On March 16, 1802, Congress approved legislation establishing the United States Military Academy at West Point, one of the oldest military service academies in the world. Strategically located on the west bank of the Hudson River 50 miles north of New York City, West Point has been continuously occupied by U.S. troops since January 20, 1778. George Washington established his headquarters there in 1779. In 1780, Benedict Arnold, then in command of the post, tried unsuccessfully to betray it to the British. Colonel Sylvanus Thayer, superintendent at West Point from 1817 to 1833 is credited with instituting the high standards of discipline and scholarship for which the Academy is known today. Under Thayer's tenure, cadets were trained as civil engineers as well as soldiers. After graduation from West Point, commissioned officers put their technical skills to work for the U.S. government in construction of canals, roads, railroads, and other internal improvements needed to facilitate westward expansion.
Both Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee were educated at West Point. Other famous graduates include Union generals George H. Thomas and George A. Custer, President of the Confederate States of America Jefferson Davis, World War I hero General John J. Pershing, and Dwight David Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander at the time of the D-day invasion during World War II and the thirty-fourth U.S. President.
- Search the George Washington Papers on West Point to read firsthand accounts of West Point during the Revolutionary War. Search results include General Washington's letter to Benedict Arnold ordering him to take command of the post at West Point.
- Over 100 turn-of-the-century photographs of West Point are available through the collection Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920. Search the collection on United States Military Academy to retrieve these images.
- General Douglas MacArthur, who graduated first in his class from West Point, served as superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy between the World Wars. His famous "Old Soldiers Never Die" speech is featured in Library of Congress exhibition Words and Deeds in American History.
- A search on the term U.S. Military Academy in Built in America: Historic Building and Engineering, 1933-Present will reveal over sixty items related to the Academy. See, for example, the West Academic Building or the Warner House, the original portion of which is said to have been part of a 1782 Revolutionary War barracks.
- Search on the term West Point in African-American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920 to learn more about the experience of African Americans at the Academy. Read, for example, the 1916 article "Here is List of Colored Men Who Have Studied at West Point."
- Read the Today in History feature about the official creation of the U.S. Military on September 29, 1789.
