No Army Inspired:
The Failure of Nationalism at
Antebellum West Point
Jacob Kobrick
Department of History
Villanova University
Edited by Alison Fisk
“No
army inspired by the spirit of the Military Academy can ever endanger a country’s liberty or can ever
desert its country’s flag.”
–
Secretary of War
Elihu Root, 1902
Elihu Root spoke these words upon a happy occasion –
the centennial celebration for the United States Military Academy at West
Point. But Root surely knew, as most of his audience
probably did, that 286 graduates of West Point had, in
substantially less happy times just 41 years earlier, both endangered their
country’s liberty and deserted its flag by opting to fight for the Confederate
States of America in the Civil War. He also was no doubt aware that of the 86
Southern-born cadets at the Academy in 1860-1861, 65 of them resigned,
abandoning their training for the United States Army in order to serve the
enemy instead.
With this in mind, Root’s statement takes on a strange
tone. Given the context in which it was
made, it seems more than likely that the statement was intended as nothing more
than a reflection of the high esteem in which West Point was held at the dawn of the twentieth century and an affirmation that
another civil war could never occur.
Read literally, however, it can just as well be taken as a rather
unsubtle criticism of the Academy’s checkered past. Viewed in this light, Root’s words beg an
interesting question: to what extent
were West Point cadets in the antebellum era “inspired by the spirit
of the Military Academy”? To put it
another way, to what extent, if any, did antebellum West Point inculcate its
cadet corps with a sense of nationalism that operated as a countervailing force
against the natural inclination of many Southerners to desert the Union and
rush to the defense of their native states?
At the time of the Civil War, many believed that the
Academy was a miserable failure in this regard.
Public sentiment in the North regarding West Point was understandably hostile, given that the Academy had trained a good
portion of the enemy’s officer corps, not to mention C.S.A. President Jefferson
Davis (class of 1828). Much of the hostility came from the
Republican Party, the leaders of which believed that the Military Academy “had been a breeding place of southern sentiment and
was responsible for the defection of many officers to the rebel cause.” Republican frustration with West Point was exacerbated by the alleged incompetence or intransigence of those
graduates who commanded Union forces early in the conflict, with the slowness
of General George McClellan, a Democrat, serving as the prime example.
Secretary of War Simon Cameron joined in the chorus
condemning West Point, lashing out angrily at defecting Southern cadets and
openly questioning whether their “extraordinary treachery” was the result of a
defect in the Academy’s system of education. Radical Republican Senators such as Zachariah
Chandler, Benjamin Wade, John Sherman, and Lyman Trumball bitterly denounced
the Academy as a producer of traitors, decrying what they believed to be its
pro-Southern and pro-slavery influence, with some of them even going so far as
attempting to have West Point abolished. Radical
attacks on West Point continued into 1863, when they were finally quelled
for good by the impressive performances in service of the Union of Military
Academy graduates Ulysses Grant, William Sherman, and Philip Sheridan.
The hindsight of history has been much kinder to West Point than Simon Cameron and the radical Republicans were. Stephen Ambrose points out that the Academy
was one of the last American institutions to divide when war broke out and one
of the first to reunite when it was over.
Although West Point cadets felt a sense of obligation to the federal
government for the education they had received, Ambrose asserts, “it plainly
was unreasonable to expect most southern graduates to fight for the North.” James L. Morrison has refuted claims that West Point was dominated by pro-Southern or pro-slavery elements, and concluded
that “the evidence strongly suggests that the antebellum Military Academy lent its weight to nationalism rather than
sectionalism in the protracted struggle between these two forces which took
place within the confines of the institution.”
The case against a Southern-dominated West Point in the antebellum years is a strong one. As Morrison points out, in the ten years
preceding the war, no department contained more than 40.5 percent Southern-born
officers, and in only three departments, including the administrative staff,
were more than one-third of the officers Southern-born. In addition, a mere 14.8 percent of the 155
officers who served at the Academy between 1850 and 1861 joined the
Confederacy, with more than one-third of all the Southern officers who taught
at the Academy during this time remaining loyal to the Union. As far as the cadets were concerned, Morrison
notes that more Southerners were admitted to West Point between 1830 and 1860
than their proportion of the population warranted, but this can be attributed
to the poor quality of education in the South, as a result of which a
disproportionate number of Southern cadets failed out of West Point, creating
vacancies to be filled with other Southerners.
