Department of History Cadets Visit NYC

MAJ Kris Seibt and CPT John Walker led cadets enrolled in HI108 (Regional Studies in World History) and HI105 (History of the United States) to New York City to discover the traces of global history found there. Visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Central Park, and the once predominantly immigrant neighborhood of Yorkville inspired cadets to think about the complex historical connections embedded in the places and objects around them. Inside the museum, cadets encountered art and artifacts from across history and around the world. They learned about African civilizations, pre-modern Japanese firefighting, Ukrainian realist art, Chinese porcelain in colonial Mexico, and much more! Outside the museum, cadets learned how an Ancient Egyptian obelisk that stood for thousands of years in Cairo and Alexandria wound up in Central Park. A statue of a medieval Polish-Lithuanian king nearby sparked discussion about the accidents of history, national identities, and the enduring role of Polish immigrants in the United States. Cadets had the chance to appreciate Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 painting “Washington Crossing Delaware.” Cadets first encountered this image on the cover of David Hackett Fischer’s Washington's Crossing, which is assigned to every cadet to read before entering the Academy. Here cadets learned that the painting was in fact done by a German, in Germany, to inspire liberal German reformers in the wake of the failed Revolutions of 1848. Thousands of those reformers would emigrate to the United States, fight in the American Civil War, and serve in government