The United States Military Academy: Its Role in the Nation’s Early Years

From the nation’s founding until the Civil War, nearly a century later, no other American institution played a more significant role in shaping the future of the United States Army.  The United States Military Academy served as the vanguard of the slow and tedious transition of military officership from a craft practiced by a privileged few to a profession shared by a representative cross-sample of Americans.  From its beginning, the Academy had always been a landmark and a guiding light to nation’s armed forces.

West Point campus in modern times

The 1802 Military Peace Establishment Act established the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.[1]  Some of its history, however, preceding its founding.  Located on the west bank of the Hudson River 50 miles north of New York City, the academy’s original purpose was to serve as a Revolutionary War fortress,[2] part of General Washington’s Hudson Highlands defense system.[3]  According to military historian, Rick Atkinson, “during the Revolution, George Washington pronounced the military garrison at West Point ‘the most important post in America.’”^[4]  In his book, The Long Gray Line, Atkinson also described how Washington entrusted the defense of West Point to one Benedict Arnold whose name later became synonymous with treason.  Arnold sold the plans for West Point’s defenses to a British spy, but the whole plot was foiled before any threat to the garrison actually materialized. 

Sylvanus Thayer

After the War of 1812, the nation became a little more comfortable with the idea of maintaining a standing army.  Senior leadership—civilian and military—saw the need to establish a school of professional military officers.  Sylvanus Thayer (Class of 1808[5]) became superintendent in 1817 and, with the backing of President Calhoun, overhauled the school’s academic and disciplinary systems.  His reforms included organizing the corps of cadets into a battalion, establishing an academic board to oversee curricular matters, dividing classes into sections according to merit, and holding semiannual examinations.[6]  Thayer’s superintendency lasted until 1833.[7]

Dennis Hart Mahan

Dennis Hart Mahan (Class of 1834[8]) was among a group of professors recruited by Thayer.  Mahan served as Professor of Civil and Military Engineering and the Art of War from his graduation to his death in 1871, with a six-year interlude during which he studied military engineering and fortifications in France.[9]  Thayer and Mahan followed the French example as they transformed the curriculum at West Point.  Like the French schools they had studied, Thayer and Mahan stressed military engineering, fortifications, and tactics.[10]  Mahan wrote his own textbooks and pioneered the American study of war that based on Napoleon.[11] 

Mahan taught the course on military science taken by virtually every West Pointer who fought in the Civil War.  His text, which he published in 1847, bore the lengthy title of Elementary Treatise on Advance-Guard, Out-Post, and Detachment Service of Troops, and was America’s first comprehensive work on tactics and strategy.[12]  Thus, Dennis Hart Mahan helped lay the foundation for American strategic studies, promoted military professionalism, and made the case “that military science was a specialized body of knowledge understandable only through intense study, especially of military history.”[13]

West Point also played a significant role in the development of the nation and its westward expansion.  “Under Thayer … the Academy not only produced officers with professional ideals but also became the nation’s finest scientific and engineering school, and graduates eagerly utilized their scientific and engineering skills for national development.”[14]  They were pioneers in the building of the nation’s early railroad system.  In fact, “Most railroad lines built before the Civil War involved academy graduates.”  They surveyed and mapped new territory, charting the nation’s course as its western boundaries pushed ever farther westward.  They supervised road building, canal construction, and harbor improvements.[15]

However, it was on the battlefield where West Point graduates most distinguished themselves.  During the Mexican War, young officers like Robert E. Lee, U.S. Grant, and Stonewall Jackson put to use the lessons taught them by Professor Mahan at the Academy.[16]  These and many other West Point officers would rise to greater usefulness and prominence during the Civil War.  Interestingly, Winfield Scott, the Army’s general in chief at the time of the war with Mexico, and victor in the Southern thrust that captured Mexico City, though an excellent commander and military historian, endured persistent reproach precisely because he had not been a West Pointer.

The “long gray line” was disrupted by the Civil War.  Many officers and alumni resigned their commissions and pledged their allegiance to the Confederacy.  Still, “Of sixty battles fought in the Civil War, fifty-five saw West Point graduates on both sides of the conflict. In the remaining battles, a West Point graduate commanded on one of the two sides.”[17]  Prominent West Pointers during the Civil War included, Jackson, Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, Philip H. Sheridan, George McClellan, and George Meade.  Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, was also a West Point graduate.[18]

From its time as the nation’s most important citadel in its war of independence, through the turbulence of a young nation’s growth and westward expansion, through two significant wars that profoundly affected the country during its first hundred years, the United States Military Academy at West Point has played an important role.  The significant contributions of its alumni positioned the United States to emerge in its second century as a military superpower.

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[1] Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 104.

[2] John Whiteclay Chambers II, Ed, The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 3.

[3] Millet and Maslowski, 75.

[4] Rick Atkinson, The Long Gray Line: From West Point to Vietnam and After—The Turbulent Odyssey of the Class of 1966 (New York: Pocket Star Books, 1989), 17.

[5] Chambers, 720.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Millet and Maslowski, 134

[8] Ibid, 133.

[9] Ibid, 133-134.

[10] Ibid, 134.

[11] Ibid.

[12] “West Point in the Making of America,” National Museum of American History, http://americanhistory.si.edu/
westpoint/history_1a2.html, accessed February 21, 2012.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid, 137.

[15] Chambers, 4.

[16] Ibid.

[17] United States Military Academy, West Point, http://www.usma.edu/NotableGrads.asp, Accessed
February 21, 2012.

[18] Chambers, 4.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Atkinson, Rick. The Long Gray Line: From West Point to Vietnam and After—The Turbulent Odyssey of the Class of 1966. New York: Pocket Star Books, 1989.

Chambers, John Whiteclay, II, Ed. The Oxford Companion to American Military History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Millett, Allan R. and Peter Maslowski. For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America. New York: The Free Press, 1994.

National Museum of American History. “West Point in the Making of America,” http://
americanhistory.si.edu/westpoint/history_1a2.html. Accessed February 21, 2012.

United States Military Academy, West Point. http://www.usma.edu/NotableGrads.asp. Accessed February 21, 2012.