TO REACH WEST POINT Robert Lee had to reach New York City. Then, as did most travelers to the Point, Lee boarded a steamboat and churned 37 miles up the Hudson River. The physical setting of the school is spectacular. West Point is indeed a point of land on the west side of the Hudson. The river is wide and mighty, and the land rises (190 feet) from the banks and then flattens to form a more or less level plain. It is and certainly was when Lee arrived a lush, serene-looking place. Lee may have seen prints depicting West Point before he went there in June of 1825. But no representation of the site does justice to the beauty there.1
The United States Military Academy contrasted severely with its setting. The Academy consisted of four fairly stark, stone buildings with stucco facades set upon the plain. North and South Barracks, four and three stories respectively, housed the cadets. The two-story Academy building contained a chapel, library, classrooms, and laboratories. The messhall, also two stories, served as well as a small hotel for visitors. In the vicinity were other structures, professors’ homes, old Fort Clinton, North’s Tavern, and more. But cadets seldom if ever legally left the confines of the school. West Point was a military monastery, a single-sex community of vigorous study, rigid discipline, and Spartan living.2
Very much the “abbot” of this martial order was Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Sylvanus Thayer, Superintendent of the Military Academy. Lee encountered Thayer when he reported to him upon arrival and again at his preliminary examination by the Academic Board. The Superintendent was forty years old in 1825. He had grown up in modest circumstances in Braintree, Massachusetts, and graduated from Dartmouth before entering the Military Academy in 1807. Thayer graduated in just one year, served in Paris studying the operation of the Ecole Polytechnique, then considered the best school of military engineering in the world.
Thayer’s return to the United States coincided with a crisis at West Point (the disastrous administration of Superintendent Alden Partridge), and in 1817 President James Madison made Thayer the new Superintendent. Thayer then began to install the system of discipline and education which would characterize the institution for the remainder of the nineteenth century and in some respects survives there still.
West Point was the special province of the Corps of Engineers; the chief of the corps in Washington supervised the operation of the Academy and the Superintendent was an engineer officer. Consequently West Point became very much an engineering school, with a prescribed curriculum emphasizing mathematics and science. In time Thayer assembled an outstanding faculty that made the school prestigious and extended Thayer’s influence long after he left the Academy in 1833. Thayer’s system also prevailed in the Academic Board, a governing body composed of the Superintendent, Commandant of Cadets, and heads of the various academic departments. This body determined the curriculum, conducted examinations, ranked the cadets in order of merit, and recommended the branch of service for each graduate.
Thayer required each instructor to grade each of his students every day and submit weekly reports. After their first term Thayer divided cadet classes into sections according to performance; department heads usually taught the best section, and each section progressed at a speed corresponding to the abilities of the students. Finally, Thayer set 200 demerits in one year as the limit beyond which a cadet became liable for dismissal, and was himself ever vigilant in the capture of miscreants. A bachelor, Thayer devoted his time and energy almost totally to West Point, and this included spying on cadets and investigating malicious gossip, as well as offering his charges superior technical training.3
With Thayer in charge, the Academic Board examined each of the 107 entering cadets orally. Lee passed this test without difficulty; however, twenty of his contemporaries did not. In fact, over half of each entering class failed to graduate for one reason or another. In Lee’s class (1829), forty-six men survived and graduated, and this was the largest number of graduates West Point had produced to that time. Attrition tended to be greatest in the first year (fourth class); the total number of cadets at the Academy at any one time varied considerably, but probably averaged 225 to 250.
During the remainder of the summer of 1825 Lee and his fellow “plebes” (fourth classmen) joined the rising first classmen (seniors) and third classmen (sophomores) at Camp Adams (in honor of President John Quincy Adams), a community of tents on the plain where all but the rising second classmen on furlough spent the summer. At summer camp plebes endured a thorough orientation and learned the rudiments of infantry drill.4
Like every cadet, Lee had an account established at the Academy against which he charged his expenses and into which went $16 per month pay and $12 per month subsistence allowance. To secure his share of the necessities to wash himself and his quarters—mirror, wash basin and stand, pitcher, pail, broom, and scrub brush—and to buy his uniform, Lee and his classmates incurred instant debt.
