SYMHC Classics: Eggnog Riot

This classic is from 2014. In 1826, liquor was forbidden at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. Cadets smuggled alcohol into the barracks anyway, and a defiant Christmas party turned into a riot when two officers attempted to break up the festivities.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, everybody. Since this is the last Saturday episode
before Christmas, of we were looking for a classic Christmas episode,
and uh a lot of them are incredibly sad. Nobody
needs that this year, so we have instead picked one
that's a little more absurd. This is our decemb episode
on the eggnog Riot. Like its name suggests, this was

(00:25):
a riot over egg knock, specifically about wanting to have
alcohol in the eggnog, which took place at West Point
in eighteen Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to

(00:49):
the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tray Suvie Wilson.
So h Happy holidays, whatever you celebrate. It's no secret
that holiday celebrations often involved drinking about a bit of
spiked eggnog. I am drinking some eggnog right now, but
it is not spiked because I'm at work. However, I
did go get some just rapped during this. I am jealous,

(01:12):
but there's no Also no big surprise in mentioning that
when people drink, they sometimes do really foolish things, and
when they drink a lot, the foolishness can reach epic proportions.
I'm sure many of our listeners have some moments where like, man,
I acted like a jerk when I had had too
much to drink. Many of us have been there. Uh
so west Point, it will seem like I'm jumping, but

(01:35):
I'm not. West Point for any listeners who may not
know what it is, is the United States Military Academy,
and it is located in West Point, New York, which
is why it is called west Point, and its roots
go right back to the founding of the United States,
as West Point was believed by George Washington to be
the key strategic spot on the North American continent in
the War for Independence, and so West Point began as

(01:56):
a military post, and then the Military Academy was established
are in eighteen o two by President Thomas Jefferson, and
it's the oldest continuously occupied military post in the United States,
which I did not know prior to researching this. Getting
into West Point is extremely difficult, and the Academy has
a long history of prestige and honor. When you know

(02:16):
someone or you hear about someone, like a friend of
the family who says, oh my gosh, I got into
West Point or my son got into West Point. Everybody
tends to go wow. Uh, so it's a big deal.
But we today are talking about Christmas at West Point
in eighteen six in an event that was exactly that
was not exactly what you would call honorable, and it
would not make you go wow being impressed. It would

(02:39):
make you go wow, I can't believe that happened. Uh.
And that is the eggnog riot. I had never heard
of this until someone asked us to talk about it recently,
and I passed it your away because my Christmas episode
was already spoken for. Yeah, and I'm so glad you did.
I had heard the phrase, but I never knew what
it was about. So I got some good learning in

(03:02):
and it's a fairly entertaining story. So first we're going
to start with just a little background about eggnog. It's
not clear exactly when eggnog was invented. It's likely predecessor
was this hot milky ale called posset that was popular
in medieval Britain. Monks had started adding eggs and figs

(03:22):
to their posset by the thirteenth century, but it wasn't
until the seventeen hundreds that eggnog really surged in popularity
and became tied to holiday celebrations, so it was being
consumed by people, uh, you know, for many centuries at
that point. But part of the reason that it was
not this hugely um popular drink that everyone had at

(03:45):
the holidays was because ingredients like milk and eggs and
sherry had been luxury items up to that point. But
in the American colonies, many people had access to cows
and chickens thanks to the many farms in the colonies,
and there was a available rum that was cheaper, and
so the average person could suddenly enjoy eggnog, and the

(04:06):
colonies loved it, just like I do. I get excited
about egg nog every year. So yeah, I get excited
about eggnog flavored things the way that I get excited
about pumpkin flavored things. I am one of those pumpkin jerks.
But I also really really love eggnog. Yeah, Patrick hates it,
which means it is all for me. George Washington even

(04:27):
made his own recipe for eggnog, which included multiple alcoholic
ingredients including brandy, rye whiskey, Jamaica rum, and sherry. In short,
this is a total booze bomb. Yeah, you can actually
find that recipe online. But there's a trick to it,
which is it the way he wrote it. He didn't
include how many eggs you were supposed to use, so

