Appendix

NOTE A.

Many reviews of my memoirs of January and September, 1858, on coast defence, have been published. The press of the country understood them and approved of them as practical and economical. But the military profession, as was to be anticipated, was far from agreeing unanimously upon the subject. The most carefully written and elaborate attempt at refutation of the said memoirs was the production of Major J. G. Barnard, of the engineer corps, who gave his work the same title as that of the last of them. It presents, also, in that connection, what I cannot but admit to be a well-digested summary of all that had been said in favor of the masonry system of fortifications in prior reports of the Engineer Bureau, boards, and individual officers; and presents a project for the defence of New York that is, he claims, in conformity with such system. If Major Barnard;s plan had been found more judicious than the one approved by the War Department, I should have had the satisfaction of having given rise to it by my memoir, which showed that additional defences of some sort were needed. It is no part of this note to point out whatever defects there may be in the arguments employed by Major Barnard to refute the opinions I had promulgated. It is limited to examining the plan proposed by him to complete the fortification of New York.

"They include (Fort Richmond being nearly completed) the construction of two new works on Staten Island, Fort Tompkins, (just commenced) and the new projected casemated battery; of additional works at Fort Hamilton, and the remodelling of Fort Lafayette, and the construction of at least one new work on Robbin's reef, and an expenditure of from two to three millions of dollars." He suggests, also, the throwing up of temporary batteries along the East and North rivers, in the city and on the opposite shores.

In discussing the plan thus far, we are at first struck by an inconsistency. If the Narrows and fort at Robbin's reef (to say nothing of the four outer works subsequently advocated) are capable of repulsing the enemy, why make any provision for repulsing him after he should have penetrated to the city? Surely there must be a consciousness of weakness in the masonry walls of the proposed forts, when preparations are advocated providing against the contingency of their eventually being of no avail to hinder the progress of a hostile fleet. But, granting that it is possible and probable that such forts would not suffice to stop the supposed fleet, is it well to blindly pursue the abstract problem of how to destroy the enemy's ships any further? Are we called upon to make a Saragossa or a Moscow of

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