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What was the West Point Eggnog Riot? · Ridiculous History

0:24
Speaker 1: One quart cream, one quart milk, one dozen tablespoons sugar,
0:29
Speaker 1: one pinte brandy, one half pint rye whiskey, one half
0:34
Speaker 1: pint Jamaica rum, one fourth pint sherry. Mixed liquor first,
0:39
Speaker 1: then separate yolks and whites of eggs. Add sugar to
0:43
Speaker 1: beaten yolks. Mix well. Add milk and cream, slowly beating.
0:48
Speaker 1: Beat whites of eggs until stiff, and fold slowly into mixture.
0:52
Speaker 1: Let's set in cool place for several days. Taste frequently.
0:58
Speaker 1: That is a recipe for eggnog by none other than
1:03
Speaker 1: George Washington. I only assumed that it was a James
1:06
Speaker 1: Bond villain z eggnog recipe. Yeah, funny, funny story. All
1:11
Speaker 1: James Bond villains are based on George Washington accent wise. Hey, everybody,
1:17
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. I'm ben that's that famous Mountain
1:19
Speaker 1: vernon accent I've heard so much about. Right, I'm no,
1:22
Speaker 1: It's is ridiculous history. And we started off with a
1:25
Speaker 1: really functional little nugget there that was nice. Yeah, that's
1:27
Speaker 1: a that's a recipe that is is genuinely believed to
1:31
Speaker 1: be George Washington's eggnog recipe. But there's one very important
1:36
Speaker 1: missing part of this recipe. Did you catch it? He
1:40
Speaker 1: doesn't say how many eggs should be in there. And
1:44
Speaker 1: you'll see a lot of versions of this recipe wherein
1:48
Speaker 1: someone has assumed, like based on the ratio of other ingredients,
1:52
Speaker 1: that it would be about a dozen eggs. But he
1:54
Speaker 1: didn't actually say that. What's the batch? What's what's the
1:57
Speaker 1: yield on this recipe? Well, I guess that's up to
2:00
Speaker 1: how much you like eggnog man? I guess? So what
2:03
Speaker 1: doesn't the recipe typically uh include number of surveys? It
2:07
Speaker 1: was a very different time. This wasn't this wasn't from
2:09
Speaker 1: Tasty right, This wasn't Taste Made Curious Good Eats or anything. Yeah,
2:15
Speaker 1: what's funny you should mention um Washington's nog because our
2:19
Speaker 1: coworker and pal, Alex Williams, who composed our theme around
2:23
Speaker 1: the holidays, he made a big old batch of Washington's
2:25
Speaker 1: nog um and distributed around the office and these delightful
2:29
Speaker 1: little Mason jars um. I was lucky enough to get
2:31
Speaker 1: my hands on one, and it packed quite a wallop
2:35
Speaker 1: because a big thing leading up to doing this episode
2:37
Speaker 1: is how could you possibly get off your tits trunk
2:40
Speaker 1: on eggnog, right right, because nowadays we typically associate eggnog
2:46
Speaker 1: as this very seasonally base, cozy drink like you sip
2:52
Speaker 1: it by a fire. It's a comfort drink. It's a
2:54
Speaker 1: comfort drink. Dug in drink form. Yeah, Yeah, it's a
2:57
Speaker 1: it's a it's a slightly boozy uh att a boy
3:01
Speaker 1: for you around the holidays. But if you as you
3:05
Speaker 1: can tell from the recipe, we started the show with. Uh.
3:08
Speaker 1: Eggnog back in the day used to pack quite a punch.
3:12
Speaker 1: This was after uh it evolved from a much older
3:16
Speaker 1: drink known as posset Yeah, which was also known as
3:19
Speaker 1: a milk punch, which sounds disgusting so bad. It's there's
3:24
Speaker 1: something in and and please uh listeners, friends and neighbors. UH,
3:29
Speaker 1: say hello to our super producer Casey Pegram. There's something
3:34
Speaker 1: that I heard of before. They've never tried, but I
3:38
Speaker 1: want to learn about. It was called milk salad. Does
3:41
Speaker 1: that not sound disgusting? Really bad? It makes me think
3:44
Speaker 1: of our jello episode, right, We got some great emails
3:48
Speaker 1: about that today. And this this beginning, folks, may make
3:53
Speaker 1: you think that my co host and I are delving
3:56
Speaker 1: into the history of eggnog, and we we do just
4:00
Speaker 1: a little bit, but it's to set the scene for
4:03
Speaker 1: a ridiculous event and we thought this would be the
4:08
Speaker 1: yummiest weird displaced to start. Yeah. Well, first I just
4:10
Speaker 1: want to describe what posset is. We talked about milk
4:13
Speaker 1: punch and the precursor um or the the spiritual cousin
4:18
Speaker 1: the predates eggnog called posset. That was a hot milk
4:23
Speaker 1: punch uh using curdled milk and it was curdled with
4:27
Speaker 1: wine or beer or I guess you get curdles when
4:30
Speaker 1: you heat it. And then eventually it was thickened with
4:32
Speaker 1: eggs and kind of became more what we know today
4:36
Speaker 1: as traditional egg nog. But our story is really about
4:40
Speaker 1: a riot involving drunken cadets. I'm gonna go with quote
4:46
Speaker 1: unquote riot on this wouldnell really okay? At what at
4:50
Speaker 1: what threshold does fracas or brew haha become full on riot?
4:57
Speaker 1: It's true. I was going to open the show with
4:58
Speaker 1: a joke about how many eighteen hundreds uh West Point
5:03
Speaker 1: cadets does it take to assault to officers and break
5:08
Speaker 1: all of the China, And when we know the answer
5:11
Speaker 1: we'll get to that. We'll get to that. So let's
5:14
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about West Point in general. West
5:19
Speaker 1: Point remains famous today. It is a storied institution here
5:23
Speaker 1: in the United States. It is named west Point because,
5:26
Speaker 1: in a stunning plot twist, it is located in West Point,
5:29
Speaker 1: New York. Yeah, it's about fifty miles outside of New
5:33
Speaker 1: York City. And storied it was. However, it didn't used
5:37
Speaker 1: to be the model of discipline um and steadfastness fastidiousness
5:44
Speaker 1: that it is today because in the early days of
5:47
Speaker 1: the school, it was ridiculously easy to get in and
5:52
Speaker 1: that they let anyone in right um and you could
5:55
Speaker 1: could join anytime during the year, and it was just
5:58
Speaker 1: kind of a loose grouping of ramshackled little huts um.
