Sylvanus Thayer

Colonel and Brevet Brigadier General Sylvanus Thayer (June 9, 1785 – September 7, 1872) also known as "the Father of West Point" was an early superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point and an early advocate of engineering education in the United States.

Sylvanus Thayer
Sylvanus Thayer, painting by Robert Weir
Nickname(s)"Father of West Point"
Born(1785-06-09)June 9, 1785
Braintree, Massachusetts
DiedSeptember 7, 1872(1872-09-07) (aged 87)
Braintree, Massachusetts
Resting Place
West Point Cemetery, Highland Falls, NY[1]
AllegianceUnited States of America
Service/branchUnited States Army
Union Army
Years of service1808 – 1863
Rank Colonel
Brevet Brigadier General
Commands heldSuperintendent of the United States Military Academy
Battles/warsWar of 1812

Early life and education

Sylvanus Thayer (9 June 1785-7 Sept. 1872) was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, the son of Nathaniel Thayer, a gentleman farmer, and his wife Dorcas Faxon.[2] In 1793, at the age of 8, Thayer was sent to live with his uncle Azariah Faxon and attend school in Washington, New Hampshire. There he met General Benjamin Pierce, who, like Faxon, was a veteran of the Revolutionary War. In 1803 Thayer matriculated at Dartmouth College, graduating in 1807 as valedictorian of his class. However, he never gave the valedictory address at Dartmouth, having been granted an appointment to West Point by President Thomas Jefferson at the behest of General Pierce. Thayer graduated from the United States Military Academy after a single year and received his commission as a second lieutenant in 1808. His first assignment was to supervise the construction of Fort Warren (later renamed Fort Winthrop) in Boston Harbor, foreshadowing the bulk of his later career.[3]

During the War of 1812, Thayer directed the fortification and defense of Norfolk, Virginia, and was promoted to major. In 1815, he was provided $5,000 to travel to Europe, where he studied for two years at the French École Polytechnique. While traveling in Europe he amassed a collection of science and especially mathematics texts that now form a valuable collection for historians of mathematics.[4]

Superintendent of West Point

In 1817, President James Monroe ordered Thayer to West Point to become superintendent of the Military Academy following the resignation of Captain Alden Partridge. Under his stewardship, the Academy became the nation's first college of engineering.[5][6]

While at West Point Thayer established numerous traditions and policies which are still in use at West Point. These include the values of honor and responsibility, strict mental and physical discipline, the demerit system, summer encampment, high academic standards and the requirement that cadets maintain outstanding military bearing and appearance at all times.

One of Thayer's reforms was to establish a standard four year curriculum with the cadets organized into four classes. Starting with the Class of 1823, July 1st was the date each year when the graduating class was commissioned and the entering class was sworn in. The graduation date was moved up to June 15 starting in 1861.

Many of the cadets who attended West Point during Thayer's tenure, held key leadership positions during the Mexican War and American Civil War.

Statue and Memorial to Sylvanus Thayer

Later career

Colonel Thayer's time at West Point ended with his resignation in 1833, after a disagreement with President Andrew Jackson. He was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1834.[7]

Thayer returned to duty with the Army Corps of Engineers. Thayer spent the great majority of the next 30 years as the chief engineer for the Boston area. During this time he oversaw the construction of both Fort Warren and Fort Independence to defend Boston Harbor. Thayer's great engineering ability can be observed in both of the above-mentioned forts.

Thayer was a member of the Board of Engineers for Coast Defenses, April 2, 1833 to December 21, 1857, and was President of the Board from Dec. 7, 1838. He temporarily commanded of the Corps of Engineers from December 21, 1857 to December 22, 1858, while its commander, Colonel Joseph G. Totten, was on a leave of absence. In December 1858 Thayer was placed on an extended sick leave of absence. He did not play an active role in the American Civil War.

In August 1861, Fort Thayer, an earthwork fort part of the Civil War Defenses of Washington, DC, was built and named in his honor.[8]

Thayer retired from the Army on June 1, 1863 with the rank of colonel in the Corps of Engineers. He was retired under the first act regulating the retirement of Army officers which required the retirement of any officer with more than 45 years of service.

Death and legacy

As a result of Thayer's enduring legacy at the United States Military Academy, in 1869 a meeting took place in Braintree between Thayer and the West Point graduate and Civil War hero Brigadier General Robert Anderson. An outcome of Anderson's 1869 meeting with Thayer was the establishment of the Military Academy's Association of Graduates (AoG).

