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6 orlando m. poe Two “i have Been called a Damned abolitionist” Educated at West Point Despite the controversy surrounding it, by the early 1850s west Point was considered by many to be the preeminent institution of higher learning in the United States. By then, the academy had been in official existence for fifty years, though its favorable status had been slow in coming. President Thomas Jefferson signed legislation in 1802 that founded the United States Military academy with the understanding that class makeup would be representative of the country’s democratic society and not just another private school for the elite. initially, lack of any official status, public indifference, and poor organization rendered the school’s results negligible at best. For close to fifteen years the school muddled along. Then a whirlwind of change was brought to west Point. academy superintendent Sylvanus Thayer, who led the school from 1817 to 1833, instituted new courses of study, disciplinary measures, and goals that are for the most part still in effect today.1 Only a few years prior to Poe’s arrival, then president andrew Jackson, who, despite his party’s public misgivings about west Point’s intentions, had referred to it as “the best school in the world,” knowing that in spite of relatively high dropout rates the institution’s graduates left the academy as first-rate military officers, engineers, and gentlemen. The military and engineering aspects were, of course, the school’s primary mission, though many politicians viewed the school’s worth and justification as simply a trainer of engineers for the civilian world. in the antebellum era, most eastern colleges viewed their central mission as offering a broad and classic, though somewhat general, education for “gentlemen.” This entailed a heavy emphasis on Greek and latin, coupled with a large concentration of the natural sciences, literature, and moral philosophy. with the exception of medicine and law, practical and functional subjects were 6 educated at west point 7 generally ignored. This aesthetic focus stood in sharp contrast to west Point, whose sole raison d’être was described by one historian as “the production of engineers who could also function as soldiers rather than the reverse,” which therefore instilled a heavy emphasis on utilitarian courses such as mathematics and engineering. Such focus was instilled in large measure due to the fact that the corps of engineers controlled the school. according to army regulations, the chief engineer was automatically the inspector of the academy and was answerable only to the secretary of war. in the same manner, only an army engineer could serve as superintendent at the academy. to further emphasize the military aspect, congress had created the rank of “cadet” as a special designation for those young men attending west Point. The 1846 to 1848 war against Mexico was the first opportunity to showcase the martial and engineering knowledge of the west Point alumni. in that victorious two-and-one-half-year campaign, U.S. forces consistently prevailed, which prompted General in chief winfield Scott to later acknowledge, “i give it as my fixed opinion, that but for our graduated cadets, the war between the United States and Mexico might, and probably would, have lasted some four or five years, with, in its first half, more defeats than victories falling to our share; whereas, in less than two campaigns, we conquered a great country and a peace, without the loss of a single battle or skirmish.” against this historical backdrop, twenty-year-old cadet Orlando Poe entered west Point in September 1852.2 Though he was several years older than the typical new cadet and likely was more emotionally mature, Poe’s thoughts and sense of awe were probably no different than any teenage boy arriving at west Point for the first time. it appeared to the newcomer that there was a single west Point that one could see, hear, and touch. But, as another graduate later remembered, there was a second west Point as well, an ethereal one that presented an overarching spiritual aura that a cadet only became aware of at the time of his graduation. This west Point was described as the “shaper of [the cadet’s] destiny” and met the young man “at the top of the slope with ominous silence.” “he hears no voice, he sees no portentous figure; but there is communicated in some way, through some medium, the presence of an invisible authority, cold, inexorable, and relentless. time never wears away this first feeling...

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