[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 50 (Thursday, March 21, 2019)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E327-E329]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
HAPPY SESQUICENTENNIAL--CELEBRATING 150 YEARS OF THE WEST POINT
ASSOCIATION OF GRADUATES
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HON. JOHN SHIMKUS
of illinois
in the house of representatives
Thursday, March 21, 2019
Mr. SHIMKUS. Madam Speaker, I rise to include in the Record an
article by Keith J. Hamel honoring the 150th Anniversary of the West
Point Association of Graduates.
``On May 22, 2019, the West Point Association of Graduates
will turn 150 years old. Think about it--one hundred and
fifty years! When ``the Association,'' as it used to be
known, held its first organizational meeting in the office of
Dr. Horace Webster, Class of 1818, President of the College
of the City of New York, the light bulb had yet to be
invented; the telephone had not been patented; the U.S. flag
had only 37 stars; and the machine gun, dynamite, and the
torpedo were less than a decade old.
The year was 1869, an important year in the history of West
Point graduates. On March 4 of that year, Ulysses S. Grant,
Class of 1843, became the 18th President of the United
States. Grant, of course, received national acclaim for
commanding the Union Army to victory during the U.S. Civil
War, accepting the surrender of Confederate forces from
another West Point graduate, Robert E. Lee, Class of 1829.
That recent conflict, roughly four years over by the time a
handful of graduates met in Webster's office one Saturday
afternoon for that first meeting, is often cited as the
reason the ``Association'' was formed; that is, to heal the
divide between West Point graduates who fought on opposing
sides of the U.S. Civil War. While it may be romanticized,
such a theory is plausible. After all, bridging chasms seemed
to be the spirit of the age in 1869. On May 2 of that year
the ``golden spike'' of the First Transcontinental Railroad
was driven into the ground at Promontory Summit of Utah
Territory, linking America's East Coast with its West Coast.
Later that year, on November 17, the Suez Canal officially
opened, finally completing a centuries-old idea to create a
waterway between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.
Yet when Robert Anderson, Class of 1825, wrote to Sylvanus
Thayer, Class of 1808, on January 28, 1869 to propose the
formation of ``an association of the graduates of the
Military Academy,'' he never mentioned the Civil War as a
raison d'etre for this endeavor (and Anderson was the officer
in charge of Fort Sumter when it was fired upon by P. G. T.
Beauregard, Class of 1838, to start that war!) Instead,
Anderson plainly told Thayer he wanted to form an association
``to see what should be done to perfect and perpetuate this
truly national Institution,'' [West Point] and, in his
February 12, 1869 reply to Anderson, Thayer agreed.
Three months later, 15 graduates gathered in Webster's
office for the purposes of officially forming an
``Association of the Graduates of the U.S. Military
Academy.'' Neither the Civil War nor the ``perpetuation'' of
West Point was explicitly mentioned in the minutes from that
meeting. Instead, the graduates present, including Anderson,
passed seven resolutions, the last pertaining to the
``fundamental principle that the characteristic of this
Association shall be.'' According to the ``Preliminary
Meeting'' minutes, Reverend Dr. Francis Vinton, Class of
1830, Assistant Minister of Trinity Church in New York City,
introduced a resolution that the Association be ``formed
purely for the promotion of social and fraternal
intercourse.'' Vinton's resolution became Article II of the
new Association's Constitution: ``The objects of this
Association shall be to cherish the memories of our Alma
Mater, and to promote the social intercourse and fraternal
fellowship of its graduates.''
Does this end the debate regarding the purpose of the
Association of Graduates' founding? Not quite. Article IV of
the Association's original Constitution complicates matters.
It states, ``Political, or any other discussions foreign to
the purposes of the Association, as set forth in this
Constitution, or any proceedings of such a tendency, are
declared inimical to the purposes of this organization, and
are prohibited.'' Such an article calls attention to itself
and seems to support the notion that the recent U.S. Civil
War and its political aftermath might impede the formation of
an Association of West Point Graduates. Furthermore, Article
III, paragraph 2, states, ``The oldest graduate belonging to
the Association shall be President; and in his absence the
senior graduate present shall preside at the meeting of the
Association.'' This made Thayer the Association's
``official'' first president. Although Thayer never attended
a meeting of the Association of Graduates (and,
interestingly, his name does not appear on the roll of
members until 1872), this passage marries Thayer's legacy
with the creation of the Association, including his desire to
form such an organization for the benefit of West Point.
