and the Department of the West. By order of the President the Engineer Department under the command of the Chief of Engineers was created after the War of 1812 as a separate command, with geographical limits coextensive with those of the United States. Thus the Chief of Engineers convened courts-martial, granted leave of absence, and exercised all the functions of a department commander. The Engineer Department included the Corps of Engineers, the Military Academy at West Point until 1866, and the Corps of Topographical Engineers until 1831. Since then the Corps of Engineers and the Engineer Department have been identical.

River and Harbor Improvements. Of all the non-military activities of the Corps of Engineers the most important are those that come under the head of river and harbor improvements. Over one billion dollars has been spent on thousands of works of this kind scattered throughout the country. Not only is the improvement of rivers and harbors the greatest in cost, in extent, and in public interest, but it is also the most important from the point of view of tracing the history and development of the civilian activities of the Corps of Engineers.

The Early Years. In the early part of the nineteenth century the question of internal improvements by the national government assumed great importance in the public mind and politics. That issue divided political parties and on several occasions proved to be the decisive factor in presidential elections. Despite frequent vetoes by presidents who believed such action to be unconstitutional, victory, even in the early years, lay with those who wanted the government to undertake internal improvements. Thus, in the first year of the national government, work was done on a lighthouse; in 1802 a law was passed authorizing the erection and repair of "public piers in the river Delaware"; and in 1806 the Cumberland Road was started. Laws for the erection of public works became more numerous around 1820, in most cases the authority being given to the President to use such agencies as he saw fit. How much of this early work was done by the Engineer Department is problematical, but there is plenty of evidence to show that it did participate. Occasionally a law would mention the Army engineers specifically. The act of March 3, 1823, authorized

the President to have the Corps of Topographical Engineers survey the harbor of Presque Isle and estimate the expense of removing the obstructions. The annual reports of the Secretary of War, also, show that the Army engineers engaged in these activities. His report for 1823 mentions among other similar items that the Board of Engineers for Fortifications" examined the proposed canal from the mouth of the Lehigh River in Pennsylvania to the tide water of the Passaic in New Jersey, and made a report in detail on the practicability, expense, and advantages of the canal in a local and national point of view." It is probable that the Engineer Department was used in most of these undertakings because, as a competent authority has said, “up to 1831, its officers were to a great degree the repositors in this country, of that knowledge which was requisite for the purpose of making accurate surveys."

The Work Really Starts, 1824 to 1829. The year 1824 not only saw a great increase in the number of internal improvements undertaken but also marked the connection of the Corps of Engineers with that work, which has lasted to the present day. The law (4 Stat. L., 22; approved April 30, 1824), which proved to be so pregnant read in part as follows:

That the President of the United States is hereby authorized to cause the necessary surveys, plans, and estimates, to be made of the routes of such roads and canals as he may deem of national importance, in a commercial or military point of view, or necessary for the transportation of the public mail;

Section 2 . . . That, to carry into effect the objects of this act, the President be, and he is hereby, authorized to employ two or more skillful civil engineers, and such officers of the corps of engineers, or who may be detailed to do duty with that corps, as he may think proper;

Some years later the authority to employ civil engineers under the act was repealed, but, the service of the Army engineers has continued without interruption. Even the Civil War did not stop all

T General A. A. Humphreys, in a letter to the Secretary of War, in response to a circular of September 4, 1876-Engineer School, Occasional Papers, No. 16. West Point was the only technical engineering school in the United States until Rennselear Polytechnical School was founded in 1825.

Act of July 5, 1838; 5 Stat. L., 257.

their civilian activities, although it greatly diminished them, while during the World War more than twice as much money was spent on river and harbor improvements under the charge of Army engineers as was spent during the entire period up to 1860.

River and harbor improvements did not, in the early years, receive the separate treatment and attention they have since been accorded. They were merely one of a number of kinds of internal improvements. Appropriations were made for several kinds of improvements in one bill or, as frequently happened, an individual bill was passed for each project. Despite the fact that the first pure "river and harbor bill" was passed as early as 1826, it was not until many years later that the present custom of putting practically all river and harbor impovements in one bill containing nothing else, was established. A few river and harbor improvements have become so important that in the course of time they have been separated by Congress from the rest and given distinct but similar treatment. The improvement of the Mississippi River under the Mississippi River Commission is an example of such a separation.

