Jefferson Davis, American

by William J. Cooper

  On the morning of August 4, Cadet Davis addressed his judges. His defense comprised the classic ingredients for teenagers accused of serious offenses—ignorance or inapplicability of rules, admitting only what cannot possibly be denied, invoking technicalities, and rationalizing, all tempered by a plea for mercy. “It is with feelings of greatest embarrassment,” Davis began. He did not think it fair to be “tried by laws which with respect to my knowledge have just sprung into existence.…” But he hurried on, knowing that on the previous day the court had ruled against him on that very point. Next, he contended that though he had certainly left the post, “circumstances may perhaps in some degree justify the deed”—the heavy rain that flooded his tent.

  Acknowledging that he had previously pleaded guilty to visiting “a public house and place where liquors are sold,” Davis now wanted “to qualify” his admission. He told the court that the critical part of the regulation addressed whether a cadet visited such an establishment to buy liquor. Thus, merely going to a place did not alone constitute violation. “As no evidence has been produced to prove that we did procure or use spirituous liquor,” Davis denied that Benny Havens’s could be defined as a public house. After all, he noted, cadets could legally patronize other stores that had liquor for sale.

  Davis denied unequivocally that he had been drinking. He rightly pointed out that Captain Hitchcock had not observed him imbibing. Neither did any of his comrades testify against him; nor he against any of them. Called as a witness in the case of one of his companions, Davis had tried unsuccessfully to narrow the definition of spirituous liquor so as to exclude hard cider and porter. He stressed that he had seen no one drinking. On this point Davis may have been relying on a traditional cadet stratagem for escaping the incrimination of buddies. When a group gathered for drinking, they turned away from one another and faced the wall at the moment when cup met lips. Each of them could then always swear that he never saw anyone actually take a drink. His “embarrassed” behavior Davis attributed to his having been caught at Benny Havens’s, in his words, a situation “certainly enough to have confused any Cadet.” A forceful declaration followed: “I cannot believe that the Court would if previously acquainted with the circumstances have shown so little respect to my feelings as to have charged me (on such weak evidence) with conduct so contrary to principles of a soldier & a man of honor.”27

  In concluding his defense, the youthful Davis spoke with a sharply different accent in imploring the court to weigh a quite different matter. “I do trust,” Davis closed, “that the Court will bear in mind the maxim that it is better a hundred guilty escape than one righteous person be condemned, and on testimony so circumstantial shall confidentially look forward to an honorable acquittal.”

  Davis’s multifaceted argument did not persuade the court. On that very same day it found Jefferson and his colleagues guilty as charged and sentenced them “to be dismissed from the service of the United States.” Simultaneously the court “in consideration of his former good conduct recommend[ed] the remission of said sentence.” Superintendent Thayer accepted that verdict. Davis had survived, barely. He had his conduct as a dutiful plebe to thank for his continuing at West Point and becoming a third classman.

  The second incident took place a little over a year later, in August 1826. Once again the magnet of Benny Havens’s drew Davis into serious trouble, though not the official or judicial kind. Jefferson and a friend headed for their favorite watering hole “on a little frolic—of course without leave.” Word reached the tavern that an instructor was approaching. Leaving immediately to return to the Academy, Jefferson and his comrade took “a short cut to get back to barracks.” In his pell-mell march up the steep path toward the plain, Jefferson fell. He tumbled some sixty feet down to the riverbank. Luckily for him he grabbed a small tree which tempered “the force of his fall,” though it mangled a hand. Davis’s companion cried out: “Jeff, are you dead?” A suffering Davis remembered wanting to laugh but hurting too much to do so. Although no record detailing his injuries exists, they were obviously quite severe. He was carried as sick on all monthly returns from August through November. Davis himself later wrote that he spent four months in the hospital, where he “rarely saw any one even when it was thought I was about to die, then some of my friends were allowed to stay with me at night.”28

