Last in Their Class. James Robbins
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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