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The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known metonymically as West Point or simply as Army,[7] is a United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a fort, since it sits on strategic high ground overlooking the Hudson River with a scenic view, 50 miles (80 km) north of New York City. It is the oldest of the five American service academies and educates cadets for commissioning into the United States Army.
George Brownell, then editor of The Twainian, met with Capt. Oberlin M. Carter, aged 86, a graduate of West Point, class of '80.
During the four years that Cadet Carter remained at West Point, he states that Mark Twain visited the Academy at least three times to his knowledge and might have made other visits to his friend, Lieut. Charles Erskine Scott Wood, and other officers, of which Carter had no knowledge. Twain made no formal address to the entire body of cadets on any of these visits, but it was his practice to gather the 55 members of the Class of '80 about him in the room of Carter's friend, Cadet Andrew G. Hammond, son of a widowed mother, who was a neighbor and friend of the Clemens family at Hartford. Here, Capt. Carter says, Twain told stories to the cadets for several hours on each visit. Except at those times when the cadets laughed uproariously at Twain's jokes and shafts of wit, Capt. Carter says that the attention given to Twain's remarks these eager young men was so intense that "you could have heard a pin drop."
(The Twainian Volume 2 number 3, 1940)