p75  Chapter Three
A System and a Purpose

The objective of the United States Military Academy is "the practical and theoretical training of young men for the military service." More specifically, its purpose is to supply the Army with young officers adequately prepared not only to assume the responsibilities of command but to develop, through continued study and application, their full potentialities of leader­ship.

No one at the Military Academy pretends that a West Point diploma is the mark of a complete Army officer. The Academy is not a university. Its graduates are equipped through general education of college grade, and basic military education and training, to "pursue their careers of the Army." They are prepared, in other words, to enter upon a period of service during which they will continue to enlarge their store of knowledge through experience and study to meet the growing responsibilities of higher rank as promotions come during the years.

In order to give the Army the best possible material with which to build its leader­ship, the Military Academy provides its cadets with a "balanced and liberal education in the arts and sciences," giving them "knowledge of the social, economic, and political history of mankind; basic principles and applications of the mathematical and physical sciences; knowledge and use of English and foreign languages and appreciation of literature; fundamentals of law."

For its eminence as an educational institution West Point gives the largest single share of credit to Sylvanus Thayer, "Father of the Military Academy," who mon a century ago lifted the institution from the level of an old‑time country school to that of an advanced technical college — the first, in fact, in the country. Thayer also snapped the Academy out of the easy ways of a half-forgotten outpost and turned it into an institution which set the pace for the whole Army in the precision of its military standards. His formula was simple: hard work.

 p76  Sylvanus Thayer, who was the thirty-third cadet to be graduated from the Military Academy, nine years l, at the age of thirty‑two, became its fourth superintendent. He was born in Braintree, Mass., on June 9, 1785, descended from Puritan settlers who had come from Gloucestershire, England, to Braintree about 1635.

Sylvanus was the fifth child and youngest son of the family, and when the seventh child was born his parents welcomed an invitation for the boy to live with an uncle in Washington, N. H. He was not quite nine years old at the time, and worked hard clerking in a store and at other tasks until at seventeen he obtained a job teaching in the Washington District School. Though self-study he prepared himself in Latin, Greek, and mathematics to enter Dartmouth College in 1803.

Thayer exhibited exceptional scholar­ship at once. In his senior year he stood at the head of his class and won the designation of class valedictorian. His valedictory was never delivered, for he had made his decision to enter the Army, and had won an appointment as a cadet at West Point. In order to comply with his first orders he was obliged to leave Dartmouth before commencement to possible at the Military Academy on time.

So thorough had been Thayer's preparation at Dartmouth that he mastered the course at West Point and was graduated within a year, on Feb. 23, 1808. He served as an ordnance officer until the beginning of the War of 1812 when he was detailed to duty as an officer of engineers. He served with credit through the war, as chief engineer of the Northern Army under Major General Dearborn in the campaign of 1812, as aide-de‑camp to Major Hampton in the campaign of 1813, and with the forces of Brigadier General Port in the defense of Norfolk in 1814. For his part in the Norfolk action he was awarded a brevet promotion to the rank of major on Feb. 20, 1815.

The close of the war found the Military Academy still in the deplorable condition to which it had been degraded during the administration of William Eustis as Secretary of War, from March, 1809, to December, 1812. Eustis had systematically "dried up" the Academy by depriving its cadets of instruction and refusing to make new cadet appointments. Hasty attempts to repair the damage that he had done, and to derive some benefit from the Academy with the approach of war, were made even before Eustis was out of the picture. President Madison commended the idea of an adequate military academy to Congress in December, 1810, but the legislators delayed more than a year before acting to rehabilitate the institution on the Hudson. Eustis was still in office when Congress finally passed legislation, in  p77 the spring of 1812, to enlarge and improve the Academy, and he saw that the program was held up as long as he could oppose it.

Congress declared war on June 18, 1812. At the end of September a single individual, Cadet Charles S. Merchant, reported to the acting superintendent, Captain Alden Partridge, who was the only officer present. Captain Partridge and Cadet Merchant constituted the entire personnel of the Academy, although Congress, by its Act of Apr. 29, 1812, had authorized a cadet body of 260 men and a faculty of eight professors and assistant professors.

Captain Partridge admitted Merchant as a cadet without mental or physical examination and proceeded to put his one‑man corps through drill. By December the acting superintendent, who did better on the drill field than in the classroom or office, had a cadet corps of five men going through the manual of arms and parade-ground maneuvers. When the weather turned cold, he dismissed his charges and granted them furloughs until spring.

