 encampment, returning from a round of drinking with Stoddard, Heth happened on a horse and decided to charge the encampment. He dashed through the tents on his mount, exited the Plain and concealed himself in Fort Clinton. Patrols were sent out, but Heth was not discovered. When the camp settled, he charged through again. The search process repeated, again with no result, and Henry made a third charge before he decided that he was tempting fate and headed back to the hospital.

The greatest change in cadet life in this period was in the social sphere. The Academy was no longer the martial monastery it used to be. West Point was well on its way to becoming one of America’s leading resorts. This peculiar development was the product of various circumstances, one of them being the proximity to New York City, less than a day’s trip by riverboat. With the advent of steamboats, the number of passenger vessels making the journey to Albany and back increased, and many made stops at West Point. This was also the heyday of the Hudson River school of painting, with its emphasis on nature and particularly the Hudson Valley, the Catskills and the Berkshires. Works of literature, such as The Last of the Mohicans, also raised awareness of the region.

Visitors were discovering what cadets had always known—that West Point is a place of great natural beauty. Nathaniel Wyche Hunter had described it as “the most beautiful place in the world” in one of the same letters in which he begged his father to be allowed to come home. Cadet Grant described the setting eloquently, saying it was “decidedly the most beautiful place I have ever seen . . . it seems as though I could live here forever, if only my friends could come too.”²⁸ Henry Heth wrote, “I have crossed and hunted in the Rocky Mountains, the mountains of Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina but to me no view equals the view from the back porch of Roe’s Hotel on a moonlit night.”²⁹ The hotel was located at the north edge of the Plain, above the bend in the river, with sweeping views of the valley. It was built in 1829 using proceeds from wood cut on the public lands of the post. The “old north stoop” was also a favored place to escort young ladies, a fact that may have enhanced Heth’s memory.

Traditionally, cadets had their greatest opportunities for social interactions during the furlough after their second year. Furlough was universally praised; as Grant said, “This I enjoyed beyond any other period of my life.” Tidball described it as “that ticket-of-leave period of a cadet’s life when, for the period of two months, he walks the earth a free man, astonishes every beholder with the glitter of his much bebuttoned furlough dress and smashes the hearts of ladies as a cider-mill crushes apples.”

Cadets wore a special uniform on their furlough, which was intended to draw attention to them and represent the Academy with style. The coat was blue and cut in the manner of a dress jacket, with long swallowtails and ten buttons down the front. The dress shirts were also fancy, with gilt buttons. The cap was an Army regulation forage cap, with the addition of a black velvet band on which was pinned a gold wreath crest with silver letters “USMA” in Old English script. Wrote Tidball, “With our neat duck pants, this coat and this cap, we went forth armed like knights of old to down every competitor and win the plaudits of all ladies.” Heth, echoing Grant, said, “these two months were among the most enjoyable of my life. The Duke of Wellington, after defeating his great enemy at Waterloo, could not have felt more exalted, or more pleased with himself, than the West Point cadet dressed in his furlough coat, with brass buttons, when strutting along the streets, or on entering the parlor of some young miss who had given a party in honor of his return to his native city or village.”³⁰ During his cadet furlough, Heth met a young schoolgirl named Teny Selden. Twelve years later, they were married.

The custom of the time was for cadets to bestow “spoony” buttons from their coat and shirt to the girls they favored. The grand prize was the cap crest, which a cadet would not give up until the end of the trip. Being unique, the crest could be presented only once, and one can only imagine the competition or the means of obtaining it. Tidball later reminisced that his furlough days “passed away as a dream. They were full of those little incidents falling to the lot of all college students on vacation, but unworthy of record except in lovesick novels. I was greatly flattered by the attention I received on all sides; attention no doubt due more to the glamour of my furlough dress than to any merit of my own. But they were attentions all the same and I will not have the ungraciousness of now looking the gift horse in the mouth.” There were, of course, the usual risks. In the fall of 1843, Derby noted that “several (3) cadets of the second class are in arrest and will probably be summarily dismissed for contracting a horrible disease while on furlough.” He was not of the opinion they should be dismissed, since “their conduct was probably owing to thoughtlessness, rather than to want of principle and they are all very fine fellows, and stand pretty well.”³¹

