Engineering Security: The Corps of Engineers and Third System Defense Policy, 1815–1861

Engineering Security

Engineering Security

The Corps of Engineers and Third System Defense Policy, 1815–1861

MARK A. SMITH

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

uapress.ua.edu

Copyright © 2009 by Mark A. Smith

All rights reserved.

Hardcover edition published 2009.

Paperback edition published 2020.

eBook edition published 2020.

Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the University of Alabama Press.

Typeface: Berkeley

Cover images: Top, Maj. Gen. Joseph G. Totten (1788–1864), USMA Class of 1805, US Army Chief of Engineers, 1838–1864, by Robert W. Wier (1803–1889), c. 1847, oil on canvas, 30 × 25 inches; West Point Museum Art Collection, United States Military Academy, West Point, New York. Bottom, Plan of Fort Jefferson, 1867, Fort Jefferson Dry Tortugas Florida, Drawer 74, Sheet 80, Fortifications File, RG77; NARA, College Park, Maryland

Cover design: Kaci Lane Hindman

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8173-5990-4

eBook ISBN: 978-0-8173-9317-5

A previous edition of this book has been catalogued by the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-0-8173-1665-5 (cloth)

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Early National Context: American Coastal Defense to 1815

2. Engineering Policy, 1816–1821

3. The Politics of Engineering, 1820–1828

4. National Defense in the Jacksonian Era, 1828–1849

5. Expertise and the Rise of Responsibility, 1826–1860

6. Challenge and Crisis, 1850–1861

7. Constructing Security, 1845–1860

8. Engineering Gulf Coast Society, 1845–1860

9. Evaluation: Third System Policy in the American Civil War

10. Conclusions

Frequently Used Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliographic Essay

Index

Illustrations

FIGURES

1.1. Profile of a Vauban-style fort

1.2. Profile of a perpendicular fort

3.1. Entrance to Mobile Bay, ca. 1818

5.1. Chief Engineer Joseph G. Totten

7.1. Plan of Fort Jefferson, 1867

7.2. Plan of Fort Taylor, 1855

TABLES

4.1. Appropriations and Expenditures for Fortification Construction, 1816–1827

4.2. Appropriations and Expenditures for Fortification Construction, 1828–1841

6.1. House Vote on Fortification Appropriations, 24 September 1850

6.2. House Vote Reconsidering the Tabling of the Fortification Bill, 24 February 1851

6.3. House Vote on Tabling the Fortification Bill, 2 August 1856

6.4. House Vote to Strike out the Fortification Bill’s Enacting Clause, 26 May 1858

8.1. Slaveholdings in Key West, 1840–1859

8.2. Composition of Large Slaveholdings in Key West, 1840–1850

10.1. Third System Appropriations, 1816–1861

Acknowledgments

In the course of my research, I incurred several debts. I could not possibly list them all, but I would be remiss not to mention those to whom I owe the most. At the Main Branch of the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC, Jill Abraham devoted much time and energy to locating specific items in the massive collection of documents that is Record Group 77, the Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers. Likewise, Suzanne Dewberry at the Southeast Branch of the National Archives and Gail Farr at the Mid-Atlantic Branch gave me the benefit of their extensive expertise with the documents at their respective repositories. Susan M. Lintelman at the Omar N. Bradley Library of the United States Military Academy carefully guided me through her institution’s holdings so that I could examine everything pertinent to my research. Dione Longley, the director of the Middlesex County Historical Society in Middletown, Connecticut, kindly extended her repository’s hours to allow me to examine the papers of Joseph K. F. Mansfield in the short time I had available. The entire staff at The University of Alabama’s Gorgas Library was always ready to assist me, but Pat Causey in Interlibrary Loan as well as Barbara Dalbach and Lisa Yuro in Reference deserve special mention for their untiring efforts to find the most obscure sources and help me to answer the most abstruse questions. In addition, during the later stages of my work, the staffs of Fort Valley State University’s Henry A. Hunt Memorial Library and Georgia Southwestern State University’s James Earl Carter Library have extended me every courtesy and provided me with many necessary sources I could not have obtained otherwise.

