Click Here for a New Version of this title available in the Fortification Library

Introductory Letter

Washington, D. C., October 31, 1859.

Sir: The memoir I was permitted last year to present to you, submitting for your examination a project of entrenched lines for the protection of New York city from land attack, and which received the honor of being the one approved by you, was limited in its scope. It was a special paper, simply explaining a particular plan, conceived with the hope of meeting your views in regard to the defense of the point in question.

In the paper I now have the honor of laying before you, I have endeavored to interpret and elaborate the general and comprehensive sentiments expressed in your annual reports to Congress on the important subject of coast defense, and to furnish a sort of commentary to such reports, in order that officers of the army and militia and the public may study them with the aid of such illustrations and explanations as are rendered necessary by their conciseness.

Should this essay be so fortunate as to prove satisfactory to you, and be found useful in the sphere it is designed to fill, until some more competent writer employs his pen in developing views which demand more time than my duties allow me to devote to their full investigation, I shall be more than rewarded for the pains it has cost me.

Those views may be comprehended, as regards their tendency and extent, in a single principle, which (in the terms of your last report) may be summed up as follows: That each generation should build and pay for its own defenses and reap the benefit of them.

The thirty-odd millions which the nation has paid for fortifications, and the drain of nearly two millions per annum, which was caused by that item of the army appropriations during the five years preceding your assuming charge of the War Department, and the present incomplete state of these defenses, are sufficient grounds for the inquiry whether some cheaper system would not answer the purpose.

The general scheme of sea-coast defense that is sketched in this memoir involves —

1st. The strengthening of such of our unfinished forts, or of such as are not of sufficient power, by earthwork batteries, until the object is attained of perfect security to our seaports from the attempts of ships-of-war to force an entrance into their harbors. It is proposed to stop short in the construction of masonry fortifications of all kinds except such as occupy, like Forts Jefferson and Taylor, remote situations, and consequently form exceptions to the general rule.

2d. To provide against attempts against such ports by means of

--3--