The new Secretary of War, General John Armstrong, appointed General Joseph G. Swift, Chief Engineer of the Army, as ex‑officio superintendent of the Military Academy, but Swift's war duties kept him in the field and Partridge therefore resumed his rule at West Point as acting superintendent in the spring of 1813. The administration in Washington, however, decided that this arrangement could not continue. A qualified superintendent for the Military Academy must be found — one who could put the full program authorized by Congress into effect.

With the war over, the search for competent leader­ship for the Academy was made in earnest. It may have been with the idea of settling a choice between Major Sylvanus Thayer and Colonel William McRee of North Carolina that the War Department sent these two officers abroad in 1815 for the purpose of synagogue the military systems of European countries and collecting books on technical subjects for the West Point library. They arrived only two days after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo and were in Paris during its occupation by the British and allied forces who had ended the little emperor's career of conquest. The American officers spent two years at their studies and investigations, returning to the United States in the spring of 1817.

Events had gone on as before at West Point until President Monroe paid a visit to the Military Academy that spring. Hardly a cadet was to be found there, and the President learned that practically all were on furlough. When  p78 he suggested that they be called back to resume their studies he was informed that they were scattered around the country and that their addresses were unknown. The Academy would simply have to wait for them to turn up.

President Monroe decided that the time had come to act. A superintendent was appointed, and the choice was Major Sylvanus Thayer. He was ordered back to the United States for the purpose of taking command of the Academy. In July he received a letter from General Swift, who wrote:

Thus, less than a decade after he had marched on its plain as a cadet, Thayer arrived at West Point and presented, to Captain Partridge, Swift's official order:

It is said that Partridge received the order with poor grace and that the cadets who had enjoyed his easy administration of the Academy were hardly less disturbed by the arrival of a young and alert superintendent who looked as though he meant business. They soon had reason to fear the worst. West Point's halcyon days were over. The new superintendent did mean business.

Thayer was not without background in the operation of the Military Academy. After finishing the course there himself, he had been returned to West Point the following year (1809) as a junior instructor. During a portion of the 1810 term he had been acting assistant professor of mathematics, and at times had acted as post commander and post adjutant.

His first job now was to get the cadets back to the Academy. He was advised that if he would be patient and wait they would probably turn up. He  p79 did not wait. Since he lacked their addresses, he inserted stern notices or advertisements in the newspapers informing members of the Cadet Corps that they were to report back to West Point immediately. Wherever cadets could be found though relatives or friends, they were sought out and brought back. Those who failed to show up were dismissed by order of the President.

The cadets who did return in response to notices received in one way or another were certainly not an altogether promising lot. Thayer found that with the run‑down institution he had inherited a body of students who, selected under the haphazard system then in use, were pretty poor material with which to start rebuilding the Academy. Some were boys of twelve, and some were men older than himself. Some were physically deformed and some hardly possessed the mental capacity to undertake the study of technical subjects in the field of military science.

In addition to those dismissed for failure to respond to his call for their return to the Academy, Thayer weeded out unpromising cadets by subjecting the remaining group to examinations which they were required to pass in order to continue their studies under the new administration. with the results of these tests in hand he was able to bring academic order out of the situation to the extent of classifying the cadets according to their scholastic standings.

Only one untoward incident occurred to loosen momentarily the new superintendent's grip on the Academy. A month after his arrival at West Point, Thayer's attention was attracted one day by the sound of cheering in the barracks area. The cheers were coming from cadets who had caught sight once again of their idol, "Old Pewter" Partridge. After acknowledging the noisy welcome of his boys, Partridge sought out Thayer to demand that his quarters be restored to him. Thayer refused, but the next morning Partridge ordered a parade of the Cadet Corps after which he read an order to them announcing that he had resumed command of the post.

Thayer penned a crisp note to the Secretary of War. "I have the honor to inform you," he stated, "that Captain A. Partridge of the Corps of Engineers has returned to this post and has, this day, forcibly assumed the command and the superintendence of the Academy. I shall therefore proceed to New York and wait your orders."

Two days later a messenger arrived at West Point with a note for Partridge for General Swift. "On receipt of this," it read, "you will deliver your sword to the bearer, Lieut. Blaney, my aide-de‑camp, and consider  p80 yourself under arrest. The charges against you will be furnished in due season." Thayer was immediately restored to command, backed by an order from General Swift read to the Corps in his presence, to the effect that disobedience to the orders of the superintend would result in instant dismissal. Partridge was later court-martialed, found guilty of some charges and cleared of others, and finally permitted to resign.

With "Old Pewt's" influence finally removed, Thayer began to evolve an educational system for the Military Academy and a way of life for its cadets so soundly conceived and expertly administered that they have remained in force to this day. In the relatively brief span of his sixteen years as superintendent he gave the institution a standing second to none among its kind in the world and accelerated its progress to an amazing degree.

