A Traveler’s Guide to the American Military Establishment: The U.S. Military Academy at West Point as Viewed Through Antebellum American Travel Literature, 1820–1860

Travel guides provided advice and descriptions of popular tourist sites to a growing readership of leisured travelers in the antebellum United States. Those written about the Hudson River valley could not avoid describing the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, which was mired in conflict as critics and Congressmen sought its abolition. In describing the attractions of West Point, travel guides also editorialized about the virtues of the Academy and intervened directly in these political debates. Travel guides helped legitimize the Academy and military professionalism against their critics and thus played a crucial role in the process of antebellum state-formation.