The uniform was gray pants, vest, and coat; the fatigue jacket and pants were blue. For summer wear Lee purchased four pairs of white duck pants and doubtless wondered how he would keep them clean while while living in a tent. Less practical than white pants, however, was the standard hat worn by cadets. It was black leather, seven inches high and topped with a pompom. It was also heavy, hot, and expensive. High-top black shoes and a black stock completed Lee’s costume for the next four years of his life.5
Institutional cooking has always been by definition bland and bad. Mr. Cozzens who operated the messhall at West Point apparently reached real depths in the quality of his food, care in its preparation, and variety of his menu. Boiled meat (beef, veal or pork), boiled potatoes, bread and butter composed breakfast; boiled meat, boiled potatoes, bread and butter was dinner (midday); bread and butter or occasionally cornbread and molasses was supper. Alterations there were in this monotonous fare; but Cozzens’s menu repeated itself each week. Quite often the butter was rancid, or the molasses was sour, and cadets could expect little surprises in their food. Cockroaches and smaller insects inhabited soups and sugar, and once a cadet discovered a nest of three small mice in his bowl of bread pudding.
Fortunately the daily schedule at the Academy allowed precious little time for cadets to eat. Lee and his classmates had to bolt their food so fast they had little opportunity to contemplate its quality.6
During that first summer in camp Lee learned the regulations that would govern his life at West Point. Forbidden to cadets were alcohol, tobacco, visitors, playing cards, novels, plays, and places beyond the plain. With the permission of the Superintendent, Lee might subscribe to one magazine. Bathing in the river required permission. Otherwise cleaniness came only from his wash basin in water pumped from a well and carried to his tent (or room during the academic year).
A system of demerits which reduced a cadet’s conduct ranking in his class and associated punishments such as extra tours of guard duty or confinement during recreation periods reinforced the rules of West Point. Some offenses, such as drinking alcohol or fighting, warranted trial by court-martial and dismissal; otherwise Thayer and the faculty assessed from 1 to 10 demerits for offenses ranked within eight categories. A cadet late for roll call received only 1 or 2 demerits for an eighth-grade offense. Ten demerits was the price of leaving the Academy grounds without permission and other first-grade offenses.7
Cadet Lee survived four years at West Point without incurring a single demerit. If he were ever late to class or if his shoes were ever unblacked, no one in authority caught him. Such a record was rare but not unheard of. In fact, five other members of the class of 1829 were equally unscathed. A survey conducted in 1831 revealed that one hundred fifty cadets then enrolled had received less than 50 demerits, eighty-eight cadets less than 100, thirty-four cadets less than 150 demerits, and sixteen had received between 150 and 200. Lee adhered to rules and regulations; he remained in control of himself. West Point prescribed obedience and punished initiative. Lee proved to himself and others that he could adapt to such an environment and thrive in a small world of schedules and standards.8
The lockstep life in a military monastery, however, only challenged some cadets. Like Jefferson Davis, they slipped off to Benny Havens’s tavern in nearby Highland Falls to eat and drink. Like William T. Sherman, they made “hash” in their rooms from a stolen chicken and whatever other edibles they could scavenge. They smuggled liquor, tobacco, prostitutes, and anything else illegal into the Military Academy. And some young men, like Edgar Allan Poe who enrolled in 1830, simply disappeared one day and never returned.
