Those who were permanently attached to the staff corps or to bureaus at Washington had also opportunity to enlarge their professional knowledge by study if they were so inclined.

But all these were exceptionally situated, and do not help us answer the question What kind and amount of military education was implied in the fact that a man had graduated at West Point and been sent to serve in the line?
I have purposely omitted for the present to consider the physical training and the practical instruction in tactics by means of drill, because the question is in terms one of science, not of practice; that will come later.

The conclusion is that the intellectual education at the Military Academy was essentially the same, as far as it went, as that of any polytechnic school, the peculiarly military part of it being in the line of engineering.

In actual warfare, the laying out and construction of regular forts or the conduct of a regular siege is committed to professional engineers.
For field work with an army, therefore, the mental furnishing of the West Point man was not superior to that of any other liberally educated man.

In some of our volunteer regiments we had whole companies of private soldiers who would not have shunned a competitive examination with West Point classes on the studies of the Military Academy, excepting the technical engineering of fortifications.