Notices of the Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U S Military Academy at West Point From Its Establishment, March 16, Reorganization of 186667 Classic Reprint

Excerpt from Notices of the Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U. S. Military Academy at West Point: From Its Establishment, March 16, 1802, to the Army Reorganization of 1866-67

I also observe that you meet an objection by some people m the early part of our civil war, when the minds of all were aroused, excited, and apt to run astray. None of us contend that because we graduated at West Point, we are the less men, with all the passions and weaknesses of other men, liable to err, and even to crime; but the facts and figures given by you are conclusive on this point, that in the great heaving cause that shook our national fabric, 3. Less proportion of our graduates were blinded and misled than of Senators and Representatives in Congress, of Judges of the Supreme Court, or of the colleges located in the most rigidly patriotic spots of our country Yale and Harvard.

I do not think we claim that West Point can in four years accomplish miracles and utterly remould the character of its pupils, but it has in the past and will make in the future, men more useful in the details of life, more reliable and faithful to their trusts, whether private or public, and more national in their attributes and aspirations, than any other system of education hitherto tried; and these results are cheaply attained by our national Military Academy.

While there is such unlimited freedom to the expression Of public opinion as in our country, we must expect the widest criticism and the wildest views but my observa tion convinces me that at no former period of our history was the Academy more firmly rooted in the respect and good opinion of our people than now, and I have no fears but that it will always receive the generous and fostering care of the Government.

In the course of my service I have been thrown most intimately with volunteer officers who had not received the advantage of the West Point course but all, without exception, regretted that they had not enjoyed, in early life, the minute and systematic instruction in the elements of the military profession, which they realized were better taught at West Point than at any other institution of our country.

Instead of learning the same things with the aid of books, they had to learn them in camp, sometimes at the expense of valuable lives.

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