General Fox Conner: Pershing's Chief of Operations and Eisenhower's Mentor

GENERAL FOX CONNER

GENERAL FOX CONNER

Pershing’s Chief of Operations and Eisenhower’s Mentor

STEVEN RABALAIS

Philadelphia & Oxford

Published in the United States of America and Great Britain in 2016 by

CASEMATE PUBLISHERS

1950 Lawrence Road, Havertown, PA 19083, USA

and

10 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford OX1 2EW, UK

Copyright 2016 © Casemate Publishers and Steven Rabalais

Hardcover Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-397-9

Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-398-6 (epub)

Mobi Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-398-6 (mobi)

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

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Dedicated to the love of my life, Colleen We Are One

CONTENTS

List of Maps

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Chapter 1: Calhoun County

Chapter 2: West Point

Chapter 3: Biding Time

Chapter 4: Getting Started

Chapter 5: The War within the War

Chapter 6: Fighting with the French

Chapter 7: Our Seat at the Table

Chapter 8: Home Again

Chapter 9: Unlike Ike

Chapter 10: Panama

Chapter 11: Climbing Their Ladders

Chapter 12: Third Time the Charm?

Chapter 13: The Zenith of Fox Conner

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

LIST OF MAPS

Map 1: Diagrammatic sketch of Western Front showing certain topographical features of military importance

Map 2: Strategical features influencing selection of the Lorraine Front for the American Army

Map 3: Ground gained by German Offensives of March and April, 1918

Map 4: Ground gained by German Offensives of May, June and July, 1918

Map 5: French–American counteroffensive, July 18, 1918

Map 6: Location of American divisions on Western Front, August 10, 1918

Map 7: Plan of attack of First Army, September 12, 1918

Map 8: Plan of attack of First Army, September 26, 1918

Map 9: German defensive organization in the Meuse–Argonne region

Map 10: American and Allied attacks on the Western Front, September 26–November 11, 1918

Map 11: Plan of flank attack of First Army against Argonne Forest, October 7, 1918

Map 12: Operations of First Army, November 1–11, 1918

Map 13: Ground gained by First Army, November 1–11, 1918

Map 14: Plan of proposed American–French attack, November 14, 1918

The maps in this work appear by courtesy of the American Battle Monuments Commission.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many wonderful people have generously given of their time and talent to bring this book to publication.

I express my sincere gratitude to Casemate Publishing for affording this previously unpublished writer the opportunity to tell the story of a forgotten giant of American military history. Tara Lichterman, Clare Litt, Ruth Sheppard, Nikolai Bogdonavic, and Hannah McAdams, as well as Steve Smith and Libby Braden before them, provided much patient and insightful guidance, for which I am deeply thankful.

Pam McPhail of Calhoun City, Mississippi made her impressive collection of information on General Conner available to me to begin my research. Members of the general’s family, especially Norm MacDonald, Lori Conner, Drew Conner, and the late Macpherson Conner, allowed me access to precious family treasures, including Bug Conner’s remarkable scrapbook. I sincerely hope that you have all found this book worthy of your trust in me. I also extend my thanks to Ginny Brandreth for her introductions to Norm, Mac, and also to Sam Black.

Professors Karl Roider and Bob Mann at Louisiana State University were both kind enough to read earlier drafts of this work and to offer their comments and ideas for improvement. I also extend my sincere gratitude to Dr. Roider for instilling in me, during my freshman year at LSU in 1978, a love of history that endures to this day.

I also appreciate the time and critiques given me by Billy Gunn, Carl Palmer, and Greg Probst—three talented men whose perspectives, and friendship, I value greatly. Martha Baker’s guidance and suggestions, always made with sweet frankness (or is it frank sweetness, Martha?), have made this a much better book than it otherwise would have been. Angela Gagliano and Zella Lopez have also both devoted many hours of assistance in countless ways.

This book would not have been completed without the love and support of my family. My brother Rob has been with me on this project since the first research/road trip to Mississippi. Alecia and Randy were both kind enough to read my earliest efforts; they nonetheless urged me to continue. My dear daughters Lindsay, Lauren, and Amanda have each helped in ways I will always treasure—from locating obscure books at the LSU Library (a 19-year-old college student’s dream, I’m sure) to helping me overcome computer challenges that most 8-year-olds can handle on their own. They must love me. I certainly love them.

