| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Thomas Jefferson's Military Academy: Founding West Point. Ed. by Robert M. S. McDonald. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004. xxii, 233 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-8139-2298-4.)
This book stems from a conference held in 2001 to explore the puzzling relationship between Thomas Jefferson and the United States Military Academy. The contributors address, from different perspectives, the apparent anomaly of Jefferson, who feared standing armies and who had once opposed establishing a military academy on constitutional grounds, changing his mind in 1802. They also examine a related question: Why, over the years, has Jefferson's status vacillated between that of an admired creator of the institution to that of an "accidental founder" (p. 210)?	1
The initial essays trace the course of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century military education before the establishment of West Point, dissect Jefferson's views on the Constitution, and discuss his hope that the scientific and engineering bent of West Point's curriculum would benefit the nation.	2
In earlier writings, Theodore J. Crackel presented the most convincing explanation of Jefferson's dealings with the regular army and with West Point. He argued that the president wanted to reform the army by eliminating Federalist officers of dubious loyalty and replacing them with others who, having been educated at government expense, would serve the nation wholeheartedly. In his article in this volume, Crackel concludes that those reform efforts extended to the civilian bureaucracy as well. His argument in this respect is also convincing.	. . .

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