Independence
Colonel John J. Abert
Although
the public knew little about the work of the Corps of Topographical Engineers
during war, the corps contributed significantly to the victory of
The War
Department made the “Bureau” a separate office directly responsible to the
Secretary of War. To overcome its limited officer strength; authorization was
given to the bureau to continue the practice of hiring civilian contractors for
military surveys and reconnaissance.
The Bureau
Colonel...”bureau Chief”
John J. Abert
Lieutenant Colonel
James Kearney
Majors
Hartman
Bache...Stephen H. Long... James D. Graham...William Turnbull
Captains
Augustus
Canfield...Joseph E. Johnston...John McClellan... Thomas J. Cram...Thomas J.
Lee...Howard Stansbury...
First Lieutenants
Jacob E.
Blake...Charles N. Hagner...James H. Simpson... William H. Emory...Andrew A.
Humphreys...Lorenzo Sitgreaves... John C. Fremont...John N.
Second Lieutenants
James W.
Abert...William R. Palmer...William F. Smith... Francis T. Bryan...William G.
Peck...George Thom... George H. Derby...John Pope...Joseph D. Webster...
William B. Franklin...William F. Raynolds...Amiel W. Whipple... Edmund L. F.
Hardcastle...Martin L. Smith...Thomas J. Woods... George G. Meade
John J.
Abert’s father John Abert was born in
From
here you can watch the relationships between the French Chouteaus, the
Bonneville family, fremont and Abert Jr. as they develop in the field of
Military reconnaissance. You can’t help but get the feeling that somehow young
Joseph got himself “Hooked-up” Major Abert and his operations!
The Topographical
Bureau
When Secretary of War… Peter B. Porter
abolished the Board of Engineers for Internal Improvements, he elevated the
Topographical Bureau to independent status within the War Department and
transferred to it the responsibility previously discharged by the board. The
Topographical Bureau then became the conduit for channeling engineering
assistance to promising improvement projects.
To a
large extent, this change represented a victory for Colonel Abert and the
topographers. Through the 1820s, their prestige had grown without redounding to
the benefit of the bureau. In 1830, as in 1820, it was still the least
important unit of the Engineer Department. When Roberdeau died, the bureau was
still an instrument depot and repository for maps, charts, and reports.
Roberdeau had dutifully made available information for reference, inventoried
holdings, ordered and maintained instruments, and purchased map cases and other
containers. All in all, he was little more than a supply clerk. In directing
the activities of the Topogs, the Chief Engineer acted without Roberdeau’s
advice or consent.
The
Topogs’ future looked bleak at the start of 1829, portending only more
dependence on the Engineer Department. Then Roberdeau died. But when Abert took
charge, he immediately began a campaign to increase his authority and break
free of Engineer control. He had a twofold goal: a bigger, more important
bureau independent of the Engineer Department and a separate Corps of Topographical
Engineers, free of the Corps of Engineers. As justification for these changes,
Abert claimed that the duties of both kinds of engineers-topographers and
fortifications engineers-were so important, so extensive, and so distinct that
the public interest and the welfare of both corps warranted the division. The
Topographical Bureau, Abert contended, should manage its own affairs and report
directly to the War Department. The Chief Engineer, Colonel Charles Gratiot,
disagreed. He claimed that surveys and construction were inseparable. Secretary
Porter sided with Gratiot. Gratiot did concede to Abert the position of
military assistant for topographical matters. He granted Abert authority to
issue orders and instructions to Topogs but withheld execution by keeping to
himself all Engineer Department correspondence, including that of the Topogs.
Without such access, Abert did not even know their stations and duties and was
hardly in a position to issue orders. So Gratiot’s concession meant nothing
until Abert was appointed to the Board of Engineers for Internal Improvements
in June 1830 as coordinator of its operations. Abert continued to lobby for an
expanded role, and Porter’s successors at the War Department seemed more
willing to listen.
