March 27, 2018 • 41 mins
Today the United States Military Academy at West Point is known as one the country's top-notch training institutions, but back in 1826 it was home to a night of pure egg-nog-fueled pandemonium. Join Ben and Noel as they retrace the drunken, crazed steps of cooped-up cadets who decided to fight the power one Christmas.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
One quart cream, one quart milk, one dozen tablespoons sugar,
one pinte brandy, one half pint rye whiskey, one half
pint Jamaica rum, one fourth pint sherry. Mixed liquor first,
then separate yolks and whites of eggs. Add sugar to
beaten yolks. Mix well. Add milk and cream, slowly beating.
(00:48):
Beat whites of eggs until stiff, and fold slowly into mixture.
Let's set in cool place for several days. Taste frequently.
That is a recipe for eggnog by none other than
George Washington. I only assumed that it was a James
Bond villain z eggnog recipe. Yeah, funny, funny story. All
(01:11):
James Bond villains are based on George Washington accent wise. Hey, everybody,
welcome to the show. I'm ben that's that famous Mountain
vernon accent I've heard so much about. Right, I'm no,
It's is ridiculous history. And we started off with a
really functional little nugget there that was nice. Yeah, that's
a that's a recipe that is is genuinely believed to
be George Washington's eggnog recipe. But there's one very important
(01:36):
missing part of this recipe. Did you catch it? He
doesn't say how many eggs should be in there. And
you'll see a lot of versions of this recipe wherein
someone has assumed, like based on the ratio of other ingredients,
that it would be about a dozen eggs. But he
didn't actually say that. What's the batch? What's what's the
(01:57):
yield on this recipe? Well, I guess that's up to
how much you like eggnog man? I guess? So what
doesn't the recipe typically uh include number of surveys? It
was a very different time. This wasn't this wasn't from
Tasty right, This wasn't Taste Made Curious Good Eats or anything. Yeah,
what's funny you should mention um Washington's nog because our
(02:19):
coworker and pal, Alex Williams, who composed our theme around
the holidays, he made a big old batch of Washington's
nog um and distributed around the office and these delightful
little Mason jars um. I was lucky enough to get
my hands on one, and it packed quite a wallop
because a big thing leading up to doing this episode
is how could you possibly get off your tits trunk
(02:40):
on eggnog, right right, because nowadays we typically associate eggnog
as this very seasonally base, cozy drink like you sip
it by a fire. It's a comfort drink. It's a
comfort drink. Dug in drink form. Yeah, Yeah, it's a
it's a it's a slightly boozy uh att a boy
(03:01):
for you around the holidays. But if you as you
can tell from the recipe, we started the show with. Uh.
Eggnog back in the day used to pack quite a punch.
This was after uh it evolved from a much older
drink known as posset Yeah, which was also known as
a milk punch, which sounds disgusting so bad. It's there's
(03:24):
something in and and please uh listeners, friends and neighbors. UH,
say hello to our super producer Casey Pegram. There's something
that I heard of before. They've never tried, but I
want to learn about. It was called milk salad. Does
that not sound disgusting? Really bad? It makes me think
of our jello episode, right, We got some great emails
(03:48):
about that today. And this this beginning, folks, may make
you think that my co host and I are delving
into the history of eggnog, and we we do just
a little bit, but it's to set the scene for
a ridiculous event and we thought this would be the
yummiest weird displaced to start. Yeah. Well, first I just
(04:10):
want to describe what posset is. We talked about milk
punch and the precursor um or the the spiritual cousin
the predates eggnog called posset. That was a hot milk
punch uh using curdled milk and it was curdled with
wine or beer or I guess you get curdles when
you heat it. And then eventually it was thickened with
(04:32):
eggs and kind of became more what we know today
as traditional egg nog. But our story is really about
a riot involving drunken cadets. I'm gonna go with quote
unquote riot on this wouldnell really okay? At what at
what threshold does fracas or brew haha become full on riot?
(04:57):
It's true. I was going to open the show with
a joke about how many eighteen hundreds uh West Point
cadets does it take to assault to officers and break
all of the China, And when we know the answer
we'll get to that. We'll get to that. So let's
talk a little bit about West Point in general. West
(05:19):
Point remains famous today. It is a storied institution here
in the United States. It is named west Point because,
in a stunning plot twist, it is located in West Point,
New York. Yeah, it's about fifty miles outside of New
York City. And storied it was. However, it didn't used
to be the model of discipline um and steadfastness fastidiousness
(05:44):
that it is today because in the early days of
the school, it was ridiculously easy to get in and
that they let anyone in right um and you could
could join anytime during the year, and it was just
kind of a loose grouping of ramshackled little huts um.
And I think it was about ten cadets that were
(06:06):
taught by I think only three teachers, you know. But
then a little thing called the War of eighteen twelve happened,
which was you know, against Britain, because the Brits were
attempting to restrict trade, uh and they kept arresting American seamen,
which is not cool, as we know, and also inciting
Indian attacks on the U S frontiers. So that aggression
(06:28):
would not stand, my friends, so we decided to go
to war with the Brits. And that also led to
a need for disciplined soldiers, right disciplined, professional, competent soldiers.
And there's a character here in the evolution of West
Point that we must absolutely mention, if only because he
(06:50):
has an awesome name. It's like a dumbledorey and awesome name.
Sylvanus Fair, Ladies and gentlemen. In eighteen seventeen, then President
Ames Monroe ordered Fair to become the superintendent of the
Military Academy after the resignation of the former superintendent, Alden Partridge.
(07:11):
And so pretty cool name also yeah, by his own right,
not not Harry potteresque, but cool nonetheless and accidentally rhymed.
Under Fair's leadership, the Academy began to make incredibly impressive
leaps and bounds in terms of discipline, in terms of
quality of education. It became the nation's first college of Engineering. Well.
(07:36):
Fair didn't take no guff, my friend, Um, he didn't
put up with any horseplay, Shenanigan's or buffoonery, especially when
it pertained to consuming or um even possessing alcohol of
any kind. Right, alcohol could not be possessed, sold, or
(07:57):
brought into West Point at all. And this was just
another part of his overall very strict regime. For instance,
he kept the students on a diet of beef, bread,
and water to accustom them to military rations. Their days
were strictly controlled as far as the way their time
(08:20):
was organized, and they had a lot of pressure on them.
So imagine these students like springs that are increasingly compressed,
storing up more energy and tension. Yeah, they weren't even
allowed these some of these rules there, I don't understand.
They weren't allowed to leave campus. I guess I can
get that because if you leave campus you can get booze.
I guess that's in the bud um. Also, they couldn't
(08:44):
cook in their dorms or duel, right right, Just this
seems related. I made a note in the margins here
in this, uh, this article from the Smithsonian egg Nog.
It's all fun and games until someone starts a holiday riot,
it said before their West Point sucked or was awesome whatever. Yeah,
that's uh, that's by Natasha Galing. And yeah, this article
(09:04):
is very well written, and I noticed some of the
same rules you're talking about here. And to me, the
dueling one makes a lot of sense because you imagine,
you know, they're in a homogeneous population, right, this was
this was strictly segregated. But for the time it's it
started to become relatively progressive because it was important for
(09:28):
kids from a lower income level, right, or a lower
socioeconomic bracket to receive the same caliber of education if
they were qualified for it. But with all the discipline
in the harsh environment, I can easily imagine that if
duels were allowed, these kids would be punching each other
(09:49):
up and pulling cards left and right. Yeah, fisticuffs and
gun battles galore. Um. It's interesting because even though alcohol
was for beden at West Point, it was surrounded by
normal things that you have in towns, like like pubs,
and there were a couple. There was one called Benny
Haven and then another one called North Tavern, and those
(10:11):
will come into play in a little bit. But Benny
Haven Um is also known for being the main hangout
for Edgar Allan Poe when he attended West Point UM.
Admittedly not for a very long time because he you know,
mainly just hung out and got sloshed the whole time,
but there was a history of getting slashed at West
(10:32):
Point before our pal Thayer came in in the days
before his iron fisted grip tightened around these cadets and
tried to whip those boys into shape. They had a
yearly kind of revelry kind of thing going on around
the holidays, didn't they. Right, this is important. It may
seem strange to day, but in the past, in those days,
(10:53):
heavy drinking was or drinking in general was more common.