Going forward, both implicit political matters and the
promotion of West Point routinely enter into the dialogue
regarding the Association's early history and business.
Take the Association's first public act after a committee
of 13 graduates, chaired by Webster, met on June 16, 1869 and
drafted the constitution and bylaws for the new Association.
Soon after, the committee mailed the proposed constitution
and bylaws to all graduates; 128 joined (of more than 1,350
living graduates), including three former Confederate
officers: Richard S. Ewell, Class of 1840; James Longstreet,
Class of 1842; and Nathaniel R. Chambliss, Class of May 1861.
In fact, Ewell sent a letter back with his dues stating, ``I
cannot think that any graduate of the Academy would, unless
blinded by prejudices, decline to aid the work of reuniting .
. . a bond broken asunder by civil discord and war.''
Conversely, Simon Bolivar Buckner, Class of 1844, the first
Confederate general to surrender an Army to Union forces,
perhaps stinging from so-called ``Radical Republicans''
attempts to strip ex-rebels of their right to vote and hold
office in the First Reconstruction Act (1867), wrote back to
the committee saying, ``Fraternal fellowship can exist only
in the light of an acknowledged equality, [which] is
denounced by the legislation of the central government which
extends its fostering care to our class of graduates of our
Alma Mater and at the same time prescribes the other . . . an
acknowledgement of the inequality which renders agreeable
social intercourse impossible.'' Buckner's sentiment becomes
an important theme taken up by committee member Charles
Davies, Class of 1815, in his address to graduates at the
Association's first reunion on June 17, 1870.
Forty-three graduates sat in the pews of the West Point
Chapel (now known as the Old Cadet Chapel) to hear Davies'
address. Although no Southern graduates attended that first
open meeting (more likely due to the prohibitive cost of
travel than to ideological allegiances), Davies used poetic
language in his speech to delicately and diplomatically
address the issue raised by Buckner, that is the seeming rift
between graduates who fought on opposite sides of the U.S.
Civil War. ``We come together as the scattered members of a
household after a long separation--some full of years, some
full of honors,'' said Davies, recalling the metaphor of a
``divided house'' used by President Abraham Lincoln in a
famous 1858 speech. Why would Davies use such language? The
answer is reunification. But, digging deeper, it is not just
a reunification of graduates from the North and the South; it
is a reunification between West Point graduates and the
United States of America. Just one sentence prior, Davies
said, ``We come together under the old flag, dear to every
American heart, to recall and contemplate that springtime of
life . . . .'' In this and his future reunion addresses,
Davies continually uses a ``reunification with the country''
theme to tacitly unite graduates from the North and from the
South behind a single purpose.
``We meet to revive cherished memories . . . and to renew,
together, vows of perpetual allegiance to our country,''
Davies said in the opening to his 1870 address. As noted by
George Pappas in his book To the Point: The United States
Military Academy 1802-1902, ``The defection of southern
cadets and graduates, termed treason by many antagonists, was
used as a stepping-stone for criticizing West Point in
general and its graduates in particular.'' The Civil War
thrust West Point and its graduates, particularly those who
defected to fight for the Confederate cause, into the
national spotlight, and, as noted by Harry Williams in his
article ``The Attack Upon West Point During the Civil War,''
``. . . the [Academy] faced and weathered a series of
dangerous attacks designed to destroy its existence.''