(04:49):
even at the time people that were using his recipes
were kind of guessing. Um. But basically you would be
drunk as a skunk if if you drink it, no
matter how many eggs you included, because it has a
lot about call in him and so as a beverage
enjoyed and endorsed by the founding fathers, eggnog really became
a vital part of any holiday celebration in the United

(05:10):
States at that point. So let's detour back over to
West Point. The superintendent of West Point in eighteen six
was Colonel Sylvanus There he actually served as superintendent from
eighteen seventeen to eighteen thirty three, and he's often called
the father of the Military Academy. Was under his leadership
that the academic standards for the school were significantly upgraded

(05:32):
and codified. He also set rigorous criteria for military discipline
and conduct. Yes, so prior to his tenure as leader
of the school, it was not quite as uh, sort
of you know, standardized it. I read one historical account
that said, like, you know, it was really sort of

(05:53):
laughable to consider it an actual learning institution or military academy.
It just it was kind of a rough and rowdy
collection of sort of like we're gathering people together and
we're teaching them as well as we can. But Undersayer,
it really just became like a Swiss clock of you know,
good standards scheduling. He handled everything, like everyone that worked there,

(06:17):
he hired them. Every student that it would have admitted,
he chose them. And he really really had these very
very high standards. And one of the major contributions that
he made to the school, in addition to pretty much
setting it up as an actual institution, and he really
the whole country kind of owes him a debt for
this contribution, was that he set up this curriculum with

(06:39):
engineering at its core. So for much of the nineteenth century,
the vast majority of engineers that were building the infrastructure
of the U. S. Transportation system came from West Point.
So if you were on a road, if you crossed
a bridge, if you travel by train, probably the people
that designed and built those things were West Point graduates.

(07:00):
And that is all thanks to Thayer's recognition that a
fledgling country really needed engineers if it was going to
actually sustain itself and develop long term Any biography or
a description of their notes that he had an intense
focus on standards and excellence. He made the school into
a meritocracy that was based on performance and throughout any

(07:22):
benefit to being from a privileged family. When his nephew
was admitted to the school, he made the voice sign
a letter of resignation that they are kept in his possession,
so the event of a single infraction, the younger man
would immediately be removed from the school. Yeah, he wanted
there to be no, uh, no way that anybody could

(07:45):
point to him or his nephew and say that like
there had been unfair partial treatment. He really was all
about sort of everybody comes in as an equal, everybody
behaves as an equal. I don't care if you're rich
or poor. I care about how smart and dedicated you are.
Just really kind of a very new way of thinking
at the time. We should probably point out that everyone here,

(08:07):
like the school was not integrated or anything, so everyone
was kind of I just don't want to make it
sound as though we are unaware of that aspect that
like everyone still had limits. Oh yes, of course his
is mostly like in terms of class level. You know,
rich kids were not going to get treated any better
or have any better chances than children than boys that

(08:29):
had come from families that were less privileged. But we're
just as smart and willing to work. It's hard. So
that was his thing. Uh, And up to this point
in us m a's brief history, it had really become
a tradition over the holidays for cadets to unwind a bit.
Life as a student at the academy was rigorous, it
was even grueling at times, and so as a much

(08:50):
needed break from all of that discipline, homemade eggnog, which
was of course spiked, had become the drink of choice
among the cadets to celebrate Christmas. Colonel Thair was not
okay with this. The superintendent is sometimes described as leading
with an almost monk like existence because he was so
dedicated to a life of honor and living up to

(09:12):
the standards he set for himself as well as the cadets.
So the idea of holiday drunkenness did not mesh with
his vision of how disciplined cadets should behave. So he
instituted a rule that no cadet could purchase, store, or
consume alcohol of any kind. Yeah, that didn't go over
so well. You can imagine how well a rule like

(09:34):
that would be received. Uh, Plenty of the young men
at West Point flouted the rule on the down low.
I think we're just like, that's fine, he can say
that all he wants. We're still going to drink at Christmas.
But a few cadets that were really sort of bristling
at the idea that he would go so far as
to make a regulation that would bar spirits from a
holiday celebration made it their personal mission to throw the

