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Comment by Electricniko | Hacker News Reader

According to Wikipedia, the most famous students who would have been there in 1828 were Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis. Also, the valedictorian from 1929, Charles Mason, was the student with the highest scores ever at the academy. He beat out Lee for valedictorian, with Lee holding the record as the second highest scoring student in academy history. (The third highest scoring student ever was Douglas MacArthur 75 years later.)

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I knew that U. S. Grant was also at West Point, but I looked it up and he was there in 1839. A good many of the generals on opposite sides of the Civil War served together in prior conflicts.

I wonder if there’s a book out there that traces their lives from West Point to Appomattox. I found a book recently that did a similar thing with Wellington (following him through his India campaigns) and Napoleon (starting in Egypt.) Although I don’t think they ever met before Waterloo. (Or even if they personally met at all, actually.)

There is a book that tracks both of these men through to Appomattox.

The Generals - Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee ; Authors Nancy Scott Anderson and Dwight Anderson (1989) ; ISBN 0-394-75985-0

My cousin "loaned" me this book years ago. One day I will return it.

It does what you ask - following each man's life from childhood through the surrender at Appomattox and includes a nice bibliography, chapter notes, etc. I found it a fascinating read that offered up so many details one would not expect. For any lover of history this is a great book contrasting two of the most important people in that conflict.

Looks like it's available as a scan from the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/generals00dwig/mode/2up

Since we’re off down a rabbit hole anyway, my favourite meetings of rival generals are those between Scipio Africanus and Hannibal. Once before the battle of Zama, and again years later in Ephesus when their military careers were behind them. I think one account is in Polybius and the other Livy.

Amazing!

This one might cover what you're looking for: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1504046900/

I haven't read it yet, but have heard it's an enjoyable read.

Thanks, this looks good.

Not the book you're asking for, but I want to plug Grant's autobiography. It has a sort of "I've already been a general and president so now I can tell you about embarrassing things I did as a kid" charm that is an interesting contrast to typical biographies.

Grant, a paper millionaire prior, discovered that he had lost his entire fortune in a Ponzi Scheme. Realizing that he needed to find a way to pay back the loan and support his family, Grant turned to writing. Mark Twain convinced Grant to sign a contract with his nephew’s new publishing firm, Charles L. Webster and Company, to write his memoirs. To sweeten the deal, Twain offered Grant a seventy percent royalty from the profits. The need to write the memoirs quickly became more urgent when Grant was diagnosed with inoperable throat cancer that worsened with time. Grant worked vigorously throughout early 1885 to write the memoirs. He and his wife Julia also relocated in June to a friend's cottage in upstate New York at Mount McGregor to continue writing in a peaceful setting. Grant spent upwards of five to seven hours a day working on the book, aided by his son Frederick and other assistants who checked facts. His servant Harrison Terrell and Doctor John Hancock Douglas also played a crucial role by tending to Grant’s medical needs and provided comfort during moments of great pain. Grant finished the Memoirs three days before his death on July 23, 1885. When "The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant" were published later that year, they became an instant best-seller. The first paycheck to his widow, Julia Dent Grant, was for $200,000, providing long-term financial stability to the Grant family.

Could you share the book, about Wellington and Napoleon?

So it's actually a quartet of books, not a single one. I only bought one at a used book store and didn't realize it was an entire series.

"Simon Scarrow: The Wellington And Napoleon Quartet".

Where Grant was known as a lazy alcoholic with mediocre grades-- if not a natural equestrian he would had nothing going for him at the school.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsemanship_of_Ulysses_S._Gra...

In case anyone else is wondering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Mason_(Iowa_judge) made a career in law and Iowa politics, but was not exactly a historical figure at the national level.

It's pretty surprising how strongly top performance at that institution seems to correlate with accomplishments later in life that are mostly unrelated to academic prowess. That isn't true for regular universities, I think.

I thought so too, and I went to one of the three National Service Academies, so I was taught about a lot of these people directly. Many of the modern top generals were some of the lowest-ranked graduates, and generally took the easiest majors, mostly Political Science. The bottom-ranked leader phenomenon starts with the leaders selected by the cadets themselves, and continues to the top of the ranks. So why was it different back then? There was a stronger emphasis on military science, but they also prided themselves on outperforming Harvard in whatever colleges used to compare each other, so it wasn’t the only focus.

The obvious answer is pretty simple: graduation order determined time-in-rank seniority, so they were considered for promotion before anyone else, and this both continues and compounds throughout their career.

Is there an actual correlation to military performance? Probably, and probably slightly more so for the academy than other schools, because of the way that subjects are taught. I later went to several other name-recognizable universities, and there are large differences in the pace and depth of what is taught and tested, with the academy having a much greater pace over much more material at a much lighter depth, so it’s kind of like testing your ability to take in a lot of information very quickly and react to it, rather than master a domain of knowledge and creatively expand upon it.

There is also a social effect of named leaders to gain support among a cohort, especially in ‘minority’ populations, which are formed by commissioning source in the military officer corps. For example, Westmoreland was “first rat” at The Citadel, which has a much lower admission standard than West Point, but it was a brutal program with fierce advocacy among graduates.

I'm not sure what the line about Westmoreland and the Citadel and minority populations means. William Westmoreland, the US Army general who lead MACV during the critical years of the Vietnam War, spent his first year of college at the Citadel, but then transferred to USMA (transfers into military academies was quite common at the time), where he ended up as First Captain (basically head of Cadets, not top in class rank but the commander of the Brigade of Cadets).