6:03
Speaker 1: And I think it was about ten cadets that were
6:06
Speaker 1: taught by I think only three teachers, you know. But
6:10
Speaker 1: then a little thing called the War of eighteen twelve happened,
6:13
Speaker 1: which was you know, against Britain, because the Brits were
6:16
Speaker 1: attempting to restrict trade, uh and they kept arresting American seamen,
6:22
Speaker 1: which is not cool, as we know, and also inciting
6:25
Speaker 1: Indian attacks on the U S frontiers. So that aggression
6:28
Speaker 1: would not stand, my friends, so we decided to go
6:30
Speaker 1: to war with the Brits. And that also led to
6:34
Speaker 1: a need for disciplined soldiers, right disciplined, professional, competent soldiers.
6:41
Speaker 1: And there's a character here in the evolution of West
6:46
Speaker 1: Point that we must absolutely mention, if only because he
6:50
Speaker 1: has an awesome name. It's like a dumbledorey and awesome name.
6:53
Speaker 1: Sylvanus Fair, Ladies and gentlemen. In eighteen seventeen, then President
7:00
Speaker 1: Ames Monroe ordered Fair to become the superintendent of the
7:05
Speaker 1: Military Academy after the resignation of the former superintendent, Alden Partridge.
7:11
Speaker 1: And so pretty cool name also yeah, by his own right,
7:16
Speaker 1: not not Harry potteresque, but cool nonetheless and accidentally rhymed.
7:21
Speaker 1: Under Fair's leadership, the Academy began to make incredibly impressive
7:27
Speaker 1: leaps and bounds in terms of discipline, in terms of
7:31
Speaker 1: quality of education. It became the nation's first college of Engineering. Well.
7:36
Speaker 1: Fair didn't take no guff, my friend, Um, he didn't
7:40
Speaker 1: put up with any horseplay, Shenanigan's or buffoonery, especially when
7:46
Speaker 1: it pertained to consuming or um even possessing alcohol of
7:52
Speaker 1: any kind. Right, alcohol could not be possessed, sold, or
7:57
Speaker 1: brought into West Point at all. And this was just
8:02
Speaker 1: another part of his overall very strict regime. For instance,
8:08
Speaker 1: he kept the students on a diet of beef, bread,
8:13
Speaker 1: and water to accustom them to military rations. Their days
8:17
Speaker 1: were strictly controlled as far as the way their time
8:20
Speaker 1: was organized, and they had a lot of pressure on them.
8:25
Speaker 1: So imagine these students like springs that are increasingly compressed,
8:30
Speaker 1: storing up more energy and tension. Yeah, they weren't even
8:34
Speaker 1: allowed these some of these rules there, I don't understand.
8:36
Speaker 1: They weren't allowed to leave campus. I guess I can
8:38
Speaker 1: get that because if you leave campus you can get booze.
8:40
Speaker 1: I guess that's in the bud um. Also, they couldn't
8:44
Speaker 1: cook in their dorms or duel, right right, Just this
8:47
Speaker 1: seems related. I made a note in the margins here
8:49
Speaker 1: in this, uh, this article from the Smithsonian egg Nog.
8:52
Speaker 1: It's all fun and games until someone starts a holiday riot,
8:55
Speaker 1: it said before their West Point sucked or was awesome whatever. Yeah,
9:00
Speaker 1: that's uh, that's by Natasha Galing. And yeah, this article
9:04
Speaker 1: is very well written, and I noticed some of the
9:07
Speaker 1: same rules you're talking about here. And to me, the
9:11
Speaker 1: dueling one makes a lot of sense because you imagine,
9:15
Speaker 1: you know, they're in a homogeneous population, right, this was
9:19
Speaker 1: this was strictly segregated. But for the time it's it
9:24
Speaker 1: started to become relatively progressive because it was important for
9:28
Speaker 1: kids from a lower income level, right, or a lower
9:32
Speaker 1: socioeconomic bracket to receive the same caliber of education if
9:36
Speaker 1: they were qualified for it. But with all the discipline
9:41
Speaker 1: in the harsh environment, I can easily imagine that if
9:44
Speaker 1: duels were allowed, these kids would be punching each other
9:49
Speaker 1: up and pulling cards left and right. Yeah, fisticuffs and
9:53
Speaker 1: gun battles galore. Um. It's interesting because even though alcohol
9:59
Speaker 1: was for beden at West Point, it was surrounded by
10:02
Speaker 1: normal things that you have in towns, like like pubs,
10:05
Speaker 1: and there were a couple. There was one called Benny
10:07
Speaker 1: Haven and then another one called North Tavern, and those
10:11
Speaker 1: will come into play in a little bit. But Benny
10:13
Speaker 1: Haven Um is also known for being the main hangout
10:17
Speaker 1: for Edgar Allan Poe when he attended West Point UM.
10:21
Speaker 1: Admittedly not for a very long time because he you know,
10:25
Speaker 1: mainly just hung out and got sloshed the whole time,
10:29
Speaker 1: but there was a history of getting slashed at West
10:32
Speaker 1: Point before our pal Thayer came in in the days
10:35
Speaker 1: before his iron fisted grip tightened around these cadets and
10:40
Speaker 1: tried to whip those boys into shape. They had a
10:43
Speaker 1: yearly kind of revelry kind of thing going on around
10:46
Speaker 1: the holidays, didn't they. Right, this is important. It may
10:49
Speaker 1: seem strange to day, but in the past, in those days,
10:53
Speaker 1: heavy drinking was or drinking in general was more common.
10:57
Speaker 1: It was something that was normal for people to do.