The courage and determination of my late brother Ronnie has inspired me to see this work to completion, as have my memories of the enjoyment my mother (Maw-Maw Betty) found in having me read passages of the book to her as I wrote them. My father, Merrill Rabalais, who began his educational career teaching history, passed on to me his own love of the subject. Though all are now gone, each has continued to guide me. I also offer a special prayer of thanks to St. Francis de Sales—the patron of writers.

My deepest thanks go to my beloved bride, Colleen, whom I had the blessing to marry in 1986. I would never have begun this book, much less finished it, without Colleen’s encouragement and support. She has also devoted countless hours of her own valuable time to researching, proofing, and otherwise bringing this work to completion. I was able to make this book a labor of love because of Colleen’s love for me. My love for her transcends all things in my life.

Lafayette, Louisiana

March 2016

PROLOGUE

London, UK

July 4, 1942

The first Independence Day since Pearl Harbor was an eventful one for Major General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Commanding General of the United States European Theater of Operations.

On that day, almost 7 months after America’s entry into World War II, the United States conducted its first offensive operations in Europe. American airmen launched what the general called a bombing raid to celebrate July 4 against German air bases in Holland. Eisenhower, who had been appointed to command 11 days earlier by Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, had never before ordered men into action. Before the mission, he visited the American crews to wish them luck. He also talked to the survivors who made it back to base. For the first time in his career, the general could count casualties directly attributable to his own orders.¹

Apart from his command duties, Eisenhower was also busy that Saturday introducing himself as the smiling and optimistic face of the American military presence in beleaguered Britain. More than 2,000 people passed through the receiving line at a reception hosted by the American ambassador. Later that evening, Eisenhower met with his general staff to discuss matters of supply for the American military force he planned to build. Eisenhower had inherited the staff; he had concern over its suitability for the task ahead.²

Eisenhower, therefore, had much on his mind that Independence Day in 1942, as he penned a letter to his mentor:

Dear General,

More and more in the last few days my mind has turned back to you and to the days when I was privileged to serve intimately under your wise counsel and leadership. I cannot tell you how much I would appreciate, at this moment, an opportunity for an hour’s discussion with you on problems that constantly beset me.

When I came to this job I was, of course, prepared to find that much of the advice given me would be colored, consciously or unconsciously, by the particular position of the individual involved, and by his conception of what his advice would mean to his own personal fortunes. But, discounting this normal human failing, I find it difficult at times to separate the wheat from the chaff among opposing views, presented, I believe, with full honesty of purpose. Right now, aside from the old question of making firm agreements with allies, many of these arguments involve internal organization–the same problems that you faced twenty-five years ago, and which have been the subject of bitter debate among some of our very able officers ever since …

I do not expect an answer to this letter, and certainly do not want to bother you with matters for which, you may be certain, I’ll soon have answers. I hope they will be right. But, recently, I’ve been so frequently struck by the similarity between this situation and the one you used to describe to me, that I thought you might like to hear something about it …³

Eisenhower’s letter was not addressed to George Marshall, the man most responsible for his elevation to command. Nor did he write to either Douglas MacArthur or John J. Pershing, both of whom he had served before the war. Instead, this glimpse into Eisenhower’s state of mind, as he assumed his first significant command, was written to retired Major General Fox Conner—a figure now forgotten in American history.

As Pershing’s chief of operations for the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) during World War I, Fox Conner directed the development and successful deployment of American combat forces in France. Pershing considered Conner to have been a brilliant soldier and one of the finest characters our Army has ever produced. Pershing paid tribute to Conner by telling him: I could have spared any other man in the AEF better than you.⁴

Fox Conner commanded Dwight Eisenhower when both were stationed in the Panama Canal Zone in the 1920s. Despite having been part of the high command that had helped win the War to End All Wars, Conner held the then-unorthodox view that the American Army would fight a second war in Europe within two decades. Conner imparted that belief to his protégé Eisenhower and transformed him from a struggling young officer facing a court-martial into one of the Army’s rising stars.

