Last in Their Class. James Robbins
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record was impressively long, filling three and a half folio pages. He was mostly skinned for the kind of infractions one might expect from someone seeking to perfect the role of the Goat as bon vivant: lateness, inattention, wearing slippers at reveille, visiting, being caught out of barracks (a serious infraction, worth eight demerits), distracting sentinels at post and making boisterous noise, talking in ranks, and looking around, swinging arms or spitting on parade. Pickett’s disciplinary history was of a similar sort, exhibiting the familiar social behavior, and was only a quarter page shorter than his cousin’s. But Pickett was more daring in allowing points to accumulate, and in his final year he came within five demerits of expulsion.
Cadet Lewis Addison Armistead, a future brigade commander in Pickett’s division and a relative of Heth’s, was less careful. Armistead came to West Point the product of a distinguished military family. He was named after two uncles who had died in the War of 1812. His Uncle George had commanded Fort McHenry during that war and defended the original “Star-Spangled Banner” against the British. His father, Walker K. Armistead, was the third graduate of the Military Academy and a brevet brigadier general in 1833 when he secured his son a presidential appointment. Despite years of prep school, Armistead was not academically gifted. Sickness prevented his taking the January 1834 exam and he was forced to resign. He was reappointed later that year and in January 1835 barely scored high enough to remain. At the end of the year he ranked 52nd of 57 cadets and was turned back. He raised his grade significantly by January of 1836, coming in 31st of 59 cadets, but he ranked close to the bottom of his class in discipline. His best-known infraction came when he cracked a plate over Cadet Jubal Early’s head in the mess hall in the winter of 1836. “Old Jube,” a future division commander under Lee, was also a member of the Class of 1837, along with such Civil War notables as Joseph Hooker, John Sedgwick, John Pemberton, Braxton Bragg and William H. T. Walker, the Immortal who survived four musket balls at the Battle of Okeechobee.42 On January 17, 1836, Armistead was placed under arrest for “disorderly conduct in the mess hall.”43 He was held for twelve days, after which he tendered his resignation from West Point rather than face trial and possible dismissal. But Armistead did not give up his dream of following in his father’s footsteps. He was commissioned a lieutenant in 1839 and served the next three years in Florida, one year as his father’s aide. In the Mexican War he won three brevets for bravery, and he served with distinction in the Army of Northern Virginia until falling mortally wounded at Gettysburg, leading his brigade in the Angle during Pickett’s Charge.44
Some cadets prevailed against all odds to get through West Point. Randolph Ridgely, for example, a hero of the Mexican War, was a rare case of a cadet who went through three plebe years. He was a classmate of Armistead’s, appointed from Maryland. Ridgely was first admitted in 1830 when he was just under sixteen years old, and had accumulated 198 demerits by 1831 when the 200 limit was instituted. The seven cadets below him were expelled. Though saved by a hair in discipline, Ridgely was found academically deficient. He was readmitted in 1832, grappled fitfully with his studies, and was turned back at the end of the academic year to start a third time. He worked doggedly for the next four years and finally graduated 42nd of 50 in the Class of 1837, seven years after he first came to West Point.
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.