By 1840, cadets who spent the summer at the Academy also had their share of opportunities for feminine companionship. The Independence Day dinners had grown to be a major public affair; on July 4, 1845, there were two hundred visitors at the hotel, and crowds for special events could number over five hundred. “Three boats landed with excursion people on board, among them bands, glee clubs etc. without number,” Derby wrote. “Of course the cadets enjoyed themselves highly and I think I never saw the Point present so gay an appearance as it did then—Last evening we danced until 12 o’clock.”³² Dances were common year round, and particularly in the summer. During the encampment of 1840 there were two dances per week in the mess hall, and cadets frequently held “stag dances” on the parade ground.³³ These were all-cadet affairs, in which lights were placed in rows on the Plain and the dancers took turns in the center showing off their steps. Some cadets would tie handkerchiefs around their necks and play the parts of girls. It was a characteristic form of entertainment in the western part of the country, and an opportunity to engage in hilarity to entertain the onlookers. Cadet William Sherman enjoyed the stag dances because a cadet “can shuffle and cut up as much as he pleases provided he goes through the figures.”³⁴

The summer’s frolics were capped with a large formal ball, which became a signature event of the year for the fashionable young belles who were able to attend. Hundreds of invitations were sent out, and people came from across the country. Cadet Sherman described the scene:

The Ball was a grand affair, in a fine large hall the walls decorated with wreaths of laurel and cedar—Crossed Swords, Sabers, and Bayonets—and the flags of nearly all nations of the world. From the ceiling hung a great number of elegant and tasty chandeliers, and when filled with ladies and officers both naval and military in their uniforms it presented the most dazzling and brilliant appearance I ever beheld.³⁵

Food and drink were in abundance; as Lieutenant Jeremiah M. Scarritt, Class of 1838 and principal assistant professor of engineering, noted, there was “Champagne for the dull who would feign to be witty, sherry for those who were just forgetting their first flames, brandy for those who had no love in them.”³⁶ Drinks were of course off limits to cadets, but those who could obtain clandestine supplies would indulge, preferably elsewhere and with their dates. The night before camp was broken, cadets held the “Illumination.” Candles were lit in and around tents, casting a gentle glow about the entire Plain, best viewed from the upper floors of the hotel or surrounding buildings. The officers’ tents had transparencies with the names of their companies. Rockets were fired, and an immense stag dance was held.³⁷ The Illumination remained a tradition until encampment on the Plain ended in 1943.

For the Corps, encampment had become a three-month celebration of idealized Army life, with martial drills during the day and festivities at night. For those who visited West Point in the summer, it seemed that this was all the cadets did, which raised some criticism, but not from the young female visitors. “To the young and gay of the female sex the hops are the chief feature of West Point,” Tidball wrote. “In their estimation the Military Academy was established solely for such entertainments, and cadets maintained by a thoughtful government expressly to furnish them with young and nimble dancing partners.” Young civilian men who might be on hand were unable to compete with the dash of the uniformed cadets, and they had to “stand in the corners and chew the bitter cud of jealousy, while their envied rivals are whirling off their fair charmers.” For the women, West Point was a laboratory of flirtation. They could experiment as they wished in complete safety. It was an artificial environment, in which the men were tightly controlled and women could leave at will without the social repercussions that might attend them in their hometowns. In addition, for those so inclined, there was the thrill of corrupting the cadets, “the very essence of stolen fruit.” It became something of a fad, as Tidball noted:

Cadets were greatly sought after by the ladies, who seemed proud of being beaued by those stripling gallants. . . . [A]s the proportion of anxious ladies to cadets increased, a spirit of rivalry sprang up among the fair ones as to who should have the latter. Blushing young misses, flirtatious married women, and prancing widows, vied with each other in the contest. This strange infatuation developed at one time, into a species of feminine mania—a sort of contagious epidemic; it was in fact called and known as the “cadet fever,” a malady every woman, whether young or old—not too old—coming to the Point was expected to catch, and until caught, the usual morning salutation was, “have you got it?”

The cadets of course were much pleased with the attention. Some took the dalliances more seriously than others, becoming infatuated, at their peril; others played their roles with no expectations other than enjoying themselves. Sometimes these relationships would result in engagement and even marriage, but more often they were summer flings, of varying intensity. A facilitating circumstance was the advent of fly trousers around 1845. Until then, cadets had worn a traditional front-flat pattern, and the more stylish design, then in use across the country, was resisted on grounds of decorum. Tidball noted that “The social element of the Point . . . opposed it as being a shocking innovation.” Shocking, perhaps, but very practical from the cadet point of view.

