The Texas A&M University Corps of Cadets (often The Corps of Cadets, or simply the Corps) is a student military organization at Texas A&M University. Established with the university in 1876, it is the oldest student organization on campus.
Students who elect to join the Corps must participate in mandatory Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) courses and training for the first three semesters, but they are optional after that. All cadets are required to attend leadership classes in the School of Military Science coordinated by the Commandant's Office. Approximately 40% of the members of the Cadet Corps continue with the ROTC curriculum, contract with the military, and receive commissions as officers in the United States armed forces upon graduation. Juniors and seniors who do not have military contracts to receive commissions but wish to remain members of the Cadet Corps are classified as "Drill & Ceremonies" (D&C) cadets. As established under federal law, Texas A&M is one of six U.S. colleges classified as senior military colleges and is the largest.
History Early years The Corps of Cadets was founded in 1876 with the creation of the all-male, military-focused Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas under the Morrill Act of 1862. The Morrill Act did not specify the extent of military training, leading many land-grant schools to provide only minimal training, Texas A&M was an exception. The only mention of military training is in Section 4: ...the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts...
In 1876, Robert Page Waller Morris, a 1872 graduate of Virginia Military Institute, joined the university staff and was assigned as the first Commandant of the Corps. In this role, he drafted the first set of Corps regulations and designed the first cadet uniform. Prior to joining Texas A&M, Morris served as a professor at the Texas Military Institute alongside John Garland James and Hardaway Hunt Dinwiddie, who were also VMI cadets. James and Dinwiddie both became future presidents of Texas A&M. Morris' experience at VMI and TMI influenced the foundation he laid for Texas A&M's interpretation of the Morrill Act of 1862. P. L. Downs, Class of 1879 and private secretary to Texas A&M's 1st president, Thomas S. Gathright, was quoted on the president's stance regarding military discipline at the university. Gathright was wholly opposed to any military discipline. He believed in putting the boys on their honor and trusting them implicitly, and yet Major Morris, as Commandant, insisted upon carrying out the governmental requirements as to military training and that did not altogether suit the president.In November 1879, the first administration was dismissed, including Morris. The board was not happy with the direction of the college and a great rift had developed in the faculty due to an event known as the "Crisp Affair." The four-day proceedings are well documented in the Galveston Daily News.
The board quickly restaffed the faculty, largely with members from the Texas Military Institute. John Garland James, then president of TMI, was named as the 2nd president of the university. One of James' first hires was John Waller Clark, a recent VMI graduate, to serve as the Assistant Commandant. During his tenure, James strongly advocated for the military training aspect of A&M's curriculum. The following is a quote from John Garland James regarding his beliefs about military training in an academic setting.The military system of school government... tends to develop in the student a high sense of personal honor and moral responsibility, and to give him those habits of regularity, promptness, self-reliance, and respect for proper authority, which go far to make the good citizen and the successful man of business. It thus becomes a potent factor in the formation of true character.
In 1883, out of frustration, James resigned, and James Reid Cole was named 3rd president of the university. Cole served as president for only a few months when the board made a surprise move removing Cole from the office of president naming Hardaway Hunt Dinwiddie in the new position of Chairman of the Faculty. Dinwiddie was also VMI alumnus and a strong believer in military training. By the time Dinwiddie's death in 1887, Texas A&M's military tradition was strongly instituted.
Through the first four administrations there were overtures to reduce the military aspect of Texas A&M. The first president, Thomas S. Gathright, was not a strong advocate and often had differences with Morris. James faced criticisms of the regimen from the state legislature,Texas Legislative Record, 17th session, volume 2, no. 43, March 3, 1881, pp 1-3 and Dinwiddie faced the pressures of strong competition from the newly formed University of Texas at Austin.
For the school's first thirty-one years, through the 1907–08 academic year, the Cadet Corps was organized into one battalion consisting of two to four companies, designated companies "A", "B", "C", and "D". Early on, these were designated "Infantry" companies, but the Commandant ensured that Artillery training was included in the military instruction. The Aggie Band was organized in 1894 as a permanent institution within the Corps. In 1908, with enrollment over 570, a second battalion was added. As enrollment climbed, the Cadet Corps continued to grow to multiple battalions, each with two to four companies, and the Corps became divided into multiple regiments.
