previous next

[372] Mr. Vaughan.1 He is, I think, one of the most respectable gentlemen I have ever known. Do persuade him to come to the North next summer. Finally, write to us when you can, come home as soon as you can, and believe in us as truly as you can.

Yours always,


Among the friends most valued by Mr. Ticknor was his college classmate, Sylvanus Thayer, who, having entered the army of the United States, and served with distinction, was appointed Superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point in 1817, and held that position for sixteen years. By force and dignity of character, energy, good judgment, and professional knowledge and ability, he gave new life to the school under his charge, and raised it to that high position, as an establishment for military education, which it has since maintained.

Colonel Thayer had repeatedly urged Mr. Ticknor to serve as a member of the Board of Visitors, at one of the annual examinations of the Academy. In the spring of 1826, Mr. Ticknor having expressed his readiness to attend the examination of that year, he was appointed among the other Visitors, and went to West Point on the 1st of June.

The following extracts from his letters, written from there, give an excellent picture of the condition of the school, and of the character and habits of its distinguished Superintendent.

To Mrs. Ticknor.

West point, June 5, 1826.
This morning the Board met; nine on the ground. General Houston was chosen President, and, as usual, the honor of doing the work fell to me, as Secretary. We have been nine hours at the examination to-day. This evening Governor Morrow, of Ohio, President Bligh, formerly of Transylvania University, and Mr. Van Buren have arrived; a salute has been fired, and all is in motion.


1 British Minister at Washington, formerly Secretary of Legation at Madrid. See ante, p. 209.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
West Point (Georgia, United States) (2)
Madrid (Spain) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
George Ticknor (5)
Sylvanus Thayer (2)
William Vaughan (1)
Morrow (1)
S. Houston (1)
Buren (1)
Bligh (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
June 5th, 1826 AD (1)
1826 AD (1)
1817 AD (1)
June 1st (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: