“Boys will be boys,” the old saying goes, especially when they’re college boys, and doubly so when alcohol is involved. I tend to take a charitable view of such youthful indiscretions. A certain incident involving bourbon in my dorm room in February 1982 came within a whisker of ending my higher education three semesters shy of graduation. (The less said about that unfortunate affair, the better.)
Nearly 200 years ago, dozens of West Pointers got into holiday hot water, and some weren’t as fortunate as I was. This is the story of the Eggnog Riot of 1826.
The United States Military Academy was much smaller back then. The school’s 260 cadets, all males, studied under 36 faculty and staff and were supervised by a no-nonsense superintendent.
Col. Sylvanus Thayer had been brought in to bring discipline to the once-rowdy institution. But, in 1826, the cadets felt he went too far.
Thayer banned booze. Cadets couldn’t drink it, couldn’t possess it, and they surely couldn’t be found drunk on it. Violating the ban could mean expulsion.
For homesick cadets who were unable to make the long trip home for the holidays, it also meant no Christmas eggnog.
Back then, eggnog was far from the family-friendly drink you find in the grocery store this time of year. True, it was made of milk and eggs and all that “nog” stuff, but, in the 19th century, it usually had something extra: alcohol. A lot of alcohol. For instance, President George Washington’s personal eggnog recipe included rum, sherry, brandy, and whiskey — enough firewater firepower to blow up a building.
Rules or no rules, the cadets weren’t going to give up their cherished Yuletide treat.
The ringleader seems to have been Jefferson Davis — yes, the future Mexican War general, senator, secretary of war, and president of the Confederacy. Late on Christmas Eve, he led some classmates in sneaking off to nearby Benny Haven’s tavern. They returned with three or four gallons of hootch and quickly shared their holiday spirits with fellow cadets in the North Barracks.
Thayer had suspected the young men might try something that night. He told the two officers who stood watch to be extra vigilant. Yet things were so quiet, the pair went to bed at midnight.
They were awakened at 4 a.m. by loud noises upstairs. There, they found a party underway in one room. Then another in the room next to it. Then a third down the hall.
Soon, drunken cadets spilled into the hall, where they tried to attack the two officers. A full-fledged brawl broke out. It’s believed between 70 and 90 students participated. Windows were shattered, banisters and furniture broken, and, in an instant, the North Barracks was turned into Animal House.
The cadets were quite a sight when they turned out for roll call a few hours later. Those from the South Barracks (where nothing had happened) were well dressed and well rested. Half those from the North Barracks were hungover, looking like they had just come through a melee. Which they had.
West Point is run by the Army, so, of course, heads quickly rolled. There were courts-martial afterward, with 19 of the worst offenders expelled. Davis somehow beat the rap and escaped without punishment. One student, who was in the South Barracks at the time of the incident and had no involvement in it (although he later testified on behalf of several fellow cadets), was future Gen. Robert E. Lee.
The North Barracks was so badly trashed, it was eventually destroyed. The building that replaced it had several architectural features designed to discourage similar cadet hijinks.
Thayer remained the West Point superintendent until 1833, when he resigned after a dispute with President Andrew Jackson. He went on to head the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
And, for the rest of the 1800s, the eggnog drunk by West Point cadets every Christmas was so tame, you could have served it to a Sunday school teacher.
J. Mark Powell (@JMarkPowell) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is vice president of communications at Ivory Tusk Consulting, a South Carolina-based agency. A former broadcast journalist and government communicator, his “Holy Cow! History” column is available at jmarkpowell.com.
