The West Point Eggnog Riot

The story as it is told

West Point, Christmas Eve, 1826. The superintendent, Sylvanus Thayer, has made the academy a strict place, and he has banned drink. The cadets have decided that Christmas will not be dry. Whiskey comes in anyway, smuggled past the sentries, and somewhere in North Barracks a batch of eggnog is stirred in the dark.

By the small hours the barracks are loud. The story says a drunken cadet named Jefferson Davis, the future president of the Confederacy, is at the head of it, and that what began as a party turns into a riot. Furniture is smashed, windows go, the officers are shouted down. In the morning Thayer, the tale says, throws the lot of them out. "19 cadets were expelled," the listicles say, with Davis as the ringleader.

What we can confirm

By 1826 Colonel Sylvanus Thayer had run the U.S. Military Academy for nearly a decade and had turned a disorderly school into a strict one. He had once tolerated drinking on the Fourth of July and at Christmas. After a rowdy July 4, 1825, when cadets hoisted the commandant, William Worth, onto their shoulders, he banned "any spirituous or intoxicating liquor" outright, according to History.com's account. The nation's 50th birthday in July 1826 passed dry at West Point.

Christmas eggnog was a cadet tradition, and some cadets decided the ban would not stop it. In the days before Christmas they smuggled liquor into the barracks. Smithsonian's account, drawing on the academy's command historian, says cadets rowed across the Hudson to Martin's Tavern for whiskey and paid an enlisted sentry 35 cents to look away, bringing back roughly three to four gallons. On Christmas Eve the party began in North Barracks after the officers had gone to bed.

Around 4 a.m. on Christmas morning, Captain Ethan Allen Hitchcock, an instructor living in the barracks, was woken by the noise. He found a crowd of cadets drinking in one room. Jefferson Davis, then a cadet, reportedly ran in shouting a warning that Hitchcock was coming, just as Hitchcock stood there. Hitchcock sent Davis to his room. That arrest may have spared Davis, because the worst of the night came after it.

The cadets turned on the officers. The Army's own history says at least 70 cadets took part, two officers (Hitchcock and Lieutenant William A. Thornton) were assaulted, and windows in North Barracks were smashed. Secondary accounts add thrown wood and stones, a pistol fired as Hitchcock tried to force a door, and drawn swords and bayonets. Order returned only when Commandant Worth arrived. At reveille on Christmas morning, the barracks had broken windows, wrecked furniture and banisters torn from the stairs.

Thayer moved quickly. A staff meeting on December 26 led to Order No. 98, which put 22 cadets under arrest in their quarters. A court of inquiry convened under Order No. 49 and reported to Major General Alexander Macomb, the Army's chief engineer. Courts-martial of 19 cadets and one soldier ran from January 26 to March 8, 1827. Robert E. Lee, a cadet at the time who was not involved, testified. Davis testified too. He had been part of the party but was not charged.

All 19 cadets were found guilty and sentenced to dismissal. Eleven were dismissed. Eight sentences were remitted, and five of those eight stayed at the academy. History.com's account adds that the tribunal heard 167 witnesses and that 53 more cadets received lesser punishment.

The academy, which had about 260 cadets, could not afford to expel everyone involved, so it made examples of a few. The records of that inquiry survive, and a transcription of the Court of Inquiry is now online.

The facts

• Thayer had banned alcohol; at least 70 cadets were involved; two officers assaulted; windows in North Barracks smashed. Army.mil (USAHEC), army.mil
• Dec 26 staff meeting; Order No. 98 restricted 22 cadets to quarters; Order No. 49 created a court of inquiry reporting to Maj. Gen. Alexander Macomb. Army.mil
• Courts-martial of 19 cadets and one soldier, Jan 26 to Mar 8, 1827; 11 dismissed (Humphreys, Stocker, Guion, Farrelly, Lewis, Fitzgerald, Burnley, Roberts, Berrien, Bomford, Johnson); 8 remitted (Aisquith, Mercer, Swords, Murdock, Screven, Norvelle, Thompson, Gard), of whom all but Norvelle, Gard and Murdock remained. Army.mil
• Lee and Davis testified; Davis took part but was not charged. Army.mil
• Officers involved: Capt. Ethan Allen Hitchcock and Lt. William A. Thornton; Commandant William Worth ended it. Smithsonian; History.com
• Davis's warning line, "Put away the grog, Captain Hitchcock is coming!" (History.com wording; Smithsonian has a near-identical version). Quoted from later accounts of the inquiry testimony, not from Davis's own writing.
• 167 witnesses; 53 cadets given lesser punishment; five of the eight spared graduated. History.com
• Davis had earlier been court-martialed for a visit to Benny Havens's tavern and in August 1826 fell down a roughly 60-foot ravine returning from it. History.com
• The academy archives hold the post orders series covering this period. West Point archives, archives.westpoint.edu
• A transcription of the Court of Inquiry from National Archives records is published online by Jon Malinowski. executionhollow.com

Related: What enters the public domain in 2027

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