Thomas Jefferson's Military Academy: Founding West Point

Front Cover
Robert M. S. McDonald
University of Virginia Press, 2004 - Biography & Autobiography - 233 pages

Why did Thomas Jefferson, who claimed to abhor war and fear standing armies, in 1802 establish the United States Military Academy? For more than two centuries this question has received scant attention, despite the significant contributions of both Jefferson and West Point to American history.

Thomas Jefferson's Military Academy is the most comprehensive treatment to date of the origins, purposes, and legacies of Jefferson's school on the cliffs above the Hudson River. In a series of essays, an interdisciplinary group of military historians, legal and constitutional scholars, and experts on Jefferson's thought challenge the conventional wisdom that the third president's founding of the academy should be regarded as accidental or ironic. Although Jefferson feared the potential power of a standing army, the contributors point out he also contended that "whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace." They take a broad view of Jeffersonian security policy, exploring the ways in which West Point bolstered America's defenses against foreign aggression and domestic threats to the ideals of the American Revolution.

Written in clear and accessible prose, Thomas Jefferson's Military Academy should appeal to scholars and general readers interested in military history and the founding generation.

Contributors:
· Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia
· Don Higginbotham, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
· David N. Mayer, Capital University Law School
· Elizabeth D. Samet, United States Military Academy
· Theodore J. Crackel, East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania
· Jennings L. Wagoner Jr., University of Virginia
· Christine Coalwell McDonald, Storm King School
· Samuel J. Watson, United States Military Academy
· Robert M. S. McDonald, United States Military Academy
· Jean M. Yarbrough, Bowdoin College

 

Contents

PETER S ONUF
1
Military Education before West Point
23
West Point and Jeffersons Constitutionalism
54
John Adams Thomas Jefferson
73
The Military Academy in the Context of Jeffersonian Reform
99
An Educational Interpretation
118
West Point and the Struggle
154
Jefferson Remembered Forgotten
182
The Role of Military Virtues in Preserving
207
Contributors
223
Copyright

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About the author (2004)

Robert M. S. McDonald is associate professor of history at the United States Military Academy.

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