Last in Their Class. James Robbins
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denied those who were not so gifted. “For one to succeed here,” he wrote on Christmas Day of 1851, “all that is required is an ordinary mind and application; the latter is by far the most important and desirable of the two. For men of rather obtuse intellect, by indomitable perseverance, have been known to graduate with honor; while some of the greatest geniuses of the country have been found deficient, for want of application, Edgar A. Poe for instance.”1
Poe could have excelled academically at West Point if he had cared to, but he was not interested in adopting the Academy’s monastic way of life and was forced to leave after half a year. James McNeill Whistler, another great American artist and a second-generation West Pointer, made it until his third year before washing out. Both were of a different type than Warner, intelligent and talented cadets to whom grades and class rank were less important than pranks, socializing and other pursuits. The 1909 Howitzer yearbook, for example, defined the Goat as “a man who would have stood first if he had boned” (i.e., studied). George C. Strong, USMA 1857, who graduated fifth in his class, said, “It is a favorite idea among many here that it requires an abler man to stand at the foot of his class throughout the course than at the head of it.” The Goat will study only enough to get by day to day, and then before exams will spend “one or two days or nights of intense application,” cramming just enough to ensure success. Strong added, “these are some of the symptoms of that epidemic which is called Genius.”
These were men like George Custer, George Pickett and Henry Heth, who might well have excelled at their studies had the pursuit of knowledge been more compelling than the lure of good times. They and their comrades lived on the edge, seeking new and inventive ways of skirting the rules, and rising to the occasion only when the situation absolutely demanded it. They were cut from the same cloth as Cadet William A. Beach of Indiana, of the Class of 1910, whom the Howitzer described as “an ‘Immortal’ of the old school; he is a goat from choice to be sure, and never bones because he thinks it is vulgar to work. . . . Many of his ‘goaty’ companions have had grave fear for his welfare during exams, but on such occasions his true immortal characteristics loom up and he passes the cleanest exam in the class.”2
The term “the Immortals” originated in the early nineteenth century and referred to any cadets in the lowest academic section. Brigadier General John C. Tidball, USMA 1848, who was Commandant of Cadets in 1864, noted that the Immortal section “contains those who are hanging on at the ragged edge of deficiency.” The derivation of the term is obscure; it may rest with Herodotus, who wrote of a 10,000-man bodyguard of the ancient Persian kings called the Immortals because their numbers never diminished. Likewise, the number in the last section was constant; when those at the bottom failed, those who remained at the tail end of the class became the new last section.
Goats and Immortals were originally synonymous, referring to anyone close to the bottom of the academic rankings.3 Like “the Immortals,” there is no known record of the origin of the term “the Goat,” but it is most likely a later invention. The earliest written reference is in the booklet for the Hundredth Night entertainment of February 20, 1886, a celebration traditionally held one hundred days before graduation. One of the jokes reads, “What feature of the instructor of the Immortals in Spanish resembles his section? His beard; it is a goatee, and so is his section.” Thus while George Custer and George Pickett are the most famous “Last Men” in the history of the Academy, it is unlikely they were ever referred to as Goats while they were cadets.
The term “goat” connotes many things—stubbornness, persistence, but also mischievousness and playfulness. The Goats were by and large charismatic, adventuresome, with a youthful bonhomie that generally made them very popular with their classmates. “Goat” is also slang for someone who fails at an important task or takes blame, especially in the context of “scapegoat.” In Biblical times, the scapegoat was brought to the door of the tabernacle, where a high priest would place his hands upon it and lay the sins of the people on the animal. The goat would then be banished to the wilderness—as the majority of nineteenth-century cadets were, particularly the lower-ranking graduates. A more pointed Biblical reference is in Matthew 25, which tells that God will separate the righteous from the unrighteous “as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.” The former are granted life eternal; the latter “go away into everlasting punishment.” The expression “to play the goat” referred to someone who acted silly in order to make others laugh, and the goat was also a classical symbol of lust and excess. Both fit the pattern, since the Goats of West Point have always been noted both for frivolity and for their way with the opposite sex.4
While intellect alone did not determine class rank, neither did ranking at graduation determine career success. Poring through the academic records and biographies of Academy graduates, one finds that class rank is not a certain predictor of achievement; that the crucible of West Point produced men of many and varied abilities, which were then tested in the arena of life, always at the whim of luck and circumstance. West Point Superintendent Major General Thomas H. Barry, in his address to the graduating Class of 1912, said, “You all begin on a fair field. You change the sleeve stripe for the chevron. The race begins, and the goats will continue to plug along, and they will put some of the stars off the track, and in doing so they have for some reason or other, more or less of my personal sympathy.” Barry had graduated in the middle of the Class of 1877 and was awarded the Silver Star in the Spanish–American War. The only Medal of Honor recipient in his class was Matthias W. Day, who showed distinction fighting the Apaches in 1879 and ranked 70th of 76 cadets.5 Powhatan Clarke, the Goat of 1884, received the Medal of Honor for saving a wounded soldier under fire during the Geronimo campaign—the only Last Man to date so honored.
The tension between the qualities that made for a good cadet as opposed to a good officer were reflected in the way branch assignments were allocated. The top Academy graduates were selected for the most elite branches, the Topographical Engineers and Engineers, and the next tier went into the demanding technical branches of Artillery and Ordnance. Infantry officers came from the middle of each class, while the bottom were made horse soldiers: Dragoons, Cavalry and Mounted Riflemen. Thus the worse one performed at West Point, the more likely one would be assigned to the combat arms. Those who graduated at the top received plaudits, a star by their name, the respect of the faculty and the institution. But those at the bottom were also part of the Long Gray Line; they were entitled to wear the class ring and would be commissioned as officers. They brought to the experience their own special talents, whether innovation, doggedness or bravado. They struggled, adapted and overcame, often showing remarkable courage. The same spirit of adventure that led Custer to sneak out of the barracks in the middle of the night to engage in off-post revelries motivated his dramatic cavalry attacks in the Civil War and afterward. It was the same bravery in the face of adversity that sent George Pickett storming the battlements of the Mexican fortress of Chapultepec and riding confidently across the field at Gettysburg into the teeth of the Union guns.
Telling the story of the Goats is necessarily telling West Point’s story—the history of the Academy that shaped them as young men, of the values they learned and the friendships they made that influenced them for the rest of their lives. It is a glimpse of the less-known side of West Point, of the mischief, the fraternization and other unofficial activities at which the Goats excelled. Some of these events, notorious in their day, are now revered as folklore exemplifying the Academy’s golden age.
This is also the story of the Army that the Goats served in as officers, both in war and in peace. These nineteenth-century Goats tell us something about the soul of the American solider, his daring, imagination and spirit. The Goats went everywhere the Army went, fought in all its battles, and occasionally changed the course of history. Above all, it is the story of the men themselves, their character, their fate—who they were, what they aspired to, and what they achieved. It is about Goats such as Custer, Pickett, Henry Heth, Charles N. Warner, Laurence Simmons Baker and James M. McIntosh, who all challenged fate on the battlefields of the Civil War; or Zeb Inge and Ephraim Kirby Smith, who found glory in Mexico; Immortals such as James Longstreet, Philip Sheridan, Fitzhugh Lee and Winfield Scott Hancock; washouts like Poe, Whistler and Lewis Armistead; and the men who helped shape their lives, such as Sylvanus Thayer, the father of the Military Academy, and legendary saloonkeeper Benny Havens. We see them as