US ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEEERS ESTABLISHED (2nd Time) – March 16, 1802

USACE Logo

On March 16, 1802, President Thomas Jefferson authorized the establishment of a military corps of engineers, which became the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers we know today. This was the second time that this corps was established.

The first idea for the army to have organized engineers took place on June 16, 1775, when the Continental Congress officially organized the army specifying that it contain a chief engineer to oversee the construction of fortifications and defenses and other such military tasks. This date might be considered the Corps’ inception.

Col. Richard Gridley, a Boston native, became Gen. George Washington’s first chief engineer. Gridley was an experienced military engineer who had done such work during the French and Indian Wars, from the capture of Louisburg (1745) to the fall of Quebec (1759). If that 1775 date seems familiar, that is because Gridley’s first mission as chief engineer was to lay out the defenses for the fortifications on Breed’s Hill where the unruly colonial rebels defied British might in the next day’s Battle of Bunker Hill.

In March of 1779, the Continental Congress authorized then Chief Engineer Brig. Gen. Louis Duportail to separate the engineers from the army at large into a corps of their own. This was the first time. By this time, Congress had recruited quite a number of military engineers from France, who were supplemented by three companies of sappers and miners formed from American troops in 1778.

US 9th Army crossing Rhine River on USACE pontoon bridge, 1945

The Corps of Engineers was mustered out of service at the end of the Revolution, along with most of the rest of the army. A flutter of war murmurings in 1794 resulted in a short-lived Corps of Artillerists and Engineers for the development of seacoast fortifications. A single regiment of engineers remained in active duty through peacetime.

Support for the 1802 legislation that ultimately established the Corps came from many directions.  During the American Revolution, officers and statesmen both recognized the need for officers skilled in technical, scientific, and mathematical trades. During the war, some effort was made to train the companies of sappers and miners in field works, but it was woefully insufficient, prompting wide support for a formal academy where officers could train for such work.  The 1802 legislation called not only for the permanent establishment of a corps of engineers, but also for the creation of an academy where soldiers could have formal education in the skills and techniques required in engineering.  West Point was chosen as that academy. Jefferson was a staunch promoter of this whole project, anticipating that such soldiers would be valuable in service to the nation during peacetime as well as during war.

As a result, today’s U. S. Army Corps of Engineers is engaged in and coordinates with both foreign and domestic war efforts, homeland security and disaster preparedness, infrastructure support (bridges, dams, and other civil and military installations), water resource management of flood zones and navigable waterways, and environmental restoration and stewardship. It is the world's largest public engineering, design and construction management agency.

Erection of Civil War signal tower, Fort Pocahontas, James River, VA

The Corps, over the past 210 years, has included and excluded various other duties, as branches have developed, diminished, or merged with other services. Among these was a Corps of Topographical Engineers which branched off in 1838, but reunited with the USACE in 1863. During the 19^th Century, the USACE coordinated with the Navy to manage the Lighthouse Districts. (My great-grandfather and some of his brothers and nephews served in the Lighthouse Service in Maine.) Lighthouses are now managed by the U. S. Coast Guard. And in the first half of the 19^th Century, Congress established a survey service for the Great Lakes (the Lake Survey), which fell under the umbrella of the Corps of Engineers.

In my Civil War reenacting portrayal of a military engineer, I have the opportunity to teach school children about this part of the army, which was quite small during the Civil War. My nutshell emphasis to them is that although the job of the rest of the army was to destroy things, the job of the engineers was to build things. I find it fascinating myself at the 19^th Century application of mathematics and physics to solve problems in the field, under conditions usually remote from the ideal and often with limited resources. These solutions were often very simple, and often ingenious. This corps deserves more recognition than it gets.