One of his first steps was to organize the cadets into a battalion of two companies under cadet officers. He appointed an Army officer as Commandant of Cadets and made him responsible for tactical instruction and discipline. With the cadets classified as to scholastic standing, Thayer organized them into classes and divided the classes into sections, all according to the grading to students. This made possible closer attention by the professors and more thorough instruction, on which the superintendent kept a check by instituting a requirement of weekly class reports showing the daily progress of each individual cadet.

The teaching word was also organized for greater efficiency. With himself as the head, Thayer established the Academic Board, consisting of the faculty members. With them he worked out a well-rounded curriculum and established proper methods of instruction. It was arranged, through an order by the Secretary of War, to have published in the Army Register the names of the five cadets of each class with the highest scholastic records and the most meritorious conduct.

West Point cadets also became familiar at once with Thayer's method of close supervision not only of their scholastic and military lives but their personal lives as well. When summoned before the superintendent or when calling at his office to ask a favor, they invariably were amazed at his fund of knowledge concerning each individual, even to the amount of money for which a cadet might be in debt. Most of them were unaware, as they faced the high front of the superintendent's desk, that neatly arranged in pigeonholes before him was a brief record on each cadet, kept daily up to date, giving such items as his class marks, his demerits, and his current financial standing. They learned too what it meant to live under strict discipline  p81 when Thayer's permission was required for every movement of a cadet, even for the posting of a letter.

In instituting his reforms and in putting the Military Academy on a course toward when Daniel Webster later described as "growing respectability," Thayer had the interested support of Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, who became his friend. Calhoun, within a year after Thayer had assumed office, approved a set of regulations which removed any uncertainty about the manner in which the Military Academy was to be run. These regulations provided for two examinations a year, in January and June. They required that new cadets arrive at the Academy prior to June 25 and stipulated that no entrance examinations would be given after Sept. 1 except for candidates prevented by illness from reporting sooner.

The regulations did away with annual vacations, provided instead for annual summer encampments. Provision was made to allow furloughs of two months after the June examinations to not more than one‑fourth of the Corps at any one time. No cadet could be graduated, however, without having attended two summer encampments. Those failing to return from furloughs were dismissed from the service.

The rules required a diploma as evidence of completion of the full course at the Military Academy and established the class standing of cadets as the order of their rank upon being commissioned. They provided, within the order of class rank, for consideration of aptitude for different branches of the service.

Cadets suspended from the Academy for any cause were made ineligible for appointment to a commission in the Army prior to the promotion of their entire respective classes, and cadets found deficient or dismissed were barred from appointment to any office or post in the Army of the United States for five years after the promotion of the respective classes of which they were members.

Thayer imposed long hours and hard work on the cadets and the teaching staff of the Academy, and he himself was untiring in his devotion to his duties. He began his day before reveille, and by eight o'clock in the morning he had taken a walk, reviewed the morning parade, taken his breakfast, and given more than an hour to receiving and interviewing cadets. His full day of inspections and work at his desk was interrupted at four o'clock for an hour's conference with officers of the post, after which he reviewed the Cadet Corps at evening parade. After dinner he spent a quiet evening at home reading or entertaining friends.

 p82  The thoroughness with which Thayer supervised cadet examinations was recounted with some amazement by his friend and Dartmouth classmate, George Ticknor, who witnessed some of these sessions. Ticknor wrote in his diary in 1826:

A few days later Ticknor continued the description of Thayer in his diary.

For sixteen years Sylvanus Thayer ruled at West Point, and in that time the Military Academy became the finest technical school in America. He built its curriculum up from a few elementary subjects to a full and comprehensive program designed to give the Army's future officers the best education obtainable in preparation for their military career. The results were instantaneous. Among the very first graduates of the Academy under Thayer's administration were men whose superior backgrounds in mathematics and science were immediately recognized. It was not long before other educational institutions were calling for their services as teachers.

During Thayer's administration the Academy produced among its graduates thirty‑one men who became professors in other colleges and universities, and half of them became college presidents. They taught in forty-seven colleges and universities in seventeen states.

The influence of the Military Academy upon other technical schools has been profound. West Point stood as the only technical and scientific college in the country until the founding of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1824. Its graduates have since taught at Virginia Military Institute, Union College, the United States Naval Academy, Lawrence School of Engineering (Harvard University), Sheffield Engineering School (Yale University), Chandler School (Dartmouth College), University of Michigan, Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, Columbia University School of Mines, Lehigh University, Thayer School of Engineering (Dartmouth College), founded by Sylvanus Thayer; and the University of Virginia. United States Military Academy texts have also been extensively used by other American technical schools.

