shoulder-stripes

Updated: July 25, 2026

Of course many and many are the exceptions; many West Point pupils are animated by the noblest and purest American spirit; but the genuine West Point spirit consists in sneering and looking down with contempt at the mother and nurse; that is, at the purely republican, purely democratic political institutions, at the broad political and intellectual freedom to which those clown-aristocrats owe their rearing, their little bit of information, and those shoulder-stripes by which they are so mightily inflated.

count Adam G. De Gurowski - Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862