The Untimely Death of Cadet James G. Carter

The Cadet Monument, West Point, NY

Photo by Author

In the West Point Cemetery is the Cadet Monument, dedicated in 1818 to honor Cadet Vincent Lowe, killed on New Year’s Day, 1817. On the column of the monument are the names of other cadets who perished while at the Academy. One of these names is James G. Carter. His marker reads, “JAMES G. CARTER of Virginia. Died June 2nd 1835. Aged 18 yrs & 2 mos.” The story of his death is a sad and remarkable one.

On Monday June 1, 1835, Cadet Theodore M.V. Kennedy from Virginia, only 16 years old, was fencing with Cadet Carter in their room (likely North Barracks) without masks and without buttons on the end of the foils (or by one account the button fell off). Kennedy struck at his friend and the point hit below Carter’s eye. Kennedy ran screaming for help from the room and other cadets responded. Carter was found collapsed on the floor with a trickle of blood flowing from the wound. Although the injury looked minor, the foil had entered the brain. The surgeon was sent for and cadets put Carter on his bed and tended to him. He briefly regained consciousness but quickly fell into a delirious state what sounds like a coma. He died the next morning about nine hours after the accident. Kennedy was naturally quite shaken by the accident.

Cadet Kennedy never graduated. He became an artist and in 1838 traveled to Europe to study on the USS Brandywine. How did an artist get passage on a Navy ship? Perhaps it was not uncommon, but Kennedy’s father was naval officer Commodore Edmund Pendleton Kennedy (1785-1844), a veteran of the First Barbary War and the War of 1812. Kennedy was the first commander of the East India Squadron, set up in the 1830s to protect U.S. (economic) interests in East Asia.

Kennedy died suddenly in February of 1849 at Oden’s Hotel in Martisburg, Virginia (now West Virigina). He had been working on a painting the day before and had attended a party with friends that night. One of Kennedy’s friends was artist and future Union brevet Brigadier General David Hunter Strother, known nationally for his personal account of the Civil War and his humorous writings under the pseudonym “Porte Crayon.”

Cadet Carter also had famous relatives. One of his uncles was James Gibbons, called the “Hero of Stony Point” for his gallantry during the 1779 battle not far from West Point. Gibbons became a customs collector in Richmond and corresponded regularly with Thomas Jefferson.

Selected Sources:

Charleston Daily Courier. 6 February, 1849.

Evening Post (New York). 5 June 1835.

Melancholy Occurrence. Vermont Gazette,. 9 June 1835.

Naval. New York Daily Herald. 8 October 1839.

West Point, June 2. Charleston Daily Courier, 18 June 1835.

General Scott's Fall

Recently on the Facebook page for this site, I wrote about the very candid news accounts concerning General Winfield Scott's gastrointestinal issues. Today, another look at the hero's health issues. And please remember to share this article to Twitter, FB, etc. by using the buttons at the bottom of the page. 

Cozzens' Hotel. Source: NYPL

General Winfield Scott, beloved military hero and failed presidential candidate, spent a great deal of time at West Point as he grew older. In September of 1858, Scott, already over 70 years old and still on active duty, was staying at Cozzens' Hotel in what is now Highland Falls.  The large hotel was located close to where now stands a McDonalds. Scott's stay this time would be memorable and garner national press. According to the Louisville Daily Courier:

Gen. Scott had a very severe fall on the stairs at Cozzens' Hotel, West Point, last week... Having had a bullet through one shoulder, and a sword thrust through the other arm during his campaigns, he was unable to break the force of the fall by his arms, and his back was severely injured. He cannot move without great pain. He has been cupped and leeched, and is somewhat better, suffers intensely. At his advanced age, and with so ponderous a frame, it is a serious affair to have such a fall, and he is fortunate to escape with life.

Cupped and leeched!  The reference to Scott's ponderous frame refers to the General's weight, which at this point was about 300 pounds. Fortunately, Scott recovered. The Tennessean newspaper reported the following:

General Scott, ~1860. Source: NARA. 