11:00
Speaker 1: You'll also hear some stories about early founding fathers uh
11:06
Speaker 1: and influential historical figures being several mattress factory amounts of
11:12
Speaker 1: sheets to the wind and Uh. We're establishing this because
11:17
Speaker 1: when Thayer came in, he wasn't creating out of whole
11:21
Speaker 1: cloth the strict set of rules. He was reacting to
11:24
Speaker 1: what he saw his laxity in the past, and people, students,
11:28
Speaker 1: officers alike were well aware of the previous traditions. When
11:32
Speaker 1: you mentioned historical figures and founding fathers. One a couple
11:37
Speaker 1: that are part of the story are our boy Jeff
11:39
Speaker 1: Davis Jefferson for Long and Uh Robert E. Lee were
11:45
Speaker 1: both involved in this tale of debauchery and chastisement. Yes, okay,
11:51
Speaker 1: so here's here's how it happens. Up until eighteen twenty five,
11:57
Speaker 1: cadets alcohol was still banned, but there were two days
12:00
Speaker 1: a year that they could drink. That was the fourth
12:04
Speaker 1: of July. Makes sense, go us right, live it up.
12:09
Speaker 1: And then of course Christmas. And then this changed because
12:13
Speaker 1: on the fourth of July e five a a bunch
12:19
Speaker 1: of cadets drinking led to a snake dance, which led
12:24
Speaker 1: to the hoisting of the school's commandant onto the students shoulders,
12:29
Speaker 1: and Thayer said, you know what, this is too much
12:31
Speaker 1: a snake dance. Snake dance like, is that some kind
12:34
Speaker 1: of is it a congo line? Is it a bunch
12:38
Speaker 1: of people just sort of slithering up and down it.
12:41
Speaker 1: They didn't like it because it just wasn't dignified. You know.
12:45
Speaker 1: It makes me think of remember when we did the
12:48
Speaker 1: episode about the poison Squad when Wiley got booted from
12:54
Speaker 1: his professorship for riding a bike. So maybe it was
12:57
Speaker 1: just the idea that this was such a lack of
13:00
Speaker 1: discipline for them to put someone on their shoulders that
13:03
Speaker 1: he said no alcohol. Ever, well, yeah, I did say
13:07
Speaker 1: he was he was not fond of horsing around. That
13:10
Speaker 1: sounds like the very definition of horsing around, making around.
13:14
Speaker 1: So Ben just want to get this straight. So yeah,
13:16
Speaker 1: he still allowed this revelry at first and then shut
13:19
Speaker 1: it down after one of these went awry by his standards. Yeah,
13:22
Speaker 1: eighteen six onward. No alcohol, not once, never, not a drop?
13:28
Speaker 1: Was he a teetotal? Do you think or do you
13:29
Speaker 1: think he would get in his cups? Privately? He seems
13:33
Speaker 1: like a pretty straight shooter. He seems like a straight shooter.
13:36
Speaker 1: But you know, you have to wonder if he applied
13:38
Speaker 1: those same rules to himself. Do as I say, not
13:41
Speaker 1: as I'm get hammered, right right right? Uh? Drink as
13:45
Speaker 1: I say, not as I drink. And you know, I
13:48
Speaker 1: love that you mentioned these taverns because they didn't magically
13:52
Speaker 1: disappear after And Benny Haven is the really interesting one
13:58
Speaker 1: there because of those two brains we mentioned earlier, Benny
14:01
Speaker 1: Haven was the only one that allowed a barter system
14:05
Speaker 1: for the students. I know, this is really interesting, so
14:07
Speaker 1: they could like trade shoes and and pantaloons and you know,
14:12
Speaker 1: maybe potatoes, who know anything? I guess was that was
14:15
Speaker 1: on the table, except if it came from the school, right,
14:19
Speaker 1: No uniform, because that would be that would be stealing.
14:21
Speaker 1: And they do not want to get on the bad
14:23
Speaker 1: side of Colonel Fair. No, certainly do not, right right,
14:27
Speaker 1: And it sounds like a tough customer, that Colonel Fair. Yeah,
14:30
Speaker 1: people took him seriously. But you also have to wonder
14:34
Speaker 1: would you barter stuff for booze? Yes, you would if
14:38
Speaker 1: I didn't have any pocket money, if you didn't have
14:40
Speaker 1: a thirty five cents on hand, which will come into
14:42
Speaker 1: play later. Okay, yeah, No, I don't know. I mean,
14:45
Speaker 1: I wouldn't barter away on the clothes on my back,
14:48
Speaker 1: But if I had something of value that I could
14:50
Speaker 1: part with and I wanted a nice stiff drink, I'm
14:52
Speaker 1: not opposed to that. So when judging me, are you
14:56
Speaker 1: silently judging me? Ben? No? No, no, no, I'm I'm
14:59
Speaker 1: judging myself fair enough, me too, Ben. You're great. You
15:03
Speaker 1: know what we're together, We're a solid eight out of ten.
15:07
Speaker 1: And uh you know we can never compare to Casey pegrum,
15:10
Speaker 1: which is not not a bad thing. None can If
15:12
Speaker 1: you can a few, very few between the two of us,
15:15
Speaker 1: we practically make a whole person. We're getting there for sure.
15:19
Speaker 1: So no, this situation is unsustainable to the students, right
15:24
Speaker 1: to the cadets. The afore mentioned winding spring ready to pop.
15:33
Speaker 1: So this all comes to a head when Christmas Eve
15:39
Speaker 1: of eighteen six rolls around again. That's one of the
15:43
Speaker 1: two days the cadets are allowed to drink to imbibe,
15:47
Speaker 1: and this is the first time they can't. And you know,
15:52
Speaker 1: no one likes it when you tell them they can't
15:54
Speaker 1: do something. Tell me what I can't do, Ben, Yeah,
15:57
Speaker 1: don't tell me what I can't do. I will automatically
16:00
Speaker 1: go do it. Reverse psychology is real, it's dangerous, and
16:04
Speaker 1: people know it works. But clearly fair that was not
16:06
Speaker 1: his style. He was much more of a prohibitor than
16:10
Speaker 1: a than a mind manipulator, a mind wrangler exactly. Um.
