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of the country a fund of information which, although very valuable, is now lying hid in drawers and pigeon holes in the offices at Washington out of reach of the mass of the profession.

8. Architecture should be taught in a rather more practical manner. A description of the orders and a few pages of rules, general enough to apply to all sorts of edifices, are not sufficient; some practical rules for building frame, brick, or stone houses-such, for example, as a barracks or hospital--would add much of utility to this branch; and hints on the lighting, warming, and ventilation, would benefit the service generally.

This subject might be finely illustrated by examples from our recently erected public buildings built by the engineer corps, which have the merit of being constructed on modern principles and with the latest improvements.

Finally, the additions which are above proposed for the course are not so extensive as may appear at first; more changes than enlargements are required; and I estimate that in teaching the course indicated, in the manner prescribed, not more than six or eight weeks additional time will be found necessary.

These six weeks may be obtained for the purpose of discontinuing the teaching of engineering and drawing. At present three hours a day for six weeks are devoted to the drawing of a canal lock, resulting in the production of neatly finished plans, as well as the improvement of the class in ability to delineate their ideas, and to understand more readily those of others when thus presented. Still, I think that the cadet is well enough grounded in this respect before he arrives at this course, and that the additional time he is drilled on drawing is calculated rather to exhibit his proficiency than to teach him anything new. This will be apparent when the time devoted to drawing during the prior years is considered.

In the third class course, cadets draw for three hours a day during three weeks on descriptive problems, and, in addition, two hours every other day during the same year at topographical drawing; during the second class year, two hours every day are devoted to drawing; thus making in all an amount of time which is already more than commensurate with the importance of the subject; and I therefore consider the first class term of three hours a day for six weeks consumed in drawing a canal lock (and also the equal term of fortification drawing in the next course, which will be alluded to beyond) to be superfluous; and recommend that the whole of it may be suppressed for this reason, and the still stronger one, that room will thus be gained for the additions above enumerated.

The summary of the additions and changes suggested is as follows: 1st. To teach engineering according to the spirit of the profession in America.

2d. To teach it as practically as possible; preferring the use of maps, plans, models, and collections, and the oral method of instruction, and by practice with the instruments in the field, in certain parts of the course.

3d. All accounts of details and constructions to be derived from the Vol. ii14

experience of this country; and all information on foreign materials not in use here should be excluded from the course.

4th. Certain additions are recommended in detail.

Lastly, the course having been modelled on the above plan, should, by constant care, be kept posted up to the times, and exhibit a correct reflection of the state of the engineering profession in America.

Fortifications and Military Art.

Having already observed that nine months, instead of four and a half, will be, after September, 1858, devoted to the study of military science, I have a few suggestions to offer on this head. It must be noted that this is a favorable time to make changes in the course as now taught, and that it will be much better to commence the new one on a different and broader basis than to take the present one, and add to it enough, on a different plan, to fill up the added time. I mean that what I propose will be on a different plan, and that, as it will not harmonize with the existing course, the latter had better be entirely remodelled.

What I understand with regard to the new programme, as planned by the professor of engineering, is as follows:

1st. The course of field fortification to remain as it is.

2d. The course of out-post service to remain also.

3d. The course of permanent fortification likewise.

4th. That there is to be added to No. 2 a foreign text book, possibly in French, on strategy and the art of war.

5th. To be added to No. 3 a course embracing the German system (so called) with one or two French and Dutch systems of the eighteenth century.

6th. Also a course of military history, embracing the campaigns of Frederick and Napoleon. This is entirely new.

The entire course, as now taught, is remarkable for the following traits:

1st. For ignoring the writings on fortifications and military science of the United States engineer corps.

2d. For not teaching the theory of American fortification.

3d. For not explaining the size, form, armament, and other elements of American forts.

4th. For teaching fortification as adapted to European States, instead of developing ideas suited to our enterprising people, immense territory, and extended sea-coast, with its wealthy ports, our railroads and telegraphs, rifles, and rifle cannon.

5th. A study of the art of war, such as it is found in foreign treatises, deduced from the practice of European States, with their different forms of government, large standing armies, and contiguous inland frontiers.

6th. The teaching of allt he branches too abstractly, without referring for the derivation of general rules and principles to accounts of battles or sieges, or to existing or past permanent or temporary fortifications. in this country or any other.

It is to insure the additions being taught in a different spirit, and

to procure the remodelling of the existing course to conform with the additions, that I offer my views on the subject.

The criticism above given of the present course is requisite, to prove that some suggestions are as much needed as I have already shown. they will be well timed. To complete it, I should add that everything is now taught with too great attention to details; that there is too much time wasted by the cadets in memorizing feet and inches, and that the idea he must thus imbibe, that dimensions are all-important in fortification, is inconsistent with that reliance on general principles which should be characteristic of a graduate of the Military Academy. With his mind stocked with general principles, the officer can turn his theory to practical use by referring for details to books. Hand books of information on all sorts of details of military and civil knowledge are at every one's disposal, and therefore there is no necessity for cramming the student with trifles of this sort; but general principles and self-confidence in selecting or originating a plan can only be gained (unless by experience in the field) by much well directed study and reflection.

No single year's course, however wisely planned, can be relied upon to impart to the student both the science of fortification and an acquaintance with its complicated details, and when the choice between the two is made, that least necessary will be found to be the one which teaches the dimensions and construction of those trifling parts which encumber text books on this subject, to the detriment of a broad consideration of the whole,

Fortification.