Those who gathered in those early reunions must have been
aware that West Point stood on precarious footing in the
years immediately following the Civil War, as well as the
distrust felt for Southern graduates. In his address at the
Second Annual Reunion on June 17, 1871, Davies' concluding
words seem to be as much for the graduates as for a public he
felt may still be wary of the future political intentions of
West Point alumni ``But above all, fellow graduates,'' Davies
said, ``let us remember that the nation which sustains and
has spread its mantle over this institution, expects from
every graduate, at all times, and wheresoever he may be,
the full measure of his duty.'' Then in his last (and
longest) address to graduates, commemorating the
centennial of the Battle of Bunker Hill (1875), Davies
made his most overt gesture to reunification between
graduates from the North and South via renewed allegiance
to the nation. He began by reminding graduates of the
resolution passed at the annual meeting a year earlier to
invite graduates from ``all sections of the country'' to
the 1875 reunion. Seven of the Association's 12 former
Confederate officer members attended this reunion, the
most ever up to that point. ``[W]e have come here today,
to bury within the circuit of these mountains all
recollections which can separate us from each other, or
from our common country,'' Davies said, ``. . . and to say
to all, for each, and to each for all, that from this
auspicious day, all the graduates of this Institution will
recognize each other as friends. Henceforth, and forever,
we have one flag--one country--one destiny.''
Interestingly, before championing the patriotism of West
Point graduates, Davies
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lauded the accomplishments of West Point itself through its
graduates. ``We behold, also, a great Institution,'' he said
in his 1875 address, ``. . . scattering science and knowledge
over the nation,'' which seems to pay homage to Thayer and
Anderson's original aim for the Association, ``to see what
should be done to perfect and perpetuate this truly national
Institution.'' Davies died in 1876, and, according to David
Pinder '86, in his paper ``The Association of Graduates of
the U.S. Military Academy, 1869-1902: The Healing Years,''
the leadership of the AOG passed to George Cullum, Class of
1833. One of the original 15 members of the Association,
Cullum became a member of AOG's Executive Committee in 1871
and chaired this committee until his death in 1892. A year
before those 15 grads met in Webster's office to form the
Association, Cullum published the first edition of his three-
volume Biographical Register of the Officers of the United
States Military Academy, which he described in its preface as
a record of West Point graduates' service to the nation so as
to give ``world-renown to their Alma Mater.'' In the preface
to his third edition of the Register, published in 1891,
Cullum's intent became more explicit. There he wrote that he
hoped ``this last legacy to Alma Mater and her numerous sons
may further prove the usefulness of that noble national
institution,'' nearly echoing Thayer and Anderson's original
aim for the Association. While reunification seemed to be
Davies' primary ambition, championing the accomplishments of
graduates for the glory of West Point was clearly the
achievement for which Cullum was known. In fact, at that
first meeting in 1870, the first order of business after
approving the constitution and by-laws was adopting a
resolution that gave thanks to Cullum ``for his truthful and
admirable annals of the Military Academy and its Graduates.''
Cullum demonstrated his philosophy for West Point and its
graduates in the biographies he wrote for ``Necrology,'' that
section of the Association's published annual report
identifying the graduates who had died since the last
meeting. In the 1871 Annual Reunion, the first to acknowledge
the author of each graduate's biography, Cullum is cited as
having written five of them, the first being for Ethan Allen
Hitchcock, Class of 1817. And while other authors devoted
paragraphs to the deceased, Cullum wrote pages (Hitchcock's
biography is 10 pages long). Cullum continued writing
``Necrology'' biographies right up until his own death, the
last one for Montgomery C. Meigs, Class of 1836, who died
January 2, 1892. Cullum himself died February 28 of that
year, and his own ``Necrology'' biography appears just six
pages after Meigs'.
Cullum had started writing an extended biography of Thayer
for the 1873 Annual Reunion, but, according to a Secretary
note in that record, Cullum's absence in Europe prevented the
completion of it in time for publication. Ten years later,
Cullum likely incorporated portions of that biography into
the momentous address he delivered at the unveiling of the
Thayer Statue on June 11, 1883, touting Thayer's impact on
West Point and the nation. Consider this passage: ``With each
evolving year of Colonel Thayer's Superintendency, class
after class was graduated, adding to our army 570 officers,
of whom the nation may be justly proud, for in that galaxy
are many bright particular stars which have given lustre to
our arms, illuminated the paths of science, brightened halls
of learning, and adorned various vocations of usefulness.''