16:14
Speaker 1: So you know these cadets on Christmas Eve of about
16:19
Speaker 1: seventy of them as it turns out, which I think
16:21
Speaker 1: was somewhere in the neighborhood of a third of the
16:24
Speaker 1: student body of of West point Um, decided to hatch
16:29
Speaker 1: a little plot where they were going to go against
16:33
Speaker 1: old Colonel Thayer's wishes and get themselves some boozy eggnog, Right,
16:41
Speaker 1: so they decided that they would go off campus and
16:46
Speaker 1: go to the place they knew that was going to
16:49
Speaker 1: be the friendliest evern, which was of course benny Haveny Haven.
16:52
Speaker 1: Maybe they brought some some extra pairs of socks with
16:55
Speaker 1: which to barter. However, Benny Haven proved without us remarking
17:00
Speaker 1: on the socks or the pantaloons or whatever they brought
17:03
Speaker 1: with them, doesn't matter, right, Benny Haven's was too expensive
17:08
Speaker 1: to step. Yeah, they could buy a little bit of liquor,
17:10
Speaker 1: but not as much as they wanted, So they had
17:12
Speaker 1: to go to Plan B. They wanted to get ripped
17:15
Speaker 1: and drunk. Oh, we should call it Plan H. I
17:18
Speaker 1: like it because why because they crossed the Hudson River exactly.
17:21
Speaker 1: That's the very very good foreshadow in there Bend. So yes,
17:23
Speaker 1: they did in fact cross the Hudson River. I imagine
17:26
Speaker 1: on some sort of sloop, perhaps a barge, some sort
17:30
Speaker 1: of would they maybe surely they had vessels at the disposal, Right,
17:33
Speaker 1: it's a military academy. What do you think, what do
17:35
Speaker 1: you picture them crossing on? One would imagine they wouldn't
17:39
Speaker 1: swim because of the weather. Yeah, it'd be cold, so
17:42
Speaker 1: they were probably on you know, a small boat or something.
17:45
Speaker 1: Maybe they just rode across. I like it. I like it.
17:48
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to set the scene as all. You know.
17:50
Speaker 1: So this is under the cover of night, no doubt. Um.
17:53
Speaker 1: They go over to the pub we mentioned briefly earlier,
17:56
Speaker 1: the tavern I guess north tavern, where they made a
17:59
Speaker 1: deal with the the bartender, the bar keep, and they
18:03
Speaker 1: procured in the neighborhood of three or four gallons of whiskey. Yeah, yeah,
18:10
Speaker 1: they're gonna do it. Yeah, they've got They've got gallons
18:14
Speaker 1: of whiskey. And while they were there, they had the
18:19
Speaker 1: historical quote we found is a few glasses themselves that
18:23
Speaker 1: this I think leads into the one for the chef, right,
18:27
Speaker 1: leads to the domino domino effect we'll see later. Because
18:32
Speaker 1: the size of those glasses as we record this, uh,
18:34
Speaker 1: that size is lost to history, so we have no
18:37
Speaker 1: idea how large these glasses were. But anyway, the death's
18:41
Speaker 1: knocked back a few They went back to the dock
18:44
Speaker 1: and they found a soldier who was standing guard. But
18:47
Speaker 1: they said, you know what, man turn a blind eye,
18:50
Speaker 1: which wasn't unusual, right, uh, And he said, what price
18:55
Speaker 1: do you expect me to put on my morals. This
18:59
Speaker 1: conversation is inspired by a true story, I should say, uh,
19:02
Speaker 1: and they they named a price and he accepted. And
19:06
Speaker 1: what was that price? It was thirty five cents? It
19:08
Speaker 1: was thirty five cents. Do you want to plug that
19:10
Speaker 1: into your handy dandy inflation calculator? Ben, you're you're going
19:14
Speaker 1: to find this hilarious, and listeners, I hope you enjoy
19:20
Speaker 1: this too. In eighteen twenty six, thirty five cents was
19:26
Speaker 1: the equivalent of Casey, can we get a drum roll please?
19:37
Speaker 1: Eight dollars and nine cents. Yeah, his cheap, cheap, cheap
19:45
Speaker 1: morals eight dollars and nine cents. I mean, that's bizarre.
19:52
Speaker 1: I can't imagine a bribe that would work at that
19:56
Speaker 1: price level. Yeah, no, I can't either. Um, I would
20:00
Speaker 1: have at least asked for some of that whiskey, right,
20:03
Speaker 1: maybe he did. Surely they applied him with with booze.
20:06
Speaker 1: Let's editorialize here. I mean, come on, no one's gonna
20:09
Speaker 1: take eight fitty without a little without a couple of
20:12
Speaker 1: shots first, right, yes, yeah, so uh, we go back
20:16
Speaker 1: to we go back to Colonel Fair and sure it
20:20
Speaker 1: was a bit draconian, but That doesn't make him a
20:23
Speaker 1: dunder head, It doesn't make him stupid. He was clearly
20:26
Speaker 1: a pretty savvy fellow, and he knew that cadets had
20:30
Speaker 1: smuggled alcohol into the academy before. In fact, one of
20:34
Speaker 1: our characters near has a history that will get to
20:36
Speaker 1: in a bit. But he had always in and the
20:41
Speaker 1: staff and officers structure of West Point had always dealt
20:44
Speaker 1: with these on a case by case basis. So he
20:47
Speaker 1: assumed reasonably so that there would be at least one
20:52
Speaker 1: bad or should we say, one drunk apple, one fermented
20:55
Speaker 1: apple like a bunch. So he had talked about it
20:59
Speaker 1: with some of the staff and the fellow officers, but
21:03
Speaker 1: he just took the regular precautions, like to two guards yep,
21:09
Speaker 1: Captain Ethan Allen Hitchcock and Lieutenant William A. Thornton. They
21:13
Speaker 1: were to monitor the North barracks, Old Hitchcock and Thornton.
21:18
Speaker 1: They have they're about to have have some fun. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh.
