blinding sheen. He said he took students on field tripsto Morris Island, though the site of the famed cadet battery had eroded into the sea years ago.
“I look at it this way,” he said. “It was Christmas, 1860, just before exam period. And someone says to these cadets, ‘Would you rather take your exams in calculus and English composition or go out to Morris Island and shoot at Yanks?’ It’s a no-brainer. You go.”
The adventure quickly became a wretched camping trip. The cadets were housed in an abandoned hospital filled with coffins. It was buggy, cold, and most of all, dull. So one morning, when a Yankee ship appeared, the adolescent cadets fired their guns. “I don’t think these kids had a cotton-picking clue what they were getting into, unless they were lunatics,” Gordon said.
The War that followed hadn’t been kind to the cadets. Two died in battle and a third fought four long years until the South’s surrender. Nor did he or the other gun-battery survivor enjoy any fame for their actions. “The romance set in later, when their families took an interest,” Gordon said. “The guys themselves probably didn’t give a rat’s ass about the War.”
Gordon’s irreverence surprised me, and I told him so. He explained that he’d seen plenty of combat in Vietnam. “Nothing romantic, let me tell you,” he said. Also, like June Wells’s at the Confederate Museum, his study of the Civil War seemed to have bred a certain pacifism. “I guess it’s fair for the Citadel to claim the first shot of the War,” he said, “but given the slaughter that followed, I’m not sure that’s much to be proud of.”
Others at the Citadel evidently disagreed. The school even had a prize called the Star of the West Medal, awarded each year to the best-drilled cadet. The prize consisted of a gold medal bearing a wooden star carved from what Gordon called “the sacred wood”—an actual sliver from the hull of the ship. The
Star of the West
also formed part of “knob knowledge,” the rote that first-year cadets—called “knobs” because of their shaved heads—were required to memorize and “pop off” whenever upperclassmen demanded it.
Gordon walked me to the door. It was Friday, when cadets drilled in dress uniform across the parade ground. Clad in gray, they toted rifles and the same Palmetto flag displayed with such pride by South Carolinians during the War. With their close-cropped hair and crispuniforms, the cadets didn’t much resemble the raffish, bearded rebels of old. But the drill ended with an appropriate flourish. A crew of artillerymen wheeled a cannon in front of the
Star of the West
monument. One of the cadets yanked the lanyard, a blank fired loudly, and a cloud of acrid smoke billowed out across the parade ground. The cadets in the gun crew smiled.
After visiting the Citadel, I made a point of perusing the indexes of Civil War histories, searching for scraps on the
Star of the West
. I rarely found more than a footnote. In the view of historians who bothered mentioning the incident at all, the cadets’ action proved inconsequential, resulting in nothing more than the ship’s return to New York. So the
Star of the West
remained a lost shard of Civil War history, hermetically sealed inside the Citadel, as if in a pharaoh’s tomb. In a sense this seemed fitting. What better vault than the Citadel, arguably the most mummified institution in America?
Nonetheless, I felt a furtive pleasure at being in on the secret. I doubted even the trivia whizzes back in Salisbury, North Carolina, knew this one. So I stored it away, looking forward to the day when I could slap a dollar on the bar while drinking with a Civil War buff and unleash my hidden weapon from the Citadel’s silo. “Buck says you don’t know who fired the first shots of the Civil War.”
T HE WAGER WOULD HAVE TO WAIT for some bar other than Moultrie’s Tavern, the one place I’d be sure to lose. Idling away another lunch hour
“I look at it this way,” he said. “It was Christmas, 1860, just before exam period. And someone says to these cadets, ‘Would you rather take your exams in calculus and English composition or go out to Morris Island and shoot at Yanks?’ It’s a no-brainer. You go.”
The adventure quickly became a wretched camping trip. The cadets were housed in an abandoned hospital filled with coffins. It was buggy, cold, and most of all, dull. So one morning, when a Yankee ship appeared, the adolescent cadets fired their guns. “I don’t think these kids had a cotton-picking clue what they were getting into, unless they were lunatics,” Gordon said.
The War that followed hadn’t been kind to the cadets. Two died in battle and a third fought four long years until the South’s surrender. Nor did he or the other gun-battery survivor enjoy any fame for their actions. “The romance set in later, when their families took an interest,” Gordon said. “The guys themselves probably didn’t give a rat’s ass about the War.”
Gordon’s irreverence surprised me, and I told him so. He explained that he’d seen plenty of combat in Vietnam. “Nothing romantic, let me tell you,” he said. Also, like June Wells’s at the Confederate Museum, his study of the Civil War seemed to have bred a certain pacifism. “I guess it’s fair for the Citadel to claim the first shot of the War,” he said, “but given the slaughter that followed, I’m not sure that’s much to be proud of.”
Others at the Citadel evidently disagreed. The school even had a prize called the Star of the West Medal, awarded each year to the best-drilled cadet. The prize consisted of a gold medal bearing a wooden star carved from what Gordon called “the sacred wood”—an actual sliver from the hull of the ship. The
Star of the West
also formed part of “knob knowledge,” the rote that first-year cadets—called “knobs” because of their shaved heads—were required to memorize and “pop off” whenever upperclassmen demanded it.
Gordon walked me to the door. It was Friday, when cadets drilled in dress uniform across the parade ground. Clad in gray, they toted rifles and the same Palmetto flag displayed with such pride by South Carolinians during the War. With their close-cropped hair and crispuniforms, the cadets didn’t much resemble the raffish, bearded rebels of old. But the drill ended with an appropriate flourish. A crew of artillerymen wheeled a cannon in front of the
Star of the West
monument. One of the cadets yanked the lanyard, a blank fired loudly, and a cloud of acrid smoke billowed out across the parade ground. The cadets in the gun crew smiled.
After visiting the Citadel, I made a point of perusing the indexes of Civil War histories, searching for scraps on the
Star of the West
. I rarely found more than a footnote. In the view of historians who bothered mentioning the incident at all, the cadets’ action proved inconsequential, resulting in nothing more than the ship’s return to New York. So the
Star of the West
remained a lost shard of Civil War history, hermetically sealed inside the Citadel, as if in a pharaoh’s tomb. In a sense this seemed fitting. What better vault than the Citadel, arguably the most mummified institution in America?
Nonetheless, I felt a furtive pleasure at being in on the secret. I doubted even the trivia whizzes back in Salisbury, North Carolina, knew this one. So I stored it away, looking forward to the day when I could slap a dollar on the bar while drinking with a Civil War buff and unleash my hidden weapon from the Citadel’s silo. “Buck says you don’t know who fired the first shots of the Civil War.”
T HE WAGER WOULD HAVE TO WAIT for some bar other than Moultrie’s Tavern, the one place I’d be sure to lose. Idling away another lunch hour
Similar Books