Despite the strong statistical evidence that
antebellum West Point did not harbor a nefarious pro-Southern influence,
many have alleged that those West
Point graduates who deserted
the Union were influenced to do so by the Academy’s curriculum
itself. The specific culprit was
allegedly an 1825 textbook by Northern lawyer William Rawle entitled A View of the Constitution, which
taught in no uncertain terms that every state had the constitutional right to
secede from the Union (despite the fact that Rawle himself was no advocate
of secession). Rawle noted that while
the Constitution required that each state maintain a representative republican
form of government, this requirement applied only as long as a state remained a
voluntary member of the Union.
Unfortunately, the records of the Military Academy are
not entirely clear as to exactly when or for how long Rawle’s book was used as
part of the curriculum, but the evidence indicates that it was definitely used
at some point. Morris Schaff, a cadet
from Ohio and a member of the class of 1862, stated in his
memoirs that the book was used only from 1825 to 1827, but had a prolonged
effect on the Academy, particularly due to its influence on Jefferson Davis,
who graduated in 1828. In contrast, Confederate General Dabney H.
Maury, a member of the class of 1846 from Virginia, believed that the book was introduced to the Academy
by Secretary of War John C. Calhoun in 1822 (which must be inaccurate as the
book was not published until 1825) and remained an official textbook until it
was removed in 1861. Maury claimed that
he and the other West Point Virginians who served the Confederacy “were not
only obeying the plain instincts of our nature and dictates of duty, but we
were obeying the very inculcations we had received in the National School.”
It appears that Schaff’s account is more accurate than
Maury’s, as an exhaustive search of West Point records
conducted by Edgar Dudley in the early twentieth century reveals that Rawle’s
book was probably used as an official textbook on constitutional law only in
the year 1826, making Albert S. Johnston the only Confederate general to have
been instructed in it. Moreover, Jefferson Davis denied reading A View of the Constitution and was
said to be quite conversant with Kent’s Commentaries,
a book replacing Rawle’s in the West
Point curriculum and holding
that secession was illegal. Thus, it seems that there is little case to
be made that the West Point curriculum was to blame for the defection of Southern West Point graduates.
If the Military Academy can be absolved of the charge of actively subverting
the national loyalty of its graduates – and it appears almost certain that it
can be – the question remains whether West Point actually
did anything to affirmatively promote nationalism in the antebellum
period. Although there is some
circumstantial evidence to suggest that it may have, there is very nearly a
complete lack of direct evidence to support the point, and some evidence that
the Academy did almost nothing at all.
Like much of the evidence used to refute the charge of
a pro-Southern influence, much of the circumstantial evidence to support the
claim that West Point had a nationalizing effect on its cadets is
statistical. The most frequently cited
statistic is as follows: of the 343
officers on active duty at the outbreak of the war who were not West Point
graduates, 99 of them, or 28.8 percent, defected to the Confederacy, while of
the 655 active members of the West Point classes of 1830 through 1860, only 161
of them, or 24.6 percent, left the Union.
These statistics do illustrate that a West Point graduate was less likely to desert the Union
than a non-graduate, but they are nevertheless of limited utility. First and foremost, a crucial piece of
information – the proportion of each group of officers that was Southern-born,
and therefore would have had any desire to join the Confederacy in the first
place – is missing. Second, the
difference of 4.2 percent between the two samples is undoubtedly significant,
but not overly large. Third and finally,
the statistical information suffers from the problem inherent in all
statistical data – it cannot by itself show causation. Even James Morrison, who believes that West Point did have a nationalizing influence, admits that “it would be foolish
to argue on the basis of these fragmentary statistics alone that the Military Academy was the sole, or even the most critical, determinant
in tipping the scales toward the Union.”
