![]() ![]() In his history of that famous academy class, Sacred Ties, From West Point Brothers to Battlefield Rivals: A True Story of the Civil War, Tom Carhart notes, he was “an excellent horseman… and was quite the dancer.” He also brought with him no small amount of charm. Pelham had been one of the wonder cadets at West Point, excelling in many areas of study. John Pelham was certainly Custer’s equal, if not in many ways his better. Of those in that class of 1861, Custer did not have a monopoly on bravery and flair. Among Pelham’s classmates was George Armstrong Custer, a brave if not excessively vain young fighter who would rise through the ranks quickly, only to be outmatched and cut down at Little Big Horn. Pelham was to graduate West Point with the class of 1861 when the Confederacy fired upon Fort Sumter. ![]() John Pelham of Alabama was one of the young men forced to make such a difficult choice. The West Point education-an automatic ticket to the upper echelon of American military leadership- was not an opportunity to forego lightly. The choice to leave or to finish their studies at the United States Military Academy was not an easy one. Some were sons of the Confederacy, others sons of the Union, but they all wanted to enter the fray and make their mark immediately. The class of 1861, West Point, was a different case altogether. Some left farms, some left shops in the city, many left wives and children, and a few left school, in an age when eighteen, nineteen, and twenty year old men were more likely to be employed than still about their studies. Young men from both sides of the conflict hurried toward the war, that they might fight and achieve the glory they had sought so desperately since they first read Ivanhoe, perhaps, or Morte d’Arthur. Brady / Half-plate ambrotype, 1858 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |