Cemetery

Benson Lossing described a visit to the cemetery at West Point in 1866 in his book, The Hudson From The Wilderness to the Sea.

"We landed in a sheltered cove a little above Camp Town, the station of United States troops and other residents at the Point, and climbed a very steep hill to the Cemetery upon its broad and level summit, more than a hundred feet above the river. It is a shaded, quiet, beautiful retreat, consecrated to the dead, and having thoughtful visitors at all hours on pleasant days.

‘There, side by side, the dark green cedars cluster,

Like sentries watching by that camp of death;

There, like an army’s tents, with snow-white lustre,

The gravestones gleam beneath.

Few are the graves, for here no populous city

Feeds, with its myriad lives, the hungry Fate;

While hourly funerals, led by grief or pity,

Crowd through the open gate.

Here sleep brave men, who, in the deadly quarrel,

Fought for their country, and their life-blood poured;

Above whose dust she carves the deathless laurel,

wreathing the victor’s sword.

And here the young cadet, in manly beauty,

Bourne from the tents which skirt those rocky banks,

Called from life’s daily drill and perilous duty

To these unbroken ranks.’

The most conspicuous object in the Cemetery is the Cadet’s Monument, situated at the eastern angle. It is a short column, of castle form, composed of light brown hewn stone, surmounted by military emblems and a foliated urn, wrought from the same material. It was erected in the autumn of 1818, to the memory of Vincent M. Lowe, of New York, by his brother cadets. He was accidentally killed by the discharge of a cannon, on the 1^st of January, 1817. The names of several other officers and cadets are inscribed upon the monument, it having been adopted by the members of the institution as ‘sacred to the memory of the deceased' whose names are there recorded."