There is other circumstantial evidence to support the
claim that West Point promoted nationalism.
Defenders of the Academy pointed out that at the outbreak of the war, 65
of the 86 Southern-born cadets at West Point resigned,
while other Northern educational institutions saw their entire Southern
contingents depart. Emory Upton, a
member of the class of May, 1861,
asked rhetorically, “can Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Union, Princeton, or any other college in the land show a higher
record of patriotism and sacrifice?
Assuredly not, for their Southern graduates espoused the rebel cause
almost en masse.” The rejoinder to this argument is somewhat
obvious, however. George Pappas has noted
that “civilian students, of course, had not taken an oath to support the
government of the United States and had no matters of conscience to delay their
departure.” In a similar vein, Stephen Ambrose points out
that “the United States government was not providing four-year, all-expense
scholarships” to other Northern schools. A comparison between West Point and other Northern schools is therefore clearly unfair.
Some letters written by West Point cadets provide further circumstantial evidence of nationalism at the
Academy. For example, one particularly
patriotic cadet was Samuel Nicoll Benjamin of New York, who graduated in May of 1861. When civil war appeared possible in early
1860, Benjamin “shuddered at the idea” of fighting against men who had been his
fellow cadets, but by
January of 1861 he was prepared to do so, promising that “where [Winfield]
Scott “Chief of Men” leads I will follow, and if I should fall it would be
fighting in defense of the Union, given to us by Washington and the giants of
that day.” A short time later he reaffirmed, “I shall be
true to my oath of allegiance, and fight for our flag and Union.” There is nothing to indicate, however,
whether or not Benjamin’s patriotism was a result of West Point’s influence.
Moreover, Benjamin’s sentiments are somewhat atypical
of antebellum West Point cadets. Most
cadet letters from this period focus on the more mundane matters of everyday
life at the Academy – the rigor of the academic program, the monotony of drills
and formations, the poor quality of the food, health
concerns, and perhaps above all, the cadets’ never ending obsession with their
class rank. The letters are also
generally devoid of a sense of pride in being a cadet at West Point, training to be an officer, or serving the country.
This is certainly true of the letters of Henry A. du
Pont of Delaware, the highest-ranking member of the class of May,
1861. Like most cadets, du Pont was
primarily concerned with getting through West Point and attaining a high class rank.
Occasionally, however, he did address weightier matters, such as his
father’s desire that he resign from the army after graduation, apparently
because he wished to see Henry establish himself in business. In 1858, du Pont told his aunt that he was
reluctant to adhere to his father’s wishes.
His reasons for this stance, however, stemmed more from the dishonor
that would be involved in breaking his oath to serve in the U.S. army than from a sense of nationalism. A year later he again expressed reluctance to
resign, this time attributing his feelings to a sense of obligation to West Point for providing him with an education, but not to an affirmative desire
to serve his country. In fact, on the same day Samuel Benjamin
declared his willingness to die for the Union,
du Pont wrote to his family, “I know if Delaware was in a similar position to South Carolina I should consider it my duty to resign at once and go
home.”
On April 14, 1861, in the immediate aftermath of the Confederate
bombardment of Fort Sumter, du Pont told his father, “I regret now that I am at
this juncture in the service of the U.S.” To his
disappointment, however, he could see “no honorable mode of leaving it.” He therefore resolved, unhappily, to do his
sworn duty and defend the Union. He was greatly influenced in this decision by
his father, who firmly believed that a soldier’s primary loyalty should be to
his nation, and not to his state. A week later, du Pont became more militantly
pro-Union, based on his being “disgusted” at the “spitting on the heads of
Union men from the galleries in the Virginia convention” and “anarchy in
Maryland,” but it seems clear that his change of heart had nothing to do with
West Point.