(09:56):
biggest holiday party the school had ever seen. And when
we say biggest, what we really mean is the most
alcohol filled. And before we get to sort of how
that played out, do you want to have a word
from a sponsor. Let's do several nights before the Christmas

(10:18):
Eve party, three different students together across the Hudson River
to visit Martin's Tavern, which was located on the east bank,
and there were other taverns closer to the school, but
they were not going to be able to provide the
amount of liquor that the cadets were planning to a
mass for their revelry at a price that the students
could also afford. And so after having a few drinks

(10:39):
at Martin's tavern, the cadets took several gallons of whiskey
that they had procured and they headed back to the academy.
When they reached the dock at the Academy after crossing
back over the river, they ran into a little obstacle
which was a guard, and the guard was an enlisted
man who was standing on the dock. This was kind
of a minor obstacle because the guard was willing to

(11:01):
look the other way for a thirty five cent ribe.
And once the cadets reached the barracks, they stowed their
illicit alcohol in their bunks with their more mundane personal effects.
They kind of carefully disguised it as just among with
everything else there. Knew that the cadets were likely to
try to smuggle in alcohol into the barracks because it

(11:22):
had happened before, and he was not a fool, so
he assigned Captain Ethan Alan Hitchcock and Lieutenant William A.
Thornton to the north barracks to keep to keep an
eye on things on Christmas Eve and uh. Initially, the
evening was relatively quiet, so the two officers went to
bed around midnight, thinking that there nothing was going to happen.

(11:43):
But several hours later, Captain Hitchcock awoke to the sound
of several of the young men partying several floors up.
He went upstairs and he discovered a half dozen drunken cadets,
And initially he just thought he was breaking up a
minor situation, and he ordered all of the boys to
their rooms, but before he could leave, noises in the
next room tipped him off to additional inebriated cadets. When

(12:07):
Hitchcock entered the next room, two drunk cadets were trying
to hide under a blanket and a third was hiding
his face behind a hat. Doesn't this kind of crack
you up? Like I could so picture these drunk people
thinking they are somehow imperceptible under a blanket. I feel
like this is a weird Sitcom said at West Point

(12:30):
a long time ago. So Hitchcock confronted the hat hider
and tried to get him to reveal his identity, and
then things pretty quickly became heated. Yeah, they exchanged some words,
and Hitchcock eventually left, but the cadets that remained were
really angry at having been confronted, and and his heated
exchange with the young man hiding behind the hat just

(12:53):
kind of ratcheted up everybody's you're a little bit like
I think they just felt like they were being hassled,
and it appears that this is kind of in the
tone of the revelry took a turn, and eventually someone
is said to have shouted, get your dirks and bayonets
and pistols. If you have them before this night is over,
Hitchcock will be dead. That's what catalyzed the riot. Yeah,

(13:15):
a little drunken screeching about violence, uh so, and the
unruly party. Another one sprung up on one of the
lower floors, and Captain Hitchcock ran to break it up,
and on his way he actually encountered Jefferson Davis, who
was intoxicated in the hallway and the slash. Davis accompanied
Hitchcock into the room where this new phase of the

(13:37):
party was going on, shouting, put away the grog boys.
Captain Hitchcock's coming, But of course he was standing right
next to him. Hitchcock sent Davis back to his room
and he acquiesced, which really saved his bacon. Later on,
his cooperation kept him from being court martialed. And when
Hitchcock attempted to break down a barricaded door in another

(14:00):
room that where a party was erupting, another cadet tried
to shoot him, and this shooting was only thwarted by
another young man that jostled him as his pistol went off.
And from the accounts I read, it was unclear whether
that second man that did the jostling did so on
purpose or was just kind of having a drunken stumbling
a moment a serendipitous prevention of murder. Yes. So meanwhile,

(14:23):
Lieutenant Thornton had also gotten up from his bed and
was trying to stop the various pockets of partying that
we're popping up all over the barracks, but he was
having even more trouble than Captain Hitchcock. At one point
a cadet brandished a sword at him, and another whacked
him with a piece of wood. Yeah, and these all
sound funny, but I have to like step back for

