The years following the Civil War were difficult for the
Military Academy. Like the rest of the country, the Army
faced the difficult task of reuniting citizens who had only
recently been at war against each other. In the case of
West Point, the question was when to readmit cadets from the
states that had seceded. The Regular Army quickly was
reduced as the nation entered a 30-year period of relative
peace, punctuated only by the Indian Wars. In a period of
stagnation, Army officials found that they often were called
upon to defend the relevance of a military academy to a
country with few threats and little ambition for
international expansion. Such justification was made all
the harder by the academy itself, which, like the Army, was
slow to adjust to the lessons of the Civil War and the
educational revolutions of the Gilded Age.
Southern cadets were formally readmitted to West Point
beginning in 1868, although cadets “from” southern states,
most often sons of Union officers stationed in the South,
had entered for several years. In many ways, however, it
was the actual admitting of young men whose permanent
residences were actually southern that allowed the Military
Academy to regain its distinction as a truly national
institution.
The painful throes of reconstruction did not
bypass the Hudson River Valley, however. Hazing, a
much-discussed periodic problem, reached epidemic
proportions in the years following the Civil War, suggesting
that southern cadets may not always have been welcomed back
by other cadets.
Historically, cadets who would haze and
harass other cadets required no special justification;
upper-class status was enough impetus to haze a lower-class
cadet. The practice was already widespread, but the added
element of sectional animosity almost certainly aggravated
the situation. Yet, as difficult as sectional
re-integration may have been, a more momentous shift in the
social order was on its way for the all-white Corps of
Cadets. The emancipation of slaves and the end of the Civil
War made racial integration at the academy virtually
inevitable.
In 1870, James Webster Smith became the first
African-American admitted to the United States Military
Academy. Ironically, the academy's first African American
cadet came from South Carolina, the first state to secede
from the Union and the state with the highest percentage of
slaves before the Civil War. Smith was spared the hazing
that was so common among his classmates. He was, rather,
completely ostracized by the Corps and, after being turned
back (forced to repeat a year) once for academic
deficiencies, was dismissed for academic failure after four
years at West Point. Smith had broken a critical barrier,
however, and in 1873, a Georgian by the name of Henry O.
Flipper would benefit. Flipper was no more popular than
Smith, but, in the words of a classmate, “never pushed” the
bounds of social equality and so was more easily tolerated.
Flipper survived his years at the academy by being as
determined as his classmates were prejudiced. In 1877 he
became the academy’s first African-American graduate,
ranking 50th in a class of 76.
In all, the academy admitted 12 African-American cadets
between 1865 and 1900, three of whom graduated. The others
failed due to inadequate academic preparation and the
powerful racism that was as typical at West Point as in the
rest of the country. Any cadet had to be tough, intelligent
and committed to graduate under the Thayer system. They
often had to depend upon each other to succeed. One can
only imagine how much harder it was for the isolated,
trailblazing African-American cadets brave enough to break
the racial barrier at West Point. Despite the low
graduation rate among African Americans, the fact that they
were admitted at all made the Military Academy an unusual
place during that period.
Immediately after the war, the academy's relationship with
the Army also changed. Before 1866, the superintendent was
always an Army engineer. Based on the lessons of the Civil
War, Congress opened the position to officers from all
branches of the service. Congress intended to encourage the
institution to shift its focus from engineering to more
generalized officer preparation, in keeping with the needs
and desires of most of the Army. Those desires were based
on a widely shared concept of the sorts of skills the Army
required, which were broader than an engineering education
could provide. Accordingly, Congress moved the academy from
under the control of the Corps of Engineers to the
supervision of the Secretary of War, making the direction
and guidance of the institution more explicit under the
Regular Army as a whole. Prior to this time, the Military
Academy had operated in something of a vacuum, training
cadets as it saw fit rather than preparing them for the
specific tasks they would be required to undertake as junior
officers. The question of the academy's responsiveness to
the Army's needs arose repeatedly throughout its history.
This change marked an important shift in the life of the
institution, a shift that ultimately would lead West Point
to broaden its curriculum to fields other than engineering.
In the short run, the Civil War caused little immediate
change in the curriculum. There was increased emphasis on
military engineering, gunnery and horsemanship and courses
in signal and telegraphy were added to military instruction
in 1868. Mahan's important “Art of War” class, long the
only military science class in the curriculum, remained a
relatively small part of each cadet’s course of study, but
even this course did not examine Civil War battles. Cadet
training was hampered, as well, by a chronic lack of
equipment and funding, as the academy struggled to prove its
worth to a nation tired of conflict, focused on internal
growth, and devoted to isolationism. In 1872, for example,
the academy added instruction in the use of the Gatling gun,
one of the weapons to come out of the Civil War. The
seven-year gap between the weapon's appearance and its
inclusion in cadet training illustrates the lag between
developments in the field and changes at the institution.