Sylvanus Thayer resigned as superintendent of the Military Academy on Jan. 19, 1833, after a series of incidents which he considered were undermining his authority. The trouble began when Andrew Jackson became President. Cadets who had been dismissed from the Academy through actions ratified by the War Department were beginning to turn up for reinstatement  p84 on orders from the White House. Thayer smarted in silence under this treatment until one reinstated cadet went so far as to erect a hickory pole in front of the barracks as a symbol of his favor in Washington.

When Thayer's resignation was accepted, he was asked to remain until the completion of the June examinations, and was actually relieved on July 1, 1833. His departure from West Point was sudden and quiet, and he never returned during his life. He had taken to walking down to the dock evenings to watch the New York boat arrive and depart. One evening, as the boat was about to pull out, he suddenly turned to some acquaintances, said "Good‑bye, gentlemen," and quickly stepped aboard. In a moment he was gone.

Sylvanus Thayer had a distinguished career in the Army after leaving the Military Academy. He was made a member of the Board of Engineers and placed in charge of planning and constructing the fortifications and other public works in and around Boston Harbor. He spent thirty years on this assignment, retiring on June 1, 1863.

Thayer never lost interest in the field of education. He kept up correspondence with such men as Ticknor, Edward Everett, Amos Eaton, Benjamin Silliman, and George Bancroft, and was consulted frequently by educators on professional problems. He founded and endowed the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College, and saw it through its first years of organization. Before his death, on Sept. 7, 1872, at the age of eighty-seven, he was breveted to the rank of brigadier general. His body was transferred to West Point in 1877, largely through the efforts of General George W. Cullum, a member of the last class to be graduated under Thayer as superintendent.

Since Thayer's time, when the Academy was strictly a technical school, the curriculum of West Point has been broadened and balanced through several stages by the addition of "cultural" courses designed to round out the cadets' education within the limits of the institution's primary purpose of preparing men for military careers. One of the first important moves in this direction came during the administration of Robert E. Lee as superintendent, 1852 to 1855. Lee and Jefferson Davis,1 who was Secretary of War under the Pierce Administration from 1853 to 1857, agreed that more time should be given at the Academy to subjects such as English literature, history, ethics, and logic. They effected an extension of the whole Military Academy course from four years to five years in order to include more  p85 studies on the humanities, and the new schedule remained in operation until the Civil War. Even after relinquishing his office as Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis pursued the subject of broader education at West Point in a letter to President Buchanan in which he declared:

The most recent major changes in curriculum were put into effect following World War II. Important changes were also made in 1920 and 1933, minor ones in 1921 and 1941. After recognition of the Academy by the Association of American Universities in 1925, the graduates began to be listed for Rhodes Scholarships.

The West Point course, condensed to three years during World War II, was placed on a schedule of four years again after the war. A postwar curriculum committee, appointed by the superintendent of the Academy in May, 1945, spent three months on careful study of the West Point system of education and training and reported its findings and recommendations in August. Transition schedules were put into effect in September, 1945.

Under the new program a cadet receives 5,241 hours of instruction and training during his four years at West Point, including 1,90E recitation or lecture periods, and 2,554 laboratory or practical work periods. Fifty-five per cent of the 5,241 hours are devoted to academic instruction, and 45 per cent to military instruction.

The new curriculum is designed to include not only the normal advancements in education but also the special military developments resulting from lessons learned by the armed forces under actual combat conditions during the war. It incorporates the best features of the improved course in tactics developed by the modernized Department of Tactics during the war years, including amphibious training and close liaison with the Naval Academy on subjects pertaining to combined operations. More time will be allotted to physics, especially nuclear physics, under a proposed combined Department of Physics and Chemistry. The course in electricity, formerly associated with chemistry, has been extended to include basic instruction in electronics and communications. The course in military history has been expanded to include additional material on World War II, and the course in economics, government, and history has been expanded to include geography  p86 and a more thorough study of international relations and the economics of war.

The language courses have also been modified and expanded. The course in English includes military-instructor training, a departure which was introduced successfully in the three-year course during the war. The original schedule of languages, which consisted of French and Spanish, has been expanded to include Portuguese, German, and Russian.

During the war cadets were permitted to take pilot training and gr with their wings. Now, however, pilot training has been eliminated for cadets desiring commission in the Air Corps, and all cadets are given general aviation training irrespective of the branches of the service they plan to enter. Through a careful screening, those having flying aptitude will be commissioned in the Air Corps and get their wings after graduation.

