In 1842 Samuel Roberts and his young bride, Lucinda, made Bonham, then known as Bois d’ Arc, their home. Over the next thirty years Samuel made his mark on the city as a lawyer. In that time he watched Texas go from a republic to a state, got directly involved in the politics of the 1850s that led to the Civil War, and participated firsthand in the war as a Confederate officer and administrator.

Samuel Alexander Roberts was born on February 13, 1809 to Dr. Willis and Asenath Roberts of Putnam County, Georgia. When he was ten, the family moved to the Alabama Territory, soon to become a state, to the proposed city of Cahawba in Dallas County.  

At the age of fifteen Roberts managed to earn an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. A member of the class of 1824, he was among cadets whose names became household words thanks mainly to the Civil War: Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ethan Allen Hitchcock and many others.  

In late 1826 Samuel Roberts and several others managed to ruin their West Point education by fooling with one of man’s oldest shortcomings – alcohol. 

On Christmas Eve a group of cadets decided that their Christmas break should be celebrated with a little eggnog. To get the whiskey needed, Roberts and a handful of others left the post, a violation in itself, and went a couple of miles south to Buttermilk Falls and a place called Haven’s Tavern. After buying the required spirits, they snuck back on post. Before long the eggnog was flowing in both the north and south barracks.  

Commanders previously warned that drinking during past holiday breaks had gotten out of hand. When they got word that liquor was being drank on the post again, they went to the barracks and investigated. What followed was a brawl between commanders and intoxicated cadets. The whole affair became known as The Eggnog Riot. 

In his excellent account of the event entitled The Eggnog Riot (Presidio Press, 1979), writer and former military man James B. Agnew recorded the details. For the purposes of this piece, I will recount only events related to Samuel Roberts. 

Problems began around five o’clock Christmas morning when two West Point officers, Ethan Allen Hitchcock and William A. Thornton, were inspecting the north barracks where Roberts and other cadets were partying. Upon entering, Hitchcock encountered an intoxicated Jefferson Davis. He placed him under arrest and ordered him to his room. (This actually benefited Davis; it kept him out of the worst of the rioting and lessened his ultimate punishment, allowing him to become a West Point graduate. Details can be found in Vol. 1 of The Papers of Jefferson Davis [LSU Press].) 

In the meantime, Lt. Thornton continued his inspection. A drunken Samuel Roberts, aware of Thornton’s location and armed with sticks of firewood, waited for him to descend a set of stairs. James Agnew describes what followed: 

Thornton started down the stairs. The lantern he carried lighted his figure against the dark window at the top of the stairwell. Roberts threw the wood as hard as he could at the lieutenant. He heard a groan, then the sound of glass breaking. Thornton fell to the stairs and the lamp went out.

Roberts committed the worst crime of all: He assaulted a commissioned officer. (In addition, Vol. 1 of The Papers of Jefferson Davis contains testimony from one cadet stating that he overheard Cadet Roberts “remark that he [Roberts] had thrown a tub - referring to the time of the riot.”) 

The legal proceedings against Roberts and other cadets involved in the Eggnog Riot began on January 24 and extended through May 3, 1827. Roberts’ trial was held on February 26th.

“The principal charges” brought against Roberts, writes James Agnew, were “introducing spirituous liquors into the barracks, and mutinous conduct, specifically assaulting a commissioned officer.”  

The trial, according to James Agnew: 

[M]oved expeditiously through the twenty-eighth, but the court granted Roberts until March 2 to present his final defense summation. Roberts took about thirty minutes to concede to the court that he had been absent from the Academy as charged and attempted to use legal legerdemain to prove that he was being charged for mutinous conduct on hearsay evidence alone. His final argument, using Christ’s crucifixion as analogous with his own case, was an imaginative, if desperate, ploy for sympathy and mercy. “But as the whole human race have been once conditionally pardoned for rebellion against the Almighty, why may not I as an individual (even had all the charges been proven) hope for the same . . .”

His pleas having fallen on deaf ears, in March the court martial ordered Roberts “dismissed from the service of the United States.”

In short, Samuel Roberts was expelled from West Point and the U. S. military. Several other cadets suffered the same fate.

Agnew further notes that “the records of the court of inquiry and the courts-martial were [forwarded] to Washington where they were reviewed by . . . then Secretary of War James Barbour.” He further notes that since “a number of the cases carried sentences of dismission, in late April, Barbour delivered the trial records to the office of President John Quincy Adams.”

President Adams ultimately wrote a lengthy opinion on the matter, which concluded: 

The confirmation of so many sentences of dismission from the Academy, of Young Men from whom their Country had a right to expect better things, is an act of imperious though painful duty. Of duty the more painful, because it has not escaped the attention of the President, that the penalty bears not merely upon the transgression, but, upon the prospects of the offenders and upon the cherished expectations of virtuous parents and friends. Convinced, that these considerations must yield to the necessity of a rigorous example, he hopes it will not be lost upon the Youth remaining at the Academy; that they will be admonished to the observance of all their duties by the reflection that when violated by them, while the offense is imputable only to themselves, the punishment must of necessity be shared with them by the dearest of their friends.

(Signed) John Quincy Adams

 Washington 3rd May 1827

It seems possible that once Roberts became a fixture in Bonham, he may have casually discussed his time at West Point minus the details about the Eggnog Riot, thus allowing his fellow Bonhamites to consider him a graduate of the esteemed academy.  A clue appeared in the March 6, 1909 Bonham Daily Favorite when Judge W. A. Evans wrote of his close relationship with Roberts, which included sharing a law office with him on the north side of the square for many years.  He described him as “a graduate of West Point . . . .”

If Roberts did tell Evans or any other friends the truth about his West Point days, he must have sworn them to secrecy.