It was something that was normal for people to do.
You'll also hear some stories about early founding fathers uh
and influential historical figures being several mattress factory amounts of
sheets to the wind and Uh. We're establishing this because
(11:17):
when Thayer came in, he wasn't creating out of whole
cloth the strict set of rules. He was reacting to
what he saw his laxity in the past, and people, students,
officers alike were well aware of the previous traditions. When
you mentioned historical figures and founding fathers. One a couple
(11:37):
that are part of the story are our boy Jeff
Davis Jefferson for Long and Uh Robert E. Lee were
both involved in this tale of debauchery and chastisement. Yes, okay,
so here's here's how it happens. Up until eighteen twenty five,
cadets alcohol was still banned, but there were two days
(12:00):
a year that they could drink. That was the fourth
of July. Makes sense, go us right, live it up.
And then of course Christmas. And then this changed because
on the fourth of July e five a a bunch
of cadets drinking led to a snake dance, which led
(12:24):
to the hoisting of the school's commandant onto the students shoulders,
and Thayer said, you know what, this is too much
a snake dance. Snake dance like, is that some kind
of is it a congo line? Is it a bunch
of people just sort of slithering up and down it.
They didn't like it because it just wasn't dignified. You know.
(12:45):
It makes me think of remember when we did the
episode about the poison Squad when Wiley got booted from
his professorship for riding a bike. So maybe it was
just the idea that this was such a lack of
discipline for them to put someone on their shoulders that
he said no alcohol. Ever, well, yeah, I did say
(13:07):
he was he was not fond of horsing around. That
sounds like the very definition of horsing around, making around.
So Ben just want to get this straight. So yeah,
he still allowed this revelry at first and then shut
it down after one of these went awry by his standards. Yeah,
eighteen six onward. No alcohol, not once, never, not a drop?
(13:28):
Was he a teetotal? Do you think or do you
think he would get in his cups? Privately? He seems
like a pretty straight shooter. He seems like a straight shooter.
But you know, you have to wonder if he applied
those same rules to himself. Do as I say, not
as I'm get hammered, right right right? Uh? Drink as
I say, not as I drink. And you know, I
(13:48):
love that you mentioned these taverns because they didn't magically
disappear after And Benny Haven is the really interesting one
there because of those two brains we mentioned earlier, Benny
Haven was the only one that allowed a barter system
for the students. I know, this is really interesting, so
they could like trade shoes and and pantaloons and you know,
(14:12):
maybe potatoes, who know anything? I guess was that was
on the table, except if it came from the school, right,
No uniform, because that would be that would be stealing.
And they do not want to get on the bad
side of Colonel Fair. No, certainly do not, right right,
And it sounds like a tough customer, that Colonel Fair. Yeah,
people took him seriously. But you also have to wonder
(14:34):
would you barter stuff for booze? Yes, you would if
I didn't have any pocket money, if you didn't have
a thirty five cents on hand, which will come into
play later. Okay, yeah, No, I don't know. I mean,
I wouldn't barter away on the clothes on my back,
But if I had something of value that I could
part with and I wanted a nice stiff drink, I'm
not opposed to that. So when judging me, are you
(14:56):
silently judging me? Ben? No? No, no, no, I'm I'm
judging myself fair enough, me too, Ben. You're great. You
know what we're together, We're a solid eight out of ten.
And uh you know we can never compare to Casey pegrum,
which is not not a bad thing. None can If
you can a few, very few between the two of us,
we practically make a whole person. We're getting there for sure.
(15:19):
So no, this situation is unsustainable to the students, right
to the cadets. The afore mentioned winding spring ready to pop.
So this all comes to a head when Christmas Eve
(15:39):
of eighteen six rolls around again. That's one of the
two days the cadets are allowed to drink to imbibe,
and this is the first time they can't. And you know,
no one likes it when you tell them they can't
do something. Tell me what I can't do, Ben, Yeah,
don't tell me what I can't do. I will automatically
(16:00):
go do it. Reverse psychology is real, it's dangerous, and
people know it works. But clearly fair that was not
his style. He was much more of a prohibitor than
a than a mind manipulator, a mind wrangler exactly. Um.
So you know these cadets on Christmas Eve of about
seventy of them as it turns out, which I think
(16:21):
was somewhere in the neighborhood of a third of the
student body of of West point Um, decided to hatch
a little plot where they were going to go against
old Colonel Thayer's wishes and get themselves some boozy eggnog, Right,
so they decided that they would go off campus and
(16:46):
go to the place they knew that was going to
be the friendliest evern, which was of course benny Haveny Haven.
Maybe they brought some some extra pairs of socks with
which to barter. However, Benny Haven proved without us remarking
on the socks or the pantaloons or whatever they brought
with them, doesn't matter, right, Benny Haven's was too expensive
(17:08):
to step. Yeah, they could buy a little bit of liquor,
but not as much as they wanted, So they had
to go to Plan B. They wanted to get ripped
and drunk. Oh, we should call it Plan H. I
like it because why because they crossed the Hudson River exactly.
That's the very very good foreshadow in there Bend. So yes,
they did in fact cross the Hudson River. I imagine
on some sort of sloop, perhaps a barge, some sort
(17:30):
of would they maybe surely they had vessels at the disposal, Right,
it's a military academy. What do you think, what do
you picture them crossing on? One would imagine they wouldn't
swim because of the weather. Yeah, it'd be cold, so
they were probably on you know, a small boat or something.
Maybe they just rode across. I like it. I like it.
I'm just trying to set the scene as all. You know.
(17:50):
So this is under the cover of night, no doubt. Um.
They go over to the pub we mentioned briefly earlier,
the tavern I guess north tavern, where they made a
deal with the the bartender, the bar keep, and they
procured in the neighborhood of three or four gallons of whiskey. Yeah, yeah,
(18:10):
they're gonna do it. Yeah, they've got They've got gallons
of whiskey. And while they were there, they had the
historical quote we found is a few glasses themselves that
this I think leads into the one for the chef, right,
leads to the domino domino effect we'll see later. Because
(18:32):
the size of those glasses as we record this, uh,
that size is lost to history, so we have no
idea how large these glasses were. But anyway, the death's
knocked back a few They went back to the dock
and they found a soldier who was standing guard. But
they said, you know what, man turn a blind eye,
which wasn't unusual, right, uh, And he said, what price
(18:55):
do you expect me to put on my morals. This
conversation is inspired by a true story, I should say, uh,
and they they named a price and he accepted. And
what was that price? It was thirty five cents? It
was thirty five cents. Do you want to plug that
into your handy dandy inflation calculator? Ben, you're you're going
to find this hilarious, and listeners, I hope you enjoy
(19:20):
this too. In eighteen twenty six, thirty five cents was
the equivalent of Casey, can we get a drum roll please?
Eight dollars and nine cents. Yeah, his cheap, cheap, cheap
(19:45):
morals eight dollars and nine cents. I mean, that's bizarre.
I can't imagine a bribe that would work at that
price level. Yeah, no, I can't either. Um, I would
have at least asked for some of that whiskey, right,
maybe he did. Surely they applied him with with booze.
(20:06):
Let's editorialize here. I mean, come on, no one's gonna
take eight fitty without a little without a couple of
shots first, right, yes, yeah, so uh, we go back
to we go back to Colonel Fair and sure it
was a bit draconian, but That doesn't make him a
dunder head, It doesn't make him stupid. He was clearly
a pretty savvy fellow, and he knew that cadets had
(20:30):
smuggled alcohol into the academy before. In fact, one of
our characters near has a history that will get to
in a bit. But he had always in and the
staff and officers structure of West Point had always dealt
with these on a case by case basis. So he
assumed reasonably so that there would be at least one
(20:52):
bad or should we say, one drunk apple, one fermented
apple like a bunch. So he had talked about it
with some of the staff and the fellow officers, but
he just took the regular precautions, like to two guards yep,
Captain Ethan Allen Hitchcock and Lieutenant William A. Thornton. They
(21:13):
were to monitor the North barracks, Old Hitchcock and Thornton.
