Renegotiating the United States Military Academy’s Position in Gilded Age America

Scholars such as Stephen Ambrose, Theodore Crackel and Ernest Dupuy argue that The United States Military Academy at West Point (West Point) is central to nineteenth-century American history. Still, discussions in the aftermath of the American Civil War indicate a time of internal strife and pedagogic stagnation. With the rise of scientific education in America in schools such as the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale, the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard and Columbia’s School of Mines, West Point’s military engineering program, by comparison, was less applicable for post-war economic developments which demanded a distinct knowledge of machinery and movement. An examination of the role of West Point graduates in American society, however, demonstrates that West Point’s influence in the United States as an educational institution continued to be significant after the American Civil War.Arts and Sciences, Irving K. Barber School of (Okanagan)History and Sociology, Department of (Okanagan)UnreviewedUndergraduat