That summer I took a rest, preparatory to my first season,—how thrillingly professional that sounded, to be sure!—and it was during that summer that I had one of the most pleasant experiences of my girlhood,—one really delightful and young experience, such as other girls have,—a wonderful change from the hard-working, serious months of study. I went to West Point for a visit. In spite of my sober bringing-up, I was full of the joy of life, and loved the days spent in a place filled with the military glamour that every girl adores.
West Point was more primitive then than it is now. But it was just as much fun. I danced, and watched the drill, and walked about, and made friends with the cadets,—to whom the fact that they were entertaining a budding prima donna was both exciting and interesting—and had about the best time I ever had in my life.
Looking back now, however, I can feel a shadow of sadness lying over the memory of all that happy visit. We were just on the eve of war, little as we young people thought of it, and many of the merry, good-looking boys I danced with that summer fell at the front within the year. Some of them entered the Union Army the following spring when war was declared, and some went South to serve under the Stars and Bars. Among the former was Alec McCook—"Fighting McCook," as he was called. Lieutenant McCreary was Southern, and was killed early in the war. So, also, was the son of General Huger—the General Huger who was then Postmaster General and later became a member of the Cabinet of the Confederacy.
It is interesting to consider that West Point, at the time of which I write, was a veritable hotbed of conspiracy. The Southerners were preparing hard and fast for action; the atmosphere teemed with plotting, so that even I was vaguely conscious that something exceedingly serious was going on. The Commandant of the Post, General Delafield, was an officer of strong Southern sympathies and later went to fight in Dixie land. When the war did finally break out, nearly all the ammunition was down South; and this had been managed from West Point.
Of course, all was done with great circumspection. Buchanan was a Democratic president; and the Democrats of the South sent a delegation to West Point to try to get the commanding officers to use their influence in reducing the military course from four to three years. This at least was their ostensible mission, and it made an excellent excuse as well as offered great opportunities for what we Federal sympathisers would call treason, but which they probably considered was justified by patriotism. Indeed, James Buchanan was allotted a very difficult part in the political affairs of the day; and the censure he received for what is called his "vacillation" was somewhat unjust. He held that the question of slavery and its abolition was not a national, but a local problem; and he never took any firm stand about it. But the conditions were bewilderingly new and complex, and statesmen often suffer from their very ability to look on both sides of a question.
Jefferson Davis was then at West Point; and, as for "Mrs. Jeff"—I always believed she was a spy. She had her niece and son with her at the Point, the latter, "Jeff, Jr.," then a child of five or six years old. He had the worst temper I ever imagined in a boy; and I am ashamed to relate that the officers took a wicked delight in arousing and exhibiting it. He used to sit several steps up on the one narrow stairway of the hotel and swear the most horrible, hot oaths ever heard, getting red in the face with fury. Alec McCook, assistant instructor and a charming fellow of about thirty, would put him on a bucking donkey that was there and say:
"Now then, lad, don't you let him put you off!"
And the "lad" would sit on the donkey, turning the air blue with profanity. But one thing can be said for him: he did stick on!
Lieutenant Horace Porter, who was among my friends of that early summer, was destined to serve with distinction on the Northern side. I met him not long ago, a dignified, distinguished General; and it was difficult to see in him the high-spirited, young lieutenant of the old Point days.
"Do you know," he said, "Mrs. Jeff Davis sent for me to come and see her when she was in New York! Of course I didn't go!"