21:22
Speaker 1: They go to bed, they knock off around midnight, right yep,
21:26
Speaker 1: that's right. Um, at which point, uh the boys who
21:30
Speaker 1: set off who sally forth for the north the tavern
21:35
Speaker 1: are now back in their respective dorms, Um, I guess
21:39
Speaker 1: they they snuck into the kitchen and made the knog.
21:43
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, what what part of the egg is
21:45
Speaker 1: the nog ben? That's that's the question. I think everyone
21:48
Speaker 1: wants to know. What's a good question. Um, let's see
21:51
Speaker 1: is there an answer there? As I was being a
21:53
Speaker 1: little coy, so no one knows exactly. And it's certainly
21:57
Speaker 1: a bit of a turn of phrase. There is no
21:59
Speaker 1: nog to the egg. It's not it's not a part
22:01
Speaker 1: of the egg. I think you will probably already knew that, um.
22:04
Speaker 1: But it turns out that the word nog um was
22:08
Speaker 1: an old English slang for a very stiff beer. Oh okay,
22:15
Speaker 1: and you've also heard like grog, So I'm assuming that
22:18
Speaker 1: there's some relation there. And then another one is uh
22:22
Speaker 1: that the idea that, um, these wooden mugs that you
22:26
Speaker 1: could find in taverns all across the land were called
22:29
Speaker 1: noggin's and so apparently, and this is from an article
22:34
Speaker 1: on a delightful blog called Sustainable Table about the history
22:37
Speaker 1: of eggnog, and they conjecture that when you combine nogging
22:43
Speaker 1: with egg, you get eggnog. So I don't know, there's
22:49
Speaker 1: a little aside that's solid. Oh, but we should also
22:53
Speaker 1: add that the three cadets went across the Hudson. Uh,
22:58
Speaker 1: we're not alone in their endeavor. This was a group effort.
23:02
Speaker 1: According to the eggnog Riot on Laughing's Quarterly by Michelle Legro,
23:09
Speaker 1: they were joined with conspirators colluters. You see, another group
23:13
Speaker 1: brought a gallon of brandy and a gallon of wine,
23:17
Speaker 1: and another one get this phrasonal organized a gallon of
23:21
Speaker 1: liquor on credit, and then someone else bought the eggs,
23:25
Speaker 1: the milk, and the nutmeg. So they had all the
23:28
Speaker 1: ingredients assembled together, and they got wasted. They got so
23:35
Speaker 1: wasted that four hours after midnight, the two officers we mentioned,
23:38
Speaker 1: Thornton and Hitchcock, woke up with a very uh we're
23:42
Speaker 1: a family show, so it's called a very OMG WTF reaction. Yeah,
23:46
Speaker 1: it was. It was a clamor um hubbub. There was
23:50
Speaker 1: such a clamor ye, indeed. But it was not jolly
23:54
Speaker 1: old st Nick. No, it was a bunch of unruly,
23:57
Speaker 1: drunken military school cadets, which has just gotta be the worst.
24:03
Speaker 1: Uh they were, well, let me let me correct here. Uh.
24:08
Speaker 1: So after the officers went to bed, they started drinking.
24:11
Speaker 1: The cadets and then you'll hear, either around two am
24:15
Speaker 1: or four am, the feather of drunken noise broke. The
24:20
Speaker 1: proverbial camel of silence is back. We all know the
24:23
Speaker 1: sound if you live next door to a frat house
24:25
Speaker 1: or anything, if you've ever had any kind of unruly
24:28
Speaker 1: neighbors that are having a party when you're trying to sleep,
24:30
Speaker 1: it's a very specific sound. Sounds totally different when you
24:33
Speaker 1: yourself are drunk, sounds delightful. It sounds just like the
24:36
Speaker 1: sound of fun. Sounds merry, you know, but when you're
24:39
Speaker 1: when you're trying to sleep. Sure, it's an instant, instant
24:42
Speaker 1: in ranger. So they were making merry. Around two am,
24:48
Speaker 1: Jefferson Davis and eight other cadets started singing very loudly.
24:53
Speaker 1: Another student tried to do the version of shoot Guys,
24:58
Speaker 1: come on Cheese and uh by four him the sounds
25:03
Speaker 1: blasting through the floorboards, and that triggers the investigation. Do
25:07
Speaker 1: we talk about Jeff Davis? Jeffe. We should talk about
25:10
Speaker 1: Jeff Davis because we just mentioned him as leading the singing.
25:13
Speaker 1: He was. He was one of those kids with a
25:17
Speaker 1: past absolutely and the future. He went on to become
25:20
Speaker 1: the president of the U. S Confederacy. That's the one. Um.
25:23
Speaker 1: But he was what you might describe as an incorrigible drunk. Yeah. Yeah,
25:30
Speaker 1: he had a history of being cinsured for leaving his
25:35
Speaker 1: post to drink at the bar. In fact, he racked
25:38
Speaker 1: up and arrest he did. He got arrested. I think
25:42
Speaker 1: he was the first student to be arrested for sneaking
25:44
Speaker 1: away to go to Benny Haven. And not long before
25:49
Speaker 1: the Eggnog riot that we're talking about, he Um was
25:53
Speaker 1: with some pals sneaking and he fell into a pit
25:58
Speaker 1: and his pals cried out, are you alive? And and
26:02
Speaker 1: thankfully he was. He was alive. But he you know,
26:06
Speaker 1: you don't know, man Ravine, good lord, he could have
26:09
Speaker 1: hit his head on a rock and that's sixty feet
26:12
Speaker 1: so that's nothing to sneeze at. So this guy, when
26:15
Speaker 1: they're when they're organizing this secret Christmas party, Jefferson Davis
26:21
Speaker 1: is one of the top picks. He's like a veteran
26:23
Speaker 1: of this sort of thing. Yeah, he was totally on board. Um.
26:26
Speaker 1: And our heroes, uh, for all, in dists and purposes,
26:31
Speaker 1: heroes are depends on what what side of of this.
26:34
Speaker 1: I'm annoyed at the cadets, to be honest, that's where
26:37
Speaker 1: I stand. I think they're being a little disrespectful. I
26:40
Speaker 1: feel you. But it's Christmas, eve Man, No it's not.