Aside from the debts incurred during the research stage, a number of people have given critical advice during the writing process. Harold E. Selesky helped me to refine my intellectual curiosity about the Corps of Engineers before the Civil War into a scholarly inquiry, and he afforded much useful advice about both style and content. I am also indebted to George C. Rable, Lawrence F. Kohl, Howard Jones, and Richard Megraw for the thoughtful suggestions and criticisms they furnished as this study approached its final stages. Dr. Derek W. Frisby at Middle Tennessee State University always indulged me in discussions about this work that have helped to sharpen its conclusions and keep me more tightly focused on what I wanted to say. Lastly, C. Grades Eades of the Volunteer State Community College gave freely of his limited time. He read the entire work from start to finish and provided a treasure trove of editorial and scholarly advice.

I would also like to thank the editors, staff, and anonymous referees of The University of Alabama Press. The press’s referees read my manuscript with the meticulousness and consideration of true friends or colleagues. Their comments forced me to sharpen my writing and explain my interpretations more clearly and completely. They are true professionals.

Finally, there are three people without whom this work would never have seen the light of day. First are my parents, Hilton G. Smith and Joyce H. Smith, who instilled in me the values of persistence and hard work that are so necessary to the completion of any undertaking of this magnitude. Over the course of my entire career, from undergraduate through graduate school and as I have begun to make my way in the professional world, they have always let me know just how proud of me that they are. I can only hope that I prove worthy of their pride in my accomplishments. Last of all, this book would never have been completed without the support and assistance of my wife, Gretchen M. Smith, to whom this work is dedicated. She has been an editor, a sounding board, a confidante, and a research assistant. Through her position as Collection Development Librarian at Georgia Southwestern State University’s James Earl Carter Library, she has made certain that I have located and examined all pertinent materials. She has read every word of this book multiple times, from its beginnings through to the completed prepublication manuscript. She has encouraged me in every step of my career, and she should know that without her, it would not have been worth doing.

All of these people, in one way or another, have contributed to making this book. Their assistance has raised its quality considerably, and for that I owe them my most heartfelt thanks. Any flaws that remain, however, rest on my own shoulders.

Introduction

In the early twenty-first century when most people think of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, they associate it with a variety of public works: natural resource management, dam and waterway projects, or coastline reclamation. In the first half of the nineteenth century, however, the corps was much more than the construction arm of the American military. At that time, the engineers were literally the cream of the crop, the elite within the U.S. Army.

As originally created in 1802, the Corps of Engineers and the United States Military Academy at West Point were one and the same, and for the first half of the nineteenth century, the engineers retained control over the academy. In the context of the time, this arrangement made perfect sense. While most aspects of the military profession were still considered more of an art, just as dependent on innate talent as education, military engineering was much more a technical science that required thorough and specific training. The military academy began its life as a school for military engineers, and it was only fitting that the engineers were in charge.¹

Through their control of West Point, the engineers were able to retain their privileged status within the American military, which did little to endear them to officers of the other branches like the artillery or the infantry. The engineers, via the academy, controlled the country’s military education system, a control that by the 1820s and 1830s, allowed them to shape the schooling of nearly all regular army officers and to retain the academy’s engineering focus. In addition, only the very best graduates, fewer than 5 percent of the total, were offered commissions with the Corps of Engineers. As one graduate from the late antebellum period, unhappy with his failure to receive an engineer’s commission, put it after his graduation, the engineers were a species of gods.²

From their elevated status at the top of the army hierarchy, the engineers presided over American national defense policy for half a century. They developed, implemented, and named the Third System of coastal fortifications, so-called because it represented the federal government’s third attempt to guard the nation’s coasts. The Third System, however, was much more than a series of forts guarding a watery frontier. Developed in the aftermath of the War of 1812, the Third System was an integrated and comprehensive system of national defense, the first in the nation’s history. While it certainly included coastal fortifications, it was not limited to them. Instead, it embraced much more, and it reflected the values of the society that created it. From 1816 to 1861 the Third System provided the nation with military security and defined the context for an ongoing dialog about defense issues through the annual funding debates in Congress. The engineers’ defense policy was one of continental defense to protect the country from close blockades, naval raids, and full-scale invasions through an integrated system based on permanent fortifications, the militia, and a small regular army. For nearly fifty years, this policy remained the reigning defense paradigm in the United States.³