General Scott has so far recovered from the effects of his recent fall that he is able to move about and transact his ordinary official and private business. Reports from Cozzens' Hotel, West Point, where hs is stopping, state that he suffered intense pain from the bruises he received, but his constitution is yet so good that he recovered in a surprisingly short time, considering his age and the severity of the accident to a man of his large frame. The old General has evidently stamina enough left to be President one term at least before he dies.  

Scott retired to West Point in 1861 amidst the turmoil of politics and military disagreements of the early days of the Civil War. Although a Virginian, he remained loyal to the Union. In total, he served 53 years in the Army. Scott died in 1866 and is buried in the West Point Cemetery. I'm sure we'll explore some of his exploits in the future. 

Sources: 

"Accident to Gen. Scott," The Louisville Daily Courier, 27 Sep 1858, 1. 

"Recovery of Gen. Scott," The Tennessean, 1 Oct 1858, 2. 

Movable Monuments Part 1: Wood's Monument

This is the first of an occasional series on the moving of West Point monuments. Today, Wood's Monument, one of the Academy's earliest memorials, is the focus. 

Eleazar Derby Wood was born in Massachusetts in 1783, entered West Point in May of 1805, and graduated in October of 1806. He then aided in the construction of fortifications in New York Harbor on Governor's Island and what is now Liberty Island (Bedloe's Island at the time). The star-shaped fort on Liberty Island became known as Fort Wood in his honor and is now the base of the Statue of Liberty. He also worked for several years on fortifications in Virginia. During the War of 1812, Wood was sent to the frontier to build forts along Lake Erie under the command of future President William Henry Harrison. Wood successfully held Fort Erie in August of 1814 but was killed in action on September 17 of the same year while leading a sortie to capture nearby British batteries.

Major General Jacob Brown, a hero of the War of 1812, admired Wood and a few years after the war ordered a monument constructed in the fallen grad's honor at West Point, paying for its construction with his own money. Wood's Monument was erected in October of 1818 and was located in the middle of the Plain in front of the 1815 Academy building, which was located about where Eisenhower Barracks now stand. Just a month after its completion, Sylvanus Thayer asked that a railing be put around the obelisk. An 1820 engraving shows the memorial on the Plain. 

This 1820 engraving shows the Wood Monument on the Plain in front of the 1815 Academy building. Source: The Analectic Magazine, Vol. 2. 1820, 171. 

Wood's Monument stayed in front of the Academy on the Plain for about three years before being moved (in 1821 according to Academy sources) to a small hill that stood just west of the site of the current Firstie Club. This hill, known as Bunker's Hill on early maps, would eventually be called Monument Hill because of Wood's Monument. The obelisk stood on top of the small hill, surrounded by a fence and evergreen trees. 

Wood Monument on Monument Hill, possibly from the late 1860s, From the New York Public Library. 

By the late 19th century, a plan developed to level the small hill that the Monument stood on and to use the earth to fill in Execution Hollow. This meant that the Monument had to be moved. While some sources say this happened in the 1870s, the monument is clearly visible on an 1883 map of the Academy. Contemporary accounts generally say 1885 and this seems correct because an 1891 shows that the Monument had been moved and the hill it stood upon leveled. 

Today, you can see Wood's Monument in the West Point Cemetery even though Wood is not buried there. 

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Wood's Monument, 2016. Photo by Author.  

Wood's Monument Location, 1818-Present. Map by Author. Base Map: Google Earth. 

Crop of an 1883 map of West Point showing Wood's Monument on a hill near the Ordnance Compound (now known as the Firstie Club).

Cadets' Monument, 1820

John Rubens Smith, circa 1820. Source: Library of Congress.

This hand-colored etching of the Cadet Monument (often called the "Cadets' Monument" in early writings) is by English-born artist John Rubens Smith and is thought to be from about 1820 (certainly 1819-1825).

Fun things to notice (see the infographic below): 

• One of the women on the left of the Monument is sharing a gaze with the cadet leaning against the tree in the middle. The Monument was a popular attraction for West Point visitors and cadets loved any chance to mingle.
• Notice the cadets taking a shortcut and coming up the bank from the River. 
• At the far right, in the background, you can see part of the yellow Long Barracks that burned down in the mid-1820s.
• Also in the background is the old dock, located at about the site of the current helipad. At the time, steamboats were still rare on the river and most boats were sloops. 