One of his classmates in the class of 1936, Benjamin O. Davis Jr, was the first African-American to attend West Point in nearly 50 years, and would go on to lead the Tuskegee Airmen into battle. Davis suffered from a set of social isolation during his entire four years at USMA, never had a roommate, no one talked to him during meals, no one talked to him outside of class, he was not invited to dances or social events, etc. trying to drive him out of the Academy and return it to the all-White way it had been. Apparently Westmoreland wasn't one of the ring-leaders of this ostracism, but as First Captain it sure as hell was his job to stop it, and he failed to do so.

This started a pattern for Westmoreland, of being wrong about things but getting promoted anyway, that continued for the rest of his life. _Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam_ by US Army in Vietnam veteran Lewis Sorely, is appropriately scathing of the man and his failures.

Firstly, it’s a military school and we’re talking about military achievement so the things are hardly unrelated. Secondly, it would be more surprising if there were low or no correlation between their school and military achievements.

Would you expect correlation between school and software engineering achievement, to give the most HN-relevant case?

If Lee hadn't gone to West Point and rubbed shoulders with all the right people, would he have gotten the job that made him famous? There were probably rank and file soldiers blown away in opening volleys who had more raw potential as military strategists than Lee, but were never given the opportunity because they didn't have the money, prestigious degree, and political connections.

Software has always been a special case because despite some naysayers, it is quite meritocratic compared to other fields. Your degree might boost your ability to get an interview, but in a good technical interview, the good coder without a degree is generally going to stand out from a bad coder even if they have a degree from a prestigious university.

I expect it to be an upside down parabola. From my experience, top performers in school were either very smart or worked very hard, or both - two skills necessary for software engineering achievement.

The other side of the parabola are smart kids who worked hard on things they found interesting, which just happened to not be school

That matches my observations too.

The very smart and very hard working are of course the shoe-ins. And then it's either the very smart and lazy or moderately smart and very hard working who are next most likely.

But the moderately smart and moderately hard working just get lost in the crowd.

I would definitely expect a high correlation between the top software engineering school and software engineering accomplishments, because there's a strong bias. If you want to achieve something in software engineering, most likely you'd want to go to a top school. I think it's the same for West point.

Isn't it likely that those people got to be top generals precisely because their good school results?

I wouldn't think so. They might get their first choice of specialty within the army as a young second lieutenant, and get some compounding advantages from that. But twenty years later, when you're up for promotion to general, aren't they going to look at your achievements as a colonel rather than wave you through on your long-ago test scores?

The pool of professional officers was very small and completely insufficient for the needs of the expanded military.

Being a semi-competent officer with some experience basically guaranteed that you’d be fast tracked to a senior command.

e.g. Grant left the military in 1854 and was just a captain when the war started. In about 4 months he was already a brigadier general

Promotion to general is very much a political effort as well as job performance today, but even more so back then.

Being at the top of your cohort from the beginning has a number of advantages. Your name is known from the very start. Big things are expected and big opportunities are presented. There is probably a very strong personal commitment to a military career by those bothering to achieve top scores, and not being a career captain, but aiming for colonel or above.

Being the top of the class also puts a person on a track that is even promotable to the very top. A 2nd lieutenant supply officer just isn't on the same trajectory as a high profile infantry officer commanding a forwardly deploy combat unit.

The class of 1915 had 36% of its 164 graduates go on to attain the rank of general. John Keliher (rank 159) made it to Brigadier General.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_class_the_stars_fell_on

It is explicitly trying to optimize for measuring/inculcating military performance.

I think there are two effects here:

1. West Point does a very good job of selecting for and rewarding the same traits that lead to career success.

2. The most successful military leaders (especially in wartime) become famous, far beyond the most successful doctors or lawyers. 12 of them became US Presidents, but this has been true since ancient times. The guy with the best grades in Harvard Medical School might have a fantastically successful career, but you haven't heard of him.

Is that still true though? A handful of leaders from WWII are well known but the only American leader I know from recent times is general Schwarzkopf with his video games.

Wars in more recent times are less impactful on the American populace. The last war that had a significant influence on the average person was Vietnam, and even then, we almost had John McCain, Al Gore, and Wesley Clark as presidents, although none were particularly high-ranking in the military.

After being West Point valedictorian, Wes Clark was NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe – can’t get too much higher than that. But yes, McCain was “only” a Captain, and Gore served for a year or so.

That's true, my mistake, and I guess he was in charge during Kosovo. But I'm not sure he would really count as being a "military leader" in the same way that Washington, Grant, or Eisenhower were.

You weren’t paying attention to national news if you didn’t read about Petraeus.

Probably could have been a president if he didn't leak a ton of shit to his mistress and get gmail hacked -- he was the golden boy for a while

Yeah, he was the golden boy until he wasn’t. There could have been another universe where he parlayed into a political career, but I think the fact that Iraq is still fundamentally a mess cut against him because his big success was still sort of just an asterisk. He would have had to run in like 2012 on the platform that Obama was ruining his victory in Iraq.

If not following the news is enough to miss someone then I would think they’re not that famous

It is less true in modern times, but the wars that have been waged have been inconsequential for the average American. It will probably matter again someday.

Well hopefully not. I'd be really happy if we could deprecate the military and its spending altogether because the world is safe enough. War is terrible for everyone even the winner. And there is no glory in conquest.

Unfortunately we still need them for now.

Colin Powell is another.

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