The four-year curriculum covers twelve full courses requiring daily recitations, providing for three full academic courses per year in the third-, second-, and first-class years, and two and one‑half academic courses plus one‑half course of physical training during the academic day in the fourth class year. A cadet's fourth-class year (his first, or plebe, year) includes, then, during the academic day from 7:55 A.M. to 3 P.M., the following subjects: algebra, solid geography, plane and spherical trigonometry, plane and solid analytic geometry, slide rule, military topography, graphics, physical training, grammar, composition, readings, public speaking, and languages. In the third-class (second) year he covers differential calculus, integral calculus, physics, chemistry, languages, military topography, graphics, advanced composition, literature, public speaking, and tactics and technique. The second-class (third) year brings courses in analytical mechanics, strength of materials, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, electricity, electronics and communication, tactics and technique, military-instructor training, military correspondence, history of modern Europe, history of the Far East, government, and geography. Subjects covered in the first-class (fourth) year are: military art, military engineering, economics, economics of war, international relations, elements of ordnance, machine-tool laboratory, military law, and tactics. Throughout the four years certain periods of the day after 3 P.M. are allocated for practical military training, physical training, parades twice a week in September and May, and reviews and inspections. Cadets receive the Bachelor Science degree on graduation.

 p87  Modification of the faculty organization is planned along with the curriculum revision. The most important proposal is the establishment of the position of Dean of the Academic Board, thus providing a staff officer through whom the superintendent can deal with the fourteen heads of departments on staff matters and questions requiring study and report. Another suggestion is that nine of the academic departments, which heretofore have had one permanent professor each, be assigned an additional professor each to share the increasing burden of work involved in department administration, planning and conducting courses of instruction, and training and supervising instructors.

A policy of exchange of instructors with the United States Naval Academy has been adopted, and frequent exchange visits are encouraged between West Point faculty members and those of the Naval Academy and Coast Guard Academy.

Of the 377 members of the Military Academy faculty, only nine are stationed permanently, serving until retirement under appointments given by the President. Most of these permanent appointees are well-experienced Army officers, and they head the Departments of Military Art and Engineering, Mechanics, Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, Electricity, Military Topography and Graphics, Modern Languages, English, and Economics, Government and History. These department heads are members of the Academic Board, which also includes the professors of Law, Ordnance, and Military Hygiene, the Commandant of Cadets, and the Director of Aviation, serving four-year terms in order that turnover in these assignments may constantly bring to the Academy men experienced in the latest developments in their fields.

Active Regular Army officers are also detailed to the Military Academy as associate professors, assistant professors, and academic and tactical instructors. In addition, young officers with four to ten years of commissioned service, both Military Academy graduates and graduates of good civilian educational institutions, are selected on the basis of personality, educational background, and service efficiency, and detailed to the Academy as instructors. It is planned also to utilize in this way the services of reserve officers, especially experienced college or university teachers, detailing them to the Academy for periods of one to four years.

The latest revision of the West Point system of education and training is designed to provide a well-balanced curriculum giving proper emphasis to academic, tactical, physical, and moral training, with due regard for the  p88 balance between the humanistic-social and scientific-engineering academic fields. Its purpose is first to develop character in the tradition of West Point ideals of honor, integrity, duty, discipline, and leader­ship. It is also designed to give all graduates a basic education at the collegiate level under a program constantly adapted to the needs of the Army, and the necessary tactical and physical training required for competent military leader­ship.

From the period of Thayer's reforms to the present day, the Military Academy has progressed steadily as a leading educational institution. Throughout that time its fundamental aims and purposes have remained the same, but its methods have been constantly examined and altered to insure the proper fulfillment of its mission. By keeping its courses modernized, by remaining alert to new development in every field of study, and by keeping its faculty fresh and enthusiastic, the Academy has remained a dynamic institution and a force whose effect is felt in every branch of the Army.

West Point education and training have earned for the Academy the admiration and respect of educators the world over. President Karl T. Compton and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in an endorsement to the nomination of Sylvanus Thayer for the Hall of Fame of New York University, paid high tribute to West Point's standing as an educational institution. He described its program as "effective, vigorous, and decidedly alert to every good suggestion and idea for improvement," and its faculty eager "to do everything possible to increase the effectiveness of the educational program . . ." After a visit to the Academy, Sir Alfred Zimmern, Professor of International Relations at Oxford, said: "To me West Point has been both a surprise and an inspiration . . . The blend of the physical, the intellectual and the moral in the life of the place, together with the power of a great tradition, and the sense of a common purpose in the present, is at once quintessentially American but different from anything I have ever encountered in this country."

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The Author's Note:

1 Both Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis were graduates of the Military Academy.

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