They have they're about to have have some fun. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh.
They go to bed, they knock off around midnight, right yep,
that's right. Um, at which point, uh the boys who
set off who sally forth for the north the tavern
(21:35):
are now back in their respective dorms, Um, I guess
they they snuck into the kitchen and made the knog.
Speaking of which, what what part of the egg is
the nog ben? That's that's the question. I think everyone
wants to know. What's a good question. Um, let's see
is there an answer there? As I was being a
little coy, so no one knows exactly. And it's certainly
(21:57):
a bit of a turn of phrase. There is no
nog to the egg. It's not it's not a part
of the egg. I think you will probably already knew that, um.
But it turns out that the word nog um was
an old English slang for a very stiff beer. Oh okay,
and you've also heard like grog, So I'm assuming that
(22:18):
there's some relation there. And then another one is uh
that the idea that, um, these wooden mugs that you
could find in taverns all across the land were called
noggin's and so apparently, and this is from an article
on a delightful blog called Sustainable Table about the history
of eggnog, and they conjecture that when you combine nogging
(22:43):
with egg, you get eggnog. So I don't know, there's
a little aside that's solid. Oh, but we should also
add that the three cadets went across the Hudson. Uh,
we're not alone in their endeavor. This was a group effort.
According to the eggnog Riot on Laughing's Quarterly by Michelle Legro,
(23:09):
they were joined with conspirators colluters. You see, another group
brought a gallon of brandy and a gallon of wine,
and another one get this phrasonal organized a gallon of
liquor on credit, and then someone else bought the eggs,
the milk, and the nutmeg. So they had all the
ingredients assembled together, and they got wasted. They got so
(23:35):
wasted that four hours after midnight, the two officers we mentioned,
Thornton and Hitchcock, woke up with a very uh we're
a family show, so it's called a very OMG WTF reaction. Yeah,
it was. It was a clamor um hubbub. There was
such a clamor ye, indeed. But it was not jolly
old st Nick. No, it was a bunch of unruly,
(23:57):
drunken military school cadets, which has just gotta be the worst.
Uh they were, well, let me let me correct here. Uh.
So after the officers went to bed, they started drinking.
The cadets and then you'll hear, either around two am
or four am, the feather of drunken noise broke. The
(24:20):
proverbial camel of silence is back. We all know the
sound if you live next door to a frat house
or anything, if you've ever had any kind of unruly
neighbors that are having a party when you're trying to sleep,
it's a very specific sound. Sounds totally different when you
yourself are drunk, sounds delightful. It sounds just like the
sound of fun. Sounds merry, you know, but when you're
when you're trying to sleep. Sure, it's an instant, instant
(24:42):
in ranger. So they were making merry. Around two am,
Jefferson Davis and eight other cadets started singing very loudly.
Another student tried to do the version of shoot Guys,
come on Cheese and uh by four him the sounds
(25:03):
blasting through the floorboards, and that triggers the investigation. Do
we talk about Jeff Davis? Jeffe. We should talk about
Jeff Davis because we just mentioned him as leading the singing.
He was. He was one of those kids with a
past absolutely and the future. He went on to become
the president of the U. S Confederacy. That's the one. Um.
(25:23):
But he was what you might describe as an incorrigible drunk. Yeah. Yeah,
he had a history of being cinsured for leaving his
post to drink at the bar. In fact, he racked
up and arrest he did. He got arrested. I think
he was the first student to be arrested for sneaking
(25:44):
away to go to Benny Haven. And not long before
the Eggnog riot that we're talking about, he Um was
with some pals sneaking and he fell into a pit
and his pals cried out, are you alive? And and
thankfully he was. He was alive. But he you know,
(26:06):
you don't know, man Ravine, good lord, he could have
hit his head on a rock and that's sixty feet
so that's nothing to sneeze at. So this guy, when
they're when they're organizing this secret Christmas party, Jefferson Davis
is one of the top picks. He's like a veteran
of this sort of thing. Yeah, he was totally on board. Um.
(26:26):
And our heroes, uh, for all, in dists and purposes,
heroes are depends on what what side of of this.
I'm annoyed at the cadets, to be honest, that's where
I stand. I think they're being a little disrespectful. I
feel you. But it's Christmas, eve Man, No it's not.
It's Christmas. Oh yeah, yeah, it's officially Christmas. Okay, even more,
(26:48):
it's Christmas Day. Have a little charity. Where's my Okay. So,
but I'm just saying, like I've been around drunk people
when I'm sober and trying to sleep enough that I
am feeling these two guards perspective here pretty hard. So
one of them, Hitchcock, leaps out of bed with a
start um and finds a handful of of the boys,
six or seven of them visibly slashed, and he he,
(27:13):
I love the way this article puts it, Uh, the
Smithsonian article. He ordered them to disperse, right, right, right,
and they refused. They refused to disperse. And it sounds
so formal at this point, you know, it sounds as though, uh,
they had a decision making process. But that's it was.
(27:34):
It had to be more sloppy and more emotionally charged.
He thought it was just that one room at first,
but it turns out it wasn't. Oh no, no, it wasn't.
He then went into another room, and he was actually
followed by our boy jeff Davis, who tried to give
his compatriots the heads up by shouting, put away the
(27:56):
grog boys, old Hitchers, come in, Old Hitchcock. Uh. But
of course he was already there. He was literally there,
right behind him or right in front of him, so
you know, he he looked like a chump. Um. And
then Hitchcock ordered Jeffy to disperse and he agreed, which
is probably the one thing that saved him from getting
court martialed and expelled. Um. So you know, we can
(28:18):
thank Hitchcock and his kind hearted nature for you know,
Jefferson Davis is uh future in politics. Yeah, no one
knew what was going to happen at the time exactly.
So Davis is arrested. Others are arrested, uh ordered to
(28:40):
their rooms. And this is this is weird because we
asked at the top of the show what constitutes a riot.
Apparently Hitchcock read the group the Riot Act, which declared
any group of twelve or more unlawfully assembled. Wait, that's
a real thing, the Riot Act. That's what's all they
(29:01):
have it here. Do you say when you're reading someone
the Riot Act. That's literally like you're telling them their rights. Yeah.
The original Riot Act again, real thing was passed back
in seventeen fourteen in Britain, and it essentially ruled that
if a group of a dozen or more people got
together and started acting unruly, an officer of the law
(29:21):
could approach them and tell them to disperse, but to
do so, they literally had to read the Riot Act.
So the Cadets are really poed right now because they
had this one party in their minds. It's one of
two nights they can let loose the entire year. Yeah,
(29:42):
because we can't forget that. It's it's you know, it's
hard to come in and like just change things overnight.
Like if they're used to having these parties, and then
you've got this, this this killjoy Fair coming in and
denying them their two nights of revelry a year. That's's
that's stings a little. You know, this was very refresh
for them. So here's where I start to lose sympathy
(30:05):
for the Cadets. Yeah. So after now they're angry at
Hitchcock for ruining the soiree to get together. They decide
to hunt the captain down, they decide that vengeance is theirs,
and we have a great quote for how that segment
of the night began. Yeah, Hitchcock took off and then um,
(30:27):
one of the drunken cadets screamed, get your dirks and
bayonets and pistols. If you have them before the night
is over, Hitchcock will be dead. So that's you know,
that's a threat of bodily harm to a superior officer.
That's probably not I'm not gonna fly right, right, right.
