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History of West Point

Histories and Source Documents

[image ALT: Two companies of men, six across and numbering just under 200, marching on a wide expanse of trimmed grass, several acres in extent, toward the right foreground of the photograph, led by a single officer carrying a guidon. The men wear close-fitting vests and crisp cotton trousers, and black hats adorned with metal crests and topped by a brushlike ornament. Elsewhere on the same level field, in the distance, similar companies can be seen marching. The backdrop to the parade ground is an imposing corps of three-story stone buildings, in front of which a bronze equestrian statue can just barely be made out on a tall marble base. Behind these buildings in turn, a low forested ridge crowned by a massive church in a military Gothic style. It is a view of a cadet review (a drill, or parade) on 'The Plain' at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.]

Cadets on review on the Plain,
with the Washington Monument on the right and the Cadet Chapel on the hill above them.

Photo: Parents' Almanac, 19th Edition, May 2006, published by the Office of the Superintendent, USMA; public domain.

The items introduced on this page will probably be most useful, not to Cadets — who in a sense already are West Point History — but to others: parents and friends, students of history, and not least, I hope, to prospective applicants.

[ 142 print pages, unillustrated ]
Roswell Park's West Point, titled in full A Sketch of the History and Topography of West Point and the Military Academy, is the earliest history of the Academy. Published in 1840 when the Long Gray Line numbered only a thousand graduates and Buena Vista and Gettysburg, Pershing, Eisenhower and MacArthur were still in the future, the book shows us an institution that, though but recently forged by Sylvanus Thayer, we can already fully recognize.

[ 246 print pages, 5 line drawings ]
E. D. J. Waugh's West Point, sonorously subtitled The Story Of The United States Military Academy, Which Rising From The Revolutionary Forces Has Taught American Soldiers The Art Of Victory, was written in 1944 (partly for young men who might be thinking of applying for admission); it provides a more anecdotal view of the Academy's history and an insight into West Point on a wartime footing.

[ 108 print pages, unillustrated ]
William Godson's History of West Point 1852‑1902, a doctoral dissertation, is markedly less good than the full-length books listed above, but provides a summary annalistic account of those years, and includes a useful bibliography.

Among the journal articles collected in my American History Notes section, three deal with West Point:
"The System of Instruction at West Point" by Robert P. Keep (1869) provides a careful description of the method of instruction practiced at the U. S. Military Academy, with an assessment and suggestions as to its possible extension to civilian colleges.
"The Nervous Exhaustion due to West Point Training" by U. S. Army surgeon Charles E. Woodruff (1901) contains a few kernels of truth scattered among a collection of idiosyncratic opinions.
"Military Education in the United States" by educator Leroy T. Patton critiqued the academic environment at USMA (in 1937) and proposed to remedy its flaws by removing the general education component to civilian colleges and transforming the Academy into a specialized higher-level university focused on exclusively military subjects.

[ 18 print pages ]
West Point Fifty Years Ago: Not the 1950's, but 1829. Gen. Francis Smith's 1879 after-dinner speech to fellow classmates is of interest not only because it is one of the earliest extant recollections of the Point, but because General Smith had been the commanding officer of the Virginia Military Institute since before the Civil War in which he fought most of those same classmates: the very fact that he gave the speech was a sign that our divided nation was starting to heal, and he talks about it.

The farewell speech of Gen. Douglas MacArthur (USMA, 1903) to the Corps on May 12, 1962: this is what West Point is about, as told to the Corps at the sunset of his life by one of the icons of the Long Gray Line. When I first looked into it, I was very surprised to discover that every single transcript available online was marked by gross errors and omissions of entire paragraphs. I retranscribed it from the audio tape of his actual delivery of it on that day; the audio itself is also downloadable.

A few miscellaneous items are inevitable. Right now, three biographical summaries from Cullum's Register:
Roswell Park 629 because that entry is the best information I could find on the author of one of the books above; and
Henry Clay, Jr. 630 illustrated with a photo I took of his grave in Kentucky.
Joseph A. Haskin 995 who turned over the arsenal at Baton Rouge to the State of Louisiana in 1861.

Images with borders lead to more information. The thicker the border, the more information. (Details here.)

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	[ 142 print pages, unillustrated ] Roswell Park's West Point, titled in full A Sketch of the History and Topography of West Point and the Military Academy, is the earliest history of the Academy. Published in 1840 when the Long Gray Line numbered only a thousand graduates and Buena Vista and Gettysburg, Pershing, Eisenhower and MacArthur were still in the future, the book shows us an institution that, though but recently forged by Sylvanus Thayer, we can already fully recognize.
	[ 246 print pages, 5 line drawings ] E. D. J. Waugh's West Point, sonorously subtitled The Story Of The United States Military Academy, Which Rising From The Revolutionary Forces Has Taught American Soldiers The Art Of Victory, was written in 1944 (partly for young men who might be thinking of applying for admission); it provides a more anecdotal view of the Academy's history and an insight into West Point on a wartime footing.
	[ 108 print pages, unillustrated ] William Godson's History of West Point 1852‑1902, a doctoral dissertation, is markedly less good than the full-length books listed above, but provides a summary annalistic account of those years, and includes a useful bibliography.
	Among the journal articles collected in my American History Notes section, three deal with West Point: "The System of Instruction at West Point" by Robert P. Keep (1869) provides a careful description of the method of instruction practiced at the U. S. Military Academy, with an assessment and suggestions as to its possible extension to civilian colleges. "The Nervous Exhaustion due to West Point Training" by U. S. Army surgeon Charles E. Woodruff (1901) contains a few kernels of truth scattered among a collection of idiosyncratic opinions. "Military Education in the United States" by educator Leroy T. Patton critiqued the academic environment at USMA (in 1937) and proposed to remedy its flaws by removing the general education component to civilian colleges and transforming the Academy into a specialized higher-level university focused on exclusively military subjects.
	[ 18 print pages ] West Point Fifty Years Ago: Not the 1950's, but 1829. Gen. Francis Smith's 1879 after-dinner speech to fellow classmates is of interest not only because it is one of the earliest extant recollections of the Point, but because General Smith had been the commanding officer of the Virginia Military Institute since before the Civil War in which he fought most of those same classmates: the very fact that he gave the speech was a sign that our divided nation was starting to heal, and he talks about it.
	The farewell speech of Gen. Douglas MacArthur (USMA, 1903) to the Corps on May 12, 1962: this is what West Point is about, as told to the Corps at the sunset of his life by one of the icons of the Long Gray Line. When I first looked into it, I was very surprised to discover that every single transcript available online was marked by gross errors and omissions of entire paragraphs. I retranscribed it from the audio tape of his actual delivery of it on that day; the audio itself is also downloadable.
	A few miscellaneous items are inevitable. Right now, three biographical summaries from Cullum's Register: Roswell Park 629 because that entry is the best information I could find on the author of one of the books above; and Henry Clay, Jr. 630 illustrated with a photo I took of his grave in Kentucky. Joseph A. Haskin 995 who turned over the arsenal at Baton Rouge to the State of Louisiana in 1861.