On this subject I recommend, in the first place, a course of history of fortification, very brief, showing mainly that the art of defence has, at every epoch, from the earliest times, followed and been subordinate to the arms and means at the disposal of the attack.

This course will impress the reason as well as the memory of the student with the general principles of the art, especially when it is elucidated by plans and models of those places of which the sieges are described. It should teach the various systems of fortification, from the early ages, when the sling, bow, and battering ram, were all the defence had to resist, up to the present century, say to 1815.

All of these are interesting, and their study will aid in giving the student the habit of independent reasoning on the principles of the art. They become more necessary and practical as we approach the present century.

They should be explained critically, but very briefly, by dwelling on the important features, and avoiding details and accuracy of dimensions, and explaining them orally, and from drawings or models of existing or past real places, choosing in preference such as have been besieged.

On arriving at 1815, a second course must commence, one more particularly important and at the same time more difficult to treat. This is because the systems actually exhibited in fortified places built since that time are essentially different in principle, while the arms

(up to 1850) have remained the same, and also because the test of experience has not been sufficiently applied. To the merits of some of them, and any abstract reasoning on the subject, the student will, if he has profited by the previous course, be disposed to distrust.

To explain this period, the sieges which have taken place in it, especially those of Antwerp, Pampeluna, and of Venice and Rome, should be explained at some length; and here will be a proper place to discuss the attacks on forts and entrenchments which took place during the American war of 1812 and 1814.

The remaining part of this course is, though confined to a history of two or three years, with all the rest, both ancient and modern to an American student. It should contain a critical account of the sieges which took place during the Russian war, the sieges of Silistria and Sebastopol, the takings of Bomarsund and Kinburn, and the bombardments of Odessa and Sweaborg.

Much analytical reasoning should here be devoted to developing the theory of sea-coast defence, illustrating the subject by detailed accounts of the recent contests between forts, on the one side, and ships, or floating batteries, bomb vessels, and gun boats, on the other. This entire course (which I have divided into three parts) will not occupy, if treated as prescribed, more than five months. Its study should be very brief and general at first, avoiding all details, becoming more thorough as it approaches the last era, where more care can be taken to place their value on those dimensions and proportions of works which appear to have influenced the duration of the defence.

Maps and models of the places described are requisite throughout the last part of the course, but for the first two parts of it drawings may suffice.

A course of similar lectures, with facilities for interchange of ideas between pupil and instructor, will be the proper mode of teaching this course; the interest of the pupil should be kept alive, and he should be led to study for the sake of improvement rather than, as is the case at present, for a high mark in the class. At this time it must be the tact of the instructor which shall give him a comparative estimate of the application and advance of each cadet, while, during other parts of the course, and on review of the whole, there will be ample opportunities for applying the present scale to assist in settling each man down to the exact level where his talents and application ought to place him in his class.

One point worth noting with regard to this course of history is, that since no two forts or localities described in it will be alike, the student will be insensibly imbued with general views on the subject of adapting fortifications to the topographical features of the locality, so that after having, in the second period of the course, studied the systems of the age in the abstract, he can the better appreciate the application of either in the third period, viz: the study of the theory and construction of the fortifications of the United States. He will also get an idea of the uses of fortification in different times and countries, for its objects have varied as much as the modes of fulfilling them. The Chinese wall was, in its day, as well conceived a fortification as are now the bastioned or casemated works which secure

grand stategetical points in France and Germany. A certain discrimination of this kind will be required to enable the student to comprehend whatever may be laid down as an American system, since the latter must, of necessity, be different in principle and practice from any foreign one.

SECOND PERIOD OF THE COURSE.

After the preparation specified above, the cadet should enter upon a study of the French and German systems, with the aid of models, of those French works which exhibit best the application of the pure bastion method, and of those German ones which are the best types of the Carnot and Montalam best systems, either separately or conjoined. He should also examine the system proposed by the French engineer Chourmara, and the views of at least one American officer; both of which, though neither is as yet recognized and acted upon in actual constructions, are conspicuous for bringing common sense to the solution of the few problems presented in the question of how to restore the equilibrium between the attack and defence.

This part of the course should not consume more than a month, for in its study all details should be omitted, and feet and inches insisted on in those cases only where the carrying out of a principle depends on the dimensions being closely measured; besides, the student is now capable of seizing without difficulty the peculiarities of each system, of approving the good points, and condemning impartially the bad.

The critical account of these European systems should be written by an American engineer officer, because, in foreign works on the subject, we do not meet any writings inspired by the desire to sift fairly their relative merits. The French and German schools are each pledged, by national considerations, to offer to the defences of their respective States all the prestige that reasonings from the closet and paper attacks can give.

This second period of the course is the indispensable basis on which I propose to found an exposition of the theory of American fortifications as it is, and a speculative discussion on what it will be now that the dogmas on which it has thus far securely rested are unceremoniously struck down by the novelties in arms, projectiles, vessels, and means of communication, which were elicited so suddenly, and on so large a scale, by the Russian war.

THIRD PERIOD OF THE COURSE.

American fortification as it is and as it will be.

At the Military Academy there is hardly any instruction given on the subject of sea-coast defences, to which branch of the science American fortification is pretty much limited-certainly all that is taught on this head is taught in two lessons and is not worth specifying. The theory and practice of American defences are substantially ignored: not a word is said of railroads and telegraphs as affecting the

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