The traditional West Point trysting place was the Revolutionary War era Fort Clinton, in the northeast corner of the Plain, next to the river. The overgrown stone walls and battlements made the fort a labyrinth of grassy, bush-topped mounds, strategically located adjacent to both hotel and encampment. The fort was guarded nightly, and it was a strange and lonely place to stand watch, rendered eerie with its shadowy indistinct forms, the cries of night birds and the lowing from calf boats floating downriver at night, heading for the New York butchers. The spookiness of the place only added to its allure as a site for romance. There was an unwritten code that a sentry would turn a blind eye to another cadet making a rendezvous with a young lady at Fort Clinton, though the sounds of couples so engaged could be an uncomfortable experience.

A very important event in the history of social life at West Point occurred when the Superintendent extended the permitted area to include the old chain walk, the access path along the river shore that had been used during the Revolutionary period to maintain the massive chain across the Hudson that blocked passage by British warships.³⁸ This pathway was quickly exploited by the cadets and was soon known by the nickname “Flirtation Walk.” The walk extended along the riverbank from the wharf below the hotel south to a spot known as Kosciuszko’s Garden. Thaddeus Kosciuszko was a Polish officer who had designed West Point’s fortifications during the Revolution. His garden was a ledge on the side of the river bluffs, which he had used as a private retreat. Maria Scott, wife of General Winfield Scott, would hold parties in the garden for several dozen cadets at a time. The Scotts and their daughters were fixtures at West Point in the summers, where the general would regale the cadets with tales of the War of 1812 and other adventures.³⁹ Kosciuszko’s Garden was also used for dueling, usually with fists, though once with muskets, a prank played on a newcomer who did not know they were unloaded.

Flirtation Walk and Kosciuszko’s Garden had what the Tacs might call a terrain advantage. The Plain is bordered on its north and eastern sides with a 150-foot escarpment, sheer in places, terraced in others. From most locations at USMA, anyone below the level of the Plain is out of sight. At one point, the path is overhung by a large boulder that came to be known as “Kissing Rock” for obvious reasons. In addition, the coastline is rugged, creating many shadowy nooks, and in the summer, the undergrowth along the slopes is dense. This afforded cadets a variety of options depending on how adventurous their guests were. “Flirty” became the scene of many contests and conquests, of one form or another. “Many youthful maidens,” recalled R. W. Johnson (USMA 1849), “with their breasts heaving with emotions they could not suppress, and with their voices tremulous with excitement, have said ‘yes’ when ‘no’ would have been far better for their future comfort and happiness.” Johnson noted that he did not speak to a woman during his entire cadetship—a record of sorts, he claimed—“hence no woman has any cause to regret a hasty and inconsiderate promise made to me in any of the love-making nooks in or about that historic place.”⁴⁰

Each class chose representatives as emissaries to the hotel to invite ladies to the dances and escort them there if they needed. It was choice duty, since it allowed the ambassadors to reconnoiter and have first preference, or at least first opportunity. The representatives for the Class of 1847 were, predictably, A. P. Hill, Ambrose Burnside and Henry Heth. The three were notorious rakes. Burnside had a steady girl at West Point named Nora, to whom he was engaged until one night when he was so drunk he fell out of his chair, and she ended it. Burnside sent Heth to plead his case, and Henry argued strongly for his friend, but came up short when Nora asked him point-blank if he would advise his own sister to marry Burnside. Heth had no good answer to that question, and the engagement was off permanently. Burnside quickly recovered, going on to be one of the great ladies’ men of the pre–Civil War Army.

In the summer of 1846, Hill and Heth became particularly attached to two sisters who were accompanying their mother on an extended visit to West Point. Henry’s sweetheart was named Josephine. One evening that August, Henry suggested a postprandial stroll on Flirtation Walk. Miss Jo agreed and met him in the hotel parlor with a package of gingerbread. After walking and talking, the pair found themselves on one of the many trailside benches. She produced the cake, ten inches square and an inch thick.

“Do you know the latest and most delightful way to eat cake?” she asked.

“I do not,” he replied.

“I will show you,” she said. She took his knife and cut an inch-wide strip of cake, placing one end in her mouth and the other in his. They slowly worked their way towards each other until their lips were brought together.

