Word: pointings
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...capacity to inspire such awe, affection and loyalty suggests deep roots and firm beginnings. Yet Thomas Fleming's chronicle of West Point shows that the academy established in 1802 was "an uneasy compromise between young America's suspicion of a standing army and the nation's obvious need for soldiers skilled in the art and science...
...Pewter. Treated warily by Congress, the academy on at least one occasion survived an appropriations ballot by a single vote. Fortunately, the performance of West Point officers during America's various wars kept the school from being abolished. In the War of 1812, while the militia (except for Jackson's defense of New Orleans) was a disgrace to the nation, not a single fort constructed by West Point graduates fell into the hands of the British...
...replacement in 1817 was Major Sylvanus Thayer, the man most responsible for shaping West Point's future. A graduate of the class of 1807, Thayer envisioned a school that would not only produce leaders in wartime but would also train engineers and scientists to develop the growing country. Despite his ability, Thayer was constantly thwarted by Congressmen who saw the fledgling academy as a waste of money and a potential instrument of federal power, and so tried to have it abolished. Political favoritism in Washington forced reinstatement of dismissed cadets. Lack of funds became so crucial that cadets were...
Silicon Gas. Everyone is aware that Presidents Grant and Eisenhower passed through the Point, but there were also artists, scientists and businessmen. George Goethals built the Panama Canal, Henry du Pont became an industrialist, and Robert Wood became president of Sears, Roebuck. Edgar Allan Poe, on the other hand, was court-martialed for "gross neglect of duty," and James Whistler failed his chemistry exam. "If silicon were a gas," he said later, "I would be a major general today...
Despite the current suspicion of the military, West Point's disciplined and talented men have profoundly influenced the political, military, scientific and artistic life of the U.S. In the reflective style of his earlier books about the Revolutionary and Colonial periods, Fleming proves that beyond the suspicion lies a relatively unexplored source of the American experience...