The letters of Tully McCrea, a member of the class of
1862, suggest that nationalism was somewhat dormant at West Point until the attack on Fort Sumter revived it. On
April
21, 1861, McCrea wrote, “the
cadets from the northern states are perfectly united in sentiment and feelings;
all are ready to defend the Stars and Stripes and uphold the government in its
endeavors to quell the treason of the southern states. It is the first time since I have been here
that I have seen them so united.” He
then described a Union meeting held in one of the cadets’ rooms, during which
patriotic songs were sung and the cadets cheered the Union troops. McCrea noted that “such cheers were never
heard here before,” and that the Southerners still left at the Academy “were
not expecting such a universal outburst of patriotic indignation.” It seems, then, that external events, rather
than anything that occurred within the walls of West Point, stirred up nationalism among the cadets. Moreover, when McCrea’s relatives from Mississippi,
the state of his birth, begged him to resign from West Point and join the
Confederacy, he declined, but cited as the basis for his loyalty to the Union
only the fact that he had spent most of his life in Ohio, and mentioned nothing
having to do with West Point.
In April of 1861, at the same time McCrea was writing
of the patriotic fervor among the Northern cadets, some members of the class of
1861 sent a petition to the Secretary of War asking that they be allowed to
graduate early and join in the defense of their country. It would be a mistake to accept this
uncritically as evidence of nationalism at West Point, however. Samuel Benjamin
eagerly signed the petition, in accordance with his patriotic desire to fight
for the Union. But not all who signed the document had
similar motives. Stephen Carr Lyford,
Jr., a member of the class of June, 1861, also signed the petition, but for
very different reasons.
As Lyford explained to his family, he and many of his
fellow cadets hoped to enter the army early in order to fill the vacancies left
by officers who had defected to the Confederacy. Lyford believed that if he joined the army
right away, he would most likely hold the rank of captain by the end of the war
– a position that normally took fourteen years to attain. “Hence you can see,” he concluded, “it is of
vital importance for us to use every exertion to secure our end. If Mr. Cameron does not do something for us,
a number of our class will resign and enter the Militia.” Similarly, although he ultimately decided not
to sign the petition, Henry du Pont acknowledged that had he done so, it would
have been “in a purely professional point of view.” So, while cadet letters do provide some
circumstantial evidence of a nationalizing influence at West Point, they also illustrate that some cadets lacked feelings of nationalism,
and reveal that others who took actions that seemed to be patriotic in nature
were in fact motivated by more selfish concerns.
Compounding the weakness of the circumstantial
evidence is the difficulty in finding any direct evidence that West Point attempted to instill its cadets with nationalism in the antebellum
period. A look at the Academy’s curriculum in the
antebellum years is instructive in this regard.
Put simply, West Point was an engineering school, and little else. As a result, the majority of the books in its
library dealt with science, math, and engineering, as well as military
affairs. In the classroom, humanities
were paid little attention; math, science, and engineering took up most of the
classroom time and counted more heavily than anything else in calculating merit
rankings. In fact, as William Skelton has noted, until
the mid-1850s, “cadets devoted well over twice as much classroom time to
mathematics, physical science, and engineering as to all other subjects
combined.” James Morrison has pointed out that “the men
who controlled the institution viewed its mission as being the production of
engineers who could also function as soldiers rather than the reverse.”
The specific courses taught and books used at West
Point in the years before the Civil War reveal nothing in the curriculum that
would tend to imbue the cadet corps with a sense of nationalism or
patriotism. In 1846, to take as an
example a year in which many future Civil War generals were cadets,
the Fourth Class (or first-year cadets) studied mathematics, French, and
English grammar; the Third Class studied the same subjects in addition to
drawing; the Second Class studied natural and experimental philosophy,
chemistry, and drawing; and the First Class cadets were instructed in Professor
Dennis Hart Mahan’s famed Engineering and Science of War course in addition to
ethics, infantry tactics, artillery, and mineralogy and geology. The only significant changes to this course
of study in the ensuing years were the addition of a course in practical
military engineering for the First Class, and the addition of courses in
artillery and cavalry and infantry tactics for the lower classes.
This course of study is unsurprising, for Professor
Mahan, who was largely responsible for the content of the Military Academy’s curriculum, did not place a high priority on the
study of liberal arts or history. In
fact, it seems that he actively discouraged the inclusion of such areas of
study at West Point. As one
historian has observed, “the great goal of the military academy, Mahan
believed, was to furnish a solid foundation of scientific and military
education. . . . Anything which detracted from this governing objective must be
pruned away ruthlessly.”
