Last in Their Class. James Robbins
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most challenging and most prestigious branch. They designed America’s forts, major roads, canals, railroads, harbors and lighthouses, carving a growing nation out of the wilderness. The next most distinctive branch was Ordnance, followed by Artillery. Those further down the list would be sent to the Infantry or the Dragoons. Cadets from the Immortal sections were unlikely to spend the early years of their Army careers supervising large-scale building projects, attending conferences or pursuing post-Academy education in Europe. They were much more apt to find themselves in distant frontier garrisons, with little prospect of adventure or advancement. The spartan conditions at West Point in the Thayer era were good moral and physical preparation for Army life in the 1820s and 1830s. Even in peacetime, it was a difficult and dangerous occupation. Of the thirty-three graduates in Jefferson Davis’s Class of 1828, fourteen died within ten years of graduation. Three of these were civilians; ten were on active duty and fell to accident or disease. Only one of them, James F. Izard, was killed in battle, by the Seminoles.
If a newly commissioned officer was looking for a remote posting in those days, he could not go much farther than Fort Mackinac, on tiny Mackinac Island at the northern tip of Lake Huron. It was one of dozens of such forts along the northwest frontier, erected as border defenses against incursions from Canada. It had been seized by the British in a surprise attack in July 1812, and transferred back in September 1815 per the terms of the Treaty of Ghent.1 Since then the area had seen no action, nor was it likely to.
In 1829, Fort Mackinac became the home of Ephraim Kirby Smith, the Goat of the Class of 1826.2 He had spent the previous three years at the equally remote Fort Howard, fourteen miles up the Fox River from Green Bay. Kirby, as he was known, was born in 1807 in Lichtfield, Connecticut, to a distinguished military family. His maternal grandfather, Ephraim Kirby, was an officer in the Continental Army who fought at Bunker Hill. His father, Colonel Joseph Lee Smith, fought in the War of 1812 and was a hero at the 1814 Battle of Lundy’s Lane.3 Colonel Smith was appointed federal judge for the eastern district of the Florida Territory in 1821, whence Kirby was appointed to West Point in 1822, the first (though nominal) Floridian to attend.
Kirby was a quixotic, proud and willful young man, and his strong views on personal honor often led him into difficult situations. He had a poor disciplinary record at USMA, and if the point system had been in use when he was a cadet, he would have had a hard time avoiding expulsion. He was frequently found visiting or absent during study hours. He was cited for neglect of fender, oversleeping, being late, sitting down on sentry duty, and being AWOL for a week in August 1824, though this was probably due to travel difficulties returning from furlough. Kirby missed classes and sometimes slept through those he did attend. In March 1823 he spent twelve days in the stockade for disorderly conduct. Clearly he had become such a lightning rod for quill (i.e., reports) that he was reported even for trivial misbehavior such as “candlestick out of place” (on September 7, 1825) and “playing with football near the barracks” (on April 10, 1826).
After graduation, Kirby traveled to St. Augustine to visit his family before departing for his first assignment. At a local tavern he was introduced to Edgar Macon, a former U.S. district attorney who had been openly slanderous against Kirby’s father for convincing President John Quincy Adams to fire him. Kirby would not shake Macon’s hand, which led to an exchange of words, the young officer slinging “epithets suited to [Macon’s] malignity.” Macon challenged Kirby to a duel, and he accepted. Dueling was a federal crime, and military law provided that no commissioned officer could either send or accept a challenge to fight a duel, “upon pain of being cashiered.”4 Kirby thought better of it later, but explained that “as a man and a soldier, my word, without regard to consequences, must through life be sacred.” They agreed to meet on an isolated shore. Kirby showed up with his second, Captain Wood, and they waited alone for the other pair.
When Macon arrived, he was accompanied by his second, Dr. Richard Weightman, an Army officer and according to Kirby a well-known “scandalous calumniator of a brother officer.” They also brought along five other men, a group of women and servants, and even the soldiers who rowed the boat that carried them there. Kirby said that this was “in violation of every honorable pledge by which all persons are bound in affairs of this nature,” in particular because it increased the chances that the duelists might be arrested. In the end, the fight never took place; Macon prompted delay after delay, claiming sickness and making other technical objections. Kirby stated that “mattresses and morning gowns had been provided for him, yet his brandy bottle, and all the other ammunition he had brought to the field, were exhausted without effect.” But the event drew the attention of the authorities and the pair were thrown in jail. Macon and Weightman, who knew the local magistrates well, cooperated in the subsequent trial, which Kirby found even greater proof of their perfidy. Kirby was convicted, though under the circumstances, and given his father’s position, the court recommended leniency. Kirby released a transcript of his impassioned speech before the court as an appeal to his brother officers, and was spared a court martial.5
Life in the Michigan Territory did not offer Kirby the adventure he might have craved. The last serious Indian disturbances had ended with the death of Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames in 1813. In the late 1820s, the only Indians likely to be seen were in fleets of canoes on the lakes, going to outposts for their annual emoluments, occasionally stopping by to sell fish or game or to get rations. Samuel P. Heintzelman, a classmate of Kirby’s who served at Mackinac and kept detailed diaries of his days at West Point and afterwards, one day noted “eleven canoes of Saginacs and Ottowas,” a splendid sight.6
The duties at the remote posts were rudimentary, and the biggest challenge was staying motivated. Jefferson Davis, then a second lieutenant of the First Infantry stationed at Fort Winnebago, in the area later to become Wisconsin, wrote his sister that “the officers of the Post are like those of the Army generally, men of light habits both of thinking and acting, having little to care about and less to anticipate.”7 Officers would keep themselves and their men busy improving local roads, building and repairing bridges, traveling the countryside assessing the timber and natural resources (particularly those of military significance such as sulfur), surveying, making maps, and undertaking construction projects on their posts, not so much to make them more defensible as to make them more comfortable. The forts were sometimes thrown up as temporary expedients that gradually became permanent, and they often needed work. Heintzelman wrote of Fort Gratiat, “Thursday the 2nd of November [1830] made two years since my arrival at this detestable place. I hoped when I arrived that we would have left long ere this; but our prospect is more distant still.”8
A frontier posting allowed a great deal of time for disconsolate introspection. Heintzelman wrote to his diary, “I completed my twenty fifth year yesterday. It is melancholy to think how I am spending my best days, in this out of the way place, without society, amusement, or improvement.”9 In a similar vein, Jefferson Davis wrote to his sister, “Today I am 22 years old. When I was a boy and dreamed with my eyes open as most do, I thought of ripening fame at this age of wealth and power. As I grew older I saw the folly but still thought that at the age of 22 I should be on the highway to all ambition desired, and lo: I am 22 and the same obscure poor being that I was at fifteen, with the exception of a petty appointment which may long remain as small as it is at present.—and yet,” he added, “I am not dissatisfied for I behold myself a member though an humble one of an honorable profession.” Davis believed that given his experiences, he had few alternatives. “I cannot say that I like the Army, but I know of nothing else that I could do which I would like better.” He said that had he returned home directly from Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky, where he attended briefly before going to the Academy, he might have been able to become a respectable citizen, but he did not think he could do so anymore because “the four years I remained at West Point made me a different creature from that which nature designed me to be.”10
For the enlisted soldiers, frontier life was more difficult. Soldiers signed up for five years, drawing five dollars a month. Morale was the biggest problem. Their duties kept the men busy, but in their free time they had little to do. They had less freedom of movement than the officers did, and no chance to enjoy high society in the cities. On the other hand, they were probably less self-pitying. Cards were a diversion for officer and enlisted