In 1830
Secretary of War…John H. Eaton
assured Abert that the topographers would take over all civil works, including
road construction as well as rivers and harbors improvements. A year later,
Eaton’s replacement, Lewis Cass, indicated his support for separating the
duties of the Engineers and topographers, although he was uncertain whether the
Topogs had enough people to do all of the nonmilitary engineering work of the
Army.
Finally,
in 1831, with Bernard’s departure and the closing of the Board of Engineers for
Internal Improvements, Abert won independence for the bureau. Acting Secretary
of War Philip G. Randolph signed the order that made the bureau a separate
office of the War Department. The order instructed Abert to report directly to
the Secretary of War, authorized him to handle correspondence and reports from
topographers and other Army officers on topographical duty, and required him to
comply with requests from the Chief Engineer for surveys for fortifications.
The
bureau’s duties, as spelled out in July 1831, were both military and civil. It
was charged with reconnaissance and surveys for military purposes and for
internal improvements. It kept its traditional assignment as caretaker for
books, instruments, maps, and charts. It also collected and preserved topographical
and geographical drawings and memoirs pertaining to its duties. Now the
Topographical Bureau stood on an equal footing with the Engineer Department and
other elements of the Army staff. As manager of the program left by the Board
of Engineers for Internal Improvements, Abert employed 12 civil engineers and
30 line officers on surveys, as well as his own 10 Topogs and a few officers of
the Corps of Engineers. In this job, Abert's bureau, according to historian
Forest Hill, “functioned in many ways as a department of internal
improvements."
The
bureau also became involved in the construction of rivers and harbors projects
during the 1830s. Until 1836 the War Department assigned all rivers and harbors
construction that had been authorized by Congress to the Corps of Engineers. In
1836, however, the department gave the Topographical Bureau several Lake
Champlain and
Obviously,
ten Topographical Engineers were inadequate for the size of the mission.
Regardless of the ability and energy of his own people, Abert needed more
professional help. His two sources of assistance were officers from other
branches of the Army and civilian engineers. Through the 1830s he employed 10
to 15 civilians (which included Joseph R. Walker, Thomas Fitzpatrick and Kit
Carson) and 20 to 30 line officers each year. He kept civilians and officers on
separate assignments to avoid friction between the groups.
With a
perennial shortage of trained personnel, Abert needed a system of priorities on
which to base allocations. He divided all surveys into three classes. Most
important were those ordered by law, for which Congress usually provided a
specific appropriation?
Then
came surveys ordered by resolutions of Congress, which were funded from annual
appropriations for surveys. Surveys of national consequence or of a highly significant
commercial character applied for by states or incorporated companies came last.
The lowest category also included the loan of topographical officers to private
enterprises, especially railroads. Abert honored such requests only when all
surveys in the first two categories were already provided for. His most
important customer was plainly Congress.
The
bureau under Abert always sought ways to increase its surveying personnel and
expand into new fields of work. In 1833 he asked Congress for money for geological
investigations. Abert argued that national encouragement of a regular system of
scientific investigation would stimulate commerce and science.
Congress
approved his proposal in 1834 and allotted $5,000 for an expedition. Abert
hired a peripatetic English geologist, George W. Featherstonehaugh, to examine
mineral deposits in
There
were other new features to the work under Abert As early as 1834; the bureau
became involved in cooperative ventures with localities. In
Abert
Abert
also felt a responsibility to disseminate as widely as possible the data
accumulated at the Topographical Bureau. He considered the bureau “the depository
of a great fund of geographical and topographical matter,” whether on surveys
of dangerous coastal bars and shoals or rivers and harbors. When possible, he
honored all requests for information from publishers of maps and charts. Data
included “vast numbers of approximate determinations of latitudes and
longitudes” taken from various reports and charts. Abert published this
information, compiled for about 500 different places of observation, in the
form of a 17-page table in his 1843 report as a “Catalogue of Geographical
Positions determined from astronomical observations by officers of the corps of
topographical engineers, and under the orders of the bureau of the corps.”
