Page 126 - Wish Stream Year of 2019

Monument at West Point to the American Civil War
toric sites, buildings, and monuments, including a surviving link of the ‘Great Chain’. The major- ity of the campus’s Norman-Gothic buildings are constructed from grey and black granite.
The idea of a Military Academy for the training and strengthening of the officer corps of the Army only received very limited support initially at national level. It is interest-
(chosen primarily because of its historical impor- tance) by the newly-formed Corps of Engineers as a military college. It suffered fairly weak super- vision in its early years, and so Congress supple- mented the law of 1802 with legislation in 1812 that established the Academy on a much firmer and broader basis. This legislation established the appointment of professors of Mathematics, Natural and Experimental Philosophy and Engi- neering, in addition to the Corps of Engineers. In overall control of the Academy was to be a senior officer entitled ‘Superintendent’. A maximum of 250 cadets was authorised, with age and basic educational requirements for admission pre- scribed. After the War of 1812, a now relatively unknown war (in Britain anyway) between Amer- ica and Britain, and their respective allies (1812 – 1815) which was ended in a stalemate and pres- ervation of the status quo ante bellum (exactly as things were before the war) by the Treaty of Ghent, the provisions of the new legislation were put into effect. The physical appearance of West Point began to change with the erection of barracks, mess hall and academic buildings. The ‘cadet gray’ uniform was adopted in 1814, because of a shortage of blue dye. Years later, it was erroneously believed that ‘cadet gray’ was adopted in honour of the victory over the Brit- ish by Major General Winfield Scott’s grey-clad troops in the 1814 Battle of Chippewa. To this day, West Point’s students and alumni are col- lectively known as ‘The Long Gray Line’.
As Sandhurst has its ‘founding father’ in Lt Col (later Maj Gen) John Gaspard Le Marchant, so does West Point have a ‘Father of the Military Academy’ in Colonel Sylvanus Thayer. Col (then Captain) Thayer took charge of West Point as
ing that the main reason given
to oppose the official formalisa-
tion of such an institution was
that a strong officer corps might
threaten the democratic princi-
ples of the Republic; on the other
hand in Britain, the main objection
(apart from a shortage of money
during the long-running war with post-revolutionary France) to the formalisation of a specific training institution for officers was almost the opposite, in that it would imply that the then current system of nepotism and prefer- ment by the titled and wealthy was flawed!
An Act of Congress in 1802 directed that a Military Academy be established at West Point
Superintendent in 1817, and found it sadly wanting. As an Engineer Officer, he had himself graduated from West Point in 1808 but, on reporting as the new Superintendent in 1817, he found most cadets either absent or on leave, regulations dis- regarded, studies inadequately mas- tered and the Academy in a general state of disorganisation. He immedi-
ately set about administering the Academy with two guiding principles in mind:
• Strict adherence to the rule of discipline and subordination. To supervise the cadets in their military education, Thayer appointed an officer as Commandant of Cadets (a post that exists to this day).
The ‘cadet gray’ uniform was adopted in 1814, because of a shortage of blue dye.
124 HISTORICAL