
Sylvanus Thayer (9 June 1785-7 September 1872) was Superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point from 1817 to 1833, succeeding Alden Partridge and preceding Rene Edward De Russy.
Biography[]
Sylvanus Thayer was born in Braintree, Massachusetts in 1785, and he was raised by his uncle in Washington, New Hampshire, where he met General Benjamin Pierce. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1807 as valedictorian, and, with the help of General Pierce and President Thomas Jefferson, he was appointed to West Point and graduated after a single year. Thayer supervised the fortification of Boston Harbor and then Norfolk, Virginia during the War of 1812, and, after the war, he studied in Paris for two years. In 1817, President James Monroe appointed Thayer Superintendent of West Point, and he established the values of honor and responsibility, strict mental and physical discipline, the demerit system, summer encampment, high academic standards, and the requirement that cadets maintain outstanding military bearing and appearance at all times. Many of his students would later go on to serve as generals during the Mexican-American War and the American Civil War. He resigned in 1833 due to his disagreements with President Andrew Jackson, and he spent the next 30 years with the US Army Corps of Engineers as chief engineer for the Boston area. In 1858, he was put on extended sick leave and did not participate in the American Civil War, and he retired in 1863. He funded the creation of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, and he died in 1872 at the age of 87.