Alfred Mordecai Bronze gun CLASS OF 1823 Mordecai led his class academically and taught engineering at West Point for two years. In 1832 he shifted to the Ordnance Corps, in which he pioneered the application of scientific methods to developing and testing weapons and ammunition. He also played major roles in compiling the army’s first ordnance manual (1841) and reorganizing army artillery along more rational lines (1849). In 1861 Mordecai, a North Carolinian, resigned his commission, refusing to break his oath but unwilling to fight against Southern family and friends. He spent the war years teaching math in Philadelphia, near the family of his wife, Sara Ann Hays Mordecai. Their son Alfred graduated from West Point in 1861 and fought for the Union. After the war, Mordecai turned to railroading, briefly as an engineer in Mexico, then as an official with the Pennsylvania Railroad. NEXT George Henry Thomas Alfred Mordecai 1804–1887 Class of 1823 George Henry Thomas 1816–1870 Class of 1840 John Clifford Pemberton 1814–1881 Class of 1837 Robert Anderson 1805–1871 Class of 1825 Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard 1815–1893 Class of 1838
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