To carry into effect the act of April 30, 1824, authorizing the President to use the Corps of Engineers on internal improvements, the Board of Engineers for Internal Improvements was formed, consisting of General Bernard and Colonel Totten of the Corps of Engineers, and John L. Sullivan, an experienced civil engineer. This board continued in existence about eight years, until the segregation of the Topographical Engineers into a separate bureau. It set out immediately to plan a national and comprehensive system of internal improvements that could be steadily developed. This system was based on three great projects; first, the canals between the Chesapeake and the Ohio and between the Ohio and Lake Erie, with the improvement of the navigation of the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers; second, the series of canals connecting the bays north of the seat of government; and third, a durable road extending from Washington to New Orleans. Surveys, plans, and estimates were made for each and duly reported. Despite wide

9

4 Stat. L., 175. An Act for improving certain harbours, and the navigation of certain rivers and creeks, and for authorized surveys to be made of certain bays, sounds, and rivers, therein mentioned.

publicity, especially on the proposed road to New Orleans which aroused great interest and many memorials from those regions through which there was even the most remote possibility of its being located, the preliminary steps were the only ones taken. This was the only attempt ever made by the Corps of Engineers to view the country as a whole and to adopt a policy of internal improvements, or river and harbor improvements, in accordance with that view.10 Since then the practice adopted by Congress, or drifted into, has been to improve rivers and harbors haphazardly and not as a part of a comprehensive and continuous plan of development.

Among the scattered improvements worked on in 1825 are several worthy of mention. The work of improving the navigation of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers was started." The beginning was humble, being only a contract made with an individual for the removal of "snags, sawyers, planters and other impediment of that nature." The contract was executed under the supervision of the Engineer Department. Another internal improvement of national prominence was the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Two brigades of topographical engineers and one of civil engineers were employed in making the surveys necessary to select the best route and to make estimates. A third undertaking was the continuation of the Cumberland Road, which was referred to the Engineer Department. The actual construction was done by civilians under contract, but the Army engineers superintended the work and made the surveys, plans, and estimates for the extension of the road and for its repair. This method of building the Cumberland Road was continued until 1835, when that part of the road between the town of Cumberland and the Ohio River was surrendered to and accepted by the states through which it passed. The work of the Engineer Department on the rest of the road gradually decreased until it ceased about 1840.

The work done on the Cumberland Road represents the most noteworthy achievement of the Engineer Department in road con

10

Comprehensive plans for internal improvements were made by other agencies during these early years. The most famous of these was contained in Secretary Gallatin's report of 1808. See American State Papers, Miscellaneous, Vol. I, p. 724.

struction, although in the early years it looked as if that kind of activity would overshadow river and harbor improvements in importance. A great many other and smaller roads were surveyed and planned and some were constructed. Most of these were between forts on the frontier and were classed as military roads. The coming and rapid spread of the railroads was probably the largest factor which caused the cessation of this work, while river and harbor improvements increased so rapidly in number.

Sustained Activity from 1829 to 1839. The rapid growth of the latter ended in 1829 and the number of improvements remained fairly constant during the following ten years. The report of the Engineer Department for 1829 mentions fifty-three civil constructions, nineteen surveys made under special acts and resolutions of Congress, and seventeen surveys made by order of the President under the act of April 30, 1824. The funds available amounted to over one million two hundred thousand dollars, about half of which was appropriated during that year. The works consisted usually of the removal of obstructions or shoals and of the erection of piers or breakwaters.

Although there were no new developments in the character of the work during the decade 1829-1839, there were significant changes in the method of handling the work. After completing plans for such important projects as the Florida Canal connecting the Atlantic with the Gulf and the improvement of the Tennessee River at the Muscle Shoals, the Board of Engineers for Internal Improvements passed out of existence in 1831. By an executive regulation of June 21 of the same year the topographical engineers were separated from the Engineer Department and formed into an independent and distinct bureau of the War Department, and so remained until 1863 when the two engineer corps were consolidated. For a few years the river and harbor work remained solely with the Corps of Engineers, but instructions of the Secretary of War issued on August 1, 1838, started a transfer of them to the Corps of Topographical Engineers. By June, 1839, some seventy or more works of improvement of rivers and harbors along the Gulf, Atlantic, and Lake coasts had been transferred and the process continued until all such works were in the hands of the topographical engineers.