Today in History - March 16 - United States Military Academy at West Point

On March 16, 1802, Congress approved legislation establishing the United States Military Academy at West PointExternal, one of the oldest military service academies in the world. Strategically located on the west bank of the Hudson River approximately fifty miles north of New York City, West Point was first garrisoned in January 1778 and is the oldest continuously occupied military post in America. George Washington transferred his headquarters there in 1779 as a Revolutionary War outpost. 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, civil engineering was the foundation of the curriculum. After graduation from West Point, commissioned officers put their technical skills to work for the U.S. government in the construction of canals, roads, railroads, and other infrastructure 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, William Tecumseh Sherman 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.