Most of those cadets who survived to graduate from West Point underwent an intense experience in male bonding with their classmates. Adversity drew them together, and out of their common circumstance they derived strength from each other.9
Lee made lasting friendships and clearly enjoyed the camaraderie he experienced at West Point. Two of his close friends were Joseph E. Johnston and Jack Mackay. Johnston was a fellow Virginian with whom Lee would remain in contact for the rest of his life. Mackay was from Savannah, Georgia, and Lee “adopted” the Mackay family during his first duty assignment at Cockspur Island, just downriver from Savannah. He remained in touch with Jack Mackay until the latter’s death in 1848. Most of his life Lee preferred the company of women to men. However, most of his life he worked exclusively with men, and with male friends maintained relationships much like those he experienced with his fellow cadets at West Point.10
Cadet summer camp corresponded with a burgeoning social season at West Point. The site and the cadets were magnets which attracted not only military notables and their families but also fashionable families from the region and beyond. Especially did prominent parents with daughters enjoy the daily parades and weekly dances that relieved the summer routine somewhat for cadets.11
Plebe Lee likely saw little of the social set during that first summer of 1825, and at the end of August the cadets broke camp and marched to the barracks; the academic year began in earnest on September 1. In North Barracks four men lived in a room; in South Barracks three men shared space. Heat came from coal-burning fireplaces; light from candles or whale-oil lamps. In these rooms cadets placed their wash basins and stands; already. in place were straight-backed chairs, tables, mattresses (rolled during the day, spread upon the floor for sleeping at night). Nothing else—any decoration was forbidden. Privacy was out of the question.12
A gun sounded reveille each day at dawn (5:30 A.M.). The cadets dressed quickly, fell into formation for roll call, and then returned to their rooms to clean them. From six to seven cadets studied, and then marched to breakfast. A half-hour of recreation followed breakfast (7:30—8:00) and then classes from 8:00 until 1:00 P.M. Dinner (lunch) was from 1:00 to 2:00 P.M., followed by more classes and study periods until 4:00. If weather permitted, the cadets drilled for two hours, from four until six; in winter this period was for study and recreation. Supper was at 6:00 P.M. Then more study from 7:00 until 9:30; a half-hour of recreation, and taps at 10:00 P.M. This schedule relaxed a bit on Sunday afternoons and all day on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.13
Letters from cadets to friends and families complained of the lack of time to write them and spoke to the monotony of a regimen which left letterwriters little “news” to relate. Lee wrote letters while at West Point; however, none are now available. Still, the life of a cadet was so prescribed and monitored that Lee’s letters, if extant, would probably reveal little beyond the public record and circumstances that applied to every cadet then at West Point.
During Lee’s first (fourth class) year, he took courses in mathematics (Algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and analytical geometry) and French (Lesage, Gil Blas), finished the academic year ranked third in his class, and earned an appointment as cadet staff sergeant. In his second (third class) year, Lee took more mathematics (analytical and descriptive geometry, differential and integral calculus, and surveying), more French (Gil Blas and Voltaire, Histoire de Charles XII), and he also took courses in drawing (human figure). Lee ranked second in his class in June 1827, retained his cadet staff sergeant appointment, and earned his furlough.14
On June 30, 1827, Lee left West Point on furlough for the first time in two years. He visited his mother, now living in Georgetown with Mildred and Carter, who had migrated there from New York. Ann Lee was unwell. Her tuberculosis had advanced; but she roused herself to travel with her children that summer. Robert’s sister Ann Kinloch had married William Lewis Marshall the previous June. His brother Smith was on leave from the Navy and joined the family in a series of visits to relatives.
Carter had experienced indifferent success with his practice of law—he enjoyed literature and good living too much. He was certainly the main attraction during that summer’s socializing with his mother, sister, and brothers.
Together, the reunited Lees visited Kinloch in Fauquier County, the home of Ann Lee’s cousin Edward Carter Turner. Also visiting at Kinloch that summer was Mary Custis from Arlington. Cadet Lee impressed her, and she began to think of him as someone quite special.
Too soon the summer ended, and Lee had to return to the Academy. He arrived on August 28, in time to march to the barracks for another academic year.15
During Lee’s third (second class) year at West Point the curriculum prescribed courses in chemistry, “natural philosophy” or physics (mechanics, acoustics, optics, and astronomy), and drawing (landscape and topography). Lee ranked number two in his class in June 1828, and won the prize of promotion to cadet adjutant, the highest rank in the corps.
