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Excerpt from Report of the Survey of a Section of the River Delaware, From One Mile Below Chester, to Richmond Above Philadelphia The duty which the Councils of Philadelphia have assigned me, in the survey of a section of the river Delaware, I have completed; and it is my consolation to know, and my privilege to assert, that I have not been faithless in the discharge of the important trust committed to me. As some accompanying remarks, with the draught of the survey, may be expected, I will endeavour to give them in as brief a detail as the nature of the case will admit. To give a formal account, in this Report, of the methods adopted in the prosecution of the survey, is deemed unnecessary; and such information would only be interesting to professional men. A history, however, of the plans and methods pursued, has been laid before a few respectable and professional gentlemen; by whom the correctness thereof was duly investigated, and from whom those certificates, which are respectfully submitted to the Councils at the close of this Report, were obtained. It may not be amiss, however, to state, that every attention was bestowed, to secure accuracy in the work, and to render the survey as full and as perfect as possible. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
This collection of documents, including many previously unpublished, details the role of the Army engineers in the American Revolution. Lacking trained military engineers, the Americans relied heavily on foreign officers, mostly from France, for sorely needed technical assistance. Native Americans joined the foreign engineer officers to plan and carry out offensive and defensive operations, direct the erection of fortifications, map vital terrain, and lay out encampments. During the war Congress created the Corps of Engineers with three companies of engineer troops as well as a separate geographer's department to assist the engineers with mapping. Both General George Washington and Major General Louis Lebéque Duportail, his third and longest serving Chief Engineer, recognized the disadvantages of relying on foreign powers to fill the Army's crucial need for engineers. America, they contended, must train its own engineers for the future. Accordingly, at the war's end, they suggested maintaining a peacetime engineering establishment and creating a military academy. However, Congress rejected the proposals, and the Corps of Engineers and its companies of sappers and miners mustered out of service. Eleven years passed before Congress authorized a new establishment, the Corps of Artillerists and Engineers.
