Heth sailed north to West Point in 1843. Like Nathaniel Wyche Hunter and most other cadets, he arrived during the summer encampment. Unlike Wyche, he was protected from most of the indignities inflicted on new cadets by his cousin George Pickett, who was then a yearling and described by William M. Gardner, Class of 1846 and later a Confederate brigadier general, as “a jolly good fellow with fine natural gifts sadly neglected. He was a devoted and constant patron of Benny Haven, [a man] of ability, but belonging to a cadet set that appeared to have no ambition for class standing and wanted to do only enough study to secure their graduation.”5 The two cousins became boon companions, the core of a cadet clique that did not have the patience to wait until after graduation to seek adventures.
George Pickett would make his mark as one of history’s most famous Virginians, but he was appointed to West Point from Illinois. After his death, the general’s widow, LaSalle “Sallie” Pickett, wove an intriguing story around Pickett’s appointment, which over the years grew in the telling. The tale goes that in the early 1840s, when young George was studying law in Illinois, he occasioned to meet Congressman Abraham Lincoln. Pickett, who did not know Lincoln’s identity, spoke to him of his secret ambition to become a soldier. Lincoln took note of the young man’s aspiration, and soon afterwards, to his surprise, Pickett was notified that he had been appointed a cadet at West Point. This inspired a lifelong loyalty, and during the Civil War, Pickett would rise to the defense of Lincoln if anyone said anything negative about the president in his presence. One of Sallie’s stories has it that when Lincoln visited Richmond after its fall in April 1865, he stopped by the Pickett home and was met by Mrs. Pickett, holding her infant son, George Pickett Jr.
“Is this George Pickett’s house?” Lincoln asked.
“Yes, but he’s not at home.”
“I know that Ma’am, but I just wanted to see the place. I am Abraham Lincoln.”
“The President!” she gasped.
“No Ma’am! No Ma’am, just Abraham Lincoln, George’s old friend.”
“I am George Pickett’s wife,” she said, “and this is his baby.” George Jr. reached out to Lincoln, who took the baby in his arms and kissed him.
“Tell your father, the rascal, that I forgive him for the sake of that kiss and those bright eyes.” He then handed little George back to his mother and left.6 The tale of Lincoln’s visit is a compelling story of irony and forgiveness, and would be extraordinary if true. Sadly, no other witnesses attest to the story, and it was probably the product of Mrs. Pickett’s hagiographic impulses. An 1842 letter from Lincoln to Pickett on his appointment, full of fatherly advice and homespun wisdom, discovered in the early twentieth century, turned out to be a forgery. Furthermore, Lincoln served only one term in Congress, 1847–49, by which time Pickett had already graduated.
But while the particulars of the myth are easily disproved, there is at least a tincture of truth in it. Pickett did go to Quincy, Illinois, in the early 1840s to study law with his uncle Andrew Johnston. Pickett was appointed to West Point through the office of Johnston’s friend John Todd Stuart, a congressman from Illinois. Stuart had previously served as a volunteer major in the Blackhawk War, where he had met Lincoln, then captain of a volunteer company. (Both had been mustered into service by Regular Army Lieutenant Jefferson Davis.)7 Stuart and Lincoln served in the state legislature together and became law partners. Lincoln later married Stuart’s cousin, Mary Todd. Andrew Johnston and Lincoln were also close friends, and Johnston was responsible for the only known publication of a Lincoln poem, when he had some verse Lincoln had written him in a letter published in the Quincy Whig, May 5, 1847.8 Thus while the tale of the Lincoln-Pickett connection has been exaggerated, it is not a complete fantasy. It would be more difficult to believe that Johnston never bothered to introduce his nephew the prospective lawyer to his two successful friends in the west Illinois legal fraternity. Ironically, the only cadet that Lincoln nominated while in Congress was Hezekiah H. Garber of the Class of 1852, who like Pickett graduated as the Goat.9
The West Point that Pickett and Heth attended was subtly different from the institution Thayer had created. Major Rene DeRussy of the Class of 1812 followed Thayer as Superintendent and retained all the academic aspects of the Thayer system, which established it beyond question.10 DeRussy, however, was not the disciplinarian that Thayer had been, and he relaxed some of the stricter standards on cadet behavior. He allowed alcohol to be served again at the Fourth of July dinners, and unlike Thayer, who kept his distance from these festivities, DeRussy joined in. His easygoing approach was popular with cadets, and punishments grew so lax that even Thayer’s bête noire President Jackson mandated that West Point be “more rigorous in enforcing its discipline.”11
DeRussy served five years as Superintendent and was succeeded in 1838 by Major Richard Delafield, known as “Old Dickey.” Delafield had graduated first in the Class of 1818, the first class of the Thayer era. He thus may have felt a special responsibility to preserve the Thayer legacy. Like DeRussy, he maintained the continuity of the system, but he was much stricter than his predecessor, and so was not liked by cadets. They showed their disregard for him in various harmless ways; for example, two of Delafield’s pet ducks were caught and eaten, and cadets would occasionally corral his cow, which was accustomed to grazing on the Plain, to exploit the supply of fresh milk. In 1843 when Delafield banned the traditional cadet practice of having Christmas Eve suppers in their rooms, the Corps boycotted the elaborate catered feast and dance he had arranged in the drill hall. A cadet officer looked in on the desolate scene, and later noted in a letter home, “I really pitied the old gent, after all the pains he had taken—however it will learn him that he can’t control a body of men in their amusements or at any rate that he can’t make a man enjoy himself if he don’t wish to.”12
Delafield was assisted in his tasks by Commandant John Addison Thomas, Class of 1833, a strict disciplinarian who also was not loved by the cadets. He had been at USMA almost his entire career, as a Tac and professor before becoming Commandant. Since he had formerly taught ethics, his cadet nickname was “Ethical Tom,” though he insisted on signing his name “J. Addison Thomas.” He was vainglorious and affected a martial bearing, which was not out of place at the Academy but was noteworthy because it was so obviously artificial. He was fond of his full-dress uniform as an officer of artillery, with its towering hat and red plume. A cadet described him during parade: “This resplendent being appeared before us as a radiant vision, and with clanking saber and whiskers of most precise military cut, strode like a field marshal along our ranks, transfixing each of us in turn with the fierceness of his eagle eye.”13 Thomas too was the object of occasional expressions of discontent, such as the time his office was flooded by some cadets he had given Saturday punishment. Thomas’s wealthy wife eventually convinced him to leave the Army and become a lawyer, and when his departure was announced to the Corps in late October 1845, after ranks were broken the cadets raised their hats and spontaneously gave three cheers, three times. “This was insubordinate conduct,” Cadet George H. Derby explained, “but it could not be punished for there were no ringleaders, and all they could have done would have been to dismiss the whole corps.”14 Later that evening the cadets celebrated with an illumination of the barracks and a serenade of drums, and those who were caught were punished.
In addition to the efforts of DeRussy and Delafield, the Thayer system persisted because of the continuity in curriculum and faculty, particularly in the person of Dennis Hart Mahan. Boy genius of the Class of 1824, Mahan was chosen by Thayer as his intellectual successor. He spent four years in Europe studying modern methods of war, and attended the French Military School of Engineers and Artillerists at Metz. In 1832, at age twenty-nine, he became the head professor of engineering at the Academy, a post he retained for almost forty years. He was the author of numerous books, and his textbook on tactics was highly influential and reprinted without permission by the Confederate government during the Civil War. Mahan was also a deft and able public defender of the Military Academy against its critics. He paid special tribute to the father of the Academy in 1840 when he named his newborn