(14:45):
a moment and think, like, Okay, These are young men
that have been trained rigorously physically there you know, in
the prime of life in terms of their health, and
they are running around drunk, so they do not have
full control of their mental faculties. Brandishing opens at these
poor men, Like it sounds kind of funny, but I
can imagine in the moment it was terrifying. Well. And

(15:05):
I am also reminded of a number of blog posts
that have been circulating around the Internet rate lately of
white people rioting over stupid things. And I feel like
this is a historical example of a ridiculous riot over
something stupid. Yeah, and we wanted some boozing our ignong.

(15:27):
So after Captain Hitchcock's near miss with the drunken shooter,
he called for backup, and he called for the commandant
of cadets. But some of the drunken men misunderstood what
he said and they thought he was calling for their
campus rivals, which were the artillery men that were stationed
at West Point, And this set off a chain reaction

(15:48):
of these inebriated young men arming themselves to defend against
the bombardiers that they were convinced were coming. As they
prepared for the coming enemy They also trashed the barracks.
They broke shows and windows and tora part the furniture.
They pulled banisters away from the staircase cases. Hitchcock had
never called for the artillery men, so they never came,

(16:10):
but the violence and the barracks kept escalating anyway. Finally
William Worth, who was the commandant of Cadets, came to
Hitchcock's Hitchcock's call and was able to shut it down.
So even though at this point, you know, things subside
a bit, what's left is that roughly one third of
the cadets at West Point at the time, so I've

(16:32):
seen the number ninety out of to sixty were involved
in this booze fueled chaos where they basically destroyed their
own surroundings. Uh, some of the young men were still
drunk on Christmas morning, because remember this started well after midnight,
so it was actually technically Christmas already when it began.
And they looked a mess at this point, you know,

(16:53):
clothes disheveled, some of them torn. The barracks were complete
shambles and basically would have boiled down too. Is a
few gallons of whiskey had incited nearly one young men
to do a serious amount of damage to their academy
and their home away from home and really sort of
them the mental environment where they were as well. I'm

(17:15):
actually kind of just made to learn by this episode
or maybe have reiterated that rioting over ridiculous things, it's
not actually a new phenomenon, No, not even a little.
And I wonder how much of that is sort of
the expression of in this particular case, you know, if

(17:37):
they were kept to this incredibly high standard, and they
were you know, forced to be rigorously devoted to their
studies and devoted to being you know, sort of on
point at all times, if this is just sort of
like a build up of the normal rambunctiousness that people
have that's been kind of tamped down for a while,
and then you get some whiskey in the mix and

(17:58):
you can't hold that back anymore and it goes perserk. Yeah,
there's actually some really interesting sociological, uh and psychological research
about what sparks riots that are made for, um like
combating oppression basically. Uh So when it comes to ones
that are just about drunkenness, I don't know, Yeah, it's

(18:21):
I'm like it might be uh unfair is not the
right word. I Mostly I'm like, guys, there's no excuse
for that behavior when when your reason is that they
told you you couldn't have alcohol in your agnog. Yeah.
But there's that thing that happens right when you're drunk

(18:41):
and a small mob forms, it quickly becomes a large mob,
and then just there's not really much logical thought going on.
It's just kind of like violence and everyone like a rocket,
like you, just people just get swept up in that
that weird wave of intensity. But before we talk about
sort of what happened after all of these young men

(19:03):
lost their minds while they were drunk, do you want
to have a word from a sponsor? Sure, So to
get back to what happened after this ridiculous riot was over,
Colonel There gathered the Academy staff together to discuss the matter,

(19:23):
and eventually two orders were issued by Major General Alexander Makeum,
who was the Chief Engineer of the Army and Inspector
of the Academy. So, following the riot, Order number named
twenty two cadets who were placed on immediate restriction, and
Order number forty nine opened a Court of inquiry into
the riot and the events surrounding it. The goal was

