Washington's Engineer
Page 28
26. Washington, Papers, 14:567.
27. Brigadier General Duportail to George Washington, Valley Forge, c. April 20, 1778, in Washington, Papers, 14:562.
28. Brigadier General Duportail to George Washington, Valley Forge, c. April 29, 1778, in Washington, Papers, 14:562.
29. Walker, Engineers of Independence, 191–95; Washington, Papers, 14:559–66.
30. Washington, Papers, 14:593–94.
31. Greene, Papers, 2:381–85; Washington, Papers, 15:83–87. The rationale was omitted.
32. US Department of State, The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution: Being the Letters of Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, John Adams, John Jay, Arthur Lee, William Lee, Ralph Izard, Francis Dana, William Carmichael, Henry Laurens, John Laurens . . . and Others, Concerning the Foreign Relations of the United States during the Whole Revolution: Together with the Letters in Reply from the Secret Committee of Congress, and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs: Also the Entire Correspondence of the French Ministers, Gérard and Luzerne, with Congress: Published under the Direction of the President of the United States, from the Original Manuscripts in the Department of State, Conformably to a Resolution of Congress, of March 27th, 1818, edited by Jared Sparks (Boston: N. Hale and Gray & Bowen, 1829), 2:262; Francis Wharton, ed., Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1889), 2:468–69.
33. Washington, Papers, 15:414–17; Greene, Papers, 2:434–37.
34. Walker, Engineers of Independence, 195–99; Washington, Papers, 15:439–40.
35. Elizabeth S. Kite, Brigadier-General Louis Lebègue Duportail, Commandant of Engineers in the Continental Army, 1777–1783 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1933), 46.
36. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 77.
37. Washington, Papers, 15:514–15, 15:517.
CHAPTER 3
1. US Continental Congress et al., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774– 1789 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1904), 2:59.
2. George Washington, The Papers of George Washington, ed. Philander D. Chase, Revolutionary War Series (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985), 13:225. The letter is dated October 7 in George Washington’s papers, but it was undoubtedly October 8. In the original, one date is written over the other. Washington probably had it copied without first comparing it with the letter to Radière, which was sent first.
3. Elizabeth S. Kite, Brigadier-General Louis Lebègue Duportail, Commandant of Engineers in the Continental Army, 1777–1783 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1933), 83.
4. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 83–84.
5. Major General Israel Putnam to George Washington, Headquarters, Highlands, New York, January 13, 1778, in Washington, Papers, 13:229.
6. Edward C. Boynton, The History of West Point (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1864), 61.
7. Washington, Papers, 14:219.
8. George Washington to Major General Alexander McDougall, in Washington, Papers, 14:236.
9. George Washington to Major General Alexander McDougall, in Washington, Papers, 14:412.
10. On November 17, 1777, Congress raised “Monsr. de la Radiere to the rank of Colonel . . . in the army of the United States . . . to be employed as heretofore in the capacity of engineer” (US Continental Congress et al., Journals, 9:932).
11. Washington, Papers, 14:497.
12. Washington, Papers, 14:587–88.
13. Washington, Papers, 15:590–93.
14. Edmund Cody Burnett, ed., Letters of Members of the Continental Congress (P. Smith, 1963), 3:462; US Continental Congress et al., Journals, 10:476. August 18, 1778.
15. Washington, Papers, 16:452–54.
16. Washington, Papers, 16:386, 16:468. Translation in Alexander Hamilton’s writing.
17. Washington, Papers, 16:536, 16:594–98. Endorsed “M. Duportail on the North in the Highlands. 13th September 1778.” The contemporary translation in the handwriting of John Laurens is preserved in the Washington Papers at the Library of Congress under the date of August 13. The month is taken from the docket on the translation. The French text is dated “13 aout [August].” This is definitely a mistake, as Washington’s order was not issued until August 27, and John Laurens was in Rhode Island on August 13, until early September. Duportail’s report was delivered to Washington before September 9.
18. George Washington to Brigadier General Duportail, Fort Clinton, West Point, September 19, 1778. Washington, Papers, 17:46.
19. Washington, Papers, 17:46.
20. Washington, Papers, 18:168. The foregoing letter offers strong proof of Washington’s appreciation of the services of the French engineers and his desire that they might be retained in the service of the United States. The president of Congress and a majority of its members were friendly to France and to the alliance and would have wished that every courtesy be shown these French officers. There was a powerful minority, however, that dreaded French influence and that sought always to delay measures and to frustrate every motion that would tend to emphasize the importance of the alliance [Paul K. Walker, Engineers of Independence: A Documentary History of the Army Engineers in the American Revolution, 1775–1783 (Washington, DC: Historical Division, Office of Administrative Services, Office of the Chief of Engineers, 1981), 216–19].
Three letters of Duportail to the Comte d’Estaing have the dates of October 24, 1778; October 29, 1778; and October 30, 1778. These are in the Archives de la Marine; photocopies in the Library of Congress.
21. Washington, Papers, 17:181–84.
22. Washington, Papers, 17:476–77, 17:504.
23. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 136.