Cullum was perpetuating the national institution of West
Point by demonstrating the perfections of its honorific
father. But this is not all that Cullum did as the
Association's de facto leader.
Cullum had been Chairman of the Thayer Monument Committee,
which was established at the June 12, 1873 annual meeting,
and was instrumental in bringing Thayer's remains from his
hometown of South Braintree, Massachusetts to West Point.
This accomplishment could be viewed as the Association's
first official act of external business (a year earlier the
Executive Committee resolved to have the body of Joseph
Swift, Class of 1802, exhumed and re-interred at the West
Point Cemetery, but this ambition never materialized).
Thayer's remains were re-interred at West Point on November
8, 1877, but the monument intended to honor his memory
remained unfinished, as only $1,225 of an anticipated $3,100
had been raised from graduates. At the 10th Annual Reunion on
June 12, 1879, feeling that the plans to obtain funds to
build a stone memorial of Thayer for placement on the Plain
were ``impractical,'' Cullum proposed that a smaller monument
be built over Thayer's grave. However, in his address at that
reunion, Cullum's classmate Francis H. Smith, Class of 1833,
the first Southern graduate to speak before AOG members,
implored graduates not to forget the original monument plan,
saying, ``He was a noble specimen of West Point character,
and I trust the scheme will not be abandoned of putting, in
enduring marble or bronze, a colossal statue of Brvt. Brig.
Gen. Sylvanus Thayer, the father of the U.S. Military
Academy.''
A year later, at the 11th Annual Reunion, George Andrews,
Class of 1851, Treasurer of the Thayer Monument Fund,
reported that all but $160 of the funds needed for the
monument remained uncollected. The project was further
delayed when the committee hired the New England Granite
Company ``to execute a statue eight feet three inches high,
standing upon a well-proportioned pedestal of eight feet,
both of pure white granite,'' and the cost jumped to $4,000.
To raise money to cover the escalating cost, Cullum
reportedly addressed ``personal letters to each living
graduate who has a diploma signed by General Thayer.'' In his
June 10, 1882 Thayer Monument Committee report to AOG's
Executive Committee, Cullum noted that the statue would be
ready by winter, ``in ample time to be erected before the
Reunion of this Association in June 1883'' (it was completed
on June 9, 1883, which would have been Thayer's 98th
birthday). At the 14th Annual Reunion on June 12, 1883,
Cullum furnished a final report on the Thayer Monument to the
Association, saying the statue ``is worthy of the great
Superintendent, whose majestic port [sic] and intellectual
visage [it] so faithfully represents; and it is worthy of
this Association which has preserved, amid so many
difficulties, to raise such a memorial to the `Father of the
Military Academy.' '' Showing its appreciation for Cullum's
efforts to bring the Thayer Monument to fruition, the
Executive Committee unanimously passed a resolution that
thanked him for admirably performing his duties.
A year after erecting Thayer Monument, AOG moved on to its
next order of major business, another project that took years
to materialize and one that ultimately depended greatly on
Cullum. At the 15th Annual Reunion in 1884, John S.
McCalmont, Class of 1842, proposed that Congress should be
petitioned to make an appropriation for the purposes of
furnishing a hall for AOG use at West Point, given that the
Association had received so many gifts of manuscripts,
portraits, books, letters, and more and had no room to safely
keep them or exhibit them. The matter was tabled and
reintroduced three years later at the 1887 meeting, but
members felt that the USMA Board of Visitors would have
better luck securing the funds from Congress for building
such a hall than their resolution. ``The Association of
Graduates cannot raise the necessary money,'' Charles Braden,
Class of 1869, AOG's Secretary at that time, flatly stated.
Then, given the lack of reference to it in meeting notes, the
Executive Committee seems to forget about this idea for a
memorial hall for half a decade, but Cullum did not forget.
Upon his death, Cullum bequeathed $250,000 to the U.S.
government for the purposes of erecting a such a hall at West
Point.