(19:45):
to identify the key players who led the riot. Yeah,
they were trying to be fair and understanding that like, yes,
there were nine young men involved, but surely there were
ringleaders and those are the ones we're going to go
after her. And these inquiries took several weeks to investigate
just what had happened during the cadets Christmas festivities, and

(20:06):
eventually nineteen cadets and one soldier were courts martialed for
their involvement in the mob that caused all the problems.
The trials began a month after the Shenanigans on January
eighteen seven. Those nineteen Cadets were William E. A. Squid,
Benjamin G. Humphreys, Walter B. Guillon, James W. M. Barrion

(20:28):
Fayette Norville, David M. Fairley, George E. Bomford, James L. Thompson,
Hugh W. Mercer, Benjamin F. Guard, Thomas Swords Jr. Richard B. Screvin,
Bill Fitzgerald, John C. Stucker, T. M. Lewis, William R. Burnley,
Samuel Roberts and Anthony Johnson, and William D. C. Murdoch.

(20:54):
And at this point, as they faced uh, this tribunal
that had assembled to try them. These cadets were basically
defending themselves to preserve their futures. If they were not
going to be able to effectively plead their cases, their
time at West Point would end really abruptly. And at
that point their future was to become military men. So
it really was the stakes were quite high, uh for

(21:17):
what was going to happen to them based on this
one night of really stupid behavior. And fellow cadets with
some now famous names came forward in support of the
cadets that were on trial while they testified, including Robert
Elie and as we mentioned before, Jefferson Davis. The proceedings
concluded on March eight of eight cadets, as with Mercer Swords,

(21:40):
Murdoch's Screvin, Norville Thompson and Guard were all allowed to
remain at West Point, although Norvill, Murdoch and Guard eventually left,
the rest of the young men were dismissed and we're
no longer welcome at the academy. And just as a
side note about Jefferson Davis, so he there are many
incidents of so seated with drunkenness on record for him

(22:02):
during his time at West Point. He apparently really liked
a party, and as we mentioned earlier, he was not
charged over the Eggnog Riot, though he got into plenty
of other troublesome little exploits when he was inebriated. The
North Barracks, as they were during the Eggnog Riot, no
longer exist. When the school built new barracks on campus

(22:22):
in eighteen forties. The new structures were made with no
interior floor to floor access and short hallways as a
form of crowd control to prevent a similar scenario where
Roality cadets could manage another riot. The barracks that were
built in eighteen forties are also long gone, and there's
also no longer a holiday celebration at West Point. So

(22:46):
while the Eggnog Riot had lasting ramifications in the eighteen hundreds,
it seems to have been largely forgotten as part of
the school's lore. I definitely had never heard of it
before um, and that was even after Like a Heavy
Star last year for ideas of Christmas related topics to do.
When Smithsonian writer Natasha Guiling interviewed West Points Command historian

(23:08):
Sherman Fleak about the eighteen six Christmas episode, she was told, quote,
hardly anyone knows about it. If pooled among four thousand,
four hundred cadets, three thousand federal employees, military staff and
faculty hid out thirty people will know a thing about
it until now. Yeah, it's kind of, um, you know,

(23:33):
it's an entertaining story. It's certainly one of those things
that you can't I can't help, I'll admit, kind of
like signing and being like you idiots. Yeah, I'm like,
go to your room, guys. That's how I feel about it.
Go to your room. I love it. Uh. Yes, So

(23:53):
that's the egg Non riot, which did you know, significantly
change the trajectory of the lives of the young men
that were dismissed from West Point as consequence of their behavior. Uh,
but it is. It's one of those things where even
when I, uh, the few articles that I found about it,
they all kind of sum it up is like, this
is a good life lesson to not get too drunk
at a Christmas party, And I'm like, well, it's kind

(24:15):
of bigger than that. But yeah, I definitely feel like
it belongs in the same blog posts as like the
pumpkin riot that just happened This year and the riots
over various sports teams winning games, are losing games or
not actually playing their games or whatever. Like I feel
like it's that caliber of foolishness. Yeah, so that's a scoop.

(24:45):
Thany so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since
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(25:06):
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