A broad understanding of the literature on American coastal defense in the first half of the nineteenth century, however, leaves the reader with the impression that the permanent masonry forts built by the Corps of Engineers in this period were never an adequate defense. The engineers have been criticized for taking a narrow view of national defense that reinforced their own elite status because of the supposedly overriding emphasis they placed on permanent masonry forts within their defense policy. This view, which assumes the inadequacy of the Third System, seems to originate from the American Civil War, when recently developed weaponry made masonry fortifications obsolescent. As early as April 1862, when Union forces reduced Fort Pulaski below Savannah in only two days using rifled artillery, the utility of Third System forts was called into question. But judging the Third System in the years between 1816 and 1861 based on its performance in the American Civil War seems a bit unfair, given the fact that rifled artillery was not developed into a practical weapon until 1860. To judge antebellum American defense policy in this way appears to be a case of reading history backward. To assess this policy fairly, it must be considered only in the light of existing contemporary technologies or predictable technological development. Moreover, Third System forts must be considered as part of the broader national defense policy they belonged to, rather than as a conglomeration of independent works. Understanding Third System defense policy in this broader sense opens up the possibility of using that policy to gain a more complete grasp of American military, political, social, and economic development in the years between the War of 1812 and the Civil War.⁴

Only twice between 1816 and 1861 were serious charges leveled against either the system or the engineers who developed and implemented it. These criticisms, as infrequent as they were, had more to do with ongoing domestic political issues than they did with any real belief that Third System works could not provide an effective defense, and these domestic issues were allowed to influence security policy because defense was only a secondary concern in the absence of an immediate threat. Evidence of the secondary status accorded to national defense can be found in Congress’s willingness to limit defense funding according to the exigencies of the domestic economy. While security may not have been free in the early nineteenth century, as C. Vann Woodward once asserted, it was not a primary concern.⁵

To understand fully the significance of Third System defense policy, it must be placed firmly within both a military and political context. Militarily, it must be judged in terms of its own stated goals. To address the policy’s ability to provide security also requires an understanding of the effectiveness of permanent coastal fortifications amid the changing technological realities of the period from 1816 to 1861. Moreover, while the Third System was developed by the military, it also affected the development of the military, especially the engineers, and this influence must be examined. The political context in which the policy must be considered is complex and multilayered. At one time or another, foreign relations, the state of the economy, and domestic political issues all influenced the level of financial support for Third System policy. Because each legislator’s vote in Congress is based on a combination of different motives, there is only a somewhat tenuous connection between funding and support. In one direction, these two concepts are connected; when congressmen provide money for a particular policy, it means that on some level, either on principle or for political reasons, they support that policy. But the connection does not run in both directions; just because funding equals support does not necessarily mean that the absence of funding implies a lack of support. Issues unrelated to the policy in question may insinuate themselves into the congressional debates and factor into legislators’ decisions about funding, particularly when the issue is a decidedly secondary one like national defense was in the first half of the nineteenth century. Fluctuating funding patterns, in other words, do not necessarily reflect fluctuating support. To determine the level of official sanction for the engineers’ defense program, the policy debates must be considered in light of the nation’s economy, its international relations, and domestic political concerns. An examination of this policy in this context provides a case study of governmental policy formation in antebellum America, and it creates the opportunity to investigate the linkage between national policy and locally driven support through a study of the local effects of the construction of these defensive works.

This book is organized in a topical fashion, with topics presented in an approximate chronological order. This format allows the development of several related themes throughout the Third System’s existence. The most prominent of these is the consistent level of support for this policy by national leaders. Most antebellum congressmen supported the engineers’ defensive recommendations, and erratic funding levels are generally explicable in terms of other issues and developments, an indication of the fact that defense issues were secondary concerns for most of the period between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. A related theme is the prevalence of local influences in determining support for or opposition to national policies. Legislators, especially in the popularly elected House, often supported or opposed the Third System on the basis of its impact (or lack of impact) on their constituencies. A study of this period also reveals the effectiveness of the Third System as a defense paradigm despite some contemporary (and historical) claims to the contrary. Moreover, the Third System also affected the local areas where the masonry fortifications were built, and it influenced the development of the Corps of Engineers and, through the corps, the American military profession in general. In sum, the study of the Corps of Engineers and the Third System in the antebellum period can provide a clearer understanding of the process of national policy formulation, the considerations involved in developing a system of national defense, the effects of national policy implementation on a local level, and the development of the American military.