“The entire gingerbread was after awhile consumed,” Henry wrote. “I found it the most delightful way to eat cake I ever tried, and I must say after the cake disappeared, our lips came together a good many times minus the gingerbread.”⁴¹ Eventually the pair wandered back up to the Plain, where there was a great commotion. A rumor had spread that Miss Jo had drowned in the river, and her mother was inconsolable. Henry and Jo were spotted, and they dashed to the hotel, where Jo ducked into her room. Henry was quickly apprehended and confronted by her mother, who demanded to know where her daughter was. Henry said she was in bed asleep.

“Where have you been and what have you been doing?” she asked forcefully.

“Taking a walk and eating cake,” he replied, innocently.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” she said, pointing to the hotel clock. Henry thought it was about ten, but the clock said 2:15 in the morning. For this adventure he was confined to his tent for two weeks and had to perform eight extra guard tours. He was also banned from the grand ball at the end of the encampment. This was harsh punishment, and despite the intercession of Mrs. Scott and one of the tactical officers, the Supe did not budge. He called Henry “the worst boy in the Corps, [who] deserved no leniency, and none would be shown.”⁴² For her part, Miss Jo was shamed by her mother and sister, and was forced to end her relationship with the dashing Virginian. “All this trouble I attributed to ginger cake,” he later wrote. “Should this ever be read by an aspirant for military glory at West Point, let him beware of a pretty miss, ginger cake, and Flirtation Walk.”⁴³

Home Sweet Home

GRADUATION WAS KNOWN AS “the kicking of the hats.” At the final assembly for the graduating class, the Corps would be drawn up and called to attention, and the first class would march on to join them, carrying the Academy colors. The firsties would be marked by their moustaches, which they were allowed to grow for the several months leading up to graduation. They also bore their class rings, a tradition that had begun with the Class of 1835 and would spread to every college in the country. When they took their places, the band would play “Auld Lang Syne,” and the weight of the moment would descend. “These men who had been here four years and who were to leave forever covered with honor the next day,” Derby wrote, “as they thought of the trials and hardships they had overcome, of the intimacies they had formed, were much affected at this time, there was not a dry eye among them.”⁴⁴ The first class was called to step forward, and the order was read relieving them of duty at the Academy. The band struck up “Home Sweet Home,” and when the Corps was dismissed, the firsties flung off their caps, tossed them in the air, kicked them around on the ground, jabbed them with swords and bayonets, whooping and hollering and generally going wild.⁴⁵ Some would start singing, and Captain Frederick A. Smith’s wife wrote a song for Heth’s class that was to become an enduring graduation theme, with the refrain, “Change the Gray for the Blue”:

Hurrah! For the merry, bright month of June!

That opens a life so new;

When we doff the cadet and don the brevet,

And change the gray for the blue.

The new officers would hurriedly switch to their Army uniforms, that very day if they had made arrangements with the tailors who had visited the Academy throughout the spring taking orders and preparing for the graduation. The graduates would not waste time in leaving West Point. Most would take steamers to New York the next day, to begin the brief furloughs before reporting to their new commands. Cadet Sherman wrote that members of his class were making plans months in advance.

[F]rom morning to night we are laying schemes of what we intend to do when we graduate and if even half of these are realized a most happy set we’ll be, but should some little Indian War break out, or the Canadian Patriots rise again or anything else interrupt with our furlough upon which all our expectations are centered we’d be in a pretty plight, instead of dancing hunting fishing and the like we might be sent to some remote corner of the Globe to drill drunken Irish recruits by way of saving our country.⁴⁶

Graduation was a time of celebration, but for the Classes of 1836 to 1842, it meant the possibility of going to fight the Seminoles. Indeed, after the Dade Massacre, the entire Class of 1836 volunteered to leave early, and most of that class and those that followed did tours in Florida. For Goats like Pickett, Heth, Crittenden and others in the Classes of 1845 to 1847, graduation meant facing a very different enemy. Theirs were the first post-Thayer classes to be given an opportunity to put their education in conventional warfare to immediate use, in the conflict that was then raging in Mexico.

Henry Heth spent his final day at West Point in contemplation, looking for the last time at the familiar buildings and natural loveliness of the post, remembering his adventures, and thinking about the future. It had been a happy four years; but now he began his life as an officer. He knew he had to shed his adolescent ways and assume the responsibilities of adulthood. The next day, he headed south with Burnside. The two of them wound up in Richmond, where they stayed for a few weeks and “had a jolly good time.”⁴⁷