West Point proudly stands tall

By Margaretta Downey
Poughkeepsie Journal

High on a bluff above a sharp bend in the Hudson, the place called West Point is a fortress, a school and a legend.

It is there that Gen. George Washington and his troops foiled a plot by Benedict Arnold to hand over this ‘‘key to the continent’’ to the British.

It is there that some of the finest military minds have been forged — men like Grant, Lee, Pershing, Eisenhower and Schwarzkopf. It is there where young soldiers learn today how to lead the Army of tomorrow.

History is encrusted there like lichen on granite. West Point, where the first troops arrived in 1778, is this country’s oldest continuously active Army post. And it is the United States’ oldest military academy, dating to 1802.

The location was everything. With views up and down the Hudson, the Point was the key strategic site for controlling the river during the Revolution. Nearly three million visitors a year may be drawn by the campus’ Gothic splendor, its military museum and the eye-feast of its autumn, but it was the fact that the river was only three-eighths of a mile wide there that made the Continental Army love it.

If the British took the Hudson, they could sever New England from the rest of the colonies. Polish patriot Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a brilliant engineer, was brought in by Washington in January 1778 to design a fortification that would govern the Hudson. In April, to further limit the British by water, the American troops dragged a 180-ton iron chain, stapled to logs, across the river, from West Point to the low-lying Constitution Island.

General earns niche in infamy

The Great Chain was never tested. The knowledge that it was there was enough to deter enemy ships. The British tried another strategy — betrayal.

Benedict Arnold, one of America’s best generals, helped rout the British at Saratoga, but the proud and pompous officer never felt he got the promotions or pay he deserved. Arnold asked Washington if he could oversee the garrison at West Point. GW gave it to him, and Arnold in turn decided to hand over plans for the fortress to the British, who he felt would likely win. Plus, the pay for treachery was good.

Arnold gave the plans to British Maj. John Andre. Andre, dressed as a civilian, was caught before he could reach British lines. One plan, in his boot, had Arnold’s name on it.

Karl Rabe/Poughkeepsie Journal U.S. Military Academy cadets line up to be formally inspected.

‘‘The jig was up,’’ said Dr. Stephen Grove, the military academy’s historian. Arnold got word of Andre’s capture and escaped. Andre was hanged in Orange County, and Arnold became an officer in the British army and fought against Lafayette in the South. After the Revolution, ‘‘he went to England and died in disgrace,’’ Grove said.

West Point, saved, went on to new life. Thomas Jefferson, who had opposed creating a military academy (the danger of too much power in generals’ hands), flip-flopped when, as president, he realized the value of a well-trained army.

But ‘‘he wanted to attract individuals from all walks of life,’’ Grove said. ‘‘If there was social diversity, there was less of a threat to the republic. Plus, he was big on education.’’ From 1817-1833, Col. Sylvanus Thayer, the longest-serving superintendent of the academy, created the serious, four-year school West Point is today and established its principles of integrity and character. The U.S. Military Academy would train engineers who would not only serve in the Army but would build railroads, bridges, highways and dams across this country and others.

In 1818, West Point, at the urging of President James Madison, opened an iron foundry in Cold Spring. It made cannons and the gun developed by foundry engineer and 1824 West Point grad Robert Parrott. This accurate, lethal piece of artillery is credited with helping the North win the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln was so impressed that he visited the foundry in 1862.

But it would be the Civil War that would nearly tear the academy apart. Generals trained there as cadets — Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee (who served 2 1/2 years as academy superintendent), James Longstreet, Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, many of whom had been comrades in the war with Mexico in 1846 — were suddenly facing each other as enemies.

‘‘You would have cadets resigning to go off and fight for the Confederacy,’’ Grove said. ‘‘People who had been roommates were fighting for different sides.’’ Of the 60 most important battles of the Civil War, 55 were commanded on both sides by West Point graduates. There were 294 Union generals and 150 Confederate generals who had graduated from the academy.

People then were more loyal to a state than a country because the state was their home.

After the war, some in Congress wanted to get rid of the academy for not creating absolute loyalty to the country. But big names, like Sherman and Grant, kept it alive.

And so it trained George Goethals who designed the Panama Canal; John J. Pershing, the top commander of World War I; and World War II’s great generals, like Douglas A. MacArthur (also a former academy superintendent), George S. Patton, Omar Bradley and Dwight D. Eisenhower, who became this country’s 34th president. Presidents of the Philippines and Costa Rica have been West Point graduates, and astronauts like Frank Borman and Buzz Aldrin.

Black students were first admitted to the academy in 1870, and women in 1976. Four thousand cadets a year are trained now.

Some cadets never graduated: like Edgar Allen Poe (who probably learned about midnights dreary from winter guard duty at the Point) and James A. McNeill Whistler (you know his mother), who was a little too impertinent for the Army. In a drawing class, historian Grove said, Whistler was supposed to draw a bridge over a river. He did, but he had two boys fishing from the span. Get those boys off the bridge, the instructor said. The next drawing showed them fishing from the river bank. Get those boys out of the picture, the instructor ordered. The final attempt showed two little tombstones by the river.

Heroes rest in cemetery

At West Point, the 14-acre Post Cemetery offers a hallowed list of names: James M. Gavin, the World War II general who helped lead the D-Day invasion; Gen. Winfield Scott, hero of the War of 1812; Margaret ‘‘Molly’’ Corbin, the Revolutionary War heroine who replaced her mortally wounded husband at the cannon during the Battle of Fort Washington; and astronaut Edward White, the first American to walk in space who died in a fire aboard the Apollo I spacecraft.

Even the controversial lie there, like George Armstrong Custer, killed in 1876 in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana. And the gentle, like Susan and Anna Warner, who lived on Constitution Island, taught Sunday school to the cadets and served them lemonade and cookies. Known for the song she wrote, ‘‘Jesus Loves Me,’’ Anna gave the island to the academy.

The Post Cemetery may be the only burial ground that contains the graves of American soldiers who have fought in every war from the Revolution to Desert Storm. Sixteen have won the Medal of Honor.

The legacy of West Point comes down to the motto emblazed on the 1898 school seal that puts Sylvanus Thayer’s ideals into words: ‘‘Duty, honor, country.’’

Relevant Web link: For more coverage of the U.S. Military Academy, log on to www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/projects/west_point