1

The Early National Context

American Coastal Defense to 1815

National defense policy in the United States after the War of 1812 grew out of two earlier developments. The formation of coastal defense policy between 1783 and 1812 laid the foundation for the later policy as Federalists and Republicans established the precedent for a federally funded system of coastal fortifications built by American engineering officers. The particular form that later policy would take, however, was determined in large measure by the American experience in the War of 1812. That conflict provided evidence of what would and would not provide an effective defense, and it illustrated the types of threats the country might expect in the foreseeable future. The Third System defense policy developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers after 1815 drew heavily on these earlier precedents, even though it also became much more than had been possible in the years before 1815.

Building on the recommendations of nationalists in Congress and former Continental officers and engineers after the Revolutionary War, the Federalists made the first concerted attempts to use the national government to secure the country’s seaboard, but these attempts were also linked to other Federalist policy objectives, such as the expansion of the regular army. In the same way that Alexander Hamilton and others tried to use the threat of war with France to justify an increased regular army, Federalists used or attempted to use the country’s increasingly unstable foreign relations to bring coastal defense under federal control, to establish a corps of military engineers and later expand it, and to provide military training for those engineers.

The Federalists had to overcome much tradition merely to establish the precedent of a federally funded system of coastal fortifications. In the same way that Americans in the colonial era had relied on the militia for self-defense, they created coastal defenses that were local and hastily improvised in response to specific crises. These temporary colonial works were usually built of earth or timber, although some more permanent structures were created by building parallel walls of brick or stone and filling the space between them with earth and rubble. Most commonly, earthen works were built to meet a particular threat and then left to deteriorate once the urgency passed. The Revolutionary War did not alter this localistic pattern in any significant way. Beginning in 1775, the soon-to-be-states took individual action to defend their coasts and harbors, and in July of that year Congress formally placed the responsibility for guarding the coasts squarely on the individual colonies. These local Revolutionary-era coastal defenses, however, were rarely complete when a British threat materialized because most communities did not act with any sense of urgency. The main coastal defense lesson of the American Revolution was the need for such defenses. With few effective works at the onset of the conflict, the American seaboard stood open to the British, who raided it at will in the northern theater and launched more ambitious joint operations in the south. The coastal defense experience in the Revolutionary War should have pointed to the need to prepare defenses during peace, but these lessons went unlearned as Americans maintained only the weakest of central governments immediately after the war.¹

The admission by Revolutionary leaders, both military and civilian, that the effectiveness of the American military would be enhanced by a body of competent military engineers was of more long-term significance than the particular means and methods of coastal defense in the fight for independence. When the war broke out, the colonies were almost completely devoid of local military engineering talent, having never needed to develop this skill. The Continental Congress first appointed Richard Gridley as the Continental Army’s chief engineer, but his advanced age often made it difficult for him to fulfill his duties, so in 1776 he was replaced by one of his assistants, Rufus Putnam, who had no formal training in engineering and little military engineering experience. With no native engineering talent, General Washington depended on foreign officers to meet his engineering needs, and when he requested engineers, Congress turned to France. Sixteen French engineering officers eventually served the American cause, including Louis le Bègue de Presle Duportail. A graduate of the French artillery and engineering school at Mèziéres, Duportail became Washington’s chief engineer.²

Duportail campaigned successfully for the establishment of a permanent and distinct engineering service within the army. On 11 March 1779 Congress created the first American Corps of Engineers, and two months later, Duportail was named its commandant. This Continental Corps of Engineers clearly concentrated on field engineering rather than coastal defense. Since the British army was the immediate threat, this focus made sense. Duportail himself laid out the defenses of Valley Forge and planned the siege of Yorktown, for which he was made a major general. The engineers’ focus and attention only shifted to the Royal Navy later when it became the main security concern of the young nation.³

