Date of Award

Spring 1-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

History

First Advisor

Faragher, John

Abstract

This dissertation examines the influence of Romanticism on the culture and curriculum of the United States Military Academy in the early nineteenth century, and demonstrates how it shaped the behavior of U.S. Army officers on the far western frontier. While historians have long associated Romanticism with the frontier experience, it has traditionally been framed as an output, rather than an input. This study identifies West Point as an unexpected but significant source of Romantic ideals.The history of the Academy is presented uniquely here as a contest between three competing visions: A republican ideal of a modest military technical school; an Enlightenment vision of a cosmopolitan center of scientific learning; and a Romantic strain that sought to cultivate self-directed, nationalistic, emotive, would-be heroes to fulfill America’s manifest destiny. Through case studies of Benjamin Bonneville (class of 1815) and John Mullan (1852), this narrative shows how Romanticism shaped their education and later influenced their notable if surprising activities on the frontier. A concluding case study of George Montague Wheeler (1866) illustrates the end of the Romantic era of military exploration as the frontier closed and civilian science matured. This study offers new insights at the intersection of military history, intellectual history, and frontier history, complicating Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous Frontier Thesis with the counterintuitive argument that the U.S. Army’s role in the settlement of the West did not negate individualism, but rather reinforced it.

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