[Illustration: The Spirit of West Point] WEST POINT CHAPTER I IN THE DAYS OF THE REVOLUTION Despite the successful attempts of the architect to give to the magnificent new buildings at West Point a mediæval character, there is nothing about them to suggest a feeling of oldness, a feeling that they are linked with the history of the place. Not until one wanders among the ruins of old Fort Putnam, explores the crumbling works of the chain of Redoubts on the surrounding hills, or rambles over the débris of Fort Constitution on Constitution Island, does he feel the flavor of age, the romance of West Point of the past. It is only then that the imagination races back over the years to the days of the Revolution where it pauses to rebuild the stirring events that filled the daily lives of our ancestors in their desperate struggle for our independence. Looking backward through the vista of more than a century the most commonplace happenings seem powdered with the golden dust of romance. Interwoven with each event are the names of the men who helped to make possible these free United States: Washington, Hamilton, Knox; and of him who was almost successful in thwarting their efforts, the traitor Benedict Arnold. As far back as the time of the French and Indian Wars both the Americans and British recognized the great value of the control of the Hudson River. It would seem, therefore, that when the Revolution broke out both sides would take every means to seize and fortify the most strategic points along its banks. Strange to say, the Americans were as indifferent about its control as the British, so that the Revolution was in progress for three years before West Point, the natural key to the river’s defense, was fortified. During the Revolution the British were operating from Manhattan on the south and Canada on the north as bases. Had they controlled the Hudson, they could have separated the eastern from the middle colonies, which division would have prevented the patriots from military combination and from interchanging the necessary commodities for both sections. Immediately after the battles of Concord and Lexington, the Congress of New York, acting upon a suggestion from the Continental Congress, sent a commission to the Highlands to select “the most proper place for erecting one or more fortifications.” Constitution Island, and the sites where Forts Montgomery and Clinton[1] were afterwards built, were chosen. Nothing much was accomplished, however, in the way of fortifications despite the appointment of another commission that recommended the absolute necessity for works at West Point opposite Constitution Island.