26:43
Speaker 1: It's Christmas. Oh yeah, yeah, it's officially Christmas. Okay, even more,
26:48
Speaker 1: it's Christmas Day. Have a little charity. Where's my Okay. So,
26:51
Speaker 1: but I'm just saying, like I've been around drunk people
26:53
Speaker 1: when I'm sober and trying to sleep enough that I
26:56
Speaker 1: am feeling these two guards perspective here pretty hard. So
27:00
Speaker 1: one of them, Hitchcock, leaps out of bed with a
27:02
Speaker 1: start um and finds a handful of of the boys,
27:07
Speaker 1: six or seven of them visibly slashed, and he he,
27:13
Speaker 1: I love the way this article puts it, Uh, the
27:16
Speaker 1: Smithsonian article. He ordered them to disperse, right, right, right,
27:20
Speaker 1: and they refused. They refused to disperse. And it sounds
27:26
Speaker 1: so formal at this point, you know, it sounds as though, uh,
27:30
Speaker 1: they had a decision making process. But that's it was.
27:34
Speaker 1: It had to be more sloppy and more emotionally charged.
27:38
Speaker 1: He thought it was just that one room at first,
27:41
Speaker 1: but it turns out it wasn't. Oh no, no, it wasn't.
27:44
Speaker 1: He then went into another room, and he was actually
27:48
Speaker 1: followed by our boy jeff Davis, who tried to give
27:52
Speaker 1: his compatriots the heads up by shouting, put away the
27:56
Speaker 1: grog boys, old Hitchers, come in, Old Hitchcock. Uh. But
28:00
Speaker 1: of course he was already there. He was literally there,
28:02
Speaker 1: right behind him or right in front of him, so
28:04
Speaker 1: you know, he he looked like a chump. Um. And
28:07
Speaker 1: then Hitchcock ordered Jeffy to disperse and he agreed, which
28:13
Speaker 1: is probably the one thing that saved him from getting
28:15
Speaker 1: court martialed and expelled. Um. So you know, we can
28:18
Speaker 1: thank Hitchcock and his kind hearted nature for you know,
28:22
Speaker 1: Jefferson Davis is uh future in politics. Yeah, no one
28:26
Speaker 1: knew what was going to happen at the time exactly.
28:34
Speaker 1: So Davis is arrested. Others are arrested, uh ordered to
28:40
Speaker 1: their rooms. And this is this is weird because we
28:45
Speaker 1: asked at the top of the show what constitutes a riot.
28:49
Speaker 1: Apparently Hitchcock read the group the Riot Act, which declared
28:54
Speaker 1: any group of twelve or more unlawfully assembled. Wait, that's
28:58
Speaker 1: a real thing, the Riot Act. That's what's all they
29:01
Speaker 1: have it here. Do you say when you're reading someone
29:03
Speaker 1: the Riot Act. That's literally like you're telling them their rights. Yeah.
29:07
Speaker 1: The original Riot Act again, real thing was passed back
29:11
Speaker 1: in seventeen fourteen in Britain, and it essentially ruled that
29:15
Speaker 1: if a group of a dozen or more people got
29:18
Speaker 1: together and started acting unruly, an officer of the law
29:21
Speaker 1: could approach them and tell them to disperse, but to
29:24
Speaker 1: do so, they literally had to read the Riot Act.
29:29
Speaker 1: So the Cadets are really poed right now because they
29:36
Speaker 1: had this one party in their minds. It's one of
29:39
Speaker 1: two nights they can let loose the entire year. Yeah,
29:42
Speaker 1: because we can't forget that. It's it's you know, it's
29:44
Speaker 1: hard to come in and like just change things overnight.
29:48
Speaker 1: Like if they're used to having these parties, and then
29:50
Speaker 1: you've got this, this this killjoy Fair coming in and
29:54
Speaker 1: denying them their two nights of revelry a year. That's's
29:58
Speaker 1: that's stings a little. You know, this was very refresh
30:01
Speaker 1: for them. So here's where I start to lose sympathy
30:05
Speaker 1: for the Cadets. Yeah. So after now they're angry at
30:09
Speaker 1: Hitchcock for ruining the soiree to get together. They decide
30:16
Speaker 1: to hunt the captain down, they decide that vengeance is theirs,
30:21
Speaker 1: and we have a great quote for how that segment
30:24
Speaker 1: of the night began. Yeah, Hitchcock took off and then um,
30:27
Speaker 1: one of the drunken cadets screamed, get your dirks and
30:32
Speaker 1: bayonets and pistols. If you have them before the night
30:35
Speaker 1: is over, Hitchcock will be dead. So that's you know,
30:39
Speaker 1: that's a threat of bodily harm to a superior officer.
30:43
Speaker 1: That's probably not I'm not gonna fly right, right, right.