24. Jared Sparks, The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts with a Life of the Author, Notes, and Illustrations (Boston: American Stationers’ Company, John B. Russell, 1834), 6:97–98.
25. Washington, Papers, 17:653.
26. Burnett, Letters, 1779. James Lovell wrote to Horatio Gates on March 1, 1779, “As to Du Portail’s Plan for the Continent at large the whole Treasury of Spain is essential to it.”
CHAPTER 4
1. US Continental Congress et al., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1904). January 15, 1779. The one enclosing a January 27 letter to him from General Duportail “on the subject of fortifying Boston” is in neither the Papers of the Continental Congress nor Fitzpatrick’s edition of his writings, but a file copy of it is in the Washington Papers at the Library of Congress.
2. Francis Wharton, ed., Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1889), 3:5.
3. George Washington, The Papers of George Washington, ed. Philander D. Chase, Revolutionary War Series (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985), 19:83–85.
4. Washington, Papers, 19:145–46, 19:155.
5. Board of War to President Reed, War Office, February 22, 1779, Pennsylvania Archives, lst ser., 7:201.
6. Elizabeth S. Kite, Brigadier-General Louis Lebègue Duportail, Commandant of Engineers in the Continental Army, 1777–1783 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1933), 137–38.
7. Washington, Papers, 19:655–56, 19:753.
8. Washington, Papers, 19:645–46.
9. George Washington, The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799: Prepared under the Direction of the United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission and Published by Authority of Congress, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1931), 14:399.
10. Washington, Papers, 19:754.
11. Washington, Writings, 15:255.
12. Washington, Writings, 15:446.
13. Nathanael Greene, The Papers of General Nathanael Greene, ed. Richard K. Showman, Margaret Cobb, Robert E. McCarthy, J
oyce Boulind, Noel P. Conlon, and Nathaniel N. Shipton (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, for the Rhode Island Historical Society, 1976), 4:262–63.
14. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 140–43; Paul K. Walker, Engineers of Independence: A Documentary History of the Army Engineers in the American Revolution, 1775–1783 (Washington, DC: Historical Division, Office of Administrative Services, Office of the Chief of Engineers, 1981), 226–28.
15. Washington, Writings, 16:93.
16. Washington, Writings, 16:93, 16:111, 16:139.
17. Manuscript Department, US Military Academy Library, translated by Lt. Col. Donald Dunne; Walker, Engineers of Independence, 229–32. Evidently, there was a map that accompanied this report, but it has not been located.
This draft, written in French and destined for Minister of War Conrad Alexandre Gérard is a major witness to Duportail’s talents as a fortification engineer. In addition to depicting his expertise in this area and his technical skills, he knows how to perfectly analyze tactical possibilities of the terrain and possesses knowledge of the forces involved in the maneuvers that each party could engage.
18. Washington, Writings, 16:356.
19. The full report is in the Washington Papers under the date of September 25, 1779.
20. Samuel Hazard, ed., The Register of Pennsylvania 4, no. 8 (August 22, 1829): 118.
21. After careful analysis, James Brown Scott, De Grasse à Yorktown (Paris: Institut Français de Washington, 1931), concludes that Arnold’s treason was as essential to the success of the revolution as his actions prior to Saratoga.
22. The Battle of Saratoga was won before France made an alliance with America. It could not have been attempted, however, without the ammunition and other military stores secretly sent from France during the winter and spring of 1777. The French foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, never admitted this aid, but the archives show beyond any shadow of a doubt that it was his plan from the beginning to “lay,” as he expressed it, “stepping stones” in the hope it would enable France to bridge the difficulties that prevented an earlier acknowledgment of American independence. It was also part of his plan to test the sincerity and vigor of the American people by sending them the means of resistance in a way that could be repudiated, should events turn out differently from his hopes.
Beaumarchais handled the secret aid. Two shiploads arrived at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, during the spring of 1777, and four more reached the continent during the summer, by way of the West Indies. The British captured one ship with her cargo in the fall. The last one brought the famous Baron von Steuben, with his French aide-de-camp, Peter Stephen Duponceau, then a lad of seventeen, who later became an American citizen and studied law. He became famous in his own right, as well as wealthy. Duportail’s heirs chose him to settle the general’s estate in 1810. Duponceau died in 1844.
For a thorough treatment of the extent of French aid, see Norman Desmarais, America’s First Ally: France in the Revolutionary War (Philadelphia: Casemate, 2019).
23. Washington, Writings, 16:319–20.
24. Howard Lee Landers, The Virginia Campaign and the Blockade and Siege of Yorktown, 1781: Including a Brief Narrative of the French Participation in the Revolution Prior to the Southern Campaign, Senate document 273 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1931), 51.
25. The substance of the conversation on this occasion was taken down by Colonel Alexander Hamilton, who acted as interpreter during the interview. It is given under date of September 16, 1779, in Wharton, Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence, 3:318–22.