(30:48):
So there's a book written by James b Agnew called
The Eggnog Riot the Christmas Mutiny at West Point. Maybe
mutiny is a little better word, but again he did
read the riot. So so this book gives a minute
by minute treatment account or estimation about how things went
(31:09):
down and from that point. So, let's says around four
a m. Over the next two hours there was a
cat and mouse game between the drunk students, the faculty
of West Point and the sober students, you know, the
nerds who woke up to side with the faculty against
their fellow cadets. Yeah, and then the other guy, Thornton
(31:31):
in the other guard. He was had a sword brandished
in his face, he got brained with a piece of wood,
got knocked on his butt. And I think Hitchcock was
trying to break into a door that had been like barricaded,
and someone took a shot at him from the other
side of the door, the pistol. I mean, this is
I think riot is absolutely fair, right, And just to
(31:53):
go back a second to establish how drunk these cadets
were when Hitchcock originally busted them. Several of them, No,
try to hide under blankets, like while he's there, Like,
if I just hide under this blanket, no one will
see me, right. I think some of them took their
hats and covered their faces, Like you think that's gonna work, right, right, right,
(32:15):
But what's what's going on? So this is where they
start doing incredible physical damage, not just threatening the officers,
but damaging the property as well, breaking windows, ripping banisters
off a staircases. Yeah, just like shredding the curtains, whatever
if they could get their hands on. I mean, it
was a melee um. And so Hitchcock and Thornton decided
(32:39):
they'd better call him the cavalry, and it was these
guys called the Bombardier's um who were the guards that
always kind of stood watched to make sure. It's sort
of like internal affairs for cops. You know, it's like
nobody likes internal affairs if you're a cop, because they're like,
it's like a snitch. So the cadets did not care
for the bombardiers, and once they got called in, um,
(33:00):
things just got even even nastier, right, because the cadets
hated these artillery men and they thought Hitchcock summoning them
was this quote affront to their integrity. And if you
read between the lines of history here, it sounds like
they were just sloshed enough that they were we're going
to get angry about anything. They were obviously having delusions
(33:23):
of grand are too. It's like, who the hell do
they think they are? You know, they were trained in warfare?
What am you're saying like their students at this school?
These are their commanding officers. There is a mill, you know,
two nights of partying a year or no, there is
a military structure in place here, right like this is
this just seems like a you know, a mass hysteria
(33:44):
kind of situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And as things went
further off the rails, it turned out that the bombardiers
or these artillery men never actually showed up, and slowly, painfully,
I would imagine these cadets began to sober up, but
(34:04):
not successfully, not in enough time to be up at
their scheduled hour, which was six am six am on
a regular day. They would be exactly. They were probably
not feeling super well. And finally, um, a man who
was the commandant of cadets. Sounds like a really intense name,
(34:24):
so like the king of cartoons from pue irmin. Yeah,
there were a commandant of cadets. Um. He struck enough
fear into the hearts of these boys that they they
chilled out, They stopped breaking stuff. They were probably also
getting tired and puy yeah. Uh. Jefferson Davis, according to
the accounts, had missed the bulk of the night's events
(34:46):
because instead of resisting arrest, when he was put under
his rest, he uh stumbled to his room, threw up
a little bit, and passed out. So that actually turned
out well for him because he wasn't party to a
lot of the more violent events. In his memoirs, he
would later claim that he didn't name names or you know,
(35:07):
snitch on other people. Essentially, but the record show he
indicated that his roommate was involved in the conflict when
the cadet returned to their dorm, waking Davis up as
he loaded his gun. So his roommate was the one
who fired the shot. Not a good look, So fair was,
you know, rightfully pretty upset. He he gathered a all
(35:30):
of his staff for an inquiry um on the next night,
and then over the following weeks they placed twenty two
cadets on restriction and then they started to develop an
investigation a court of inquiry uh and that was issued
by Major General Alexander McComb, who was the Chief Engineer
of the Army and Inspector of the Academy. And this
(35:52):
is actually from an article on the U. S. Army's
website egg And they have access to apparently a whole
lot of ink that was spilled over this thing in
terms of internal records. Because is a big deal, right, Oh, yeah,
of course a huge deal. It's a premier institution. And
we have the names of the cadets that we can
list off. I'm gonna do it very quickly. The cadets
(36:14):
were an Swith Berry and Bomford Burnley, Farely, Fitzgerald, Guard Guyan, Humphries, Johnson, Lewis, Mercer, Murdoch, Norville,
Robert Scriven, Stocker, Swords, and Thompson. They all stood trial
and uh other cadets, including Jefferson Davis and Robert Eally,
testified for the defense. Eleven of that group were dismissed
(36:38):
and the remainder were allowed to stay, although three of them, Guard,
Murdoch and Norvelle chose to leave the academy anyway. You
can't fire me. I quit indeed, And you know, and
that you might think there were way more people involved
in this than went down for it, right, yeah, but
you gotta think this was like a third of the
population of the school. And he was just getting things
(37:02):
moved away from the old ways, the old debaucherous ways
of West Point that sounds funny, um, getting things on
track for his government. He you know, he'd been given
some out of boys and he didn't want to lose everybody.
He just wanted, like the main aggressors to take the
fall and have it be a teachable moment, which I
can appreciate. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, tough but fair. And
(37:24):
so the riot included, as I believe you point out
earlier nearly one third of West Point students and it
changed the change the approach in the face of the
academy for decades to come. But West Points command historian
Sherman Fleek that name is on fleek? Is it is
(37:48):
literally on FLEEKU famously was incorrect when he said hardly
anyone knows about it if pooled among forty cadets, I
don't know why. I think he talks like, um, three
thousand federal employees, military staff and faculty. I doubt thirty
people will know a thing about this. Guy's not even
old timey. He's in our current day and age. It
(38:11):
doesn't matter. Why would I not do a voice? Right?
But way more than thirty people know about this, and uh,
you know, more than thirty people should. Yeah, I don't know. Um.
I think nowadays eggnog is maybe remembered less as the
source of uh drunken riotous revelry at West Point and
(38:34):
more of a non alcoholic kind of holiday drink. You know,
my kid likes segnog. We have eggnog milkshakes. It sonic
and you know egg frappuccinos Starbucks. Yeah, and eggnog is
certainly not associated with crazy college party has gone wrong.
That's more of a Yeager bomb thing. That's true. My
(38:54):
whole thing with eggno because it's got so much sugar
and milk and cream in it, it just seems like
it would make you sick before you get drunk enough.
It feels like a Lebowski drink to me, just drink
the whiskey, man, drink the whiskey. Just is that? Is
that our p s A? Is that our moral for
this today's episode? Why not just drink the whiskey and
(39:14):
the rum and the wine, whatever you got. Uh, we
are going to wrap it up. We would like to
hear from you. Does this change the way you feel
about West Point? I don't know why we're going we're
going with that question. Uh, we want to hear about
your experience with agnog. Do you have your own eggnog recipe?
Because a lot of people do, you know. Our composer
(39:36):
Alex Williams, as as you said, modeled his after George Washington,
but he had to figure out the amount of eggs himself. Yeah, exactly.
And why not make a batch of your own George
Washington eggnog and send us a note and let us
know how you liked it. It's ridiculous at how stuff
Works dot com. You can also write us on the
facebooks um where we are ridiculous history and we have
a nifty new Facebook group called the Ridiculous Historians where
(40:00):
you can find your fellow listeners hipping each other to
ridiculous stories throughout the span of human civilization. You can
also find us two jokers on there as well. Yea, yeah,
we lark. We hey, we comment as well and uh
we do also look to this page for inspiration for
future topics, so thanks to everyone who's already made so
(40:22):
many excellent suggestions. You can also find us on Twitter.
You can find us on Instagram. You can find us
wherever you get podcasts. Oh gosh, that's right. We even
have a website. Do you know that I didn't know? That?
Isn't it Ridiculous History Show dot com spot on my friend.
That's where you can find every episode that we have
ever done. So check it out and let us know
(40:43):
what you would like to hear. Next. We'll be getting
some fantastic emails and we it always makes our day
to read them, and as always we want to thank
our super producer and eggnog enthusiast. Wait, let me check
Casey now, okay, super producer Casey Pegram, who was not
(41:03):
a fan of egg nog, not not not a not
an odd guy. I think Casey would probably agree with
me in saying, just drink the whiskey, man, Just drink
the whiskey. And we want to thank Lori L. Dove,
our regular contributor, for her excellent article on how stuff works.