In 1867, Thayer donated $40,000 to the trustees of Dartmouth College to create the Thayer School of Engineering. Thayer personally located and recommended USMA graduate Lieutenant Robert Fletcher to Dartmouth president Asa Dodge Smith. Fletcher became the school's first—then only—professor and dean.

The Thayer School admitted its first three students to a graduate program in 1871. Also in 1871 at the bequest of his will Thayer Academy in Braintree, Massachusetts was conceived. It opened September 12, 1877.

Thayer died on September 7, 1872 at his home in Braintree. He was reinterred at West Point Cemetery in 1877. Thayer's obituary appeared in the New York Times on September 8, 1872.[2]

Works

Thayer's papers and manuscripts are divided between the U.S. Military Academy Library, West Point, New York, and the Dartmouth College Library, Hanover, New Hampshire.[2]

Honours, decorations, awards and distinctions

In 1852 herpetologists Spencer Fullerton Baird and Charles Frédéric Girard of the Smithsonian Institution named a species of lizard in honor of Thayer, Sceloporus thayeri, which was later placed in the synonymy of Sceloporus undulatus hyacinthinus.[9]

On April 21, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln nominated Thayer for the award of the honorary grade of brevet brigadier general, United States Army (Regular Army), to rank from May 31, 1863, the day before he retired,[10] for long and faithful service.[11] The U.S. Senate confirmed the award on April 27, 1864.[10]

To honor his achievements, in 1958, the Sylvanus Thayer Award was created by the United States Military Academy. He has been honored by the United States Postal Service with a 9¢ Great Americans series postage stamp.

Thayer Street, in the Inwood, Manhattan section of New York City, is named after him.[12]

The house where Thayer was born in Braintree, Massachusetts is preserved and open to the public.

Bibliography [2]
  • Stephen E. Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point (1966)
  • Thomas J. Fleming, West Point: The Men and Times of the United States Military Academy (1969)
  • James L. Morrison, Jr., "The Best School in the World": West Point, the Pre-Civil War Years, 1833-1866 (1986)
  • George S. Pappas, To the Point: The United States Military Academy, 1802-1902 (1993).
gollark: You may be in the minority. People who just join without seeing the forums and see "hey, I can trade for an IOU" may not think that.
gollark: Also, that it being a site feature will legitimize it and make it seem more trustable even if it's not particularly.
gollark: The trouble with automating IOUs would be that you *can* just not collect something, even if they're autotransferred somehow.
gollark: Ah, that didn't end too well, did it.
gollark: Wouldn't work too well, but you know, better than nothing.

See also

Notes
  1. "Sylvanus Thayer". Find a Grave. Retrieved October 17, 2010.
  2. Herman Hattaway, Michael D. Smith. "Thayer, Sylvanus"; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000, accessed ; American Council of Learned Societies. Published by Oxford University Press.
  3. Fort Winthrop at FortWiki.com
  4. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2004-11-24. Retrieved 2006-05-24.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. "Sylvanus Thayer: The Man Who Made West Point | AMERICAN HERITAGE". www.americanheritage.com. Retrieved 2020-04-22.
  6. "Who Was Sylvanus Thayer? | Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth". engineering.dartmouth.edu. Retrieved 2020-04-22.
  7. "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter T" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 22 April 2011.
  8. 1862 Commission to Study the Defenses Report - Letter to the Secretary of War - Washington, December 24, 1862 - http://www.npshistory.com/publications/cwdw/hrs/appc.htm
  9. Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, xiii + 296 pp. ISBN 978-1-4214-0135-5. ("Thayer", p. 264).
  10. Eicher, John H., and Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, p. 737. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8047-3641-3
  11. Hunt, Roger D. and Brown, Jack R. Brevet Brigadier Generals in Blue, p. 608. Gaithersburg, MD: Olde Soldier Books, Inc., 1990. ISBN 1-56013-002-4
  12. http://myinwood.net/inwood-street-names/

References
  • Eiche, John H., and Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
  • Hunt, Roger D. and Brown, Jack R. Brevet Brigadier Generals in Blue. Gaithersburg, MD: Olde Soldier Books, Inc., 1990. ISBN 1-56013-002-4.
  • Kershner, James William, Sylvanus Thayer – A Biography, Arno Press, New York, 1982, p. 329.
  • Eliot, Major George Fielding, Sylvanus Thayer of West Point, Messner, 1959
  • Lathem, Edward Connery, editor, The Beginnings of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. The Thayer School of Engineering, Hanover, NH, 1964
Military offices
Preceded by
Alden Partridge		 Superintendents of the United States Military Academy
1817–1833		 Succeeded by
René Edward De Russy
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.