The Class of 1846

by John Waugh

  9. Cook, Family and Early Life, pp. 87–89.

  10. Samuel L. Hays to John G. Spencer, 17 June 1842, U.S. Military Academy, Cadet Application Papers, 1805–1866, U.S. Military Academy Archives, No. 162, 1842. The letter is also reprinted in Cook, Family and Early Life, p. 89, although under a different date, 19 June 1842.

  11. John Tyler, Jr.’s recollection is in Cook, Family and Early Life, p. 91. Some versions of Jackson’s appointment have Hays taking him personally to the secretary of war’s office, where Spencer gave the cadet-to-be some fatherly advice about how to conduct himself at West Point. For that version see Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 32; and Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, pp. 31–32.

  12. The price of the steamboat fare in 1842 is in Samuel H. Raymond to Joshua Raymond, 31 July 1842, Samuel H. Raymond Papers, U.S. Military Academy Library.

  13. Timothy Dwight, Travels in New England and New York, ed. Barbara Miller Solomon with the assistance of Patricia M. King, 4 vols. (1822; reprint, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1969), vol. 3, pp. 303–4, p. 313.

  14. Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel, 3 vols. (1838; reprint, New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), vol. 1, pp. 57–59.

  15. Charles Dickens, American Notes (1892; reprint, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), p. 199.

  16. George McClellan to his sister, Frederica English, 28 June 1842, George B. McClellan Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. All of McClellan’s letters cited throughout the book, unless otherwise noted, are to be found in series A, container 1, reel 1 (Al:1).

  17. Peter S. Michie, General McClellan (New York: D. Appleton, 1915), p. 7; Stephen W. Sears, George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1988), pp. 1–3.

  18. Dabney Herndon Maury, “General T. J. (‘Stonewall’) Jackson: Incidents in the Remarkable Career of the Great Soldier,” Southern Historical Society Papers 25 (1897), p. 311. In future citations, the title of these Papers will be shortened to SHSP.

  19. Dabney Herndon Maury, Recollections of a Virginian in the Mexican, Indian, and Civil Wars, 3d ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894), p. 22.

  20. William Dutton to C. Dutton, 19 June 1842, William Dutton Papers, U.S. Military Academy Library.

  21. John C. Tidball, “Getting through West Point by One Who Did,” typescript, John C. Tidball Papers, U.S. Military Academy Library. For an edited, published version of this sprightly account of life at West Point in the mid 1840s, see James L. Morrison, Jr., ed., “Getting through West Point: The Cadet Memoirs of John C. Tidball, Class of 1848,” Civil War History 26 (December 1980). The remark on provincialism is in Morrison, p. 308.

  22. Synonyms for the lowly are from Henry Heth, The Memoirs of Henry Heth, ed. James L. Morrison, Jr. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1974), p. xvii. Heth answered to all of these epithets as a plebe with the class of 1847. Also see Oliver E. Wood, The West Point Scrap Book: A Collection of Stories, Songs, and Legends of the United States Military Academy (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1871), p. 338.

  23. The number of appointees to the class varies from 133 to 164, depending on whom you read. The 122 figure is Cadet George Horatio Derby’s count of the actual number who had arrived by early July. See Derby to Mary Townsend Derby, 2 July 1842, George Horatio Derby Papers, U.S. Military Academy Library, box 7.

  24. Maury’s account of Jackson’s arrival is in “General T. J. (‘Stonewall’) Jackson,” pp. 309–10; and Recollections of a Virginian, pp. 22–23.

  25. Erasmus D. Keyes, Fifty Years’ Observation of Men and Events Civil and Military (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1884), p. 190.

  Sighing for What We Left Behind

  1. Derby to his mother, Mary Townsend Derby, 2 July 1842, Derby Papers. All of his letters to her from West Point are in box 7.

  2. See correspondence between John Quincy Adams and Mary Townsend Derby, Derby Papers, box 6; and U.S. Military Academy, Cadet Application Papers, No. 91, 1841.

  3. Derby to Walter Janes, 12 June 1842, Derby Papers, box 6. For a description of Kinsley’s Classical and Mathematical School see A Guide Book to West Point and Vicinity; containing descriptive, historical, and statistical sketches of the United States Military Academy, and other objects of interest (New York: J. H. Colton, 1844), pp. 42–47.