The Academy’s overwhelming emphasis on science and
engineering to the exclusion of the humanities did not please everyone,
however. In 1854, the Board of Visitors,
a group of outside observers who annually conducted a thorough review of every
aspect of life at West Point and issued a detailed report containing
evaluations and recommendations for improvement, expressed its disappointment
at the narrowness of the curriculum. In
particular, the Board complained that “the subject of history is not taught in
the academy, very much to our regret, as it is certainly a branch of great
importance, especially the history of our country and military history – this
should not be neglected.” The Board did not state explicitly that its
desire for the inclusion in the curriculum of United States history was the result of its perception that such
study would tend to instill the cadet corps with a greater sense of
nationalism, but this seems a likely motivation.
Perhaps partially in response to this complaint, the Military Academy added a fifth year to its course of study beginning
in 1855, and began to instruct the Fifth Class in Lossing’s History of the United States as part of its course in “English Studies and
Literature.” This did not fully satisfy the Board,
however, which continued to bemoan the lack of humanities training at West Point. In 1856 the Board recommended
the establishment of a permanent professorship of English that would have dominion
over studies in grammar, logic, rhetoric, chronology, history, intellectual
philosophy, principles of government, and fine arts. This suggestion was evidently ignored. Moreover, by 1859 the Academy no longer used
a textbook devoted exclusively to United States history, as the First, Second, and Fifth Classes were
instructed in Max Weber’s Outline of
Universal History instead.
All in all, the West Point curriculum in the antebellum years was characterized by a heavy
emphasis on the technical and the practical, and any attempt to look to the
course of study as a source of nationalistic pride would seem to be in vain. The fact that this was never the Academy’s
goal is confirmed by a 1946 pamphlet, published by the Academy itself,
detailing the history of West
Point’s educational
objectives dating back to its formation in 1802. The publication, which is divided into three
separate sections dealing with the curriculum itself, the physical training of
the cadets, and the building of character, makes no mention of a desire to
inculcate cadets with a feeling of nationalism or to impress upon them a sense
of pride in training to defend their native land.
James Morrison nevertheless attempts to find evidence
of nationalism at the antebellum Military Academy in the cadets’ daily routine, asserting that “the
student faced daily reminders that he had come to West Point for the one purpose of preparing to become an officer in a national
army; every formation, drill, and ceremony kept that fact before him.” But might exercises such as formations and
drills merely have turned the cadets into soulless automatons instead of
filling them with love for their country, especially if such rituals were not
explicitly linked to a sense of patriotism?
At least one cadet thought so.
John Tidball, an Ohioan in the class of 1848, noted in his memoirs that
his drills were often sufficient “to extinguish the Fourth of July or Magna
Charta spirit from the most rampant of cross-road patriots.”
Ironically, Morrison himself seemed to recognize the
drawbacks of the Academy’s regimentation when he penned, a year after his
assertion that drills promoted nationalism, that “taken in totality the
institution must have encouraged a mechanistic outlook. . . . Success at the
military academy depended primarily on the exactitude with which a student met
requirements imposed by an instructor, a textbook, or a set of regulations;
initiative and imagination, if not actively penalized, were not rewarded.” West Point’s
mechanistic approach to regulating every aspect of a cadet’s life was partly
behind Simon Cameron’s aforementioned attack on the Academy in 1861. Cameron believed that the defections of
Southern graduates and cadets could be blamed to some extent on the fact that
the Academy drew little distinction between acts that were inherently wrong and
acts that merely violated regulations, resulting in the confusion of right and
wrong and “in the decision of grave moral questions, [the substitution of]
habit for conscience.”
Not only is there a lack of evidence to support the
proposition that drills and formations inspired nationalism, it seems that in
some instances where the antebellum Academy had a clear chance to imbue its
ceremonies with patriotism, it failed to do so.