26. US Continental Congress et al., Journals, Library of Congress ed. Entered only in the secret journals.
27. John C. Fitzpatrick, George Washington Himself: A Common-Sense Biography Written from His Manuscripts (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1933), shows that after the loss of New York in 1776, Washington’s constant desire was to regain possession of this central stronghold of the Atlantic coast.
28. Jared Sparks, The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts with a Life of the Author, Notes, and Illustrations (Boston: American Stationers’ Company, John B. Russell, 1834), 6:378–79.
29. Washington, Writings, 16:483–84.
30. Washington, Writings, 16:4–6.
31. Brigadier General Louis Le Bèque Du Portail and Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton to George Washington, Great Egg Harbor Landing, New Jersey, October 26, 1779, in Alexander Hamilton, The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett and Jacob E. Cooke (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 1:212.
32. Washington, Writings, 16:28. Published in full in Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Henry Cabot Lodge (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), 9:181.
33. This evidently refers to a note sent in the letter. Washington says that Mr. Henry Laurens, late president of Congress, had had the goodness to send him the note, which he enclosed. Mr. Laurens was from South Carolina; therefore, rumors from Georgia might easily reach him. There is no indication what was in the note.
34. Washington, Writings, 16:93–94.
35. Probably the chief cause of the disaster at Savannah was the treachery of a deserter from the American ranks who went over to the enemy the night of the eighth. He informed the enemy of the assault and that the real attack would be to the right; the onslaught to the left would be merely a feint. See Justin Winsor, ed., Narrative and Critical History of America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884), 6:470.
36. Washington, Writings, 16:110–11.
37. Washington, Writings, 16:247–48.
38. Washington, Writings, 17:56.
39. Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères: Correspondance politique, États-Unis 12, supplement, folio 108; Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 160; Elizabeth S. Kite, “General Washington and the French Engineers Duportail and Companions,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 43, no. 1 (March 1932): 25.
40. Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, folio 109.
41. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 161.
42. Greene, Papers, 5:178; Washington, Writings, 17:271.
43. Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, folio 109; Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 164; Kite, “General Washington,” 29. Full text also in Serge Le Pottier, Duportail, Ou, Le Génie De Washington (Paris: Economica, 2011), 161–63.
CHAPTER 5
1. George Washington, The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799: Prepared under the Direction of the United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission and Published by Authority of Congress, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1931), 17:362–65.
2. Washington, Writings, 17:339–40. Washington included Colonel Radière in his request, but he reminds Congress at the end of the letter that Radière had died of an illness at West Point on October 30, 1779.
3. Samuel Huntington to George Washington, Library of Congress, in Paul H. Smith, Gerard W. Gawalt, Rosemary Fry Plakas, and Eugene R. Sheridan, eds., Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789, vol. 14, October 1, 1779–March 31, 1780 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1987); US Continental Congress, Papers of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (Washington, DC: National Archives, National Archives and Records Service, General Services Administration, 1985), vol.4, no. 147, folio 63; US Continental Congress et al., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1904), 16:33, 16:39–40, 16:43–44, 16:46, 16:48–52, 16:55–56.
4. Washington, Writings, 17:421.
5. Published in full in Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton: Comprising His Correspondence and His Political and Official Writings, Exclusive of the Federalist, Civil and Military (New York: C. S. Francis, 1851), 1:108.
6. US Continental Congress,
Papers, 1:36, folio 65; US Continental Congress et al., Journals, 16:234.
7. Washington, Writings, 18:163.
8. Washington, Writings, 18:164.
9. Jared Sparks, The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts with a Life of the Author, Notes, and Illustrations (Boston: American Stationers’ Company, John B. Russell, 1834), 6:494; Washington, Writings, 18:178–79.
10. US Continental Congress et al., Journals, 16:316; Washington, Writings, 18:178.
11. Elizabeth S. Kite, Brigadier-General Louis Lebègue Duportail, Commandant of Engineers in the Continental Army, 1777–1783 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1933), 171.
12. George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, pt. 2, Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers (Charleston, SC: Nabu Press, 2012), 7:26.
13. See Jared Sparks, ed., Correspondence of the American Revolution: Being Letters of Eminent Men to George Washington, from the Time of His Taking Command of the Army to the End of His Presidency (Boston: Little, Brown, 1853), 450–53.
14. Samuel Huntington to George Washington, in Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères: Correspondance politique, États-Unis 13, supplement, folio 107; Elizabeth S. Kite, “General Washington and the French Engineers Duportail and Companions,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 44, no. 1 (March 1932): 40–41; Smith et al., Letters of Delegates, vol. 15, April 1, 1780–August 31, 1780; US Continental Congress, Papers, item 164, folios 350–53; US Continental Congress et al., Journals, 17:609–10; Paul K. Walker, Engineers of Independence: A Documentary History of the Army Engineers in the American Revolution, 1775–1783 (Washington, DC: Historical Division, Office of Administrative Services, Office of the Chief of Engineers, 1981), 277–79. The last two paragraphs are not given in the translation conserved in the Papers of the Continental Congress. They are made from the French copy sent to Luzerne.