Ye Olde Egg Nog Riot

 

   Can you tell what a person will do later in life based on their actions when young? There's one person you really could do that for: Jefferson Davis. If he had been kicked out of West Point after his involvement in the notorious eggnog riot on Christmas Eve, 1826, all kinds of trouble could have been prevented.

   In December, 1828, Jaefferson Davis was a third year cadet at West Point Military Academy. Life was not easy for the cadets. No one went home for the Christmas holidays. The regulars soldiers stationed at West Point were issued a daily whiskey ration; not so the cadets.

   Across the Hudson River was a tavern, and a couple of days before Christmas, three of the more enterprising cadets rowed across the river and brought back several gallons of whiskey to add to the non-alcoholic eggnog provided by their officers and professors. The soldier who was guarding the landing on the river was bribed to keep silent.

   In previous years, alcoholic eggnog had been allowed at Christmas, but drinking among the cadets had gotten out of hand so this was to be an alcohol-free Christmas. In the days leading up to the secret party, cadets started stockpiling food smuggled out of the mess hall.

   The party started small in one the two cadet barracks late on Christmas Eve, but soon grew to include about 70 of the 260 cadets. One of the officers on duty in the barracks was aware of the party and if it had remained subdued, he probably would have let it go. But some of the students were unable to hold their liquor, and as the evening wore on, drums were beaten and windows were broken. When the officer attempted to intervene, he too was beaten and knocked out.

   Some of the cadets got their hands on arms and began firing indiscriminately. Things didn't settle down till the regular soldiers were called out around six a.m. In the light of day, cleanup began and a list of those involved in the fracas was drawn up. Of the seventy cadets on the list, the worst behaved 20 were court-martialed.

   Jefferson Davis was among those on the list. He had a history of disciplinary problems at the academy, but Fate intervened and he was not court-martialed. Of the 20 court-martialled, nine were expelled while the  others were shown clemency. The soldier who allowed the whiskey to be transported across the river was sentenced to a month of hard labor with no whiskey ration.

   Expelling Davis from the Academy might not have prevented him from becoming president of the Confederacy. Look at Benjamin G. Humphreys. He returned to Mississippi after his expulsion, probably deeply humiliated. But he shook it off and was soon running a large cotton plantation. When the Civil War came along, he raised a company to fight, and by war's end was a brigadier general, and later, governor of Mississippi.

   Davis may have wished he never became president of the Confederacy. The war was a drag, and when the South was defeated, he spent two years in prison. His post-war business ventures were failures and he ended up selling insurance and writing his side of the story.

A little eggnog with your eggnog, sir?