Cadet Life at West Point

by Hugh T. Reed

After the close of the Mexican war Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott in a report to the Secretary of War said:

“I give it as my fixed opinion that, but for our graduated cadets, the war between the United States and Mexico might, and probably would, have lasted some four or five years, with, in its first half, more defeats than victories falling to our share; whereas, in less than two campaigns, we conquered a great country and a peace, without the loss of a single battle or skirmish.”

Some two score of years later, in speaking of the graduates of the Military Academy, the Honorable Charles S. Fairchild, of New York, in an address said: “That roll, which, when told over, excites patriotic enthusiasm, and calls forth high emotion beyond that of the roll of any like institution in the world.”

And General William Tecumseh Sherman said:

“The education and manly training imparted to young men at West Point has repaid the United States a thousand times its cost, and more than verified the predictions of General Washington. Every cadet at West Point is an appointee of a member of Congress, every member having a cadet of his own nomination there, with only ten appointed by the President at large. The corps of cadets is therefore a youthful counterpart of our national House of Representatives. The same laws, the same regulations, the same instruction, books, clothing, and food are common to all, and a more democratic body never existed on earth than is the corps of cadets.”

In June, 1902, some five hundred graduates and President Roosevelt, Secretary of War Root, Lieutenant-General Miles, Adjutant-General Corbin, and scores of other non-graduates, assembled together at West Point, many with and a few without their wives, and celebrated in a royal manner the first centennial of the founding of the Military Academy. The cadets went into camp that year earlier than usual and their barracks were used by such of the visiting graduates as were not cared for at the hotel, in Cullum Hall, or by the families on duty at the post, while the wives and daughters of those of us who slept in barracks were cared for at Cozzen’s Hotel, now a part of the post.

Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, then President of the United States, in an address said:

“This institution has completed its first hundred years of life. During that century no other educational institution in the land has contributed as many names as West Point has contributed to the honor roll of the nation’s greatest citizens.”

The Hon. Elihu Root, the Secretary of War, said:

“The foregoing considerations naturally bring to mind the Military Academy at West Point. I believe that the great service which it has rendered the country was never more conspicuous than it has been during the past two years. The faithful and efficient service of its graduates since the declaration of war with Spain have more than repaid the cost of the institution since its foundation. They have been too few in number and most heavily burdened.”