Sylvanus Thayer

Sylvanus Thayer

Sylvanus Thayer (* 9. June 1785 in Braintree , Massachusetts ; † 7. September 1872 in South Braintree, Massachusetts) was an American civil engineer and Brigadier General of the US Army , the 1817-1833 Superintendent of the US Military Academy in West Point was and is therefore considered to be the real "father of the US Military Academy".

Life

Military training and missions

After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1807, he entered the US Military Academy and graduated in 1808. He then worked for the next four years as an engineer in the engineering corps on the east coast of the United States and, after being awarded a Master of Arts (AM) by Dartmouth College, as an instructor in mathematics at West Point.

After his promotion to first lieutenant on July 1, 1812, he was called to work on the Canadian border ( Niagara Frontier ) during the British-American War and served there as chief engineer of General Henry Dearborn's troops . He then became chief engineer of the division commanded by General Wade Hampton in 1813 and was promoted to captain on October 13, 1813 during this service .

In 1814 he was a member of the troops deployed in the defense of Norfolk under the command of General Moses Porter , and received the rank of major on February 20, 1815 for his outstanding service . This was followed by a posting to Europe , where he was supposed to examine military work and schools and to study military operations in Paris .

Superintendent of West Point

In 1817 he was recalled to the USA, after his arrival on July 28, 1817, he took over the post of Superintendent of the US Military Academy at West Point from Alden Partridge and held this position until his retirement on July 1, 1833.

During his almost 16 years of leadership, he reorganized the school from scratch, laying the foundations for one of the best military academies in the world. He increased the quality of the training and placed the emphasis on military discipline and conduct of honor. In the field of training, he made civil engineering the cornerstone of his studies; the graduates of the academy played a significant role in the development of the infrastructure in the United States in the first half of the 19th century .

In the course of his activity he received the rank of lieutenant colonel on March 3, 1823 , was promoted to major on May 24, 1828 and was last awarded the rank of colonel on March 3, 1833 . At the same time, Harvard University awarded him a Master of Arts in 1825, while St. John's College in Maryland awarded him a Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) in 1830 . In 1834 Thayer was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Working on Boston Harbor

After leaving the company, he became a member of the Board of Engineers of the US Military Academy and was involved in the construction of fortifications in and around the port of Boston for the next thirty years . His work there is a model of his engineering achievements, economic standards and the stability of the constructions.

After he received the rank of lieutenant colonel of engineers on July 7, 1838, he was appointed president of the engineering authority on December 7, 1838. At the same time he was offered to take over the office of superintendent of West Point as the successor to his own successor René Edward De Russy , but he refused. In 1844 he published the textbook Papers on Practical Engineering . In the following years Dartmouth College (1846), Kenyon College in Gambier (1846) and Harvard University (1857) awarded him three further degrees of Doctor of Laws. On March 3, 1863, he was first promoted to colonel, before he was adopted on June 1, 1863 with the brevet rank of brigadier general in retirement.

Legacies and Honors

General Thayer who is a member of numerous scientific societies, was inherited considerable part of his fortune public facilities such as about 300,000 US dollars for the foundation of the US Military Academy, $ 32,000 for a library in his hometown of Braintree and US $ 70,000 for the Faculty for architecture and civil engineering from Dartmouth College, which he opened in 1871 as the Thayer School of Engineering in Hanover .

Five years after his death, his body was exhumed on November 8, 1877 and interred on the West Point grounds. On June 11, 1883, General George Washington Cullum , also a former superintendent of West Point, unveiled a memorial to Sylvanus Thayer with the inscription "Colonel Thayer, Father of the United States Military Academy".

Sylvanus Thayer was honored, among other things, by posthumous induction into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in New York City .

In addition, the US Military Academy awards the Sylvanus Thayer Award to military and political figures such as Gordon Gray (1976), Stanley Rogers Resor (1984) and Dean Rusk .

literature

• Thayer, Sylvanus . In: James Grant Wilson, John Fiske (Eds.): Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography . tape 6 : Sunderland - Zurita . D. Appleton and Company, New York 1889, p. 72 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).