Last in Their Class. James Robbins
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sarcastic, not a favorite among the cadets, who respected and feared him. He brooked no disagreement from his students (or anyone else, for that matter), but those whom he taught learned their subjects well. Due to a slight speech impediment, Mahan spoke as though he had a head cold, and “as he was constantly telling his pupils to use a little cobben sense he at length got to be known—such is the irreverence of cadets—as ‘Old Cobben Sense.’”16 One piece of advice he doled out concerned marriage. Mahan’s wife, Mary Helena, was a beauty whom he had met at a cadet hop in 1830. Their courtship lasted nine years, and Mahan later told cadets that nothing was more foolish than for a young officer to get married, and a wife was a luxury that should not be thought of until one reached the rank of captain.17 The question of whether it would be beneficial to forbid officers under the rank of captain from marrying was debated by the Dialectic Society in September 1840, and the resolution was defeated 11 to 4. Cadets were forbidden to marry while at the Academy, but many found themselves in wedlock soon after graduation despite Mahan’s sagacious advice.
Completing the course of studies and graduating from West Point did not get any easier in the post-Thayer years. In Pickett’s class, 133 young men were appointed, of whom 122 actually made it to the Academy. At the first January examination, 30 were found deficient and had to “take the Canterbury Road,” i.e., go back home; 56 of the remaining 92 would go on to graduate, but only 47 of them graduated in four years; the other 9 completed in 1847. So Pickett, even as the Goat, was like the other Immortals a survivor.
During the period before the Mexican War, the Corps saw pass through its ranks cadets who would later win fame on the battlefields of the Civil War. The class rosters of those days read like a Who’s Who of the War Between the States. Yet none at the time knew the struggles they were preparing for, or which among them were marked for greatness. Class rank was not a good predictor. During his commencement speech for the Class of 1886, Brigadier General John Gibbon, Class of 1847, noted, “one cannot help being struck with the remarkable, sometimes whimsical, way in which the dice-box of Fate has apparently belied all prognostications formed here. . . . Who cannot recall instances of boys whose future the most exalted estimates were made, and who, when the great test of life was applied, were never heard of? Who has not been amazed at the way in which some, never associated in our minds with greatness, have shot up into well-merited prominence?”18 He envisioned a roll call of his cadet company by a sorcerer with the gift of prescience, telling each man his fate. Gibbon, who graduated 20th in a Class of 38, began the Civil War as a captain and ended it as a brevet major general, being wounded several times and promoted for bravery at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Spottsylvania and Petersburg. He was born in Pennsylvania but grew up in North Carolina and was appointed to West Point from there. His three brothers fought for the Confederacy and his family disowned him as a traitor. His entry to West Point was delayed a year because on his entrance exam he did not know the correct date for Independence Day. Of the Class of 1847 as a whole, sixteen would rise to general officer rank, but none of the generals came from the top five “star men” of the class. Four of the class would die in combat, including one of the generals, Ambrose Powell “A. P.” Hill, who was killed at Petersburg in the last week before Appomattox.
Professor Mahan, unlike Gibbon, was a believer in the infallibility of the Thayer system. The continual process of testing and ranking the cadets—not just twice yearly but weekly—was to him an objective winnowing, and its product as accurate an indicator of future potential as could be devised. This, of course, was easy for a star man to believe. John C. Tidball of the Class of 1848, who rose to the rank of brevet major general in the Civil War and who was briefly Commandant of Cadets in 1864, wrote later that Mahan “regarded Grant, Sheridan and others who did not have high class standing as mere freaks of chance.” The high-ranking graduates who held important leadership posts in the opening years of the war affirmed the judgment of the Academic Board; “but when success did not perch upon their banners hope fled, and when, finally, those of inferior standing rose to distinguished leadership the world was turned topsy-turvy. Then the days were indeed gloomy for the professor.”19
One of the most noteworthy “freaks of chance” was indeed Ulysses H. (later S.) Grant, of the Class of 1843, whom Dabney Maury described as “a very good and kindly fellow whom everybody liked.”20 He is often thought to have been a Goat, but he was not, having graduated firmly in the middle of his class, 21st of 39. The idea that Grant performed poorly in school probably stems from a temptation to make him the anti-Lee. In many ways he was—Blue vs. Gray, westerner vs. easterner, son of the middle class vs. scion of the aristocracy, plainspoken vs. eloquent, rough-hewn vs. well groomed—it is too tempting to add to the list “Goat vs. Star.”21 But while not a Goat, Grant was hardly an ideal student. Looking back on his cadet years, he recalled that “military life had no charms for me, and I had not the faintest idea of staying in the Army even if I should be graduated, which I did not expect. . . . I did not take hold of my studies with avidity, in fact I rarely read over a lesson the second time during my entire cadetship.” Grant said he spent most of his study time devouring novels, though “not those of a trashy sort.”22 When Congress debated a bill in December 1839 to close West Point, Grant favored the measure as “an honorable way to obtain a discharge.”23 Grant’s lowest marks were in ethics and French, in which he was very poor, and in his final year his worst showing was in infantry tactics. But his other grades were decent and his disciplinary record was not extraordinarily bad; he did not get involved with hazing and he blew post to Benny’s only once.
Grant’s friend James Longstreet explained, “as I was of large and robust physique I was accomplished at most larks and games. But in these young Grant never joined because of his delicate frame.”24 Yet Grant was without equal in one area of study, horsemanship. He was a daring rider who took risks that others would not. The riding hall was a large space in the Academic building, which was not well adapted to the purpose, particularly because of the numerous iron support pillars around which cadets had to maneuver. They would guide their mounts about the hall, chopping at posts with straw-filled heads on top, poking their sabers through rings hanging above them, and leaping over wooden poles held by enlisted dragoons. Grant favored a foul-tempered sorrel called York that other cadets feared, and he would leap the animal over bars six feet high or higher. A hash was placed on the wall to mark Grant’s highest leap, which was never beaten. Longstreet said that when Grant was in the saddle, “Rider and horse held together like the fabled centaur.”25 Once while Grant was riding a particularly spirited mount, the saddle girth broke, sending the rider tumbling. “Cadet Grant,” the riding master said, “six demerits for dismounting without leave.”26
Henry Heth was also credited as the best rider in his class, and was once given demerits for improvising a spur by placing a nail in his boot. Heth, like Grant, had no desire to compete for class ranking. “My four years career at West Point as a student was abominable,” he wrote. “My thoughts ran in the channel of fun. How to get to Benny Havens’ occupied more of my time than Legendre on Calculus. The time given to study was measured by the amount of time necessary to be given to prevent failure at the annual examinations.”27 Unlike Nathaniel Wyche Hunter, who constantly worried about being able to pass and feared the worst with every exam, Heth was fairly certain he could complete the curriculum, provided it did not interfere with his amusements, or vice versa. His previous schooling, especially at Peugnet’s, may have helped inculcate this attitude. He found himself overprepared, or so he thought. “For the first six months [at West Point] I scarcely ever opened a book,” he wrote. “I thought I knew it all, but often found, to my sorrow, that I was sadly mistaken when the X-rays of the professor were turned on my perfunctory knowledge of the subject.”28
At the other end of the scale, the cadets in the first section had a “glamour of sanctity shimmering about [them] which causes its members to be regarded as a sort of intellectual aristocracy.” This was Tidball’s impression; he had worked his way up from the Immortals and was nervous about joining those whom he had made his peers:
It was with palpitating forebodings I took my place among them; but I soon discovered I had little to fear on this score. I found, it is true, a very great difference between this section and those near the foot of the class, but I did not, on the other hand,