And uh, I guess most importantly other than thanking you, Ben, oh,
thank you know. Let men do this every time. I
(41:25):
don't know, you know, Let's not force it, Let's just
let it happen. Okay, I'm up into that. We'd like
to thank you folks for listening to the show, and
we hope you'll join us for our next episode, where
we talk about weird people who built weird stuff. That
is literally going to be the title. Let see then,
One quart cream, one quart milk, one dozen tablespoons sugar,
one pinte brandy, one half pint rye whiskey, one half
pint Jamaica rum, one fourth pint sherry. Mixed liquor first,
then separate yolks and whites of eggs. Add sugar to
beaten yolks. Mix well. Add milk and cream, slowly beating.
(00:48):
Beat whites of eggs until stiff, and fold slowly into mixture.
Let's set in cool place for several days. Taste frequently.
That is a recipe for eggnog by none other than
George Washington. I only assumed that it was a James
Bond villain z eggnog recipe. Yeah, funny, funny story. All
(01:11):
James Bond villains are based on George Washington accent wise. Hey, everybody,
welcome to the show. I'm ben that's that famous Mountain
vernon accent I've heard so much about. Right, I'm no,
It's is ridiculous history. And we started off with a
really functional little nugget there that was nice. Yeah, that's
a that's a recipe that is is genuinely believed to
be George Washington's eggnog recipe. But there's one very important
(01:36):
missing part of this recipe. Did you catch it? He
doesn't say how many eggs should be in there. And
you'll see a lot of versions of this recipe wherein
someone has assumed, like based on the ratio of other ingredients,
that it would be about a dozen eggs. But he
didn't actually say that. What's the batch? What's what's the
(01:57):
yield on this recipe? Well, I guess that's up to
how much you like eggnog man? I guess? So what
doesn't the recipe typically uh include number of surveys? It
was a very different time. This wasn't this wasn't from
Tasty right, This wasn't Taste Made Curious Good Eats or anything. Yeah,
what's funny you should mention um Washington's nog because our
(02:19):
coworker and pal, Alex Williams, who composed our theme around
the holidays, he made a big old batch of Washington's
nog um and distributed around the office and these delightful
little Mason jars um. I was lucky enough to get
my hands on one, and it packed quite a wallop
because a big thing leading up to doing this episode
is how could you possibly get off your tits trunk
(02:40):
on eggnog, right right, because nowadays we typically associate eggnog
as this very seasonally base, cozy drink like you sip
it by a fire. It's a comfort drink. It's a
comfort drink. Dug in drink form. Yeah, Yeah, it's a
it's a it's a slightly boozy uh att a boy
(03:01):
for you around the holidays. But if you as you
can tell from the recipe, we started the show with. Uh.
Eggnog back in the day used to pack quite a punch.
This was after uh it evolved from a much older
drink known as posset Yeah, which was also known as
a milk punch, which sounds disgusting so bad. It's there's
(03:24):
something in and and please uh listeners, friends and neighbors. UH,
say hello to our super producer Casey Pegram. There's something
that I heard of before. They've never tried, but I
want to learn about. It was called milk salad. Does
that not sound disgusting? Really bad? It makes me think
of our jello episode, right, We got some great emails
(03:48):
about that today. And this this beginning, folks, may make
you think that my co host and I are delving
into the history of eggnog, and we we do just
a little bit, but it's to set the scene for
a ridiculous event and we thought this would be the
yummiest weird displaced to start. Yeah. Well, first I just
(04:10):
want to describe what posset is. We talked about milk
punch and the precursor um or the the spiritual cousin
the predates eggnog called posset. That was a hot milk
punch uh using curdled milk and it was curdled with
wine or beer or I guess you get curdles when
you heat it. And then eventually it was thickened with
(04:32):
eggs and kind of became more what we know today
as traditional egg nog. But our story is really about
a riot involving drunken cadets. I'm gonna go with quote
unquote riot on this wouldnell really okay? At what at
what threshold does fracas or brew haha become full on riot?
(04:57):
It's true. I was going to open the show with
a joke about how many eighteen hundreds uh West Point
cadets does it take to assault to officers and break
all of the China, And when we know the answer
we'll get to that. We'll get to that. So let's
talk a little bit about West Point in general. West
(05:19):
Point remains famous today. It is a storied institution here
in the United States. It is named west Point because,
in a stunning plot twist, it is located in West Point,
New York. Yeah, it's about fifty miles outside of New
York City. And storied it was. However, it didn't used
to be the model of discipline um and steadfastness fastidiousness
(05:44):
that it is today because in the early days of
the school, it was ridiculously easy to get in and
that they let anyone in right um and you could
could join anytime during the year, and it was just
kind of a loose grouping of ramshackled little huts um.
And I think it was about ten cadets that were
(06:06):
taught by I think only three teachers, you know. But
then a little thing called the War of eighteen twelve happened,
which was you know, against Britain, because the Brits were
attempting to restrict trade, uh and they kept arresting American seamen,
which is not cool, as we know, and also inciting
Indian attacks on the U S frontiers. So that aggression
(06:28):
would not stand, my friends, so we decided to go
to war with the Brits. And that also led to
a need for disciplined soldiers, right disciplined, professional, competent soldiers.
And there's a character here in the evolution of West
Point that we must absolutely mention, if only because he
(06:50):
has an awesome name. It's like a dumbledorey and awesome name.
Sylvanus Fair, Ladies and gentlemen. In eighteen seventeen, then President
Ames Monroe ordered Fair to become the superintendent of the
Military Academy after the resignation of the former superintendent, Alden Partridge.
(07:11):
And so pretty cool name also yeah, by his own right,
not not Harry potteresque, but cool nonetheless and accidentally rhymed.
Under Fair's leadership, the Academy began to make incredibly impressive
leaps and bounds in terms of discipline, in terms of
quality of education. It became the nation's first college of Engineering. Well.
(07:36):
Fair didn't take no guff, my friend, Um, he didn't
put up with any horseplay, Shenanigan's or buffoonery, especially when
it pertained to consuming or um even possessing alcohol of
any kind. Right, alcohol could not be possessed, sold, or
(07:57):
brought into West Point at all. And this was just
another part of his overall very strict regime. For instance,
he kept the students on a diet of beef, bread,
and water to accustom them to military rations. Their days
were strictly controlled as far as the way their time
(08:20):
was organized, and they had a lot of pressure on them.
So imagine these students like springs that are increasingly compressed,
storing up more energy and tension. Yeah, they weren't even
allowed these some of these rules there, I don't understand.
They weren't allowed to leave campus. I guess I can
get that because if you leave campus you can get booze.
I guess that's in the bud um. Also, they couldn't
(08:44):
cook in their dorms or duel, right right, Just this
seems related. I made a note in the margins here
in this, uh, this article from the Smithsonian egg Nog.
It's all fun and games until someone starts a holiday riot,
it said before their West Point sucked or was awesome whatever. Yeah,
that's uh, that's by Natasha Galing. And yeah, this article
(09:04):
is very well written, and I noticed some of the
same rules you're talking about here. And to me, the
dueling one makes a lot of sense because you imagine,
you know, they're in a homogeneous population, right, this was
this was strictly segregated. But for the time it's it
started to become relatively progressive because it was important for
(09:28):
kids from a lower income level, right, or a lower
socioeconomic bracket to receive the same caliber of education if
they were qualified for it. But with all the discipline
in the harsh environment, I can easily imagine that if
duels were allowed, these kids would be punching each other
(09:49):
up and pulling cards left and right. Yeah, fisticuffs and
gun battles galore. Um. It's interesting because even though alcohol
was for beden at West Point, it was surrounded by
normal things that you have in towns, like like pubs,
and there were a couple. There was one called Benny
Haven and then another one called North Tavern, and those
(10:11):
will come into play in a little bit. But Benny
Haven Um is also known for being the main hangout
for Edgar Allan Poe when he attended West Point UM.
Admittedly not for a very long time because he you know,
mainly just hung out and got sloshed the whole time,
but there was a history of getting slashed at West
(10:32):
Point before our pal Thayer came in in the days
before his iron fisted grip tightened around these cadets and
tried to whip those boys into shape. They had a
yearly kind of revelry kind of thing going on around
the holidays, didn't they. Right, this is important. It may
seem strange to day, but in the past, in those days,
(10:53):
heavy drinking was or drinking in general was more common.