In the immediate wake of the Revolutionary War the principal military concern of the new nation was the debate over the existence of a military establishment. Popular American political ideology was opposed to standing armies as a threat to the citizens’ liberties, and the paramount question was whether or not the nation should retain any permanent military force. In April 1783 a congressional committee led by Alexander Hamilton, a committed nationalist, considered this issue as well as the structure of any potential force the United States might maintain. Based on the recommendations of Continental officers, including several engineers, this committee called for the establishment of a federal military force and addressed the need for coastal and frontier defenses. The Hamilton committee recommended a systematic approach to the fortification of the American coastline, remarking that "it will be expedient for Congress, so soon as they [sic] have determined on the establishment of the corps of Engineers, to instruct the head of that corps to make a survey of the points proper to be fortified and to digest a general plan proportioned to the military establishment of the United States."⁴ With independence assured and no immediate threat to the nation, however, Congress ignored these recommendations and disbanded the Corps of Engineers in November 1783. The existing coastal defenses were left in the care of the states, but the states neglected them, and within a decade only three of them were even worth repairing, one each in Boston, Philadelphia, and Newport.⁵

But in January 1794, with the United States apparently on the brink of war with Great Britain, Congress appointed a committee to investigate the need for coastal fortifications. Moving with unusual speed, on the last day of February this Committee on Fortifications recommended roughly $80,000 for fortifications to defend sixteen ports and harbors against naval raids and joint operations. These structures would be earthen works erected and garrisoned by the federal government. After three weeks of debate, and with the addition of five locations, Congress passed the first federal law sanctioning the construction of coastal defenses in March 1794. Because the congressional report recommended that these new works be garrisoned by federal troops, Congress had to provide the men, over and above the then-extant Legion of the United States that served on the inland frontier. Late that May, Congress authorized the president to organize and raise a Corps of Artillerists and Engineers charged with service in the field, on the frontiers, or in the fortifications of the sea-coast. Coming so soon after the provision of funds for seacoast fortifications, it was obvious that Congress intended the new corps primarily for coastal defense.⁶

Despite the establishment of a Corps of Artillerists and Engineers, few men in the army (or the country) had the skills necessary to build the works Congress had funded, and Secretary of War Henry Knox had to employ foreign-born engineers. All seven men he appointed were of European birth and two had served in the Continental Army under Duportail. Unable to rely on American resources to meet the country’s basic defense needs, Knox accepted the necessity of employing foreign talent because the majority of these engineers were French, and France was the traditional enemy of Great Britain. Knox did not, however, make the French engineers officers in the army, employing them only as temporary civilian engineers.⁷

The works these men erected are known today as the First System of coastal defense because they were the first works erected with federal money, authorized by federal legislation, and intended to be garrisoned with federal troops, but the term system is misleading. The law authorizing these works established no priority among them, the War Department provided only minimal guidance, and the involvement of state authorities and the nature of these works as a response to an immediate crisis all reinforced the lack of system in their construction. Knox did provide some instructions to the temporary engineers, but these were only guidelines, most of which were dictated by the limited funding and the need to complete the works quickly in case war should erupt. The absence of real central direction was only compounded by the involvement of state authorities. The local engineers could begin construction only after the state governors approved their plans, giving the states a considerable amount of oversight. The impact of this localism was most clearly demonstrated in Boston where construction faced repeated delays because Castle William on Governor’s Island, one of the main coastal defense locations for that harbor, was being used as a state prison. As a result the defense of Boston harbor remained in state hands until 1798.⁸

The defenses of the First System drew heavily on the colonial and Revolutionary coastal defense heritage. Like those earlier works, First System forts were built of earth and timber, and they were a response to an immediate threat. They were erected in a hurried fashion, without time for thorough planning or prioritization of the works. The result was a series of earthen works with anywhere from eight to several dozen cannon mounted to fire over the top of the fort’s walls, or en barbette. They were designed to defend against naval or amphibious raids, but they were not part of a larger integrated system of defense capable of defending the country in the face of an invasion.⁹