30:48
Speaker 1: So there's a book written by James b Agnew called
30:53
Speaker 1: The Eggnog Riot the Christmas Mutiny at West Point. Maybe
30:57
Speaker 1: mutiny is a little better word, but again he did
30:59
Speaker 1: read the riot. So so this book gives a minute
31:03
Speaker 1: by minute treatment account or estimation about how things went
31:09
Speaker 1: down and from that point. So, let's says around four
31:13
Speaker 1: a m. Over the next two hours there was a
31:15
Speaker 1: cat and mouse game between the drunk students, the faculty
31:19
Speaker 1: of West Point and the sober students, you know, the
31:23
Speaker 1: nerds who woke up to side with the faculty against
31:29
Speaker 1: their fellow cadets. Yeah, and then the other guy, Thornton
31:31
Speaker 1: in the other guard. He was had a sword brandished
31:34
Speaker 1: in his face, he got brained with a piece of wood,
31:37
Speaker 1: got knocked on his butt. And I think Hitchcock was
31:41
Speaker 1: trying to break into a door that had been like barricaded,
31:45
Speaker 1: and someone took a shot at him from the other
31:48
Speaker 1: side of the door, the pistol. I mean, this is
31:50
Speaker 1: I think riot is absolutely fair, right, And just to
31:53
Speaker 1: go back a second to establish how drunk these cadets
31:57
Speaker 1: were when Hitchcock originally busted them. Several of them, No,
32:02
Speaker 1: try to hide under blankets, like while he's there, Like,
32:06
Speaker 1: if I just hide under this blanket, no one will
32:08
Speaker 1: see me, right. I think some of them took their
32:10
Speaker 1: hats and covered their faces, Like you think that's gonna work, right, right, right,
32:15
Speaker 1: But what's what's going on? So this is where they
32:17
Speaker 1: start doing incredible physical damage, not just threatening the officers,
32:22
Speaker 1: but damaging the property as well, breaking windows, ripping banisters
32:28
Speaker 1: off a staircases. Yeah, just like shredding the curtains, whatever
32:32
Speaker 1: if they could get their hands on. I mean, it
32:34
Speaker 1: was a melee um. And so Hitchcock and Thornton decided
32:39
Speaker 1: they'd better call him the cavalry, and it was these
32:42
Speaker 1: guys called the Bombardier's um who were the guards that
32:46
Speaker 1: always kind of stood watched to make sure. It's sort
32:49
Speaker 1: of like internal affairs for cops. You know, it's like
32:51
Speaker 1: nobody likes internal affairs if you're a cop, because they're like,
32:54
Speaker 1: it's like a snitch. So the cadets did not care
32:57
Speaker 1: for the bombardiers, and once they got called in, um,
33:00
Speaker 1: things just got even even nastier, right, because the cadets
33:05
Speaker 1: hated these artillery men and they thought Hitchcock summoning them
33:10
Speaker 1: was this quote affront to their integrity. And if you
33:14
Speaker 1: read between the lines of history here, it sounds like
33:16
Speaker 1: they were just sloshed enough that they were we're going
33:20
Speaker 1: to get angry about anything. They were obviously having delusions
33:23
Speaker 1: of grand are too. It's like, who the hell do
33:25
Speaker 1: they think they are? You know, they were trained in warfare?
33:28
Speaker 1: What am you're saying like their students at this school?
33:31
Speaker 1: These are their commanding officers. There is a mill, you know,
33:34
Speaker 1: two nights of partying a year or no, there is
33:37
Speaker 1: a military structure in place here, right like this is
33:40
Speaker 1: this just seems like a you know, a mass hysteria
33:44
Speaker 1: kind of situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And as things went
33:47
Speaker 1: further off the rails, it turned out that the bombardiers
33:51
Speaker 1: or these artillery men never actually showed up, and slowly, painfully,
33:58
Speaker 1: I would imagine these cadets began to sober up, but
34:04
Speaker 1: not successfully, not in enough time to be up at
34:08
Speaker 1: their scheduled hour, which was six am six am on
34:15
Speaker 1: a regular day. They would be exactly. They were probably
34:17
Speaker 1: not feeling super well. And finally, um, a man who
34:21
Speaker 1: was the commandant of cadets. Sounds like a really intense name,
34:24
Speaker 1: so like the king of cartoons from pue irmin. Yeah,
34:27
Speaker 1: there were a commandant of cadets. Um. He struck enough
34:31
Speaker 1: fear into the hearts of these boys that they they
34:34
Speaker 1: chilled out, They stopped breaking stuff. They were probably also
34:37
Speaker 1: getting tired and puy yeah. Uh. Jefferson Davis, according to
34:42
Speaker 1: the accounts, had missed the bulk of the night's events
34:46
Speaker 1: because instead of resisting arrest, when he was put under
34:49
Speaker 1: his rest, he uh stumbled to his room, threw up
34:53
Speaker 1: a little bit, and passed out. So that actually turned
34:57
Speaker 1: out well for him because he wasn't party to a
34:59
Speaker 1: lot of the more violent events. In his memoirs, he
35:04
Speaker 1: would later claim that he didn't name names or you know,
35:07
Speaker 1: snitch on other people. Essentially, but the record show he
35:10
Speaker 1: indicated that his roommate was involved in the conflict when
35:15
Speaker 1: the cadet returned to their dorm, waking Davis up as
35:18
Speaker 1: he loaded his gun. So his roommate was the one
35:21
Speaker 1: who fired the shot. Not a good look, So fair was,
35:25
Speaker 1: you know, rightfully pretty upset. He he gathered a all
35:30
Speaker 1: of his staff for an inquiry um on the next night,
35:33
Speaker 1: and then over the following weeks they placed twenty two
35:38
Speaker 1: cadets on restriction and then they started to develop an
35:42
Speaker 1: investigation a court of inquiry uh and that was issued
35:45
Speaker 1: by Major General Alexander McComb, who was the Chief Engineer
35:49
Speaker 1: of the Army and Inspector of the Academy. And this
35:52
Speaker 1: is actually from an article on the U. S. Army's
35:54
Speaker 1: website egg And they have access to apparently a whole
35:58
Speaker 1: lot of ink that was spilled over this thing in
36:01
Speaker 1: terms of internal records. Because is a big deal, right, Oh, yeah,
36:04
Speaker 1: of course a huge deal. It's a premier institution. And
36:08
Speaker 1: we have the names of the cadets that we can
36:11
Speaker 1: list off. I'm gonna do it very quickly. The cadets
36:14
Speaker 1: were an Swith Berry and Bomford Burnley, Farely, Fitzgerald, Guard Guyan, Humphries, Johnson, Lewis, Mercer, Murdoch, Norville,
36:22
Speaker 1: Robert Scriven, Stocker, Swords, and Thompson. They all stood trial
36:27
Speaker 1: and uh other cadets, including Jefferson Davis and Robert Eally,
36:33
Speaker 1: testified for the defense. Eleven of that group were dismissed
36:38
Speaker 1: and the remainder were allowed to stay, although three of them, Guard,
36:42
Speaker 1: Murdoch and Norvelle chose to leave the academy anyway. You
36:46
Speaker 1: can't fire me. I quit indeed, And you know, and
36:50
Speaker 1: that you might think there were way more people involved
36:53
Speaker 1: in this than went down for it, right, yeah, but
36:56
Speaker 1: you gotta think this was like a third of the
36:58
Speaker 1: population of the school. And he was just getting things
37:02
Speaker 1: moved away from the old ways, the old debaucherous ways
37:05
Speaker 1: of West Point that sounds funny, um, getting things on
37:08
Speaker 1: track for his government. He you know, he'd been given
37:11
Speaker 1: some out of boys and he didn't want to lose everybody.