It was something that was normal for people to do.
You'll also hear some stories about early founding fathers uh
and influential historical figures being several mattress factory amounts of
sheets to the wind and Uh. We're establishing this because
(11:17):
when Thayer came in, he wasn't creating out of whole
cloth the strict set of rules. He was reacting to
what he saw his laxity in the past, and people, students,
officers alike were well aware of the previous traditions. When
you mentioned historical figures and founding fathers. One a couple
(11:37):
that are part of the story are our boy Jeff
Davis Jefferson for Long and Uh Robert E. Lee were
both involved in this tale of debauchery and chastisement. Yes, okay,
so here's here's how it happens. Up until eighteen twenty five,
cadets alcohol was still banned, but there were two days
(12:00):
a year that they could drink. That was the fourth
of July. Makes sense, go us right, live it up.
And then of course Christmas. And then this changed because
on the fourth of July e five a a bunch
of cadets drinking led to a snake dance, which led
(12:24):
to the hoisting of the school's commandant onto the students shoulders,
and Thayer said, you know what, this is too much
a snake dance. Snake dance like, is that some kind
of is it a congo line? Is it a bunch
of people just sort of slithering up and down it.
They didn't like it because it just wasn't dignified. You know.
(12:45):
It makes me think of remember when we did the
episode about the poison Squad when Wiley got booted from
his professorship for riding a bike. So maybe it was
just the idea that this was such a lack of
discipline for them to put someone on their shoulders that
he said no alcohol. Ever, well, yeah, I did say
(13:07):
he was he was not fond of horsing around. That
sounds like the very definition of horsing around, making around.
So Ben just want to get this straight. So yeah,
he still allowed this revelry at first and then shut
it down after one of these went awry by his standards. Yeah,
eighteen six onward. No alcohol, not once, never, not a drop?
(13:28):
Was he a teetotal? Do you think or do you
think he would get in his cups? Privately? He seems
like a pretty straight shooter. He seems like a straight shooter.
But you know, you have to wonder if he applied
those same rules to himself. Do as I say, not
as I'm get hammered, right right right? Uh? Drink as
I say, not as I drink. And you know, I
(13:48):
love that you mentioned these taverns because they didn't magically
disappear after And Benny Haven is the really interesting one
there because of those two brains we mentioned earlier, Benny
Haven was the only one that allowed a barter system
for the students. I know, this is really interesting, so
they could like trade shoes and and pantaloons and you know,
(14:12):
maybe potatoes, who know anything? I guess was that was
on the table, except if it came from the school, right,
No uniform, because that would be that would be stealing.
And they do not want to get on the bad
side of Colonel Fair. No, certainly do not, right right,
And it sounds like a tough customer, that Colonel Fair. Yeah,
people took him seriously. But you also have to wonder
(14:34):
would you barter stuff for booze? Yes, you would if
I didn't have any pocket money, if you didn't have
a thirty five cents on hand, which will come into
play later. Okay, yeah, No, I don't know. I mean,
I wouldn't barter away on the clothes on my back,
But if I had something of value that I could
part with and I wanted a nice stiff drink, I'm
not opposed to that. So when judging me, are you
(14:56):
silently judging me? Ben? No? No, no, no, I'm I'm
judging myself fair enough, me too, Ben. You're great. You
know what we're together, We're a solid eight out of ten.
And uh you know we can never compare to Casey pegrum,
which is not not a bad thing. None can If
you can a few, very few between the two of us,
we practically make a whole person. We're getting there for sure.
(15:19):
So no, this situation is unsustainable to the students, right
to the cadets. The afore mentioned winding spring ready to pop.
So this all comes to a head when Christmas Eve
(15:39):
of eighteen six rolls around again. That's one of the
two days the cadets are allowed to drink to imbibe,
and this is the first time they can't. And you know,
no one likes it when you tell them they can't
do something. Tell me what I can't do, Ben, Yeah,
don't tell me what I can't do. I will automatically
(16:00):
go do it. Reverse psychology is real, it's dangerous, and
people know it works. But clearly fair that was not
his style. He was much more of a prohibitor than
a than a mind manipulator, a mind wrangler exactly. Um.
So you know these cadets on Christmas Eve of about
seventy of them as it turns out, which I think
(16:21):
was somewhere in the neighborhood of a third of the
student body of of West point Um, decided to hatch
a little plot where they were going to go against
old Colonel Thayer's wishes and get themselves some boozy eggnog, Right,
so they decided that they would go off campus and
(16:46):
go to the place they knew that was going to
be the friendliest evern, which was of course benny Haveny Haven.
Maybe they brought some some extra pairs of socks with
which to barter. However, Benny Haven proved without us remarking
on the socks or the pantaloons or whatever they brought
with them, doesn't matter, right, Benny Haven's was too expensive
(17:08):
to step. Yeah, they could buy a little bit of liquor,
but not as much as they wanted, So they had
to go to Plan B. They wanted to get ripped
and drunk. Oh, we should call it Plan H. I
like it because why because they crossed the Hudson River exactly.
That's the very very good foreshadow in there Bend. So yes,
they did in fact cross the Hudson River. I imagine
on some sort of sloop, perhaps a barge, some sort
(17:30):
of would they maybe surely they had vessels at the disposal, Right,
it's a military academy. What do you think, what do
you picture them crossing on? One would imagine they wouldn't
swim because of the weather. Yeah, it'd be cold, so
they were probably on you know, a small boat or something.
Maybe they just rode across. I like it. I like it.
I'm just trying to set the scene as all. You know.
(17:50):
So this is under the cover of night, no doubt. Um.
They go over to the pub we mentioned briefly earlier,
the tavern I guess north tavern, where they made a
deal with the the bartender, the bar keep, and they
procured in the neighborhood of three or four gallons of whiskey. Yeah, yeah,
(18:10):
they're gonna do it. Yeah, they've got They've got gallons
of whiskey. And while they were there, they had the
historical quote we found is a few glasses themselves that
this I think leads into the one for the chef, right,
leads to the domino domino effect we'll see later. Because
(18:32):
the size of those glasses as we record this, uh,
that size is lost to history, so we have no
idea how large these glasses were. But anyway, the death's
knocked back a few They went back to the dock
and they found a soldier who was standing guard. But
they said, you know what, man turn a blind eye,
which wasn't unusual, right, uh, And he said, what price
(18:55):
do you expect me to put on my morals. This
conversation is inspired by a true story, I should say, uh,
and they they named a price and he accepted. And
what was that price? It was thirty five cents? It
was thirty five cents. Do you want to plug that
into your handy dandy inflation calculator? Ben, you're you're going
to find this hilarious, and listeners, I hope you enjoy
(19:20):
this too. In eighteen twenty six, thirty five cents was
the equivalent of Casey, can we get a drum roll please?
Eight dollars and nine cents. Yeah, his cheap, cheap, cheap
(19:45):
morals eight dollars and nine cents. I mean, that's bizarre.
I can't imagine a bribe that would work at that
price level. Yeah, no, I can't either. Um, I would
have at least asked for some of that whiskey, right,
maybe he did. Surely they applied him with with booze.
(20:06):
Let's editorialize here. I mean, come on, no one's gonna
take eight fitty without a little without a couple of
shots first, right, yes, yeah, so uh, we go back
to we go back to Colonel Fair and sure it
was a bit draconian, but That doesn't make him a
dunder head, It doesn't make him stupid. He was clearly
a pretty savvy fellow, and he knew that cadets had
(20:30):
smuggled alcohol into the academy before. In fact, one of
our characters near has a history that will get to
in a bit. But he had always in and the
staff and officers structure of West Point had always dealt
with these on a case by case basis. So he
assumed reasonably so that there would be at least one
(20:52):
bad or should we say, one drunk apple, one fermented
apple like a bunch. So he had talked about it
with some of the staff and the fellow officers, but
he just took the regular precautions, like to two guards yep,
Captain Ethan Allen Hitchcock and Lieutenant William A. Thornton. They
(21:13):
were to monitor the North barracks, Old Hitchcock and Thornton.