Despite the less-than-permanent nature of these works and the lack of systematic planning, they accorded well with the Federalist program of general military preparedness. The Federalists consistently used temporary crises to pursue their permanent policy objectives in this domain, as illustrated by the approach they took to establish the navy. The U.S. Navy was created in 1794 in response to the threat the Algerine pirates posed to American commerce. Because of this growing threat, Congress passed the Naval Act of 1794, authorizing the construction of six warships, three of which were eventually built. This act was a temporary expedient designed to protect the nation’s commerce from the Algerine pirates, but it laid the foundation for the U.S. Navy. Similarly, the First System provided the foundation for later programs of coastal defense by establishing the precedent of federal involvement in the defense of the nation’s maritime frontier.¹⁰

When the crisis that spawned these works passed, so did congressional support for them. Secretary Knox continued to advocate a modicum of preparedness during peacetime, and to this end he requested $225,000 to complete the First System. Based on his request, a House committee recommended an appropriation not exceeding $500,000 dollars to continue the necessary works for fortifying the ports and harbors of the United States . . . [with] the most durable materials, so as best to answer the purposes of defense and permanency. This committee, dominated by men who held Federalist views, recognized the value of peacetime defensive preparations as well as the long-term economy of permanent works over less expensive but less durable temporary ones. Congress initially proved receptive to these ideas. Although the committee had recommended annual appropriations of $100,000 over five years, in January 1795 Congress provided a one-year appropriation of $50,000, enough to show that Congress accepted the principles on which the committee had based its recommendations. This acknowledgment, however, was soon overturned when, in March of that year as well as May of the next, the House Committee on Fortifications opposed additional funds for the First System.¹¹

In the midst of this declining congressional willingness to provide for coastal defense, the newly appointed secretary of war Timothy Pickering faced the problem of staffing and employing the new Corps of Artillerists and Engineers. His primary concern was locating qualified field-grade officers, including four majors and a lieutenant colonel commandant. There was still a scarcity of qualified American-born engineers, so the secretary turned to the foreign temporary engineers overseeing the First System works. He appointed Stephen Rochefontaine, who was then supervising the construction of New England’s coastal defenses, as the lieutenant colonel commandant. Henry Burbeck, an American artillery officer with Anthony Wayne’s Legion, became the senior major and remained with the corps’ one field battalion attached to Wayne’s command. Of the other three majors’ commissions, only one went to an American, Constant Freeman, and he was the most junior of the four majors.¹²

With a decreasing amount of funding available for coastal defenses and a concurrent decline in the need for the engineers as international tensions subsided, Pickering also faced the question of how best to employ his new corps. He decided to order those companies not garrisoning the defenses or serving with the Legion to West Point where the foreign officers would instruct them in the technical and theoretical aspects of military engineering. By the end of 1795, less than half of the corps’ officers and cadets had arrived at West Point, and no teaching had begun.¹³ Even after James McHenry replaced him as secretary of war in January 1796, Pickering remained committed to preparing America’s defenses by educating the engineers and artillerymen as a part of general military preparedness. In a February 1796 report written for the House of Representatives, Pickering concluded that "The corps of artillerists and engineers appears to be an important establishment. To become skilful [sic] in either branch of their profession, will require long attention, study, and practice; and because they can now acquire the knowledge of these arts advantageously only from the foreign officers, who have been appointed with a special reference to this object, it will be important to keep the corps together for the present, as far as the necessary actual service will permit. Its principal station may then become a school for the purpose mentioned."¹⁴ The former secretary of war was advocating the creation of a military academy on the basis of the need to provide technical experts in the form of military engineers and artillerists in order to prepare the nation’s defenses. Pickering’s previous orders had established such a de facto institution at West Point, but it was never very successful. Most of the Americans resented being instructed by foreigners, and they also resented having to be instructed at all rather than fighting the British, which was why most of them had joined the army in 1794.¹⁵

