LITMIR.BIZ

      THE ACADEMY THAT HENRY HETH arrived at in 1843 looked much like the school that Nathaniel Wyche Hunter had left ten years earlier, but day-to-day life had gradually improved for the Corps. North and South Barracks were still in use, and small groups of cadets still roomed with Mrs. Thompson, known as “Old Manny,” in her cottage with her three now aging daughters. They were given permanent residence in recognition of the gallant sacrifice of her son at the Battle of Okeechobee. Beds appeared in all the rooms. Cadets had to pay a rental fee and buy the bedclothes, but it was better than sleeping on the floor. Yet the beds grew less comfortable once the mattresses began to wear out; Cadet William Dutton complained that he awoke each morning with traces of the iron bars on his body, since his mattress “has been lain on 8 years & is about 3 inches thick.”¹ George Pickett sought to solve that problem and received three demerits for “having more bedding in use than is allowed by orders.” All cadet furnishings and toiletries were standardized to the extent they could be, which made it harder for cadets to find items for barter, since things might turn up missing in any of the multiple daily inspections. Barter remained a necessity; cadets were paid $28 per month (until 1845, when their pay was reduced to $24), but were still not allowed to keep cash. All money was kept on account, and was not issued until graduation. Those who had to make purchases at the cadet store did so against their accounts, which were monitored by the Supe. Those who sought to make other purchases adapted as best they could.

      Rooms were still crowded, with up to six per room for the larger spaces. They heated them by wood fire, though coal was now permitted, which was warmer and burned more evenly but did not give sufficient light to study. Whale-oil lamps were used for illumination, “the smell of which was, similar if not worse than that which Jonah must have experienced during his sojourn in the whale’s belly.”² There was still no running water, and cadets would line up at the old wooden pump every morning to carry buckets back to their rooms. The cadet latrine, “a place of barbaric filthiness, whose odors, but not those of Araby, pervaded the whole neighborhood around,” was referred to as “Number Ten” due to its proximity to sentry post no. 10, and the term became slang for latrines throughout the Army.

      The food that Wyche had complained about had improved slightly, but was still not praised by cadets. In one letter home, Cadet George Derby noted that “India rubber boiled in Aqua forte could give no idea of the toughness of our roast beef, and we are so accustomed to stale bread that the sight of a hot biscuit might occasion hysterics.”³ Bread was as a rule served cold, except, as the joke went, when a cat had slept on a loaf. Fruits and green vegetables were unknown in the mess hall.⁴ Coffee and tea were in abundance, as were dairy products from local farms. Fish was served on Friday, frequently sturgeon caught in the Hudson and known as “Albany beef.” But Tidball noted that there was at least a purpose to the culinary poverty. It was “still the epoch when soldiers—and with them were classed cadets—were fed with Spartan simplicity, so that their stomachs might be trained to meet every vicissitude of service, even to subsisting for a fortnight by chewing a greasy rag, or to enduring the fare of a rebel prison. All beyond the bare necessaries of life were deemed effeminacies unworthy of a solider.”

      Cadets continued to make hash in the winter, despite stern warnings from the authorities. In fact, the illegality of the act improved the taste of the fare. The hashes consisted of bread, meat and potatoes, “mashed and mixed together with plenty of butter and seasoned generously with pepper; the whole cooked in some kind of a vessel, generally a frying-pan.” The tall, aptly named “forage hat” in use at the time provided a useful means of smuggling or “hooking” food from the mess hall, and “a steady marching cadet, one who could preserve a level head, could carry at one time enough of bread, potatoes, meat, and butter as was necessary for a very respectable hash for himself and a half dozen or so of his friends.”⁵ Frying pans were in short supply and were passed from cadet to cadet as the need arose. Most feasts were planned for Saturday night, when officers were more likely to be engaged in their own diversions and there were no lessons in the morning. Sentinels were bribed with portions of the hash. But the hash feast was not a bacchanal; cadets could not risk having the smell of the hash alert the authorities, so the meal was “scooped hot from the frying-pan and eaten on slices of bread or toast with a relish equaled only by the dispatch with which it had to be done; and then the guests flitted to their rooms with the innocence of uncaught thieves.”⁶

      Hazing had become more prevalent over the years, but had not reached the severity it would in later decades. It was an initiation ritual, “just sufficient to awaken alertness on the part of the new comers, but seldom anything malicious.”⁷ Before encampment, prospective plebes were called “things” and “beasts” (which is the origin of the contemporary term “beast barracks”) and their ignorance of the rules made them prime targets for all kinds of mischief.

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