Liberty Men and Great Proprietors

Liberty Men and Great Proprietors
Author: Alan Taylor
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 406
Release: 1990
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780807842829

Detailed exploration of the settlement of Maine during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, illuminating the violent and widespread contests along the American frontier that served to define and complete the American Revolution.

Engineers of Independence

Engineers of Independence
Author: Paul K. Walker
Publisher: The Minerva Group, Inc.
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2002-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781410201737

This collection of documents, including many previously unpublished, details the role of the Army engineers in the American Revolution.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.