Why did Thomas Jefferson, who claimed to abhor war and fear standing armies, in 1802 establish the United States Military Academy? For more than two centuries this question has received scant attention, despite the significant contributions of both Jefferson and West Point to American history. Thomas Jefferson's Military Academy is the most comprehensive treatment to date of the origins, purposes, and legacies of Jefferson's school on the cliffs above the Hudson River. In a series of essays, an interdisciplinary group of military historians, legal and constitutional scholars, and experts on Jefferson's thought challenge the conventional wisdom that the third president's founding of the academy should be regarded as accidental or ironic. Although Jefferson feared the potential power of a standing army, the contributors point out he also contended that ""whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace."" They take a broad view of Jeffersonian security policy, exploring the ways in which West Point bolstered America's defenses against foreign aggression and domestic threats to the ideals of the American Revolution.Written in clear and accessible prose, Thomas Jefferson's Military Academy should appeal to scholars and general readers interested in military history and the founding generation. Contributors: Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia; Don Higginbotham, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; David N. Mayer, Capital University Law School; Elizabeth D. Samet, United States Military Academy; Theodore J. Crackel, East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania; Jennings L. Wagoner Jr., University of Virginia; Christine Coalwell McDonald, Storm King School; Samuel J. Watson, United States Military Academy; Robert M. S. McDonald, United States Military Academy; Jean M. Yarbrough, Bowdoin College.

Volume 19 of the Revolutionary War Series documents Washington's activities during the winter and early spring of 1779, when the bulk of his army was encamped at Middlebrook, New Jersey, strategically situated where the Watchung Mountains rise from the coastal plain in the middle of the state. Washington took advantage of the relative quiet of this period to consult with a congressional committee of conference in Philadelphia. He returned to Middlebrook in early February and devoted himself yet again to reorganizing and reinvigorating the Continental Army. Recruitment problems, disputes among officers over rank, and compensation woes had grown old, but Washington corresponded at length with state officials and Congress in order to keep an effective fighting force in the field.

Winter camp also allowed Washington to consider future military operations. Emphasis fell on planning a punitive expedition against Indians of the Six Nations and Loyalists whose raids had terrorized settlers along the Pennsylvania--New York frontier. Washington's most immediate challenge was simply understanding the geography of this largely unknown region, and he sought information from anybody who had direct experience with the terrain and the Indian inhabitants, a group that included army officers, prisoners, land surveyors, interpreters, traders, and missionaries. Washington carefully sifted through these reports, observations, and opinions. To aid analysis, he consolidated the most pertinent materials, in his own handwriting, into a comparative table, and appended significant related items. His final plan called for the main force to cross the Susquehanna River at or near Wyoming, Pennsylvania, and strike into the heart of the border region while a supporting column advanced from near Albany, New York. After Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates declined Washington's offer to command this expedition, citing health reasons, it was accepted by Maj. Gen. John Sullivan, who left his post at Providence, Rhode Island, to begin preparations at Middlebrook.

In a late-February reply to Mount Vernon manager Lund Washington's question about selling slaves, the general expressed his confidence in the eventual success of the American struggle for independence as well as his personal resolve, saying, "if we should ultimately prove unsuccessful (of which I am under no apprehension unless it falls on us as a punishment for our want of public, & indeed private virtue) it would be a matter of very little consequence to me, whether my property is in Negroes, or loan office Certificates, as I shall neither ask for, nor expect any favor from his most gracious Majesty, nor any person acting under his authority." By every measure, Washington remained indispensable to the Revolutionary cause.

Volume 13 of the Presidential Series documents the period from 1 June through 31 August 1793, a time when Washington focused his efforts as president on keeping the United States neutral during the war between France and Great Britain. The greatest challenge came from the presence in U.S. ports of both British and French privateers and their prizes. Frequent correspondence with the state governors, especially Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania and George Clinton of New York, kept the president informed of the latest arrivals. The cabinet, consisting of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph, met frequently at Washington's behest, both with and without him. These meetings produced a series of cabinet opinions delineating America's neutrality policy. An effort to solicit the Supreme Court for an opinion on regulations designed to enforce America's neutrality policy, however, failed. The administration also was unsuccessful in its attempt to prosecute American citizens who enlisted for service on French privateers. At the same time, Charles Edmond Genet, the French minister plenipotentiary to the United States, failed to cooperate with the administration's directives concerning French privateers and prizes. This fact, combined with his attempt to influence the American political process, led to the cabinet's decision to ask the French government for Genet's recall. While some Americans opposed the neutrality policies of the administration, others did not, and Washington received numerous letters of support from municipal and civic organizations in the maritime states.

Other issues of national concern included Washington's approval of additional foreign loans and the administration's preparations for a peace treaty with hostile Indians in the Northwest Territory. The president also paid considerable attention to the desire of the citizens of South Carolina and Georgia for a military expedition against the Cherokees, Creeks, and other southern Indians. Washington, however, decided against the use of force at this time.

In his private life, Washington continued his efforts to manage his Mount Vernon farms while living in Philadelphia. The death of his estate manager in June provided additional anxiety as Washington searched for a replacement. He also continued his role as the patriarch of an extended family. He was particularly engaged in offering advice on estate management to Frances Bassett Washington, the widow of his nephew George Augustine Washington.

Grant. Pershing. Eisenhower. Schwartzkopf. The United States Military Academy has shaped America's senior military leaders from the sons-and now daughters-of farmers and shopkeepers, laborers and bankers. Now celebrating its two hundredth anniversary, West Point and its legacy continue to support and reflect the nation it serves. Authored by Theodore Crackel, one of the nation's premier authorities on the academy, West Point: A Bicentennial History celebrates one of America's most prominent establishments. A revision and refinement of the author's earlier Illustrated History of West Point, published more than ten years ago, it provides the most accurate and comprehensive history yet available on the academy. It features new research and new perspectives in every chapter, adds a decade of coverage, and has garnered the West Point Bicentennial Committee's official seal of approval. Crackel tells how the institution was created to embody the vision of Thomas Jefferson and expands our knowledge of the additional contributions of the Adams administration to its founding. He reveals how the academy developed to meet the needs of American expansion by integrating civil engineering into its early curriculum, then tells how cadets experienced growing sectional tensions as the nation headed toward civil war. Along the way, he explains how the familiar physical presence of West Point evolved, offering new insights on decisions to adopt its classic Tudor-gothic architecture. In its chronological account of West Point's history, the book traces a number of themes: cadet and faculty life, institutional governance, curriculum development, physical expansion, growing diversity among the cadet corps, and the tensions between the school's superintendents and its academic board, who often had competing visions for the academy and its future. In following the lives of cadets and officers, Crackel also offers a fresh look at the treatment of black cadets in the nineteenth century and a new analysis of their experience in the twentieth, as well as a look at the place of women in the corps since the graduation of the first female in 1980. To understand West Point is to better understand the country its graduates are sworn to protect and defend. This bicentennial history honors that institution as no other book does and shows how it has endowed the select of America's youth with dedication to its motto: duty, honor, country.