The influence of Conner upon Eisenhower’s career is best described by Eisenhower himself. In sheer ability and character, wrote Eisenhower of Conner, he was the outstanding soldier of my time. Eisenhower believed that Conner had more influence on me and my outlook than any other individual, especially in regard to the military profession. He paid tribute to his mentor by writing: In a lifetime of association with great and good men, he is the one more or less invisible figure to whom I owe an incalculable debt.⁵

Conner has become an invisible figure, to use Eisenhower’s phrase, partly by his own design. Unlike many of his World War I comrades, Fox Conner did not write a memoir. He also directed a former aide to burn his personal papers. Nonetheless, through analysis of archival records and surviving personal letters, as well as from the writings of those whose lives and careers were affected by Fox Conner, the complete story can now be told of the life and career of this remarkable officer, whom Dwight Eisenhower considered the greatest soldier I ever knew.⁶

The story begins, amid the ashes of the Civil War, in Calhoun County, Mississippi.

CHAPTER 1

CALHOUN COUNTY

He had always thought in terms of war.

—Virginia Conner, 1951

His work in the family’s north Mississippi cotton patch done for that day in the mid-1880s, young Fox Conner waited at the family’s hearth. The boy watched as his father moved toward the fireplace by lightly touching the table, chairs, and other objects that defined his surroundings. Robert Conner settled into a comfortable place and began to reminisce. Fox listened, spellbound, as the blind man told his stories of war.¹

Robert spoke of his part in April 1862’s Battle of Shiloh, where more than 23,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing after just two days of close-quarter fighting in heavy rain and mud. Soldiers who had been countrymen the previous year looked each other in the eye as one slew and the other was slain, often with bayonet or sword; the kind of killing that made hands, and rage, bloody. Robert Conner fought at Shiloh until Union gunfire ripped open his leg. Robert survived to fight again at Chickamauga and Chattanooga in late 1863, but thousands did not—including Robert’s friend, Private Jesse Fox. Like his Fox ancestors who had died fighting the British during the American Revolution, Jesse Fox lost his life at Shiloh in the service of his fledgling nation.²

Fox Conner also heard how the Civil War had ended for his father. Shot through the head and eyes outside Atlanta in 1864, Robert Conner was left bleeding upon a battlefield he could no longer see. Robert nonetheless heard the roar of cannon and the moans of the wounded. He could also smell the aftermath of battle in the heat of a Georgia July. While collecting the dead, the Yankees found Robert Conner and took him to a hospital. The Northern men he had been trying to kill had saved his rebel life. But the darkness remained. The sights of battle—of men killing other men—were the last things ever seen by the man who came to be known as Blind Bob Conner.³

Fox Conner understood that war could be tragic. But he was irresistibly drawn to it; Fox begged his father to tell him more.⁴

Robert Herbert Conner told his son what war was actually like. Born in 1843, Robert had joined the Confederate Army at the outset of the Civil War in 1861. Before the war, the intelligent and well-educated Conner had a penetrating gaze, set in a face with a square jaw and tightly drawn lips that presented an air of seriousness. The war took Robert Conner’s sight, but not his will. After his release from a Union hospital, Robert returned to his father’s cotton farm near Slate Springs in isolated Calhoun County, Mississippi. There, Robert Conner began to rebuild his life. He learned to grade cotton by feeling it between his thumb and forefinger; he became a cotton trader.⁵

Blind Bob, however, also had the insight to recognize that his education provided an advantage upon which to build his future.

Robert Conner became a teacher at the Slate Springs Academy. Fuller Fox, the younger brother of the slain Jesse Fox, founded the school in 1872. Fuller welcomed his fallen brother’s Confederate comrade. Other members of the Fox family also taught at the academy, including Nancy Hughes Fox, Fuller’s older sister. Known as Nannie, she was in her early 30s, and still unmarried, when Robert Conner joined the faculty. The two began a romance. They married on December 30, 1873.⁶

Nannie gave birth to their first child, a son, on November 2, 1874 at Slate Springs, Mississippi. His name symbolized the union of two families devoted to both military service and education. Nannie Fox and Robert Conner named their son Fox Conner, with no middle name.

