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of Major General Duportail, Brigadier General Armand, and Major de La Colombe, requesting warrants for their bounty lands on January 7, 1841.12

The Committee on Public Lands met on January 19 and filed a report (no. 96), accompanied by a bill that was read and passed to a second reading. The bill directed the issuing of warrants “for the bounty land due on account of the services of Major General Duportail, Brigadier General Armand, and Major De la Colombe.”13

The Committee on Private Land Claims requested on February 12, 1841, that the matter be referred to the Committee on Revolutionary Claims. The Committee on Revolutionary Claims read the bill (no. 55) twice on December 29, 1841, and decided to address it as a Committee of the Whole House the following day.14 The same day, the House of Representatives, Twenty-Seventh Congress, second session, considered the bill (H.R. 55) to issue the bounty land due on account of the services of Major General Duportail, Brigadier General Armand, and Major de La Colombe. The matter apparently was still not settled by January 28, 1842, when the Senate Committee on Public Lands considered it again (S. 150 and S. 213).15

At the time of his unusual death, Duportail disappeared completely from human memory, in the greatest anonymity, in the greatest indifference, without earthly burial, without military honors, without a dedicated monument to his glory in service to France and the United States, and without intervention of his brothers in arms to honor and recall his memory. The media of the time forgot him completely. Only the US Army Corps of Engineers continues to remember him each year on May 11 as the man who created and commanded the prestigious corps and played such an important and decisive role for the liberty of the American people and the birth of the United States of America.

APPENDIX A: CARGOES OF TWO OF BEAUMARCHAIS’S SHIPS SENT TO AMERICA

AMPHITRITE

Sailed from Le Havre for Dominica (Haiti) on December 14, 1776

52 bronze guns (four- and six-pounders), their carriages and fore-carriages, etc.

20,160 four-pound cannonballs

9,000 grenades

24,000 pounds of lead balls

2,900 spades

239 iron shovels

2,900 pickaxe mattocks

500 rock picks

484 pick heads

1,000 mattocks

300 hatchets

1,500 bill hooks

5 miner’s drills

12 iron pincers

10 pistols

4 scoops (surgical instruments)

6 priming wires

2 iron wedges

4 pickaxes (sage-leaved)

15 crescent-shaped axes

5 shears

4 punches

2 rammers

6,132 muskets

255,000 gun flints

5,000 worms (tools for removing debris from the barrels of firearms)

12,648 iron balls for cartridges

345 grapeshot

1,000 pounds of tinder

200 levers

37 bales of tent covers

12,000 pounds of gunpowder

5 bales of blankets

925 tents

clothing for 12,000 men

5,700 stands of arms

MERCURE

Sailed from Nantes on February 4, 1777

11,987 stands of arms

1,000 barrels (50 tons) of gunpowder

11,000 flints

57 bales, 4 cases, and 2 boxes of cloth

48 bales of woolens and linens

9 bales of handkerchiefs

thread, cotton, and printed linens

2 cases of shoes

1 box of buttons and buckles

1 case of sherry, oil, etc.

1 box lawn

1 case of needles and silk neckcloths

caps, stockings, blankets, and other necessary articles for clothing the troops

APPENDIX B: CHIEFS OF THE CORPS OF ENGINEERS, 1774–1893

Note that in this document, Duportail’s name is spelled Lewis instead of Louis.

Name

Rank

Title

Date of Appointed

Where Appointment From

Richard Gridley

Colonel

Chief Engineer

June, 1775

Mass.

Rufus Putnam

“

“

Aug. 5, 1776

“

Lewis du Portail

“

“

July 22, 1777

France

Lewis du Portail

Brig. Gen.

“

Nov. 17, 1777

“

Lewis du Portail

Maj. Gen.

“

Nov. 16, 1781

“

Stephen Rochefontaine

Lt.-Col.

Comdr. Corps of Artillerists and Engineers

Feb. 26, 1795

——

Henry Burbeck

“

Comdr. 1st Regt. Corps Artillerists and Engineers

May 7, 1798

Mass.

Jonathan Williams

“

Principal Engineer

July 8, 1802

Penn.

Jonathan Williams

“

Chief Engineer

April 19, 1805

“

Jonathan Williams

Colonel

“

Feb. 23, 1808

“

Joseph G. Swift

“

“

July 31, 1812

Mass.

Walker K. Armistead

“

“

Nov. 12, 1818

Va.

Alexander Macomb

“

“

June 1, 1821

New York

Charles Gratiot

“

“

May 28, 1828

Mo. Ter.

Joseph G. Totten

“

“

Dec. 7, 1838

Conn.

J. J. Abert

“

Chief Top. Engineer

July 7, 1838

D.C.

Stephen H. Long

“

“

Sept. 9, 1861

New Hamp.

Joseph G. Totten

Brig. Gen.

Chief Engineer

Mar. 3, 1863

Conn.

Richard Delafield

“

“

April 22, 1864

New York

Richard Delafield

“

Chief of Engineers

July 13, 1866

“

Andrew A. Humphreys

“

“

Aug. 8, 1866

Penn.

Horatio G. Wright

“

“

June 30, 1879

Conn.

John Newton

“

“

Mar. 6, 1884

Va.

James C. Duane

“

“

Oct. 11, 1886

New York

Thomas L. Casey

“

“

July 6, 1888

R.I.

Source: Henry L. Abbot, “The Corps of Engineers,” Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States 15, no. 68 (March 1894): 413–27.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. Henri Doniol, Histoire de la participation de la France à l’établissement des États-Unis d’Amérique. Correspondance diplomatique et documents (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1886–1892), 1:402–19; Elizabeth Sarah Kite, Brigadier-General Louis Lebègue Duportail, Commandant of Engineers in the Continental Army, 1777–1783 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1933), 57–61.

2. Letter from London to Count de Vergennes, April 26, 1776, in Doniol, Histoire, 1:413–14. A letter from Arthur Lee dated June 21, 1776, stated that the British Army in America consisted of 40,000 men and a fleet of 100 ships, that they were well supplied with artillery and stores, and that they had good officers and engineers. He also emphasized the difficulty of resisting such forces without assistance from France, with officers, engineers, and large ships of war. Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, For the Good of Mankind: Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais Political Correspondence Relative to the American Revolution, comp., ed., and trans. Antoinette Shewmake (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987), 136; Silas Deane, The Deane Papers . . . 1774–[1790], ed. Charles Isham (New York: Printed for the Society, 1887–1890), 3:297; Record Group 76, Records Relating to French Spoliation Claims, 1791–1821.

3. Deane, Deane Papers, 1:119.

4. Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Correspondance [de] Beaumarchais, ed. Brian N. Morton and Donald C. Spinelli (Paris: A.-G. Nizet, 1969– ), 2:241–44; Beaumarchais, Good of Mankind, 157; Etienne Dennery, ed., Beaumarchais (Catalog of the 1966 Exposition) (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1966), MS 327; H.R. Res. 220, 20th Cong., 1st Sess. (April 1828), 24–25; Francis Wharton, ed., Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office,