In his final (first class) year, Lee continued his work in chemistry, took a catch-all course in geography, history, ethics, and law, and undertook the heart and soul of an Academy education, military engineering. The latter course included field fortification, permanent fortification, artillery, grand tactics, and civil and military architecture.16
In his final exams before the Academic Board and a Board of Visitors, Lee earned a maximum score in artillery and tactics and outstanding scores on other subjects. For class rankings the various academic subjects over the four-year curriculum had weighted values. Engineering, for example, counted for 300 out of 2,000 total points, while French, drawing, and chemistry rated 100 points each. Mathematics, sciences, and engineering consumed over 70 percent of classroom hours in the curriculum and counted for 55 percent of the score on which class rank depended.17
Lee’s scores placed him second in the class of 1829. First in the final class ranking, as he had been first in class ranking for each of the three previous years, was Charles Mason of New York. West Point, however, was the zenith of Mason’s public career. He served one year as an instructor at the Academy, resigned his commission, settled in Burlington, Iowa, and became a prominent “solid” citizen.18
In the Thayer system, education meant the acquisition of information and the capacity to manipulate facts and numbers using appropriate formulae. Classes at West Point were “recitations,” and the term well described the classroom process. Cadets answered questions about the contents of their textbooks, and the accuracy of their responses determined their grade for the day. In courses in science and mathematics, the instructor called several cadets to the blackboards that lined the classroom and assigned them problems to solve. After questions and critiques, the instructor dismissed the first group and called more cadets to the blackboards. The process continued until all cadets in the section had taken a turn.19
Then and since, critics of the system—many of whom were the cadets who endured it—have observed that the Thayer regimen emphasized memorization at the expense of understanding, rewarded rote at the expense of enlightenment, and suppressed independent thinking in favor of doctrine and dogma. These critics are correct. But in the educational context of Thayer’s time, the system was innovative and effective. The traditional, classical education offered in American colleges did not address the science and technology which increasingly preoccupied American thought and life. So obsessed with piety and platitudes was much of what passed for higher education in the United States that proponents of Thayer’s system might with justification have said tu quoque (you, too) to those who found excessive degrees of memorizing, rote, doctrine, and dogma at West Point.20
Within the limits of its goals, Thayer’s system worked. The Military Academy attracted faculty who became authorities and authors of superior texts in their fields and produced graduates who excelled in military and civil pursuits. Whatever Thayer’s graduates did or did not achieve after graduation, while they were cadets at West Point they learned to master the material in their courses and pursue perfection. During the course of the final examinations in 1833, the president of the Board of Visitors that year, Joel R. Poinsett, said to someone at dinner that the cadets had performed so well it seemed they must have known the questions the examiners intended to ask. Thayer learned of Poinsett’s comment and took it literally as an affront to the integrity of his examinations instead of as a compliment. He reassembled the board and the class, submitted course outlines from the faculty to the board, and insisted that members of the board interrogate each cadet on any topic contained in the course outlines. Poinsett protested; Thayer insisted; and the cadets again performed flawlessly. Thayer’s system produced men who knew with precision the substance of Thayer’s curriculum.21
Precious little in that curriculum strayed very far from science and technology. Even courses in strategy and tactics seemed all but afterthoughts. Cadets studied French in order to read French texts on mathematics and engineering, which Thayer considered the best in the world. Lee never learned much conversational French; nor did he learn much about French culture. French phrases appear occasionally in his writing, but seldom in reports of his speaking. Gil Blas is picaresque satire; but Lesage enforces stern moral standards even when his hero strays from them. So while Lee was learning to read French, he was reinforcing his (and Thayer’s) commitment to hard work and righteous living.22
Cadets learned to draw so that they might present designs and data graphically, not for the sake of artistic expression. Lee’s instructor was Thomas Gimbrede, who did inject some humor and humanism into his course. Gimbrede began his first session with his students by insisting that each of them could learn to draw. “There are only two lines in drawing,” he stressed, “the straight line and the curve line. Every one can draw a straight line and every one can draw a curve line—therefore every one can draw.”23