The academic year 1916–17 saw the division of the Corps into two regiments. The following year, the two regiments had a total of six battalions composed of eighteen companies and a battery of field artillery. In 1918, enrollment surged to 1,284, almost a fifty percent increase over the previous year. In the 1919–20 school year, a Signal Corps battalion and a Mounted Cavalry battalion (later called a "cavalry squadron") with one cavalry troop were added. An Air Service squadron with one company-sized "flight" was added in the 1920–21 school year.Adams, op. cit.
In the fall of 1923, the Cadet Corps, with a total of 2,091 cadets in twenty-three individual units, became divided between the Infantry Regiment and the Composite Regiment. The Composite Regiment included the Cavalry, Field Artillery, Air Service and Signal Corps units. The Air Corps Squadron (formerly Air Service Squadron) was phased out at the end of the 1927–28 school year. In the fall of 1928, with enrollment at 2,770 cadets, an Engineer Battalion was added, and the following year a third regiment was formed out of the expanded Field Artillery Battalion. A fourth battalion, the Coast Artillery, was added to the Composite Regiment in the fall of 1933.
The Cadet Corps enrollment hit a peak of 2,770 in 1928, but the Great Depression took its toll, and by the fall of 1932 enrollment had fallen to 2,001. But as the Depression waned and the U.S. involvement in the war became imminent, enrollment climbed back to a pre-War total of over 6,500 in the fall of 1941. In 1935, swelling enrollment forced the formation of an Engineer Regiment and a Cavalry Regiment. With these two new regiments, added to the Infantry, Field Artillery and Composite regiments, the Cadet Corps, for the first time in its history, now had a total of 5 regiments, encompassing thirty-two individual units (companies, batteries and troops). That same year, a Chemical Warfare Service Company was added to the Composite Regiment, and the following year a second company warranted the formation of a Chemical Warfare Service Battalion. A sixth regiment, the Coast Artillery Regiment, was added in 1937. In 1939, the Band had grown to the point that it was now divided into two units, the Infantry and Artillery Bands.
In the fall of 1942, as citizens of Texas responded to America's need for military officers, the number of individual military units in the Cadet Corps hit an all-time high with a total of seven regiments of seventeen battalions comprising sixty companies, batteries, and troops, including the Band. The Cadet Corps at Texas A&M sent over 20,229 former cadets into World War II, 14,123 of them as commissioned officers, more than the combined totals of both military academies. By February 1943 enrollment dropped to less than 4,000 as Cadets left school to serve in the U.S. military. The 1944–45 school year saw enrollment drop to as low as 1,600 and the depletion of cadets forced the reorganization of the Corps down to only two regiments (Infantry and Composite) consisting of a total of only 17 companies, batteries and troops, including the two Band units. In 1943, the U.S. Army declared the Mounted Cavalry obsolete, although Cavalry units continued at Texas A&M as mechanized units until the end of the 1949–50 academic year.
Post-World War II World War II and the demands of the U.S. military took their toll on enrollment. But, with the end of the war, as enrollment surged in the fall of 1946, Texas A&M gained the use of Bryan Air Force Base, which was being closed, and converted a number of its buildings into dormitories. In 1947, all entering freshmen, approximately 1,500, were assigned to the Bryan Air Force Base "Annex" which became essentially a freshman campus. The Cadet Corps reorganized again to accommodate these unusual conditions. The 1947–48 Cadet Corps consisted of five regiments, a Headquarters Group, and the Band during that academic year. The five regiments (a combined Infantry and Veterans regiment, an Artillery regiment, a combined Air Force and Cavalry regiment, a combined Engineer and Composite regiment, and the "Training Regiment" consisting of nine companies of freshmen), the Headquarters Group and the Band were composed of a total of 35 individual military units. The 1951–52 academic year saw the organization of the Cadet Corps at is largest in number of individual units. Sixty-six units (companies, batteries and squadrons) were divided among 8 regiments (Infantry, Artillery, Armor/Engineers, First Air Force Wing, 2nd Air Force Wing, Composite Regiment, Seventh Regiment and the Eighth Freshman Training Regiment) consisting of 21 battalions and the Band.