They have they're about to have have some fun. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh.
They go to bed, they knock off around midnight, right yep,
that's right. Um, at which point, uh the boys who
set off who sally forth for the north the tavern
(21:35):
are now back in their respective dorms, Um, I guess
they they snuck into the kitchen and made the knog.
Speaking of which, what what part of the egg is
the nog ben? That's that's the question. I think everyone
wants to know. What's a good question. Um, let's see
is there an answer there? As I was being a
little coy, so no one knows exactly. And it's certainly
(21:57):
a bit of a turn of phrase. There is no
nog to the egg. It's not it's not a part
of the egg. I think you will probably already knew that, um.
But it turns out that the word nog um was
an old English slang for a very stiff beer. Oh okay,
and you've also heard like grog, So I'm assuming that
(22:18):
there's some relation there. And then another one is uh
that the idea that, um, these wooden mugs that you
could find in taverns all across the land were called
noggin's and so apparently, and this is from an article
on a delightful blog called Sustainable Table about the history
of eggnog, and they conjecture that when you combine nogging
(22:43):
with egg, you get eggnog. So I don't know, there's
a little aside that's solid. Oh, but we should also
add that the three cadets went across the Hudson. Uh,
we're not alone in their endeavor. This was a group effort.
According to the eggnog Riot on Laughing's Quarterly by Michelle Legro,
(23:09):
they were joined with conspirators colluters. You see, another group
brought a gallon of brandy and a gallon of wine,
and another one get this phrasonal organized a gallon of
liquor on credit, and then someone else bought the eggs,
the milk, and the nutmeg. So they had all the
ingredients assembled together, and they got wasted. They got so
(23:35):
wasted that four hours after midnight, the two officers we mentioned,
Thornton and Hitchcock, woke up with a very uh we're
a family show, so it's called a very OMG WTF reaction. Yeah,
it was. It was a clamor um hubbub. There was
such a clamor ye, indeed. But it was not jolly
old st Nick. No, it was a bunch of unruly,
(23:57):
drunken military school cadets, which has just gotta be the worst.
Uh they were, well, let me let me correct here. Uh.
So after the officers went to bed, they started drinking.
The cadets and then you'll hear, either around two am
or four am, the feather of drunken noise broke. The
(24:20):
proverbial camel of silence is back. We all know the
sound if you live next door to a frat house
or anything, if you've ever had any kind of unruly
neighbors that are having a party when you're trying to sleep,
it's a very specific sound. Sounds totally different when you
yourself are drunk, sounds delightful. It sounds just like the
sound of fun. Sounds merry, you know, but when you're
when you're trying to sleep. Sure, it's an instant, instant
(24:42):
in ranger. So they were making merry. Around two am,
Jefferson Davis and eight other cadets started singing very loudly.
Another student tried to do the version of shoot Guys,
come on Cheese and uh by four him the sounds
(25:03):
blasting through the floorboards, and that triggers the investigation. Do
we talk about Jeff Davis? Jeffe. We should talk about
Jeff Davis because we just mentioned him as leading the singing.
He was. He was one of those kids with a
past absolutely and the future. He went on to become
the president of the U. S Confederacy. That's the one. Um.
(25:23):
But he was what you might describe as an incorrigible drunk. Yeah. Yeah,
he had a history of being cinsured for leaving his
post to drink at the bar. In fact, he racked
up and arrest he did. He got arrested. I think
he was the first student to be arrested for sneaking
(25:44):
away to go to Benny Haven. And not long before
the Eggnog riot that we're talking about, he Um was
with some pals sneaking and he fell into a pit
and his pals cried out, are you alive? And and
thankfully he was. He was alive. But he you know,
(26:06):
you don't know, man Ravine, good lord, he could have
hit his head on a rock and that's sixty feet
so that's nothing to sneeze at. So this guy, when
they're when they're organizing this secret Christmas party, Jefferson Davis
is one of the top picks. He's like a veteran
of this sort of thing. Yeah, he was totally on board. Um.
(26:26):
And our heroes, uh, for all, in dists and purposes,
heroes are depends on what what side of of this.
I'm annoyed at the cadets, to be honest, that's where
I stand. I think they're being a little disrespectful. I
feel you. But it's Christmas, eve Man, No it's not.
It's Christmas. Oh yeah, yeah, it's officially Christmas. Okay, even more,
(26:48):
it's Christmas Day. Have a little charity. Where's my Okay. So,
but I'm just saying, like I've been around drunk people
when I'm sober and trying to sleep enough that I
am feeling these two guards perspective here pretty hard. So
one of them, Hitchcock, leaps out of bed with a
start um and finds a handful of of the boys,
six or seven of them visibly slashed, and he he,
(27:13):
I love the way this article puts it, Uh, the
Smithsonian article. He ordered them to disperse, right, right, right,
and they refused. They refused to disperse. And it sounds
so formal at this point, you know, it sounds as though, uh,
they had a decision making process. But that's it was.
(27:34):
It had to be more sloppy and more emotionally charged.
He thought it was just that one room at first,
but it turns out it wasn't. Oh no, no, it wasn't.
He then went into another room, and he was actually
followed by our boy jeff Davis, who tried to give
his compatriots the heads up by shouting, put away the
(27:56):
grog boys, old Hitchers, come in, Old Hitchcock. Uh. But
of course he was already there. He was literally there,
right behind him or right in front of him, so
you know, he he looked like a chump. Um. And
then Hitchcock ordered Jeffy to disperse and he agreed, which
is probably the one thing that saved him from getting
court martialed and expelled. Um. So you know, we can
(28:18):
thank Hitchcock and his kind hearted nature for you know,
Jefferson Davis is uh future in politics. Yeah, no one
knew what was going to happen at the time exactly.
So Davis is arrested. Others are arrested, uh ordered to
(28:40):
their rooms. And this is this is weird because we
asked at the top of the show what constitutes a riot.
Apparently Hitchcock read the group the Riot Act, which declared
any group of twelve or more unlawfully assembled. Wait, that's
a real thing, the Riot Act. That's what's all they
(29:01):
have it here. Do you say when you're reading someone
the Riot Act. That's literally like you're telling them their rights. Yeah.
The original Riot Act again, real thing was passed back
in seventeen fourteen in Britain, and it essentially ruled that
if a group of a dozen or more people got
together and started acting unruly, an officer of the law
(29:21):
could approach them and tell them to disperse, but to
do so, they literally had to read the Riot Act.
So the Cadets are really poed right now because they
had this one party in their minds. It's one of
two nights they can let loose the entire year. Yeah,
(29:42):
because we can't forget that. It's it's you know, it's
hard to come in and like just change things overnight.
Like if they're used to having these parties, and then
you've got this, this this killjoy Fair coming in and
denying them their two nights of revelry a year. That's's
that's stings a little. You know, this was very refresh
for them. So here's where I start to lose sympathy
(30:05):
for the Cadets. Yeah. So after now they're angry at
Hitchcock for ruining the soiree to get together. They decide
to hunt the captain down, they decide that vengeance is theirs,
and we have a great quote for how that segment
of the night began. Yeah, Hitchcock took off and then um,
(30:27):
one of the drunken cadets screamed, get your dirks and
bayonets and pistols. If you have them before the night
is over, Hitchcock will be dead. So that's you know,
that's a threat of bodily harm to a superior officer.
That's probably not I'm not gonna fly right, right, right.