According to a March 7, 1892 New York Times article
reporting on his will, Cullum's gift, ``Follow[ed] an idea
which he had for some years entertained.'' Part of that idea
likely involved Cullum's 1891 proposal that Executive
Committee incorporate the Association under the laws of New
York state. The committee unanimously adopted Cullum's
proposal and filed a certificate of incorporation in November
of that year. As some have hypothesized, Cullum proposed this
idea because he had already made his estate plans, and,
rather than gift his considerable fortune to what might be
characterized as an informal fraternal club, he wanted to
leave it to an organization with legitimacy and longevity.
Furthermore, showing his prescience, Cullum explicitly
stated in his will for the memorial hall to be built ``at
farthest within five years after my death'' (perhaps
because he witnessed no movement on an idea that
originated in 1884!). Cullum's bequest was formally
accepted by an act of Congress, and the architectural firm
McKim, Mead & White was appointed in 1894 to design the
building. Construction began in 1896, with the cornerstone
being ceremoniously laid on April 15, and construction was
completed on December 21, 1898. After it was furnished
(Cullum also left $20,000 in his will for this purpose),
the hall was dedicated on June 12, 1900, the date of the
31st Annual Reunion. According to a July 1900 article by
Charles Larned, Class of 1870, in Junior Munsey Magazine,
``This hall is distinctly a monument to West Point and all
that it stands for, given by a son of the Academy to his
brother alumni and their well beloved mother; designed to
commemorate their deeds, to preserve their names, and to
bear witness to the enduring work of the foremost military
school of the age.''
Thirty-one years after its founding, the Association of the
Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy had 473 members on its
rolls, and those members now had a home at West Point. In his
will, Cullum indicated that it was his desire that the gifted
memorial hall be used for ``the Assemblage and Dinners of the
Association of Graduates of the United States Military
Academy, and, if practicable, I wish that lodging
accommodations should be provided in some part of it for the
members of that Association while attending its annual
reunions.'' Furthermore, they now had funds. Cullum's will
also provided $10,000 for ``the current and necessary
expenses'' of the Association. This is the genesis of what is
now known as the West Point Association of Graduates' ``Long
Gray Line Endowment.'' While Cullum was Chairman of AOG's
Executive Committee, AOG's balance sheet consistently ran
between $1,000-$1,500, but, thanks to his gift, it grew by
300 percent in one year.
At the turn of the 20th century the Association, now with a
home and with funds, started to focus on growth and
accountability. This began with two notable changes to the
Association's Constitution and Bylaws. First, in 1897, the
Executive Committee decided that an elected graduate, rather
that the oldest graduate, would serve as the Association's
President, and voted accordingly to change Article III of the
Constitution. They nominated George Greene, Class of 1823, to
[[Page E329]]
be President, and he was unanimously elected (ironically,
Greene was also the oldest graduate on the Association's
membership roll). Then, at the 1900 Annual Reunion, the
Executive Committee voted to amend the Bylaws so that
initiation fees were reduced from a one-time $10 payment to
an initial $2 fee with an additional $1 paid each subsequent
year for the next decade. The prorated fee cycle spurred
growth in new membership. In 1898, only three graduates
elected to pay the prescribed $10 initiation fee; in 1902,
more than 70 paid the new $2 fee. New membership also
fostered more graduate participation. In 1899, only seven
members attended the 30th annual reunion, but in 1902
reportedly some 350 graduates returned to West Point for the
annual alumni reunion.
During the dedication of Cullum Hall, Alexander S. Webb,
Class of 1855, who was present in Webster's office at the
original May 22, 1869 meeting, looked back on that historic
day and gave a brief account of the organization of the
Association. No records exist of his remarks, but it is easy
to imagine he would have said that the 15 graduates who
gathered to form an ``Association of the Graduates of the
U.S. Military Academy'' would be proud that, 31 years later,
their idea had figuratively and literally found a home, that
more and more graduates were coming back to that home each
year, and that the Association was continuing to promote the
social intercourse and fraternal fellowship of USMA
graduates.''
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