Damien Galeone

Tis the season to be merry. And what can aid merriment more than cracking a few eggs and dropping a pound of sugar into a glass of milk and then mixing it with three kinds of alcohol? Not a damn thing.

Booze has had already had a long, complicated, twin-engine relationship with the military. As had occurred in armies for centuries, men in Washington’s continental army were rationed a gill of rum each day (4 ounces). Alcohol was key to morale and order. But it came with its own problems. Everyone knows that alcohol makes civilians say and do stupid things. This truth has been entertaining and cringing humans for centuries. It’s no different for soldiers, who live in harsh conditions and live with daily pressures we can’t get. In the Revolutionary War alone, alcohol was blamed for desertions, sleeping on guard duty, failure to execute duties and jobs, and just being an asshole. It was blamed for excessive casualties along with Major General Adam Stephen, who would be the only high-ranking officer in the continental army relieved of his duty. During Washington’s sneak attack on the Hessians on Christmas 1776, the soldiers got into the Hessian rum. Their return across the Delaware was held up constantly because they had to keep fishing drunken soldiers out of the water. Aside from all that, once soldiers had too much to drink, they suddenly became probably embittered, potentially aggressive, definitely armed men who could no longer tell right from wrong or left from right.  

Similar worries had arisen at the US Military Academy at West Point around 1825. Concerns had been raised and cadets were often court martialled for visiting local taverns. The problem grew as discipline suffered and grades slipped. At an 1825 graduation shindig, a group of drunken soldiers hoisted West Point’s Commandant William Worth onto their shoulders and created a snake dance, during which they ran Worth through the campus. This was a big no-no in the army (up in the air meant easier to shoot). And it was also the straw that broke the camel’s liver. West Point superintendent Colonel Sylvanus Thayer, who had allowed booze in limited quantities on special holidays, put booze was on the kibosh list.

When it was announced that the Christmas eggnog for 1826 would be alcohol-free, the cadets were less than thrilled. On December 24^th, cadets Burnley, Center, and Roberts spent the afternoon at Martin’s Tavern where they mulled over this eggnog issue. Already intoxicated, they nearly got into a fight with another tavern owner regarding smuggling whiskey into West Point for the party. They eventually got 2 gallons of whiskey brought by boat across the Hudson. Other cadets got another gallon from another tavern. The eggnog was spiked; the shindig achieved full-swing.

The series of events that follow include cadets firing weapons, refusing orders, trashing rooms, assaulting officers and teachers – knocking one out – and barring rooms. Exactly what you’d expect when you give a ton of booze to students who are becoming experts on military strategy and how to kill people wearing different clothes. What happened next was essentially a mutiny.  

The fun lasted until the next (Christmas) morning, when 80% of the cadets who lived in the north barracks celebrated the birth of their savior with the worst hangover they’d ever experienced. Courts martial proceedings rather improve hangovers. After the investigation, about 53 cadets would get punished, 20 would get court-martialled, and nine would get expelled. Some got convicted but their sentences retained. 20 (19 cadets + 1 soldier)

Among the 20 courts martials, two would command confederate forces in about forty years. One court martial was for Jefferson Davis, who had already received demerits for drinking in Benny Hannah’s Tavern. First year cadet Robert E. Lee – who was a teetotaller – surely raised his eyebrow at Davis on Christmas morning and thought to himself: I’ll never commit treason against my country for that guy.  

There’s no doubt that smuggled whiskey caused a lot of issues that evening and morning. However, we are forgetting an innocent victim in all of this: eggnog.

Medieval monks created eggnog’s grandfather, posset, by curdling milk with ale or wine. They used it as medicine, nightcap, winter warmer, or to help them forget that they were tonsured and wore hairshirts. In the 1400s, posset reaches the upper classes who add spices like nutmeg and cinnamon. The ingredients are hard to come by and afford; they are served in posset pots, which is why it’s out of reach of the lower classes who don’t have a posset pot to piss in. Eggs (also hard to come by) begin appearing in some posset recipes in the mid-1500s. Stronger alcohols like brandy, sack, rum (or all three) sometimes replace ale or wine. Tis party time.

It comes to America – like everything else – more or less on the genes that steered, and threw its guts up over, the Mayflower. It’s a Colonial American thing in the 1700s. It develops quickly in America because of our multitude of dairy farms, chicken farms, and cheap rum. Dairy + eggs + available rum = eggnog! s and chicken farms. Because it’s warm and comforting and its homey ingredients make it an ideal Christmas drink.

Since the creation of its ancestor posset in the middle-ages, eggnog’s sweet demeanor and milky features have made it a social institution to convey warmth and comfort and an ideal Trojan Horse through which to commit dark shenanigans. Posset is used by Lady Macbeth to knock out guards. Its strong does a lot in its medieval adventures. It appears in other Shakespeare plays and it also features heavily in Dickens.

And while grog and rum are the Navy’s domain, eggnog is the unofficial beverage of the US Army. Dwight Eisenhower made a famous eggnog. He apparently used to whip it up in between scoldings of Patton and, you know, winning World War II. Another famous recipe comes from founding father and famous tall man – George Washington. For all of Washington’s personal discipline and compulsive truth-telling, he owned several whiskey and rum distilleries. And he had a killer eggnog recipe – which I will share on Hammered History tomorrow!  

Unless you consider 750,000 dead Americans and the near-destruction of the Union, then everything worked out for the eggnoggers. Jefferson Davis was acquitted and would go on to create a nation. Robert E. Lee never surrendered to Grant. George Washington won the war and had uncomfortable dentures. Ike won a war and became a president who had never voted. Me, I’m off to get a few gills of eggnog. Merry Christmas!