  4. The cadet physical examination is described in Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” p. 312; Derby to Mary Townsend Derby, 2 July 1842, Derby Papers; and William Montgomery Gardner, “The Memoirs of Brigadier-General William Montgomery Gardner,” ed. Elizabeth McKinne Gardner, typescript of a series of articles appearing in the Memphis Commercial Appeal in 1912, U.S. Military Academy Library, p. 5.

  5. Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” p. 312.

  6. Derby to Mary Townsend Derby, 2 July 1842, Derby Papers.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Stephen E. Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966), p. 103.

  9. Lloyd Lewis, Captain Sam Grant (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1950), p. 89.

  10. A list of successful candidates, with Jackson’s name at the very end, is in U.S. Military Academy, Staff Records, No. 3, 1842 to 1845, U.S. Military Academy Archives, pp. 51–53. William Montgomery Gardner, his classmate, says Jackson actually failed to pass, but was not sent home as many others were. “There must have been something about him which impressed the authorities.…” Gardner says. “For some reason he was permitted to occupy a room in the barracks during the summer while the cadet corps was in camp. In September he was again examined and passed.” The academic board’s records, however, list Jackson as qualifying in June. Gardner’s version is in his typescript “Memoirs,” p. 9.

  11. Derby to Mary Townsend Derby, 2 July 1842, Derby Papers.

  12. McClellan to Frederica English, 28 June 1842, McClellan Papers.

  13. Raymond to Mrs. Joshua Raymond, 12 June 1842, Raymond Papers.

  14. Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” p. 307. Also see Morrison’s “The Best School in the World”: West Point, the Pre-Civil War Years, 1833–1866 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1986), p. 65.

  15. Gardner, “Memoirs,” pp. 5–6.

  16. Dutton to C. Dutton, 19 June 1842, Dutton Papers.

  17. Raymond to David Raymond, 16 October 1842, Raymond Papers.

  18. “Rabid beast” is defined in Wood, The West Point Scrap Book, p. 338, as an impertinent plebe.

  19. Lowe’s brassy behavior is described in Gardner, “Memoirs,” p. 6.

  20. Raymond to David Raymond, 16 October 1842, Raymond Papers.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Raymond to Joshua Raymond, 30 September 1842, Raymond Papers.

  23. Dutton to John W. Matthews, 31 July 1842, Dutton Papers.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Derby to Mary Townsend Derby, 8 August 1842, Derby Papers.

  26. Hill to Frances Russell Hill, 3 April 1843. Hill Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond.

  27. Dutton to John W. Matthews, 20 September 1842, Dutton Papers.

  28. Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” p. 310.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Maury, Recollections of a Virginian, p. 25.

  31. Dutton to C. Dutton, 19 June 1842, Dutton Papers.

  32. Derby to Mary Townsend Derby, 2 July 1842, Derby Papers.

  33. Raymond to Mrs. Joshua Raymond, 12 June 1842, and to Joshua Raymond, 31 July 1842, Raymond Papers.

  34. William Whitman Bailey, “My Boyhood at West Point,” Personal Narratives of Events in the War of the Rebellion, 4th ser, no. 12 (Providence: Rhode Island Soldiers and Sailors Historical Society, 1891), pp. 10–13.

  35. The Pompeii image is a direct steal from the O. Henry short story “Schools and Schools,” in The Complete Works of O. Henry, 2 vols. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1953), vol. 1, p. 712.

  36. Derby recounts these nighttime shenanigans in a newsy letter to Mary Townsend Derby,
2 July 1842, Derby Papers.

  37. Ibid.; Dutton to John W. Matthews, 12 July 1842, Dutton Papers.

  38. Dutton to John W. Matthews, 12 and 31 July 1842, Dutton Papers.

  39. George W. Cullum to Alfred Huidekoper, 30 July 1832, Sidney Forman, Cadet Life before the Mexican War, Bulletin No. 1 (West Point: U.S. Military Academy Library, 1945), p. 11.

  40. Derby to Mary Townsend Derby, 2 July 1842, Derby Papers. There is a brief description of the nightly summertime “stag dances” in A Guide to West Point and Vicinity, pp. 17–18.

  41. Dutton to John W. Matthews, 12 July 1842, Dutton Papers.

  42. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 35.

  43. Maury’s second frustrated overture to Jackson is in “General T. J. (‘Stonewall’) Jackson,” p. 310. For a word about the police detail see Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” p. 313.

  44. A few representative euphemisms for the examinations are to be found in Forman, Cadet Life before the Mexican War, p. 17.

