Review: Robbins, Last in Their Class (2006)

[truepenny]

Last in Their Class: Custer, Pickett and the Goats of West Point by James S. Robbins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I found this book (subtitle, "Custer, Pickett and the Goats of West Point") unsatisfying. It's partly a history of West Point, partly a set of mini-biographies of the men who finished last in their class (the Goats) at West Point, and partly, at the end, a biography of Custer in the couple of years leading up to Little Big Horn. It talks about Pickett, but does not single him out as much as the subtitle would suggest.

It does none of these things particularly well.

It teeters on the edge of the hagiographic in its mini-biographies and is much more concerned about the friendships between West Point graduates than it is about any of the causes of the Civil War. He quotes Morris Schaff saying, "My heart leaps with pride, for on that day two West Point men met, with more at stake than has ever fallen to the lot of two Americans to decide....These two West Point men knew the ideals of their old Alma Mater, they knew each other only as graduates of that institution know each other, and they met on the plane of that common knowledge....The greatest hour that has ever come in the march of our country's years was on that April day when Grant and Lee shaped the terms at Appomattox." And Robbins goes on, "And the next day as well, when the healing began, when the United States was reborn; when classmates and brothers came together reunited in purpose and friendship..." (305). Which makes it sound like the end of the Civil War was based on the old boys' network of West Point. WHICH MAY BE TRUE. But if it IS true, I would like some examination of what that means in a whole host of contexts, not just beaming pride. With this lens, the brotherhood of white men is certainly considered far more important than the emancipation of Black people. Which could be a searing indictment of white patriarchy and privilege...but is not.

I've read too many biographies of Custer (4? 5?) to be very impressed with Robbins's rehashing of the same old facts, and I'm not quite sure why Custer gets singled out, aside from the fact that he's the most famous Goat, and his last couple of years HAVE been chronicled in exhaustive detail. I would at least have liked to have seen a tally of the Goats who died in battle, because the impression I got is that it was definitely the majority. Which, again, could be an elegy to all this passion and skill lost to the U.S. in war after war after war, but is---insofar as there's any summing up at all---simply a source of pride.

The only thing Robbins get heated up about is the abolishment of the official Goat in the 1970s as counter to the ideals and purpose of West Point (unofficially, cadets continue to keep track of their class rankings, so the Goat is still celebrated). Robbins defends the Goat as "not the product of defeatism but one of esprit[....] Competing for the coveted hindmost spot required a certain audacity and courage, traits with which Custer, Pickett and the rest would be on familiar terms" (411). (He's arguing that the brinksmanship involved in doing badly enough to be last, but NOT badly enough to wash out is a marker of merit rather than shame.) And that probably is the thesis of his book: academic standing is not a predictor of success, and Goats have more audacity and courage than those with class ranks higher than theirs. Which is okay as a thesis, but not great.



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