These small changes were an inadequate reaction to the
largest war in American history and drew criticism from many
observers in and out of uniform. Among the criticisms was
the charge that the curriculum was monotonous, the Thayer
system antiquated, and the cadets isolated from the outside
world and the people who would fill the enlisted ranks of
the units they eventually would be leading. Such criticism
illustrates the ever-present tension between technical
training and a broader education in the development of
leaders of character.
Outside the gates of West Point, the Gilded Age was a period
of dynamic change in education. Civilian colleges and
universities allowed their students an unprecedented degree
of freedom to choose their own course of study and offered
numerous graduate programs. The curriculum changed more
slowly at West Point. The Academic Board, charged with the
responsibility of preserving traditions and maintaining
academic standards, came under fire for its reluctance to
modify the curriculum. Members of the Board contended,
however, that many civilian institutions had abandoned their
schools to their students rather than maintain rigorous core
requirements and high academic standards. Most of these
senior military officers were confident that they knew from
experience how to train cadets and wanted to preserve
methods they considered tried and true. Generally, the
Board favored training in technical military skills rather
than broad studies in the humanities.
The debate between the Academic Board and Congress over
entrance requirements illustrates another of the academy's
periodic difficulties. The faculty, wishing to ensure high
standards and attract the nation's finest young men, sought
to toughen admissions requirements. Congress, on the other
hand, wanted to provide opportunities for a wide array of
young men. Low entrance requirements, proponents believed,
ensured that the academy's doors remained open to the sons
of rich and poor citizens alike. They feared that raising
entrance standards would turn the academy into an elitist
institution. Congress prevailed, for a while at least.
In contrast to the lax admission standards, the curriculum
remained heavily focused on engineering and mathematics,
with 70 percent of a cadet's class time spent on those
subjects. The Thayer method, with its emphasis on
individual cadet preparation and daily drills, continued to
dominate educational practices. The result of easy
admission standards and a tough course of study was that the
academy admitted nearly every young man who applied, then
routinely found almost half of every entering class
academically deficient.
While the academic curriculum remained relatively unchanged
and strongly focused on technical skills, another critical
aspect of cadet life became more formalized. Cadets
established a semi-official Vigilance Committee. This
committee, the predecessor to today’s Honor Committee,
replaced a traditional, but totally informal, system of
honor enforcement. Honor had become one of the pillars of
cadet life. To tarnish one’s honor was a cardinal sin at
West Point, and cadets were taught, then as now, that an
officer’s integrity must be beyond reproach. Prior to the
establishment of the Vigilance Committee, upper-class cadets
dealt with suspected violations of cadet honor when and how
they saw fit. Under this informal system, punishment was
usually swift and severe, and often resulted in dismissal
for those found to have compromised their honor. If a cadet
escaped official punishment for a perceived honor violation,
such as lying or stealing, because of Army or academy
intervention, for instance, he still had to face his peers.
The Corps had its own traditions for dealing with those whom
it considered deficient, including the practice of
“silencing,” which meant that no cadet in the Corps was
permitted to interact with that cadet other than for
official business. Such ostracism usually led to the
isolated cadet's resignation. To “break” the silence was
itself considered a breach of honor. The practice began and
was perpetuated within the Corps but was not sanctioned by
the Military Academy. The establishment of a formal
Vigilance Committee was intended to bring a degree of
uniformity and a higher degree of stability to a system
still left in cadet hands.
One area in which there was great change after the Civil War
at West Point was the construction of buildings and
facilities. In 1880, Congress appropriated funds for a new
gymnasium, reflecting Superintendent John Schofield's belief
in the importance of physical training. The new gym was
completed in 1893 and was followed by a new academic
building, a mess hall and a memorial hall.
In the climate of fast-paced change and educational
innovation that characterized the Gilded Age, West Point
found itself under fire for its focus on technical training.
The Military Academy, which had pioneered engineering and
mathematics education in America, arguably lost its place as
the preeminent engineering school in the nation, overlooked
by students increasingly favoring the liberal arts and
outpaced by a number of other engineering schools. Despite
criticism from many civilian educators, West Point produced
several officers who would rank among the most prominent
American leaders of the early 20th Century.
Among the academy graduates to emerge from the tumult of the
Gilded Age were George Washington Goethals from the Class of
1880 and John J. Pershing from the Class of 1886. Goethals
excelled as an engineer and leader. By 1914, he succeeded
where civilian engineers had failed by completing the Panama
Canal, one of the greatest engineering feats of the modern
age. Although Pershing distinguished himself in action in
Cuba, where he earned the Silver Star for gallantry; in the
Philippines, where he rose to become Governor of Mindanao;
and in Mexico, where he was selected to lead 10,000 soldiers
in pursuit of Poncho Villa, his greatest accolades would
come when he became President Woodrow Wilson's choice to
lead the American Expeditionary Force sent to Europe during
World War I.