The Seminole War
With so
many plans for the future and his officers thoroughly absorbed in a variety of
civil projects, Abert was unprepared to meet the cartographic needs of the Army
during the Second Seminole War. The first war, Andrew Jackson’s campaign
against the Seminoles in 1818, had employed only one of the Army’s ten topographers,
Captain Hugh Young. The second war placed much greater demands on the Topogs.
By the end of 1836, eight of the ten topographers were in the field with
various forces, performing reconnaissance, collecting topographical
information, and drawing maps, although only two stayed with troops very long.
Within
a few months, the Topogs began to catch up with the demand for maps. In 1837
the Topographical Bureau published a Map of the Seat of War in
Establishment of the Corps
of Topographical Engineers
By the
time of the Second Seminole War, lobbying for increased manpower and a separate
corps for the topographers had gone on for at least ten years. But the war
itself gave a greater boost to efforts to improve the status of the
topographers and arguments by successive secretaries of war or petitions from
Abert and his colleagues. The war and the expansion of the western military
frontier made plain the need for change. The Army Reorganization Act of 1838
created the Corps of Topographical Engineers, consisting of 36 officers. In
addition to 1 colonel, the corps had a lieutenant colonel, 4 majors, 10
captains, and 20 lieutenants. “This law,” said Abert, who was promoted to
colonel in 1838 and commanded the corps from its inception until September
1861, “may be considered . . . as a new creation of the corps, giving to it the
requisite rank and form, and numbers.” Abert now had an independent corps, free
of the Corps of Engineers, to go with the bureau that had been separate from
the Engineer Department since 1831.
By
expanding the number of topographers and prohibiting their employment of
civilian engineers, the act ended the Topogs’ continued dependence on private
civil engineers. During much of the 1830s, Abert had had to supplement his
force of ten with officers detailed from other branches of the Army and with a
number of civil engineers. For instance, in 1835, of the 49 men involved in
surveying activities, 13 were civil engineers and 26 were from the line of the
Army. Abert always had opposed employment of outside civil engineers, many of
whom he thought incompetent, or of Engineer officers, who were not very
interested in surveying work. Secretary
of War…Joel R. Poinsett agreed with
him. By this time, the topographical officers had established their reputation
in rivers and harbors work. In fact, that renown helped justify the creation of
a separate corps. However, just when the topographers achieved the status they
had so long pursued, an economic recession and growing disenchantment with the
cost of internal improvements moved Congress to cut drastically the level of
federal involvement. The same law that created the corps repealed the General
Survey Act. It also limited the use of Army engineers on behalf of private
interests to times when such employment did not interfere with their official
duties.
That
the Corps of Topographical Engineers
was created just as its work on rivers and harbors surveys declined was ironic.
There were several reasons for the repeal of the General Survey Act: increasing
competition from railroads; the growth of rivalries between sections, states,
and cities; conflict between Congress and the President; the effects of the
1837 financial panic; continued constitutional controversy; and, finally,
diminishing enthusiasm among even the topographical officers due to the lack of
any sort of national program or planning. The surveying duties of the Topogs
focused increasingly on western exploration, more traditional military
missions, and specific assignments authorized by Congress.
Indeed,
surveying activity actually increased after 1838, although it was less directly
concerned with internal improvements. Moreover, the topographers continued to
be involved in critical construction projects relating to navigation around the
country.
Poinsett
While
Congress imposed limitations on the efforts of the topographers, Secretary of
War Poinsett rationalized what remained in an order of 1 August 1838. With the
encouragement of the leadership of the Corps of Engineers, who thought their
Corps no place for civil works, Poinsett transferred to the Topogs all civil
engineering works directed by the United States,” whether in progress or being
considered. At the same time, he moved all plans and drawings of fortifications
to the Corps of Engineers. For the next 14 years, the topographers handled all
new internal improvement works, while the Corps of Engineers was responsible
for fortifications.