Connections

While the program faced significant challenges in its execution and experienced wide variations of effectiveness and participation, at its best it embodied most of the goals and elements of the movement for professionalization that swept the Army officer corps in the period between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the century. The Officers’ Lyceums represented both a critical element of professional education in the late nineteenth century Army as well as the professional spirit that began to animate the officer corps during this periodDespite Secretary Root’s evaluation of the program as “unsatisfactory and futile,” the Officers’ Lyceum program represented a critical component in the progressive effort of Army officers to professionalize and modernize their institutions. The Lyceums provided both a mechanism to inculcate the wider officer corps in this ethos of professionalization and a venue in which to articulate the ideals of Army reformers, ideals that predated and indeed provided much of the framework emplaced by Root at the outset of the twentieth century. The Officers’ Lyceums, then, represented both a critical element of professional education in the late nineteenth century Army as well as the professional spirit that began to animate the officer corps during this period, a spirit that would eventually help transform the small frontier constabulary army of the nineteenth century into the modern, professional fighting force of the twentieth century.

Lyceums and the School of Application

One major goal of the Lyceum program was to prepare officers in these basic skills at their home garrisons, thus removing this burden from the School of Application at Fort Leavenworth and allowing that institution to refocus on its original, loftier purpose. In the short term, then, the Lyceums would provide a replacement for both the basic and remedial curriculum that the School of Application had been forced into over the last decade. In order to do so, the Lyceums would move the foundation of officer professional education from the dedicated institution at Leavenworth, which could only serve a fraction of the officer corps at a time, to every garrison in the far flung frontier Army.

In addition to eliminating the need for the Leavenworth Schools to teach basic military subjects, the Lyceums in the longer term remained closely linked to that institution in another way.

Staff Ride

Instructors and Students from Fort Leavenworth on a Staff Ride at Gettysburg, 1908

In his annual report for 1894, the Secretary of War, Daniel S. Lamont, noted that “the lyceum affords an opportunity for the display of original military thought, and by bringing to the notice of superior officers and of the Department exceptional military talent” the Lyceums facilitated the identification of the best junior officers.[1]United States War Department, Annual Report of the Secretary of War (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1894), 21-22. The Lyceums, or so at least the faculty at Leavenworth hoped, would thus provide a venue in which to identify top performers who would excel at the new, more advanced course provided at the School of Application. According to Carol Reardon, “outstanding work in the lyceum, as many military reformers had hoped, became a major consideration not only for promotion but for coveted assignments to more advanced schools.”[2]Carol A. Reardon, Soldiers and Scholars: The U.S. Army and the Uses of Military History, 1865-1920 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1990), 15. Thus the Lyceums would have a two-fold effect on the quality of officers sent to Leavenworth: first by improving the overall education of the officer corps and removing the burden of basic and remedial instruction from the limited time available in the Leavenworth curriculum, and then by improving the quality of the specific officers sent to Leavenworth by helping identify those officers best qualified for further post-graduate education.

The connection between the Lyceums and Leavenworth did not remain a one-way street however. While Leavenworth would be the initial beneficiary, Leavenworth-trained officers, following their course of instruction at the School of Application, returned to their regiments and posts. There they would again participate in the Lyceum, often serving as assistant instructors in place of the field grade officers, most of whom were older officers unconvinced of the value of the Army’s newfound focus on education and who were all too willing to give up their duties. The reintroduction of Leavenworth trained officers into the Lyceum system would inject the methods, doctrine, and perhaps most importantly, simple belief in the value of professional education into the Lyceums. This process becomes clear as one reviews the minutes of individual post lyceums. Several of these journals, and especially those from posts with active and well-supported Lyceums, begin to reflect a movement away from rote recitations or even to discussions of military topics to the regular use of map problems and other hallmarks of the applicatory method used in instruction at Leavenworth.

For example, by 1897 the Lyceum at Benicia Barracks, California was making extensive use of these Leavenworth style map problems, and including both the original problem and student solutions in their minutes, to include maps and written orders.[3]Records of the Post Officers’ Lyceum, Vancouver Barracks, WA, Record Group 393, Part 5, Entry 35, NARA, Washington, D.C.. See also Proceedings of the Officers’ Lyceum, Benicia Barracks, CA, Record Group 393, Part 5, Entry 18, NARA, Washington, D.C., and Proceedings of the Officers Lyceum and Garrison Schools, Fort Barranacas, FL, Record Group 393, Part 5, Entry 15, NARA, Washington, D.C. for further examples of the use of map problems and the applicatory method in post Lyceum records.By the late 1890s, then, the Lyceums at certain posts had developed well beyond the basic recitation method and began to serve as a mini-School of Application at each small garrison. Ideally, and to some extent in practice, this would gradually disseminate throughout the entire Army, or at least the line regiments, the near equivalent of the course of instruction provided at Leavenworth. This was a highly important point for, as noted by Secretary Root, only a small portion of the officer corps would ever have the chance to attend the School of Application.


Example Written Problem and Student Solution from the Lyceum at Benicia Barracks, 1897

Lyceums, Essays, and Reform

While the majority of actual Lyceum meetings were spent on either recitations or discussions, all officers participating in the program were required to prepare and present an essay on a military subject each year. These essays topics were typically either assigned or chosen, depending on the local commander, at the beginning of the Lyceum season and were then presented during the last month. Even more revealing than the importance that the Army as an institution placed on these essays were the topics of the essays themselves.

The better offerings of the Lyceum essays engaged with almost every major theme of Army reform and demonstrated both the intimate connection between Lyceums and the larger reform movement and the high level of concern with such reform topics amongst the junior officers of the Army. For example, Fort Canby’s 1892-1893 season included an essay on the “The Army of the United States as of present organized and administered, with a consideration of the best organization for the future,” a favorite topic of Army reformers, and perhaps the central focus of “Uptonian” reformers in the late nineteenth-century.[4]Submits list of subjects to be read before the officers’ lyceum, Fort Canby, WA, September 13, 1892, Record Group 393, Entry 732, NARA, Washington, D.C. Likewise, the Fort St. Michael, Alaska Lyceum heard essays in 1902 on “A Plea for an Effective National Guard” and “Is our Staff System at Fault.”[5]Report of Officers’ Lyceum at Fort St. Michael for March 1902, April 4th, 1902, Enclosure 1: Essay on “A Plea for an Effective National Guard” and Enclosure 3: Essay on “Is our Staff System at Fault,” Record Group 393, Entry 732, NARA, Washington, D.C. Reform of both the National Guard into an effective federal reserve and the current Bureau system into a General Staff system along the lines of European, and especially German, armies were key points in the professional reform movement and eventually were a major part of the slate of reforms proposed by Secretary Root.

Thus, in addition to the practical connections between the Lyceums and other aspects of Army professionalization, the Lyceums and especially their essay program provided an arena for the development and dissemination of ideas between reform-minded junior officers. Of particular note, the ideas expressed in some of these essays provided the broad outlines of many of the actual reforms undertaken during the early twentieth-century. Despite Secretary Root’s labeling of the Lyceum program as “unsatisfactory and futile,” the officers undergoing the program outlined and advocated many of the specific reforms he oversaw.