"West Point Bicentennial"
A Pictorial History of the First Two Hundred Years of the United States Military Academy
Preface | 1776-1817 | 1817-1833 | 1833-1848 | 1848-1865 | 1865-1890 | 1890-1919 | 1919-1939 | 1939-1950 | 1950-1970 | 1970-1980 | 1980-2002 | Bicentennial and Beyond

"Challenges and Validation"

1833-1848

The superintendency passed in 1833 to Major Rene DeRussy, an 1812 graduate who was more lenient in enforcing regulations. This leniency, combined with the growing cohesion among the cadets and the continuing willingness of President Jackson to overturn dismissals, encouraged further indiscipline. Ultimately, the situation led President Jackson to order a retightening. In 1838, DeRussy was succeeded by Major Richard Delafield, Class of 1818, a strict disciplinarian who was given the authority to dismiss cadets without presidential intervention. Fluctuations in discipline aside, DeRussy and Delafield changed little about the Thayer system or curriculum, although West Point saw the erection of a chapel and the first library building as well as the addition of horsemanship to the curriculum in 1839. To help prepare prospective cadets for the rigors of the Thayer system, the first version of today's U.S. Military Academy Preparatory School (which enhances the democratic nature of the academy by serving as a route for enlisted soldiers to enter the Military Academy from the Army) was founded by former artillery instructor Zebina Kinsley in 1835. Perhaps the greatest innovation in cadet life during these years occurred when bedsteads were first issued in 1839, giving rooms in the barracks a more permanent feel. Previously, cadets had slept on mattresses the floor.

The Military Academy still faced attack from congressmen and political leaders from the new states on the frontier, west of the Appalachians, who took up Alden Partridge's charge that West Point had become a haven for aristocracy and championed the militia as the main line of national defense. These critics called for abolishing the academy or opening additional academies to train officers of and for the militia. They gained success in a number of state legislatures, but the power to nominate young men for appointment as cadets had been divided informally among congressmen since the early 1820s and seemed to be a democratic approach to choosing public servants. Although southern and western appointees lacked adequate academic preparation, frequently failed to pass the entrance exams, and were dismissed for academic failure more often than northeastern cadets, the congressional system of appointment made the geographic origins of cadets and graduates closely representative of the nation's population. Indeed, families and political leaders throughout the nation recognized West Point as a path to education, self-improvement and social mobility otherwise unavailable to young men outside the elite.

Thus, though social and political connections did lead to a disproportionate presence of the sons of the elite, the rigorous enforcement of academic standards under the Thayer system, under which wealthy and well-connected youths frequently failed and were refused reinstatement, while a substantial number of cadets from middle class or even impoverished backgrounds succeeded, made the institution a unique, democratic environment. Indeed, in the words of one historian, the Military Academy "probably came closer to producing the aristocracy of talent espoused by Jefferson and John Adams than any other educational [or government] institution in the antebellum United States." This, plus legislation formalizing the congressionally apportioned system of cadet appointments in 1843, enabled West Point to answer its critics, convincing Congress to maintain the academy as the Army's principal source of officers and the regular Army as the nation's de facto first line of defense on land. In effect, Thayer's West Point fostered the first organized professional body in the nation's service, graduating leaders of tested character whose sense of duty to national objectives proved indispensable to national growth and reunification both during and following the Civil War.

Slowed by the Army's seniority promotion system, few West Pointers attained even the rank of major before the war with Mexico in 1846. Yet graduates provided decisive leadership in every branch of the Army, on every field, in the war with Mexico and were rewarded with a shower of public honors and acclaim. Indeed, 452 of the 523 graduates then in the Army who served in Mexico received honorary "brevet" promotions for meritorious service or courageous leadership on the battlefield, while many received two or even three. Forty-eight graduates gave their lives in that conflict. General Winfield Scott, lauded as a strategic genius for his daring march on Mexico City, was not an academy graduate but had repeatedly visited the Military Academy and promoted its value. He noted the indispensability of these highly trained junior officers when he declared that "I give it as my fixed opinion that but for our graduated cadets, the war...probably would have lasted some four or five years, with, in its first half, more defeats than victories falling to our share." The academy's success was so convincing that leaders in both the North and the South looked automatically to West Point and its graduates for leadership during the Civil War. Many of these officers, such as Ulysses S. Grant (an infantry lieutenant, Class of 1843, brevetted twice for courageous leadership under fire in Mexico) and Robert E. Lee (Scott's chief field engineer, Class of 1829, brevetted three times), first passed the test of combat in Mexico.