Footnotes for Part X: United States
[1] The Militia System was broken up by the Volunteer System introduced by the United States and encouraged by State Legislation, and now (1872) even formal returns as to enrollment are not complied with by a majority of the States.
[2] Prepared by Major E. D. Mansfield, a graduate of West Point in 1819, for Barnard’s American Journal of Education, March, 1862.
[3] It is not meant to say that this subject was not mentioned before. It was by Col. Pickering, in 1783. But whoever reads the letters and memoirs of Washington, will see, that all the early ideas on the subject of military education and military science were derived from the experience of Washington.
[4] The first diploma, which we suppose was a manuscript certificate, was the one given to the then Cadet Swift, and signed by Captains Barron and Mansfield.
[5] Captain Partridge, who was a useful and energetic man, had subsequently full opportunity of carrying out his popular views in the military schools of Norwich and Middletown, which he founded by his own efforts.
[6] These defects and irregularities arose from not obeying the law, and not pursuing the ideas it pointed out. The great effort of Professors Mansfield and Ellicott, was to get the spirit of the law followed practically.
[7] The Class here spoken of graduated in 1819. Of its living members, are Henry Brewerton, late Superintendent at West Point; Edward D. Mansfield, Commissioner of Statistics for the State of Ohio; Justin Dimmick, late Commander of Fortress Monroe; Daniel Tyler, a distinguished Engineer and General in the Army of the Potomac; Wm. H. Swift, a distinguished Engineer, and President of the Illinois Canal Company; Joshua Baker, a Civil Engineer, Judge, and Planter, in Louisiana; and Major Turnbull, distinguished as a Topographical Engineer in the War with Mexico.
Among the dead was George H. Whistler, the most distinguished Civil Engineer our country has produced.
[8] We use the word moral, in preference to spiritual, because, in its comprehensive sense, including the latter; but by no means intimating, that in this Christian country, we should make any place of education a mere reproduction of Persian or Greek models. Our servile imitation of the Ancients, often makes us forget that we are neither Spartans nor Romans. The man who attempts at this day to revive the institutions of Pagan Greece, is as false to true Philosophy, as he is to true Christianity.