  45. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, pp. 33–34.

  46. Fort Putnam and the view it commanded are described in A Guide Book to West Point and Vicinity, pp. 35–40. The note on the foundry is from Thomas J. Fleming, West Point: The Men and Times of the United States Military Academy (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1969), p. 66. Jackson’s love for Old Put is in Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 39.

  47. Jackson’s maxims, which would have made a saint—or a monk—of anybody, are listed in full in Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, pp. 35–38.

  As Intelligible as Sanskrit

  1. McClellan to Frederica English, 10 September 1842, McClellan Papers.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Raymond to Joshua Raymond, 2 September 1842, Raymond Papers.

  4. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, 2 vols. (1894; reprint [2 vols. in 1], New York: AMS Press, 1972), p. 27.

  5. Morris Schaff, The Spirit of Old West Point, 1858–1862 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1907), pp. 60–61.

  6. McClellan to Frederica English, 10 September 1842, McClellan Papers; Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” p. 315.

  7. McClellan recreates Thomas’s pep talk in the letter to Frederica English, 10 September 1842, McClellan Papers.

  8. Derby to Mary Townsend Derby, 8 August 1842, Derby Papers.

  9. Wood, The West Point Scrap Book, p. 338.

  10. Raymond to Joshua Raymond, 2 September 1842, Raymond Papers.

  11. Dutton copied off the posted order of things, not precisely in that language, in a letter to his cousin and sweetheart, Lucy J. Matthews, 18 February 1843, Dutton Papers.

  12. Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” p. 307.

  13. The Academy building is described in A Guide Book to West Point and Vicinity, pp. 12–13, pp. 26–29.

  14. Maury, “General T. J. (‘Stonewall’) Jackson,” p. 311.

  15. Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” p. 322, p. 308.

  16. Maury, Recollections of a Virginian, p. 60.

  17. Morrison, “The Best School in the World,” p. 87. Derby uses the phrase “perfect rag” in letters to Mary Townsend Derby. For example, the letter of 5 January 1844, Derby Papers. There were several ways to describe a perfect recitation, all of them rolling fondly off the tongue. For instance: “to max it,” “to make a cold max,” and “to rag out”—the last also meaning to dress well, which was also important to Derby, who was something of a dandy. See Wood, The West Point Scrap Book, p. 339.

  18. Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” p. 320.

  19. Derby to Mary Townsend Derby, 3 October 1842, Derby Papers.

  20. Morrison, “The Best School in the World,” p. 91, p. 101.

  21. Schaff, The Spirit of Old West Point, p. 68.

  22. George W. Cullum, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy … from its Establishment, in 1802, to 1890, 3 vols. with Supplements, 3d ed. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1891), vol. 1, pp. 404–5.

  23. Richard Henry Savage, “Literature and Art at West Point,” Army and Navy Journal, 39 (14 June 1902), p. 1025.

  24. Schaff, The, Spirit of Old West Point, p. 68.

  25. Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” p. 316.

  26. Keyes, Fifty Years’ Observation of Men and Events, pp. 195–96.

  27. Morrison, “The Best School in the World,” p. 52.

  28. Sylvanus Thayer to George Graham, 28 August 1817, Sylvanus Thayer Papers, U.S. Military Academy Library.

  29. Cullum, Biographical Register, vol. 1, pp. 36–37.

  30. Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” p. 317.

  31. Raymond describes the recitation procedure in a letter to his brother, Josiah Raymond, 1 October 1842, Raymond Papers.

  32. Wood, The West Point Scrap Book, p. 337.

  33. Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” pp. 316–17.

  34. Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, pp. 33–34.

  35. Important orders, messages, disciplinary actions and sometimes philosophical discourses, were communicated to the cadets in the daily Post Orders, a handwritten ledger containing a running account of the main events of the day. For the order to change uniforms see U.S. Military Academy, Post Orders, No. 2, 1 June 1842 to 22 June 1846, U.S. Military Academy Archives, p. 34. Hereafter this source will be cited simply as Post Orders.

  36. Raymond to Josiah Raymond, 16 October 1842, Raymond Papers.

  37. Raymond to Josiah Raymond, 1 October 1842, Raymond Papers; Dutton to John W. Matthews, 20 September and 19 October 1842, Dutton Papers.

  38. John Tidball describes the drums in Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” p. 307, p. 310.

  39. Ibid., p. 318.

  40. The complete list of disciplinary rules is in U.S. Military Academy, Regulations Established for the Organization and Government of the Military Academy (New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1839), pp. 31–36, pp. 40–43.