The omnibus course on geography, history, ethics, and law taught to first classmen (seniors) by the chaplain was as close as Lee came to social science or humanities in the Academy curriculum. Chaplain Thomas Warner taught the course during Lee’s tenure and presided at the mandatory chapel services on Sundays. The course took up only 3 percent of Lee’s total time at West Point.24
Lee did supplement his technical training with selections from the Military Academy library. Available to cadets for only two hours on Saturday afternoons, the library permitted them to borrow books and periodicals only until the following Monday, unless they were using the materials for a course. Lee checked out no novels. He read a new edition of his father’s Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department, the Works of Alexander Hamilton, and Rousseau’s Confessions (in French), as well as volumes on navigation, astronomy, travel, and geometry. He read some periodicals—North American Review, Edinburgh Review, and Retrospective Review. This was pretty ponderous reading, but it did offer some relief from equations and theorems.25
After his first year at the Academy, Lee’s background and performance in mathematics earned him an appointment as acting assistant professor and an extra $10 per month. He taught and tutored cadets with less preparation and ability in mathematics than he possessed.26
Someone certainly gave Lee good advice when he or she suggested during the spring before he reported to West Point that he study with Benjamin Hallowell. Lee encountered conic sections, one of the topics he had studied with Hallowell, during the fall term of his second year (third class) at the Academy.27
Mathematics lay at the heart of the curriculum and contributed to courses in science and engineering as well. Indeed, an analysis of the records of cadets who left the Military Academy because of academic deficiencies reveals that failure in mathematics accounted for 43.1 percent of the total and mathematics in combination with one or more other subjects for 35 percent. Lee’s firm grounding in mathematics served him well and doubtless reinforced his confidence and capacity in other subjects, too.28
As Lee prepared to graduate, he received the balance which remained in his account book: $103.58. The $10 per month he earned while an acting assistant professor of mathematics made possible much of this positive balance. Nevertheless, Lee was an extremely frugal cadet; most young men at West Point never saw a positive balance in four years.29
Jefferson Davis, later Lee’s commander in chief, was in the class of 1828 at the Academy, one year ahead of Lee. During Davis’s fourth class year he wrote to his older brother asking for “some Cash,” a request very much against Academy regulations. Davis devised an ingenious rationale for his plea: “The Yankee part of the Corps find their pay entirely sufficient some even more, but these are not such as I formed an acquaintance with on my arrival … nor are they such associates as I would … at present select.” In other words, only Yankees can survive on the pay and allowance of a cadet; a Southern gentleman must have more; therefore please send money. Cadet Leonidas Polk, later an Episcopal bishop and Confederate general, informed his father, “exactly like nineteen twentieths of the corps, I am indebted to the aforesaid tailor, merchant, etc., the major part of my next month’s pay…. Not even the rigid economy of the Yankees can withstand it.” Lee’s refund was rare indeed, an eloquent testimony to his mother’s training and Lee’s concern for his personal finances.30
Because of his outstanding performance, Lee earned a commission as brevet (temporary) second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers. Like his classmates, he received a two-month furlough; the Corps of Engineers would decide his first duty assignment and send him orders during his leave.31
So for the second time Lee boarded the steamer, left West Point, and sailed down the Hudson toward home. His experience at the Military Academy had been good for him. He had enjoyed success and from his accomplishments gained confidence. He had likewise enjoyed the camaraderie of shared hardships with his fellow cadets and entered enduring friendships. He had acquired a profession and professional training in arms and engineering.
At West Point, Lee had matured—not least, physically. He did have tiny feet (size 4 1/2C); but he was tall for his time, five feet, eleven inches, and he was incredibly handsome. Lee adopted a military bearing and posture without becoming even slightly stiff, and he moved with grace and poise. His eyes were dark brown, sharp, and engaging; his black hair waved and was thick and full. Probably because they had little beyond themselves about which to talk in so closed a society, cadets at West Point were keen students of physical beauty and homeliness. In each class, members knew who was most and least handsome. About Lee someone recalled, “His limbs, beautiful and symmetrical, looked as though they had come from the turning lathe, his step was elastic as if he spurned the ground upon which he trod.” Lee’s classmates spoke of him as the “Marble Model.”32
The monastic rule at the Academy had been demanding; Lee could be proud of himself for enduring unscarred. But in one sense life at West Point was easy. Cadets simply obeyed orders; Lee had made very few choices during four years of his life. Now he was free—free to relax for a time, but also free to choose. For the first time in four years, really for the first time ever, Robert Lee’s life was his own.