Thursday, December 19, 2013

The Great West Point Egg Nog Riot of 1826

Oh, egg nog.  Please drink responsibly.  Oh, and look who was there for the egg nog riot: Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee.  Yes, THAT Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee!

1 comment:

Eric said...

That's classic West Point.
Famously strict as a military institution, but also famously rebellious in her cadets. It's made for a heritage of US Army officers who are dutiful but also bring a lot of moxie to the fight.

Counter-intuitively, the stricter the rules, the more rebellious the cadets. While USMA is still a pressure cooker, West Point has relaxed the rules with various compromises. The pressure doesn't build up like it used to. The corp has paradoxically been better behaved with less restrictions, although anarchic night-time spirit missions continue to be a regular feature of cadet life.

Upperclassmen also continue to get drunk off-post.

Within West Point, it's common knowledge that many top Confederates like Davis and Lee were West Pointers. The Civil War was fought between West Pointers, many of whom were friends and comrades-in-arms having served together in the Mexican War and at frontier outposts, or were classmates at West Point. The Confederacy itself finds no love at West Point, but the Confederacy's West Pointers are embraced as sons of West Point. GEN Lee, especially, is revered.