  41. Dutton to John W. Matthews, 20 September 1842, Dutton Papers.

  42. Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” p. 318.

  43. John Adams to Cave Gouts, 19 January 1845, John Adams Letters, 1844–1845, Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, CA.

  44. Post Orders, p. 48, p. 54, p. 60.

  45. Hashmaking is vividly described in Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” pp. 317–18; and in Raymond to Josiah Raymond, 1 October 1842, Raymond Papers.

  46. Lewis, Captain Sam Grant, p. 70.

  47. Mahan to Joel Poinsett, 20 September 1838, in Morrison, “The Best School in the World,” p. 42.

  48. Schaff, The Spirit of Old West Point, p. 37.

  49. Percy Gatling Hamlin, ed., The Making of a Soldier: Letters of General R. S. Ewell (1935; reprint, Gaithersburg, MD: Ron R. Van Sickle Military Books, 1988), p. 32.

  50. Keyes, Fifty Years’ Observation of Men and Events, p. 193.

  51. Post Orders, p. 17; U.S. Military Academy, Regulations, p. 62.

  52. Delafield is described in Morrison, “The Best School in the World,” p. 38, pp. 40–43; Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country, p. 126; and Cullum, Biographical Register, vol. 1, pp. 180–86.

  53. McClellan to Frederica English, 18 January 1843, McClellan Papers.

  54. Post Orders, p. 52.

  Oh, for the Sight of Our Native Land

  1. The description of Jackson in 1843 is a composite drawn from Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” pp. 315–16; Gardner, “Memoirs,” p. 9; and Thomas Jackson Arnold, Early Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson (1916; reprint, Richmond, VA: Dietz Press, 1957), p. 76.

  2. Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, p. 20, p. 37.

  3. Tidball, “Getting through West Point by One Who Did,” typescript, Tidball Papers.

  4. G.F.R. Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War, 2 vols. (1936; reprint, Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey Press, n.d.), vol. 1, p. 20.

  5. Maury, Recollections
of a Virginian, p. 23; George B. McClellan, Jr. “Reminiscences of Geo. B. McClellan and ‘Stonewall’ Jackson,” Blue and Gray 1 (1893), p. 29.

  6. John Russell Young, Around the World with General Grant: A Narrative of the Visit of General U. S. Grant, Ex-President of the United States, to Various Countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa, in 1877, 1878, 1879, 2 vols. (New York: American News Company, 1879), vol. 2, p. 210.

  7. Tidball and Gardner shared this assessment of Jackson. See Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” p. 315; and Gardner, “Memoirs,” pp. 8–9.

  8. Raymond to Mrs. Joshua Raymond, 12 January 1843, Raymond Papers.

  9. U.S. Military Academy, Staff Records, pp. 121–22.

  10. McClellan to Frederica English, 18 January 1843, McClellan Papers.

  11. McClellan to John McClellan, 21 January 1843, McClellan Papers.

  12. Dutton to Lucy J. Matthews, 18 February 1843, Dutton Papers.

  13. Post Orders, p. 66.

  14. McClellan to Frederica English, 18 January, and to John McClellan, 21 January 1843, McClellan Papers.

  15. Raymond to Mary Raymond, 22 February 1843, Raymond Papers.

  16. Quoted in Kenneth W. Rapp, West Point: Whistler in Cadet Gray, and Other Stories about the United States Military Academy (Croton-on-Hudson, NY: North River Press, 1978), p. 101.

  17. Albert E. Church, Personal Reminiscences of the Military Academy, from 1824 to 1831 (West Point: U.S.M.A. Press, 1879), p. 19.

  18. Gardner, “Memoirs,” p. 8.

  19. Reprinted in Forman, Cadet Life before the Mexican War, 1. Except as otherwise cited, the material on Benny Havens and his tavern is from Robert J. Wood, “Early Days of Benny Havens,” The Pointer 14 (26 February 1937), pp. 6–13, p. 29.

  20. Hill to Frances Russell Hill, 3 April 1843, Hill Family Papers.

  21. Raymond to Mrs. Joshua Raymond, 19 May 1843, Raymond Papers.

  22. U.S. Military Academy, Regulations, p. 7.

  23. Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” p. 311.

  24. Schaff, The Spirit of Old West Point, p. 51.

  25. Dutton to Lucy J. Matthews, 23 June 1843, Dutton Papers.