Despite all drawbacks, his four years at the Academy were years of steady progress.  “The Immortals” were soon left far behind.  At the end of the first twelve months he stood fifty-first in a class of seventy-two, but when he entered the first class, and commenced the study of logic, that bugbear to the majority, he shot from near the foot of the class to the top.  In the final examination he came out seventeenth, notwithstanding that the less successful years were taken into account, and it was a frequent remark amongst his brother cadets that if the course had been a year longer he would have come out first.  His own satisfaction was complete.  Not only was his perseverance rewarded by a place sufficiently high to give him a commission in the artillery, but his cravings for knowledge had been fully gratified.  West Point was much more than a military school.  It was a university, and a university under the very strictest discipline, where the science of the soldier formed only a portion of the course.  Subjects which are now considered essential to a military education were not taught at all.  The art of war gave place to ethics and engineering; and mathematics and chemistry were considered of far more importance than topography and fortification.  Yet with French, history, and drawing, it will be admitted that the course was sufficiently comprehensive.  No cadet was permitted to graduate unless he had reached a high standard of proficiency.  Failures were numerous.  In the four years the classes grew gradually smaller, and the survival of the fittest was a principle of administration which was rigidly observed.

The fact, then, that a man had passed the final examination at West Point was a sufficient certificate that he had received a thorough education, that his mental faculties had been strengthened by four years of hard work, and that he was well equipped to take his place amongst his fellow men.  And it was more than this.  Four years of the strictest discipline, for the cadets were allowed only one vacation during their whole course, were sufficient to break in even the most careless and the most slovenly to neatness, obedience, and punctuality.  Such habits are not easily unlearned, and the West Point certificate was thus a guarantee of qualities that are everywhere useful.  It did not necessarily follow that because a cadet won a commission he remained a soldier.  Many went to civil life, and the Academy was an excellent school for men who intended to find a career as surveyors or engineers.  The great railway system of the United States was then in its infancy; its development offered endless possibilities, and the work of extending civilisation in a vast and rapidly improving country had perhaps more attraction for the ambitious than the career of arms.  The training and discipline of West Point were not, then, concentrated in one profession, but were disseminated throughout the States; and it was with this purpose that the institution of the Academy had been approved by Congress.