  Despite his having been away from the post without permission and his lengthy hospital stay, surviving records indicate that this time Jefferson escaped serious disciplinary and academic consequences. The records do not reveal whether or not he had been inebriated. Although Davis did poorly in his classes in the fall semester, no evidence connects that performance to his hospitalization. His grades had been falling since his plebe year. Still, Jefferson did end the year 1826 under arrest for yet another youthful caper, the Christmas eggnog riot of 1826, notorious in the annals of West Point.29

  Student tradition and Academy authority collided on Christmas Day, 1826. For a number of years cadets had been in the habit of holding drinking parties in the barracks before reveille on Christmas morning. Officers did not interfere with this practice, even though drinking by cadets was forbidden except when officially sanctioned. Authorization was given on rare occasions, especially for the Fourth of July, but on July 4, 1825, events got out of hand. At least Superintendent Thayer thought so. Intoxicated students organized a snake dance, hoisted Commandant Worth on their shoulders, and carried him to the barracks. As a result, Thayer banned all liquor, no exceptions. And the celebration on the Fourth of July, 1826, was dry. At the same time, of course, an unknown number of cadets surreptitiously continued to imbibe spirituous liquors.

  As Christmas 1826 drew near, some cadets, including Jefferson Davis, planned to celebrate in the customary way. Word got out that the holiday festivities would once again entail the Christmas morning drinking. Determined to prevent any such activity, Superintendent Thayer and Commandant Worth placed all tactical officers on duty on Christmas Eve night. They were to patrol the cadet area.

  Without question Davis was deeply involved in planning the event. He and two others were designated to obtain the alcohol. None other than Benny Havens supplied the essential liquid, two half-gallon jugs, which the cadets smuggled into North Barracks. Early on Christmas morning the participants planned to mix and drink eggnog in two designated rooms on the upper floors of North Barracks. Revelry began after midnight. To that point the tactical officers had not foiled the celebrants.

  But shortly after 4 a.m., authority intruded. In North Barracks, Captain Ethan Hitchcock, hearing “walking” and an “increase of noise,” marched toward the source and “observed a collection of cadets at No. 5.” When he entered the room, he discovered a group of carousers. At this point Cadet Jefferson Davis rushed in shouting—too late—“Put away the grog, Captain Hitchcock is coming.” Captain Hitchcock was already there, and he immediately placed Davis under arrest and ordered him to his room. Without responding, Davis complied.30

  That prompt compliance undoubtedly saved Davis’s West Point career. After his departure, pandemonium broke loose. Drunk cadets ran amuck. They abused officers; they reeled through the barracks shouting, some with swords, some with muskets, some with bayonets; one fired a musket; another threw a log at an officer. Finally reveille was sounded. Cadets poured out of the two barracks. The Christmas eggnog riot was over.

  Thayer directed Worth to head a full Court of Inquiry. Twenty-two cadets, including Davis, were under arrest; seventy others, one-third of the corps, were implicated. Thayer realized that he could not charge so many students: the institution probably could not have survived the shock. Finally, after careful scrutiny and deliberation, the superintendent decided that the nineteen cadets most deeply involved would go before a court-martial; fifty-three others would receive lesser punishments. All nineteen tried by court-martial were convicted and sentenced to be dismissed. Seven, however, were saved by the court’s recommendation of clemency. Thus, one dozen cadets involuntar
ily departed.

  Jefferson Davis amazingly escaped any punishment. Testimony at the trial established that he had been in on the affair from the beginning. Two cadets testified that he was or appeared to be drunk. Another swore that Davis offered him a drink. Davis’s claim six decades later that he was not drunk must rest on an interpretation of the word. Yet he never had to answer to that charge. In his only appearance before the court-martial, he was asked no questions about his involvement.31

