Last in Their Class. James Robbins
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Tidball discovered that those at the top were typically cadets who had excelled early in math and held on through hard study. He said there was an unwritten law that “none could be admitted to the first section in mechanics and engineering who had not been in the first section in mathematics. And this custom assisted in making the first section a close corporation, fostering the before-mentioned notion of intellectual aristocracy.”
Those who aspired to join the top ranks would have to apply themselves diligently, and not everyone thought it was worth the effort. But perspectives on rank were relative, and proximity could breed contempt. Cadet George Derby, who had always done well in his studies and been consistently in the top ten, thought those above him were insufferable grinds who had an unseemly obsession with plaudits. (Those below, of course, might have thought the same of him.) He finished his third year ranked fifth in his class, a distinguished cadet aiming for a commission in the Engineers. He felt that he could have been first in the class had he tried, but he chose instead to do only enough to maintain the standing he needed. Anyway, the top of the class was not all it was made out to be; in Derby’s opinion, the top men were insecure, egotistical and generally unlikable. “With moderate study I get calmly and comfortably along,” he wrote in the fall of his final year, while
the men above me are filled with envy, jealousy, and all sorts of bad passions, nothing is too small for one or two of them to do to get a better mark than those above them. They study nights, they draw on their problems at unauthorized hours, they neither think nor care for anything but their mark, and their continual bickerings, and jealousies, and boastings, and exultations are enough to make anyone sick of the sight of them. Now I dare say (and without much vanity either) that if I were to make such an ass of myself as all this I might stand above them all—but I should not gain much in self-respect, or in the opinion of any of my classmates or officers.30
Alas for Derby, he relaxed a bit too much in his final year and graduated seventh, missing both the designation of Distinguished Cadet and a commission in the Engineers. But he went on to become a hero in the Mexican War and to win more lasting celebrity as a humorist writing under the name John Phoenix.
One of those with whom Derby competed was the future Union army commander George B. McClellan, who had entered West Point at the age of sixteen and had also always ranked near the top. He was fourth in the class entering the final year, but as Derby dropped two slots, McClellan rose two, and he could have graduated first but for a disciplinary infraction. The top man, C. Seaforth Stewart, served honorably for forty years, but rose only to the rank of colonel.
The quest for rank and class standing became an unhealthy obsession for some. Plebe Benjamin Baden, for instance, passed away October 19, 1837, at the age of sixteen, because his classroom performance had been substandard. Cadet William Tecumseh Sherman, then seventeen, wrote to Ellen Ewing, then thirteen and a half (later his wife), that Baden was “proud and ambitious but unfortunately was not able to succeed in his studies which so mortified him that he was taken sick and five days afterwards was a corpse.”31
The West Point entrance exam in those years required only an understanding of the four fundamental rules of arithmetic, the ability to read, good handwriting skills and passable spelling. Decades later William Gardner observed that “if the present high standard had then obtained, many men since distinguished in our national history would certainly have been rejected.”32 Among them in particular was his classmate Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, who arrived at West Point an unprepossessing figure wearing gray homespun and a wagon-master’s hat, with a pair of worn saddlebags slung across his shoulders. Maury said that Jackson “was awkward and uncultured in manner and appearance, but their was an earnest purpose in his aspect which impressed all who saw him.”33
Jackson had secured his position at West Point when another appointee decided not to attend at the last minute, and Jackson took his slot.34 He failed his entrance examination, but was allowed to try again in September, and he passed. Jackson was something of a loner at West Point, a student who knew he had to study constantly if he wished to prevail. He spent most of his free time in his room, which he shared with George Stoneman, later a Union major general of cavalry and governor of California in the 1880s. Tidball said that “in consequence of a somewhat shambling, awkward gait, and the habit of carrying his head down in a thoughtful attitude, he seemed less of stature than he really was. . . . Being an intense student, his mind appeared to be constantly pre-occupied, and he seldom spoke to anyone unless spoken to, and then his face lighted up blushingly, as that of a bashful person when complimented. . . . When a jocular remark occurred in his hearing he smiled as though he understood and enjoyed it, but never ventured comment to promote further mirth.”35
With rare exceptions, Jackson did not socialize with the other cadets or visit them in their rooms. Despite his eccentricities, he was not the victim of much hazing, except once in class when he was asked to go to the boards, and upon standing revealed that someone had chalked across his back, “General Jackson” in large letters.36 Jackson’s studies paid off. A year after he failed the entrance exam, he ranked 51st of 83 in his class, his worst showing (70th) being in French. A year later he had jumped up to 30th of 78, though he was in the Immortal section in drawing. He rose another ten spaces by the end of his third year, though he had not improved his skill at drawing, ranking third to last. This was balanced by his 11th place showing in philosophy. Jackson continued to improve his standing up to graduation, finishing 17th overall in the Class of 1846 and 5th in ethics, with his worst grades, like Grant’s, coming in infantry tactics.
James Longstreet, an Immortal of the Class of 1842 who graduated third from the foot, and who would later serve with Jackson and A. P. Hill as one of Robert E. Lee’s corps commanders, was another of those who used his intellectual gifts chiefly to make free time available for other pursuits. Longstreet was born in South Carolina. His mother moved to Alabama after his father died in a cholera epidemic, and he was appointed from that state by a relative, Congressman Reuben Chapman. “As cadet I had more interest in the school of the soldier, horsemanship, sword exercise, and the outside game of foot-ball than in the academic courses,” he later recalled.37 Longstreet managed to stay just above the line of deficiency until the January examination in his third year, when he failed mechanics for not being able to demonstrate pulleys. He had never really paid much attention to the lesson. “When I came to the problem of the pulleys, it seemed to my mind that a soldier could not find use for such appliances,” he explained, “and the pulleys were passed by.” He was given a few days to study before being reexamined, at which point he was quizzed over the entire mechanics curriculum and allowed to continue. But in the June exam he was again faced with the problem of the pulleys. “The professor thought that I had forgotten my old friend the enemy,” Longstreet wrote, “but I smiled, for he had become dear to me—in waking hours and in dreams.”38 He passed that part of his exam with a perfect score, but it did not rescue his overall academic standing that year; and he ranked in the bottom ten of the entire Corps in conduct.
It was nearly impossible to escape demerits. “Few men have tried harder than myself to avoid demerit,” Cadet Derby wrote, “yet some little act of carelessness would fix them upon me, in fact when the cadet officers seek a man doing his best or as it is called ‘boning conduct’ they instead of assisting him rather take pains to report him when possible, probably with the benevolent object of making him still more careful.”39 The cadet officers would “skin” their fellows just to show higher authorities that they were being attentive to their duties, and officers brought elastic interpretations to the regulations that made obeying the rules a largely subjective enterprise. Edmund Kirby Smith of the Class of 1845 (brother of Ephraim, the Goat of 1826), nicknamed “Seminole” since he came from Florida, complained in a letter to his mother, “If I obeyed the regulations to the letter, I should make a perfect anchorite of myself. The Professors—Superintendent, etc.—twist-turn & change them to suit their fancies & should not we poor devils evade them to meet our necessities?”40 Edmund fared better than his older brother academically, graduating 25th of 41. He would go on to fame as commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederacy, who did not lay down his arms until over a month after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.41 He died in 1893,