America’s Civil War Comes to West Point

In early 1861 all the possibilities presented endless topics for discussion, as the cadets marveled over the colonelcy one had received, what another had been offered, and what a third intended to do. A number sent in their resignations after accepting Volunteer commissions, but to their disgust the superintendent refused to accept them. Major Bowman argued that they were not ready to represent the Academy in the field, although he admitted that they would probably do better than most of those already serving as Volunteer officers, and he feared that if he accepted any resignations for the purpose of serving as Volunteers, the entire Corps would resign.

Like most Americans, the cadets assumed the war would consist of one gigantic battle, with the winner marching on and capturing the loser’s capital. The inactivity and isolation at West Point, the continuation of regular classes, and the seeming blindness of the authorities who refused to call them immediately into active service, all made the cadets frantic. They were certain the great battle would be fought without them. Cadet Bryant complained about being ‘completely secluded,’ and commented bitterly that ‘we might as well be at some frontier post a thousand miles from any settlement.’ When they heard in March that the midshipmen at Annapolis were going to graduate early and go to war, the first classmen held a series of informal meetings and decided upon a course of action. The cadets each wrote their Congressmen, asking that they urge the Secretary of War to graduate the first class early. As a group, they sent a petition to the Secretary of War himself, pointing out that the Secretary of the Navy had ordered the first class at Annapolis into the active service and arguing that they were just as ready and willing to assume their responsibilities. The Secretary, Simon Cameron, responded favorably, and on May 6, 1861, without benefit of either graduation ceremonies or the traditional furlough, the first class went off to war-or, in actual fact, to Washington, where they spent the next months drilling Volunteers.

Encouraged by their predecessors’ success, the new first class also petitioned Cameron, once again with success, and on June 24, a year early, the cadets were examined, graduated, and ordered to Washington. They received their commissions in General Scott’s office with President Abraham Lincoln present for the ceremony, then went out in the field to serve as drill masters. By July both classes had done so well in their tasks that Cameron ordered the new first class, the third of that year, to begin recitations and prepare for graduation. Three days later, just as it began to appear that West Point would soon have no cadets at all, Cameron rescinded his hasty decision and postponed the graduation until the next year. For the rest of the war classes graduated at the regular intervals.

During the next four years there was not much change in the routine at West Point, but the Academy did have to face a vicious attack launched against it by the Radical Republicans. The politicians charged that West Point was disloyal-the leading generals and the President of the Confederate States of America were graduates-and that its products were inferior soldiers. The attack reached a frenzy during the dark days of 1863, but died out after the Union victories of that summer. Grant, Sherman, and the others who had made West Point’s name famous throughout the world effectively answered the charges of incompetence, and the fact that it was Academy graduates who led the armies to final victory answered the charge of treason.

The last institution in America to divide, the Academy was one of the first to reunite. Grant and Lee at Appomattox set the pattern, and all over the South, as the Confederate armies surrendered, senior and junior officers who had been classmates at West Point held individual reunions. In 1869 a formal alumni association was formed, composed of members from both Blue and Gray armies, and whatever bitterness that had existed was soon forgotten.

The United States Military Academy emerged from the war one of America’s most hallowed institutions. Grant, a tanner’s son, Sherman, an orphan, and many others made the old charges of its aristocratic nature absurd. Not a single graduate had made any attempt to take over the civilian government, either in the North or South-although General George McClellan did make a couple of frightening but empty statements along those lines-and the ancient fear of military domination was lessened. Most important, Americans North and South were immensely proud of their armies, and they made the men who led them heroes, superior soldiers, so it was said, to any others in the world. And the leaders were West Pointers.

This article was written by Stephen E. Ambrose and originally published in Civil War Times Illustrated Magazine in August 1965.

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