As the eldest son of a blind father, Fox Conner grew up quickly in the mid-1880s. In springtime, Fox’s mule-drawn plow creaked through row after row in the family’s 600-acre cotton field. His young arms and chest strained to control the gray beast that normally felt a man’s weight pulling back against it. In summer, Fox walked those same rows, often barefooted, as he picked cotton. Some days, a hundred pounds went into the burlap sack he wore upon his back. Every boll mattered. Without the money from cotton farming, the growing Conner family could not survive on the meager salaries of two teachers in rural Mississippi.⁷

But as Fox Conner bore his burden in the cotton field, his daydreams carried him to fields of battle far away from Calhoun County. In Fox’s mind, his back carried a soldier’s pack rather than a burlap sack. Instead of stumbling behind a plow, he was marching behind a caisson. Even when raking manure in the Mississippi heat, Fox saw the pungent piles as the opposing lines of two armies; he maneuvered them with his rake as a general would move his divisions upon a map.⁸

Once the harvest was in and the weather turned cool, Fox went to his father’s schoolhouse instead of his cotton field. Robert Conner became superintendent of the Slate Springs Academy after Fuller Fox left the school to practice law. Fox flourished at the school and rose to the head of his class. Blind Bob Conner could hear his son’s intellect grow. But with a school term of only five months and a curriculum focused upon the rudiments of reading and writing, Fox Conner needed more than the Slate Springs Academy could provide. To meet the need, Robert and Nannie Conner continued their son’s education at home.⁹ More importantly, Fox Conner learned to teach himself.

Around the age of 10, Fox subscribed to The Youth’s Companion, the leading American weekly subscription magazine of the late 19th century. The magazine was no mere compilation of children’s tales. With the slogan For all the Family,its articles on an array of subjects—from fiction, poetry, and history, to theology, politics, and science—were written for both older children and for adults interested in becoming better-educated citizens. Literary giants such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Louisa May Alcott, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Emily Dickinson, and Harriet Beecher Stowe each published stories in the magazine, as did British Prime Minister W.E. Gladstone, future Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, future President Theodore Roosevelt, and many others.¹⁰

The Youth’s Companion fed Fox Conner’s appetite to learn. He and a friend won a contest for selling subscriptions to the magazine. For his prize, Conner chose a book on American history. The passages that interested him most involved his nation’s battles and the men who fought them.¹¹

The articles in The Youth’s Companion were written to be read aloud, and Fox eventually began to tell the evening stories in the Conner home to his sisters, Mary and Nannie Gus, and to brothers Manly, Rush, and Fuller. Sometimes he recited poetry. Mostly, he shared stories of scientific discovery and far-off exploration that transported them all to places beyond the fields of Calhoun County. His mother and father enjoyed the evenings too. Their eldest son Fox was becoming a teacher.¹²

The common thread that wound through the articles in The Youth’s Companion was the premise that reunited America was exceptional among the world’s nations, and that its citizens had a duty to excel as well. With a circulation of nearly 500,000 weekly, The Youth’s Companion served, in the late 19th century, the same function that radio, television, and the internet have provided to subsequent generations of young Americans: a mass medium that allowed people from different regions of the country to form a common, if idealized, image of their nation. The Youth’s Companion influenced the reconciliation of Northerners and Southerners into a single national identity once America emerged from the divisiveness of postwar reconstruction and actually began to reunite. The magazine’s most enduring legacy—The Pledge of Allegiance—by which millions of American children from Montana to Mississippi to Maine have begun their day for more than a century, was created by the magazine’s writers and published in 1892.¹³

That same year, Fox Conner turned 18, and he made a pledge of his own.

Fox had been pondering what his life’s work would be. One option was to follow in his father’s footsteps and become head of the family’s farm, and possibly its community’s school as well—both noble occupations. Undoubtedly, he could have served his family well by staying in Calhoun County to continue his father’s and mother’s work there.

Fox Conner, however, felt called to service of a different type. His boyish fascination with war had never waned; it had intensified as he continued to read about history’s great generals and momentous battles. Fox also respected family tradition. His Fox ancestors had fought and died for their young country during the American Revolution, when the nation’s future was in doubt. His father and his Uncle Jesse had done the same for their country, albeit with a different outcome. Fox Conner likewise embraced his country—the reunited nation of Northerners and Southerners that The Youth’s Companion fostered. As his forebears had done, Fox Conner vowed to serve his country as a soldier.¹⁴

While Fox owed his fascination with warfare to the stories of his enlisted father, he also understood that generals, not foot soldiers, made history. Fox was determined to become an officer. He also sought a higher education. He wanted a lot for a poor farm boy whose parents could not afford to send him to college.¹⁵

But Fox Conner also had a plan.