John Tidball describes in his memoirs the West Point graduation ceremony, which seemed to consist mostly of a ritual
whereby graduating cadets would remove their hats and kick them, but little
else. Absent from Tidball’s description is anything
of a nationalistic nature, including the playing of the Star Spangled Banner or
other patriotic songs.
The Academy’s failure in this regard was not total,
however. George Horatio Derby, the noted
American humorist and a member of the class of 1846, reported in 1844 that George
Washington’s birthday was marked at West Point with
fireworks, rockets, and the performance of several patriotic songs, including
the national anthem. To Derby, the patriotic displays were “quite exhilarating.” Other cadets recorded the details of July 4th
celebrations that included an artillery salute, a processional march, a reading
of the Declaration of Independence, a cadet oration, and a celebratory dinner
with the drinking of patriotic toasts (although this one-day exemption from the
ban on cadet drinking was eliminated in 1838). These holiday celebrations provide virtually
the only direct evidence that West
Point did anything
affirmative to promote nationalism among its cadet corps.
Of course, the Academy did require each new cadet to
take an oath of loyalty to the United States and the Constitution.
The effect of this oath upon the cadets is questionable, however. The events of 1860-1861 apparently convinced
Congress that the existing oath was inadequate, as it passed two new laws; the
first, passed in August of 1861, required the cadet to take an additional oath
promising that he would “maintain and defend the sovereignty of the United
States paramount to any and all allegiance, sovereignty, or fealty I may owe to
any state, county, or country whatsoever”; the second, passed in July of 1862,
required a cadet to swear that “he had never borne arms against the United
States, given aid to her enemies, held office under any authority hostile to
the United States, or supported any ‘pretended government, power or
constitution within the United States, hostile thereto’.”
John Tidball recounted in his memoirs an anecdote
suggesting that the oath may not have had the effect on the cadet corps that West Point and Congress intended. When
Tidball’s class took the oath in 1844, one of their number, Enoch Q. Fellows,
declined to do so, saying he no longer wished to be a cadet. He was not allowed to resign; instead,
officers, professors, and his fellow cadets attempted to convince him to take
the oath, to no avail. For months the
matter seemed forgotten, until one spring day during drills. Abruptly halting drills, the commandant
brought the cadets into formation so that they formed three sides of a square
in front of the superintendent’s house.
With great formality, Fellows was called to the front. As Tidball claimed in his memoirs, the cadets
were prepared to take action upon realizing that Fellows might be flogged:
By
glancing to the right and left I observed a rebellious pallor gathering on the
faces of many, while others flushed scarlet with the hot blood of
defiance. And this was not confined to
us alone, his classmates; the feeling ran, as if by corps sympathy, through the
whole body.
Fortunately for all concerned, Fellows was not
flogged. Instead, the doors to the
superintendent’s house opened, and the superintendent emerged with the entire
military and academic staff behind him.
A Bible was produced, and Fellows, undoubtedly cowed by the whole
proceeding, took the oath.
Significantly, however, Tidball and his comrades,
rather than being angry with their fellow cadet for refusing to take the oath,
were willing to risk their own standing to defend him from what they perceived
as official tyranny. Although Tidball’s
memoirs cannot be taken as gospel in this regard, as they represent the word of
only one man and were written years after the fact, they nevertheless tend to
support some historians’ belief that West Point did produce new loyalties, but
these loyalties were “less to the nation as an abstract ideal than to one’s
classmates, West Point, and the army.”
In this way, the Academy has been described as creating “a band of
brothers,” and a “corporate identity among army officers.” This is not, of course, the same thing as
creating nationalism.
Another way in which James Morrison has sought
evidence of nationalism at West
Point is by looking at the
Academy from the outside – specifically through the annual reports of the
aforementioned Board of Visitors. This is a difficult way to
gauge the climate of life at West Point, however, as the members of the
Board visited only once a year to conduct their inspections and examinations,
and were not present for everyday
events. Moreover, a closer look at the
Board’s annual report for 1838 – which Morrison cites as an example –
demonstrates the problems inherent in relying on this type of evidence.