37:14
Speaker 1: He just wanted, like the main aggressors to take the
37:17
Speaker 1: fall and have it be a teachable moment, which I
37:20
Speaker 1: can appreciate. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, tough but fair. And
37:24
Speaker 1: so the riot included, as I believe you point out
37:30
Speaker 1: earlier nearly one third of West Point students and it
37:34
Speaker 1: changed the change the approach in the face of the
37:37
Speaker 1: academy for decades to come. But West Points command historian
37:43
Speaker 1: Sherman Fleek that name is on fleek? Is it is
37:48
Speaker 1: literally on FLEEKU famously was incorrect when he said hardly
37:54
Speaker 1: anyone knows about it if pooled among forty cadets, I
37:58
Speaker 1: don't know why. I think he talks like, um, three
38:00
Speaker 1: thousand federal employees, military staff and faculty. I doubt thirty
38:05
Speaker 1: people will know a thing about this. Guy's not even
38:08
Speaker 1: old timey. He's in our current day and age. It
38:11
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. Why would I not do a voice? Right?
38:15
Speaker 1: But way more than thirty people know about this, and uh,
38:21
Speaker 1: you know, more than thirty people should. Yeah, I don't know. Um.
38:24
Speaker 1: I think nowadays eggnog is maybe remembered less as the
38:29
Speaker 1: source of uh drunken riotous revelry at West Point and
38:34
Speaker 1: more of a non alcoholic kind of holiday drink. You know,
38:38
Speaker 1: my kid likes segnog. We have eggnog milkshakes. It sonic
38:41
Speaker 1: and you know egg frappuccinos Starbucks. Yeah, and eggnog is
38:46
Speaker 1: certainly not associated with crazy college party has gone wrong.
38:52
Speaker 1: That's more of a Yeager bomb thing. That's true. My
38:54
Speaker 1: whole thing with eggno because it's got so much sugar
38:56
Speaker 1: and milk and cream in it, it just seems like
38:59
Speaker 1: it would make you sick before you get drunk enough.
39:03
Speaker 1: It feels like a Lebowski drink to me, just drink
39:05
Speaker 1: the whiskey, man, drink the whiskey. Just is that? Is
39:09
Speaker 1: that our p s A? Is that our moral for
39:11
Speaker 1: this today's episode? Why not just drink the whiskey and
39:14
Speaker 1: the rum and the wine, whatever you got. Uh, we
39:17
Speaker 1: are going to wrap it up. We would like to
39:21
Speaker 1: hear from you. Does this change the way you feel
39:23
Speaker 1: about West Point? I don't know why we're going we're
39:27
Speaker 1: going with that question. Uh, we want to hear about
39:30
Speaker 1: your experience with agnog. Do you have your own eggnog recipe?
39:33
Speaker 1: Because a lot of people do, you know. Our composer
39:36
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, as as you said, modeled his after George Washington,
39:40
Speaker 1: but he had to figure out the amount of eggs himself. Yeah, exactly.
39:43
Speaker 1: And why not make a batch of your own George
39:45
Speaker 1: Washington eggnog and send us a note and let us
39:48
Speaker 1: know how you liked it. It's ridiculous at how stuff
39:50
Speaker 1: Works dot com. You can also write us on the
39:52
Speaker 1: facebooks um where we are ridiculous history and we have
39:56
Speaker 1: a nifty new Facebook group called the Ridiculous Historians where
40:00
Speaker 1: you can find your fellow listeners hipping each other to
40:02
Speaker 1: ridiculous stories throughout the span of human civilization. You can
40:06
Speaker 1: also find us two jokers on there as well. Yea, yeah,
40:11
Speaker 1: we lark. We hey, we comment as well and uh
40:15
Speaker 1: we do also look to this page for inspiration for
40:19
Speaker 1: future topics, so thanks to everyone who's already made so
40:22
Speaker 1: many excellent suggestions. You can also find us on Twitter.
40:25
Speaker 1: You can find us on Instagram. You can find us
40:28
Speaker 1: wherever you get podcasts. Oh gosh, that's right. We even
40:31
Speaker 1: have a website. Do you know that I didn't know? That?
40:34
Speaker 1: Isn't it Ridiculous History Show dot com spot on my friend.
40:37
Speaker 1: That's where you can find every episode that we have
40:40
Speaker 1: ever done. So check it out and let us know
40:43
Speaker 1: what you would like to hear. Next. We'll be getting
40:46
Speaker 1: some fantastic emails and we it always makes our day
40:50
Speaker 1: to read them, and as always we want to thank
40:53
Speaker 1: our super producer and eggnog enthusiast. Wait, let me check
40:58
Speaker 1: Casey now, okay, super producer Casey Pegram, who was not
41:03
Speaker 1: a fan of egg nog, not not not a not
41:06
Speaker 1: an odd guy. I think Casey would probably agree with
41:09
Speaker 1: me in saying, just drink the whiskey, man, Just drink
41:12
Speaker 1: the whiskey. And we want to thank Lori L. Dove,
41:15
Speaker 1: our regular contributor, for her excellent article on how stuff works.
41:19
Speaker 1: And uh, I guess most importantly other than thanking you, Ben, oh,
41:22
Speaker 1: thank you know. Let men do this every time. I
41:25
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, Let's not force it, Let's just
41:27
Speaker 1: let it happen. Okay, I'm up into that. We'd like
41:29
Speaker 1: to thank you folks for listening to the show, and
41:32
Speaker 1: we hope you'll join us for our next episode, where
41:35
Speaker 1: we talk about weird people who built weird stuff. That
41:39
Speaker 1: is literally going to be the title. Let see then,