  The documents do not explain Davis’s incredible good fortune. Clearly his instant, unquestioning obedience of Captain Hitchcock’s order was critical. Whether or not he was intoxicated, he completely missed the riot. Whether he passed out in his room or just had sense enough not to venture out will never be known. Davis’s absence from the scene when the really serious offenses took place made him a prime contender for removal from the court-martial list. After all, Thayer was searching for ways to excuse people. Whatever the particulars, on February 8, 1827, Davis was released from arrest.32

  Even though nothing else so serious as these three events occurred in Davis’s last year and a half, it is not at all surprising that he never achieved much military rank in the cadet corps. For the summer encampment held after Davis’s second year, he received an appointment as fourth sergeant of the First Company. In August 1826, he was named sergeant of the color guard. Then as a first classman he joined fifteen other cadets in a Hose Company designed to combat fires. None of these posts represented a significant leadership position.33

  Although Cadet Davis never achieved academic or military distinction, he obviously made friends. He was never alone in those risky escapades. At West Point and afterwards Davis spoke of “the set” with whom he associated. Composed mostly of southerners, it included Albert Sidney Johnston and Leonidas Polk, both in the class of 1826, and both of whom Jefferson admired as cadets and long afterward. He also would certainly have known two Virginians in the class behind him, Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston, though he was not close to either. Even in the last decade of his life Davis never forgot his old West Point companions, and he still corresponded with some of them.34

  Jefferson’s “set” may have tried to ameliorate their spartan cadet existence. In the only surviving letter from his four years at West Point, he asked his brother Joseph for money. Although he “fe[lt] a delicacy” in once again requesting money, Jefferson’s delicate feelings were insufficient to restrain him. Whether his cadet pay would suffice, Jefferson told Joseph, “depends entirely upon the company I keep.” “The Yankee part of the corps find their pay entirely sufficient some even more,” he disclosed. Revealing a bit of snobbery as well as sectional chauvinism, the plebe Jefferson remarked, “but these are not such as I formed an acquaintance with on my arrival.” Nor would he now “select” them as “associates.” Concluding, he adopted a haughty tone: “enough of this as you have never been connected with them, you cannot know how pittiful they generally are.” Whether Joseph sent Jefferson money on this or any other occasion is not known. Jefferson’s view of northerners did change by the time of his graduation, and later he praised the nationalizing effect of a West Point education.35

  Davis apparently never left West Point for any extended period during his four years. Thayer’s system provided for a furlough during the summer between the third class and the second class years, but no record mentions Davis taking any such leave. He was, however, granted a one-week leave in mid-July 1825, probably in connection with Joseph’s coming to the Academy. Joseph did travel north that summer, and his itinerary included West Point. He had as companions William B. and Margaret K. Howell of Natchez, future father-in-law and mother-in-law of Jefferson. All three appeared at West Point. Delighted to see his surrogate father, Jefferson ran to the landing and embraced Joseph. The young man’s “beautiful blue eyes and graceful strong figure” impressed Margaret Howell, who also spoke of “his open bright expression.”36

  Finally, the senior examinations came in June 1828. Cadet Jefferson Davis passed, though without distinction. Thayer’s scheme, in which class standing determined army branch, put Davis in the infantry. An order from the War Department dated July 14, 1828, appointed Davis as brevet second lieutenant in the infantry to rank from July 1.37

  Jefferson Davis never spoke favorably about any of his instructors at West Point. He only mentioned one, and that one quite negatively, though he gave no name. No comments from Davis on Sylvanus Thayer have survived, but it is most unlikely that he would have had much positive to say about the creator of a system he obviously disliked. Thayer, for his part, had no use for Davis. In 1855, when Davis was secretary of war, Thayer vented: “Neither [Davis] nor my opinion of him have changed since I knew him as a cadet. If I am not deceived, he intends to leave his mark in the Army & also at West Point & a black mark it will be I fear. He is a recreant and unnatural son, would have pleasure in giving his Alma Mater a kick & would disclaim her, if he could.”38