Despite the failure of Pickering’s engineering school, the nation continued to need coastal defenses. Although the first phase of the First System had petered out by 1796, in 1798 a second phase commenced in the face of a new threat. Jay’s Treaty had eased relations with the British, but it strained them to the breaking point with the French, who quickly became the primary violators of American neutral rights. These developments prompted President John Adams to request congressional attention to the nation’s defenses early in his administration. In June 1797 Congress provided $115,000 for coastal fortifications, while Adams dispatched a special mission to France to resolve the difficulties. This mission, however, only led to the XYZ Affair and an undeclared naval war with France.¹⁶

In the wake of these events, Alexander Hamilton began to call for an increased regular army to defend the country from the external threat of the French and the internal threat of the Republicans. President Adams, however, preferred a naval response directed solely at the French. Hamilton’s leadership role in the party ensured that Congress considered his plans, and the legislature ultimately provided for a three-year Provisional Army should the president decide to raise it, $800,000 for arms and equipment, and $250,000 for coastal defense works. The coastal defense recommendations of Secretary of War James McHenry paralleled Hamilton’s. In a February 1798 report the secretary remarked on the inability of the militia to garrison the coastal works and maintain them in a defensible posture. At the same time, he noted that none of the regular forces on the frontier could be safely removed, so McHenry called for an increase of the regular army to garrison the coastal works. As a result of his recommendations, in late April 1798 Congress doubled the size of the Corps of Artillerists and Engineers, providing for a second regiment organized on the same principles as the original one. This new regiment was intended only as a temporary expedient, as it was to be organized to serve for the term of five years, unless sooner discharged. The last Federalist-controlled Congress, however, voted to maintain the new engineer regiment as a part of the permanent military establishment in April 1800, once again illustrating the Federalist use of temporary expedients in response to immediate crises to achieve permanent policy objectives. McHenry, however, faced the same personnel problems that Knox and Pickering had, a lack of trained American engineers.¹⁷

In 1797, Congress, on McHenry’s recommendation, had provided for the appointment of four instructors at West Point to teach the American engineers the skills they needed. This development proved fortunate for the corps when Rochefontaine was dismissed from the service in May 1798. Technically, he was dismissed because of irregularities in his 1797 financial statements, but it probably had more to do with his French origins than anything else. With France now an enemy of the United States, there seemed to be a fear that Rochefontaine might use his knowledge of American coastal defenses to aid the French in the event of war. When he was dismissed, the command of the corps devolved on the ranking major, the American artillerist Henry Burbeck, who was on the frontier with the Legion.¹⁸

During the later phase of First System construction, the engineers built more durable works. In his 1798 recommendations, McHenry also made a special mention of Fort Mifflin guarding Philadelphia. He noted that it was composed of good materials . . . put together in such a manner as to promise long duration and utility. Two months later McHenry called for the more complete defence of our principal ports by fortifications, a project whose estimated cost would exceed $1,000,000. McHenry’s increased estimates reflected a new desire to erect more permanent works, and the funding provided in 1798, and for the remainder of the Federalist era, allowed the introduction of more permanent materials in First System works of the second phase, with earth and timber giving way to stone and masonry in some locations.¹⁹

Thomas Jefferson’s election in 1800 abruptly halted the Federalist era. The Federalists continued to champion military preparedness through increasing the navy and the army and by supporting coastal defenses, but, although they remained a potent force in national politics, they would never again hold a majority in Congress. The Republicans had an entirely different view of national defense policy. A Jeffersonian desire to limit government expenditures and a fear of politicized standing armies drove them to rely on what can best be described as a militia concept of defense. Only basic defensive preparations, such as stockpiling munitions and matériel, were undertaken during peacetime, and these supplies would then be stored until needed. The actual militia and wartime preparations would provide the nation’s main defense during an actual conflict. This view, for example, determined the Jeffersonian approach to the U.S. Navy. A few vessels could be built but kept in ordinary until needed. Only a small active force would be maintained to deter pirates.²⁰

Permanent coastal fortifications initially had no place in the Republican militia concept of national defense. While Jefferson acknowledged the utility of land batteries in assisting the gunboats responsible for defending the seaboard, he saw these batteries as smaller temporary works that could be erected during a conflict and manned by the militia, a view supported by his comments on the First System in December 1801. He proclaimed that some of those