"The Single Discharge of a Cannon": The Cadet Monument

In honor of Memorial Day, this week’s focus is on the Cadet Monument, one of the Academy’s oldest memorials.  It stands in the northeast corner of the West Point Cemetery overlooking the Hudson. Today, I'll detail the sad origins of the Monument. Later this week, I’ll explore its importance later in the 19th century.

The Cadet Monument, West Point, NY. ©2016 ExecutionHollow.com. 

On New Year’s Day, 1817, Cadet Vincent M. Lowe enjoyed an early lunch of cider and cakes with his friend Charles Davies, a new Assistant Professor of Mathematics and two years Lowe’s junior. It was an unusually warm winter's day, so the friends sat on the veranda of the military storekeeper’s quarters (later known as the Thompson House and roughly on the site of Mac Short Barracks).  Lowe had been born on Navy Island near Niagara Falls where his father, Cornelius Lowe, had been granted land after the Revolution. Cornelius later died at or after the Battle of Queenston Heights during the War of 1812. Davies would go on to be a giant in early American mathematics education, a professor at several colleges, and the author of widely used textbooks.

After their lunch, Lowe had to report to a detail responsible for firing off a 24-gun salute at noon to usher in the New Year. Lowe left Davies near the Academy building (close to where the Superintendent’s house now stands) and set off to his duty location. Not long after, Davies heard a lone cannon discharge, which he deemed unusual, and ran to the cannons where he found his friend dead. Without even a bruise on his body, Lowe had been killed from the percussive force of a round igniting prematurely.

Because of the limited staffing and isolation of the Post in those days, there was no one to prepare the body for burial, so Davies and another man rowed the body all the way to Newburgh without even wearing overcoats, a distance of about seven miles! The Academy’s first graduate, Joseph Gardner Swift (Class of 1802) described the funeral as “one of the most impressive scenes in its march across the plain to the burial ground on the extremity of the German flat, in a gusty snow storm, which alternately concealed and exposed the party in its route.” 

Days later, New York’s The Evening Post (January 6, 1817) reported the incident:

Suddenly, at West-Point, on the 1st instant, Cadet VINCENT M. LOWE, aged 18 years. He was killed by the accidental explosion of a charge of powder in a cannon, while ramming the cartridge; the accident is supposed to have occurred in the consequence of an imperfect spunging (sic) of the piece after a previous discharge. Cadet Lowe was an amiable and intelligent youth. His death has deprived the Military Academy of one of its ornaments, and the nation of a promising young soldier.

The Corps of Cadets, moved by Lowe’s death, donated money to erect a monument in his name. Unveiled in 1818, the Cadet Monument reads on one side,

Vincent M. Lowe of New York. This stone feebly testifies the respect and regret of his Brother Cadets. He was accidentally killed by the discharge of a cannon at West Point on 1st. Jan. 1817, aged 19 years.

On the reverse,

This Monument Sacred to the memory of the deceased Officers and Cadets of the Military Academy. Erected by the members of the Institution, Oct. 1818.

It is this reverse message that represents the importance of the Monument over time because for decades it became a tradition to inscribe on the Monument the names of cadets or professors who died while at the Academy.

In a later post, we’ll explore the Cadet Monument beyond Cadet Lowe’s untimely death.

Note: The Monument states that Lowe was 19 years old when he died, but Lowe genealogies record a birth date of January 7, 1796. This would make Lowe 20 years (and almost 21) at the time of his death. 

Sources:

Berard, Augusta B. Reminiscences of West Point in the Olden Time: Derived from Various Sources, and Register of Graduates of the United States Military Academy. East Saginaw, MI: Evening News Printing & Binding House, 1886.

"Died." The Evening Post (New York, NY), January 6, 1817. 

Swift, Joseph G. The Memoirs of Gen. Joseph Gardner Swift, LL.D., U.S.A., First Graduate of the United States Military Academy, West Point, Chief Engineer U.S.A. from 1812-to 1818. Worcester, MA: F. S. Blanchard & Co., 1890. 

 "Vincent M. LOWE (7 Jan 1796 - 1 Jan 1817)." Accessed May 29, 2016. https://jrm.phys.ksu.edu/genealogy/needham/d0005/I462.html.