  In one fundamental sense Thayer was absolutely wrong. Although Jefferson Davis was never a prize cadet, he absolutely prized West Point. Its imprint never left him. His lifelong military bearing he acquired there. The friendships and the fond memories prompted by them never faded. In his public career as a congressman, a senator, and a cabinet officer, he steadfastly defended and supported his alma mater. In his mind West Point helped undergird the well-being of the nation. As secretary of war he wrote that “those who have received their education at West Point, taken as a body, are perhaps more free from purely sectional prejudices, and more national in their feelings than the same number of persons to be found elsewhere in our country.”39

  With his commission in hand the new second lieutenant received orders to report to the Infantry School of Practice at Jefferson Barracks in Missouri.40

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Ever Ready to Render My Best Services”

  Sometime after July 14, 1828, Brevet Second Lieutenant Jefferson Davis left West Point bound for Mississippi. Along with the other new infantry officers, he had been given leave until October 30. Davis had not been home for more than five years, since he began college in the spring of 1823. In all that time he saw a member of his family only once, when his brother Joseph visited West Point in 1825. Yet his journey southward was not a rapid one.

  From Lexington, Kentucky, in late August, Davis wrote his superiors for permission to extend his graduation leave. Informing the army that “the commencement of the sickly season” in Mississippi made him anxious about going that far south, he asked for an extension of his furlough until December 31. He buttressed his case with two additional reasons. “Unavoidably detained” in the North, he had not covered the distance he had expected. At the same time he told the army about his almost six-year absence from home. Whatever its particular reason, the army granted his request. The lack of urgency for new officers to report on active duty certainly contributed to the positive response Davis received.1

  Exactly when he reached Wilkinson County is not known. Undoubtedly he and his family experienced a happy reunion. Although no direct evidence reveals either activities or emotions among the Davises in the fall of 1828, family news and expressions of devotion filled the college letters between Jefferson and other Davises. From Transylvania, Jefferson told his sister to kiss her child for him. In his only remaining letter from West Point he mentioned four siblings and a niece. Moreover, when he wrote the army to have his leave extended, he made clear his desire to remain “some time with my relations.”2

  This homecoming and the year 1828 ended together. With his leave expiring, Lieutenant Davis departed for his first duty station, Jefferson Barracks, ten miles south of St. Louis, Missouri. As the site of the Infantry School of Practice, Jefferson Barracks served as a collection point for young officers. Davis’s new orders of December 31, 1828, had assigned him to the First Infantry Regiment, but still at Jefferson Barracks.3

  Upon his arrival at Jefferson Barracks, Lieutenant Davis confronted the sharp cont
rast between West Point and the army. As a well-trained graduate of the Military Academy, he reported to headquarters on January ll, 1829, in full uniform, but he found neither the colonel commanding nor the lieutenant colonel. The former was away on special duty; the latter was under arrest. The acting commander, a major, was not there either. To find him Davis was directed to the commissary. There, as Davis remembered, he came upon the major “alone, seated at a table with a pack of cards before him, intently occupied in a game of solitaire.” Responding to the lieutenant’s formal salute, the major “invited [Davis] to take a seat, and continued his game. After a few minutes the major looked up and inquired: ‘Young man, do you play solitaire? Finest game in the world! You can cheat as much as you please and have nobody to detect it.’ ”4

  In the next six and a half years Jefferson Davis would learn much about the United States Army. In 1830 the entire force totaled fewer than 6,000 men. Its mission focused on coastal defense and on protecting the advancing settlers from the Indians they were displacing. Most of the troops were scattered across the western frontier, chiefly along the length of the Mississippi River Valley, in isolated posts often populated by fewer than 100 soldiers and a handful of others. Quarrelsomeness, drinking, even violence became almost endemic in an officer corps that could anticipate no continuing military education, few chances for promotion, and limited social outlets. Resignations were common. “The profession of arms is a dull one in a time of peace …” wrote one of Davis’s commanders. This disenchanted officer continued, “I find More treachery and deception practised in the Army than I ever expected to find with a Body of Men who Call themselves Gentlemen.”5