The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York afforded the perfect opportunity for Fox Conner to achieve his twin goals of a college education and an officer’s commission. Significant hurdles, however, separated him from his objective. Only members of Congress or the president had the power to appoint a young man to West Point. Also, only one cadet from each congressional district could attend West Point at a time. Because cadets normally needed at least four years to graduate, the opportunity for appointment from a congressional district generally arose only once every four years. Even if a vacancy existed, and if the necessary appointment could somehow be obtained, each appointee then had to pass rigorous physical and academic examinations before being allowed to enter the academy.¹⁶

In formulating his strategy, Fox realistically assessed the assets available to him. Work on the farm had made him a lean and muscular young man who could easily meet whatever physical requirements West Point might have. Fox also trusted the educational foundation laid by his parents, and which he had furthered through his own reading. Conner believed he could compete academically; those that he could not outthink, he could outwork.¹⁷

But the obstacle of securing the necessary political appointment to the United States Military Academy still loomed large. Fox Conner saw one possible route from Calhoun County to West Point, New York—a path that passed through the nearby town of West Point, Mississippi.

In 1893, Fox Conner’s Uncle Fuller was a man on his way up. After leaving the Slate Springs Academy, Fuller Fox established his law practice in West Point, the county seat of nearby Clay County, Mississippi. Fuller Fox also plunged into Mississippi politics; he became a state senator, a delegate to the 1892 Democratic national convention that nominated Grover Cleveland for president, then United States Attorney under President Cleveland.¹⁸

Just as Fuller Fox had helped Robert Conner make the transition from army to civilian life two decades earlier, so did he open the door for his nephew to enter military service.

Hernando De Soto Money, a former Confederate Army officer, represented northern Mississippi in Congress. Representative Money was a controversial figure. Another Mississippi politician once accused Money of taking a bribe from railroad interests. In the ensuing fight between the two men, Money’s accuser threw a law book that struck the congressman in the head. H.D. Money had his enemies, but he also had his friends, including Fuller Fox. An astute politician, Money recognized the value of association with Fuller Fox, who eventually became both a congressman himself and a candidate for governor of Mississippi.¹⁹

Congressmen normally made appointments to West Point a year in advance of admission so that the appointee could adequately prepare for the academy’s difficult academic entrance examinations. In May 1893, however, an opening unexpectedly arose for a young man from Congressman Money’s district to join the class that would enter West Point the following month. Fuller Fox let H.D. Money know that his nephew wanted to go.

That was all it took.

On May 31, 1893, Congressman Money appointed Fox Conner of Slate Springs, Mississippi, to the West Point class that would convene in two weeks—provided he could pass the entrance exams.²⁰

Conner’s plan had succeeded. He would have the opportunity to pursue the life he had daydreamed of as he had worked the fields and read his stories. Fox Conner also received a valuable introduction to the effect that a powerful sponsor could have upon a young man’s career.

CHAPTER 2

WEST POINT

We got sabers the other day so we ride with these now. A fellow begins to feel pretty high ranking when he gets his saber.

—Fox Conner, 1897¹

Fox Conner entered the gray and granite world of the United States Military Academy on June 15, 1893.

Having been appointed only two weeks before admission, Conner first faced the task of passing West Point’s entrance examinations in reading, writing, spelling, history, geography, and arithmetic. As Conner took his tests, he trusted that the educational foundation laid by the Slate Springs Academy and his parents would be good enough.

It was not.

On June 19, 1893, West Point’s Academic Board met and found candidate Fox Conner not duly qualified for admission to the academy due to deficient marks in grammar and arithmetic. An 1893 academy report noted the high failure rate of young men who had been appointed so near to the admission date. The wonder is how some of these young men ever came to be selected to represent their districts at West Point, the report bemoaned. More charitably, the committee also recognized that most candidates required at least 6 months of preparation for the entrance tests, and that many fail who might have succeeded had they had the benefit of the time for preparation.²

Bearing the weight of failure for the first time in his life, the pride of Slate Springs went home. But he did not abandon his dream.

Having failed only two subjects, Conner remained eligible for reexamination. Back in Calhoun County, Conner immersed himself in study for the next nine months. He drew upon all he knew and all that he could teach himself. On March 19, 1894, he travelled to New Orleans to retake the tests that would determine his future.