(30:48):
So there's a book written by James b Agnew called
The Eggnog Riot the Christmas Mutiny at West Point. Maybe
mutiny is a little better word, but again he did
read the riot. So so this book gives a minute
by minute treatment account or estimation about how things went
(31:09):
down and from that point. So, let's says around four
a m. Over the next two hours there was a
cat and mouse game between the drunk students, the faculty
of West Point and the sober students, you know, the
nerds who woke up to side with the faculty against
their fellow cadets. Yeah, and then the other guy, Thornton
(31:31):
in the other guard. He was had a sword brandished
in his face, he got brained with a piece of wood,
got knocked on his butt. And I think Hitchcock was
trying to break into a door that had been like barricaded,
and someone took a shot at him from the other
side of the door, the pistol. I mean, this is
I think riot is absolutely fair, right, And just to
(31:53):
go back a second to establish how drunk these cadets
were when Hitchcock originally busted them. Several of them, No,
try to hide under blankets, like while he's there, Like,
if I just hide under this blanket, no one will
see me, right. I think some of them took their
hats and covered their faces, Like you think that's gonna work, right, right, right,
(32:15):
But what's what's going on? So this is where they
start doing incredible physical damage, not just threatening the officers,
but damaging the property as well, breaking windows, ripping banisters
off a staircases. Yeah, just like shredding the curtains, whatever
if they could get their hands on. I mean, it
was a melee um. And so Hitchcock and Thornton decided
(32:39):
they'd better call him the cavalry, and it was these
guys called the Bombardier's um who were the guards that
always kind of stood watched to make sure. It's sort
of like internal affairs for cops. You know, it's like
nobody likes internal affairs if you're a cop, because they're like,
it's like a snitch. So the cadets did not care
for the bombardiers, and once they got called in, um,
(33:00):
things just got even even nastier, right, because the cadets
hated these artillery men and they thought Hitchcock summoning them
was this quote affront to their integrity. And if you
read between the lines of history here, it sounds like
they were just sloshed enough that they were we're going
to get angry about anything. They were obviously having delusions
(33:23):
of grand are too. It's like, who the hell do
they think they are? You know, they were trained in warfare?
What am you're saying like their students at this school?
These are their commanding officers. There is a mill, you know,
two nights of partying a year or no, there is
a military structure in place here, right like this is
this just seems like a you know, a mass hysteria
(33:44):
kind of situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And as things went
further off the rails, it turned out that the bombardiers
or these artillery men never actually showed up, and slowly, painfully,
I would imagine these cadets began to sober up, but
(34:04):
not successfully, not in enough time to be up at
their scheduled hour, which was six am six am on
a regular day. They would be exactly. They were probably
not feeling super well. And finally, um, a man who
was the commandant of cadets. Sounds like a really intense name,
(34:24):
so like the king of cartoons from pue irmin. Yeah,
there were a commandant of cadets. Um. He struck enough
fear into the hearts of these boys that they they
chilled out, They stopped breaking stuff. They were probably also
getting tired and puy yeah. Uh. Jefferson Davis, according to
the accounts, had missed the bulk of the night's events
(34:46):
because instead of resisting arrest, when he was put under
his rest, he uh stumbled to his room, threw up
a little bit, and passed out. So that actually turned
out well for him because he wasn't party to a
lot of the more violent events. In his memoirs, he
would later claim that he didn't name names or you know,
(35:07):
snitch on other people. Essentially, but the record show he
indicated that his roommate was involved in the conflict when
the cadet returned to their dorm, waking Davis up as
he loaded his gun. So his roommate was the one
who fired the shot. Not a good look, So fair was,
you know, rightfully pretty upset. He he gathered a all
(35:30):
of his staff for an inquiry um on the next night,
and then over the following weeks they placed twenty two
cadets on restriction and then they started to develop an
investigation a court of inquiry uh and that was issued
by Major General Alexander McComb, who was the Chief Engineer
of the Army and Inspector of the Academy. And this
(35:52):
is actually from an article on the U. S. Army's
website egg And they have access to apparently a whole
lot of ink that was spilled over this thing in
terms of internal records. Because is a big deal, right, Oh, yeah,
of course a huge deal. It's a premier institution. And
we have the names of the cadets that we can
list off. I'm gonna do it very quickly. The cadets
(36:14):
were an Swith Berry and Bomford Burnley, Farely, Fitzgerald, Guard Guyan, Humphries, Johnson, Lewis, Mercer, Murdoch, Norville,
Robert Scriven, Stocker, Swords, and Thompson. They all stood trial
and uh other cadets, including Jefferson Davis and Robert Eally,
testified for the defense. Eleven of that group were dismissed
(36:38):
and the remainder were allowed to stay, although three of them, Guard,
Murdoch and Norvelle chose to leave the academy anyway. You
can't fire me. I quit indeed, And you know, and
that you might think there were way more people involved
in this than went down for it, right, yeah, but
you gotta think this was like a third of the
population of the school. And he was just getting things
(37:02):
moved away from the old ways, the old debaucherous ways
of West Point that sounds funny, um, getting things on
track for his government. He you know, he'd been given
some out of boys and he didn't want to lose everybody.
He just wanted, like the main aggressors to take the
fall and have it be a teachable moment, which I
can appreciate. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, tough but fair. And
(37:24):
so the riot included, as I believe you point out
earlier nearly one third of West Point students and it
changed the change the approach in the face of the
academy for decades to come. But West Points command historian
Sherman Fleek that name is on fleek? Is it is
(37:48):
literally on FLEEKU famously was incorrect when he said hardly
anyone knows about it if pooled among forty cadets, I
don't know why. I think he talks like, um, three
thousand federal employees, military staff and faculty. I doubt thirty
people will know a thing about this. Guy's not even
old timey. He's in our current day and age. It
(38:11):
doesn't matter. Why would I not do a voice? Right?
But way more than thirty people know about this, and uh,
you know, more than thirty people should. Yeah, I don't know. Um.
I think nowadays eggnog is maybe remembered less as the
source of uh drunken riotous revelry at West Point and
(38:34):
more of a non alcoholic kind of holiday drink. You know,
my kid likes segnog. We have eggnog milkshakes. It sonic
and you know egg frappuccinos Starbucks. Yeah, and eggnog is
certainly not associated with crazy college party has gone wrong.
That's more of a Yeager bomb thing. That's true. My
(38:54):
whole thing with eggno because it's got so much sugar
and milk and cream in it, it just seems like
it would make you sick before you get drunk enough.
It feels like a Lebowski drink to me, just drink
the whiskey, man, drink the whiskey. Just is that? Is
that our p s A? Is that our moral for
this today's episode? Why not just drink the whiskey and
(39:14):
the rum and the wine, whatever you got. Uh, we
are going to wrap it up. We would like to
hear from you. Does this change the way you feel
about West Point? I don't know why we're going we're
going with that question. Uh, we want to hear about
your experience with agnog. Do you have your own eggnog recipe?
Because a lot of people do, you know. Our composer
(39:36):
Alex Williams, as as you said, modeled his after George Washington,
but he had to figure out the amount of eggs himself. Yeah, exactly.
And why not make a batch of your own George
Washington eggnog and send us a note and let us
know how you liked it. It's ridiculous at how stuff
Works dot com. You can also write us on the
facebooks um where we are ridiculous history and we have
a nifty new Facebook group called the Ridiculous Historians where
(40:00):
you can find your fellow listeners hipping each other to
ridiculous stories throughout the span of human civilization. You can
also find us two jokers on there as well. Yea, yeah,
we lark. We hey, we comment as well and uh
we do also look to this page for inspiration for
future topics, so thanks to everyone who's already made so
(40:22):
many excellent suggestions. You can also find us on Twitter.
You can find us on Instagram. You can find us
wherever you get podcasts. Oh gosh, that's right. We even
have a website. Do you know that I didn't know? That?
Isn't it Ridiculous History Show dot com spot on my friend.
That's where you can find every episode that we have
ever done. So check it out and let us know
(40:43):
what you would like to hear. Next. We'll be getting
some fantastic emails and we it always makes our day
to read them, and as always we want to thank
our super producer and eggnog enthusiast. Wait, let me check
Casey now, okay, super producer Casey Pegram, who was not
(41:03):
a fan of egg nog, not not not a not
an odd guy. I think Casey would probably agree with
me in saying, just drink the whiskey, man, Just drink
the whiskey. And we want to thank Lori L. Dove,
our regular contributor, for her excellent article on how stuff works.
And uh, I guess most importantly other than thanking you, Ben, oh,
thank you know. Let men do this every time. I
(41:25):
don't know, you know, Let's not force it, Let's just
let it happen. Okay, I'm up into that. We'd like
to thank you folks for listening to the show, and
we hope you'll join us for our next episode, where
we talk about weird people who built weird stuff. That
is literally going to be the title. Let see then,
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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