Conner passed his tests. On June 15, 1894, he again reported to Reception Day at the academy with 108 other appointees who hoped to become members of the West Point Class of 1898.³

Conner and his new classmates stood with heels together and arms straight down at their sides as sweat began to soak their Sunday suits in the summer sun. Cadets in gray uniforms spoke to the new men sharply and impersonally, with Northern accents much different from the familiar drawl of Calhoun County. Conner quickly recognized that a chasm separated plebes like him from the upperclassmen who barked at them.⁴

After keeping the new men at attention well past the point of comfort, the upperclassmen sent them inside one of the buildings. Without ceremony, the plebes shed their civilian clothes and put on their uniforms. The men inside loaded the newly gray-clad plebes with their bedding and belongings, then briskly marched them to their barracks, much as Conner had driven the gray beasts in his family’s cotton fields.

In West Point’s culture, as Conner wrote in a June 16 letter home, he and his fellow plebes were indeed no more than beasts to be tamed.

Conner had begun Beast Barracks—the initial three-week indoctrination of plebes. Conducted by upperclassmen with little faculty supervision, Beast Barracks essentially amounted to a hazing spree by upperclassmen.

Hazing took many forms. Upperclassmen braced Conner, by forcing him to stand for prolonged periods in an exaggerated position of attention: his palms turned outward to force the shoulders further back with his chin tucked down and abdomen sucked in making it hard to breathe. They make you get your shoulders back until the back of it is full of wrinkles, Conner wrote his parents. A fellow’s bones ache so he can scarcely move after one of these drills.

West Point yearlings, cadets who had just completed their own plebe years, hazed with zeal. Yearling corporals, assigned the tasks of instilling discipline in the newly arrived beasts, were especially harsh. Corporal William Connor singled out the new man from Mississippi. The cadets who have namesakes in the new cadets … are worse on them than any others, wrote Fox. They do this because they want the standing of their name kept up.

One of Conner’s classmates described the hazing in 1894 to have been very bad and really brutal. Fox Conner did not complain. I don’t care how hard they are on me as it will straighten me and develop me generally, Conner wrote his parents; he added that he liked academy life even better than I had expected.

From Beast Barracks, Conner went into his first summer camp.⁵ Each summer, incoming plebes, and the cadets who had just finished their first and third years, lived in tents on The Plain—the elm-lined parade ground leading down to the Hudson River. Despite its pleasant-sounding name, summer camp presented plebes like Conner with the most trying time of the entire course, as one West Point instructor put it, in which first-year men were divested nearly of all pleasure. Yearling corporals bellowed as the plebes ran, did calisthenics, and went on marches of up to 15 miles a day in the summer heat. Apart from the physical training, plebes also tended to camp latrines and performed other menial tasks for upperclassmen to instill the practice of obedience to superiors.

A greater challenge faced Cadet Conner once classes began on September 1, 1894.⁶

Conner’s first-year courses included algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and surveying, as well as English and French. West Point grouped cadets into sections of twelve to fifteen men for each subject, based upon academic performance. The sections constantly changed after weekly exams held in each course; better-performing students rose while struggling cadets dropped. Failure in a single class normally led to dismissal from the academy or, at best, being turned back to the next class with the taint of having failed—a stigma Conner already bore.

An October 6, 1894 letter to his parents reveals Conner’s sense of academic inadequacy as he struggled with the curriculum in his plebe year:

If anything I have ever said, and I fear it has, has caused you to regret and reproach yourself for not giving me better opportunities, I am sorry for it, for I know that you have borne much worse fortune than you were able and that I did not use the opportunities I had in the right way. I am to some extent overcoming the habit of making my mistakes.

First-year men like Conner also wrestled with isolation from family and friends. Except for a furlough home after their second year, cadets remained at the academy for the entire four-year course. Through his letters home, however, Conner maintained contact with his loved ones in Mississippi.⁷

Each Sunday, after attending mandatory church services, Conner used his day off to write his family. His letters mostly described the ordinary details of life at the academy, ranging from comments on the weather and food of New York, to the fortunes of the West Point football team, to one of his classmates being court-martialed for refusing to go to church. Conner frequently ended his letters with lighthearted notes to his youngest sister, 10-year-old Nannie Gus. Conner shared with Nannie Gus one unusual experience in which, while horseback riding in his free time, he encountered two traveling minstrels with bagpipes and a