SOURCES:

U. S. Army Corps of Engineers http://www.usace.army.mil/About/History/HistoricalVignettes/HolidaysObservances/015EstablishmentofUSACE.aspx

Wikipedia: US Army Corps of Engineers  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Corps_of_Engineers

PHOTOS:

Logo: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers http://www.nau.usace.army.mil/

Pontoon bridge: U.S. Army Corp of Engineers Digital Visual Library http://images.usace.army.mil/Main.html

Signal tower: at Fort Pocahontas on the James River, Charles City County, VA, May 2002, by Sally M. Chetwynd

NATIVE AMERICAN VICE PRESIDENT INAUGURATED – March 4, 1929

Charles Curtis (1860-1939)

 On March 4, 1929, a Native American was inaugurated as Vice President of the United States. Charles Curtis served one term with President Herbert Hoover.

Curtis was born on January 25, 1860, in North Topeka, in what was then the Kansas Territory. His mother was three-quarters Native American, of ethnic Kaw, Osage, and Pottawatomie ancestry. His great-great-grandfather, White Plume of the Kaw nation, had assisted the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804. From the Kaw, we get the name “Kansas.” Curtis spoke French and Kaw before he learned English.

When he was five years old, Curtis’ mother died, and his father left him with his mother’s parents on the Kaw Reservation in Morris County, Kansas.  He spent three years with his maternal grandparents, then went to live with his paternal grandparents in Topeka. Both sets of grandparents urged him to obtain a formal education, lest he become nothing more than another suppressed Indian eking out a hardscrabble existence on an underfunded reservation.

His childhood and early adult life were varied. These were the days, still, of “wild” Indian raids and frontier rivalries, both between whites and Indians and between Indian tribes. He learned to ride bareback, to use the bow and arrow with deadly accuracy (shooting at coins to entertain white visitors), and other activities typical to Plains Indian life.

By ten, he was an accomplished horseman and was working in a livery stable.  By sixteen, he raced horses on Kansas racetracks, and at the time was considered the best jockey of all time.  Still in his teens, he became a reporter for the North Topeka Times. While driving a hack (horse-drawn taxi). he studied law, and was admitted to the bar when he was twenty-one. He began his legal practice with a fellow attorney.

He served two terms in the elected position of Shawnee County Prosecuting Attorney.  At age 32, he ran for the US House of Representatives on the Republican ticket, and served seven terms.  In 1907, he was elected to the US Senate, where he served 3 terms with distinction.  He was the first Republican to become Floor Leader of the US Senate, and at one point was a presidential hopeful.

In the midst of this busy life, he found time to court and marry Anna Elizabeth Baird, with whom he had two daughters and a son.  Anna died in 1924. Curtis’ half-sister Theresa Permelia Curtis Gann, fondly known as Dolly, also made her home with Charles and Anna’s family.

Wah-Shun-Gah, Kaw chief, c.1900

Curtis’ political interests and causes were broad and civic-minded.  Among many other issues, Curtis supported the Woman Suffrage Amendment (Kansas women received the vote in 1912); the Soldier’s Adjusted Compensation Bill (for WWI veterans); the Anti Child Labor Amendment; anti-narcotic legislation; bills which protected the rights of Native American women and which made Native Americans citizens of the US; parts of the Tariff Act to protect farm interests, plans to benefit wheat growers whose crops failed, and the Hepburn railroad bill which eliminated discrimination against farmers; Farm Loan Bonds which offered low-interest loans to farmers; and the consolidation of the US ports of entry to streamline the collection of customs. He held more Senate Committee assignments than any previous Senator.

Senator William Borah (R-Idaho) described his contemporary, Curtis, as “a great reconciler, a walking political encyclopedia, and one of the best poker players in America.”  The American Mercury described him as “the greatest whisperer in Congress.” This was typical of Curtis, not to be loud and obstreperous but to cajole and convince, to attract more bees with honey than vinegar.

Curtis became Herbert Hoover’s running mate in Hoover’s 1928 bid for the White House, which the team won in a landslide. Unfortunately, Curtis’ dynamic dedication in the US Congress did not carry him far as Vice President. Like most vice presidents, he was generally ignored, never consulted, and often lampooned. The Republican ticket had been a “marriage of convenience,” and there was no love lost between the two candidates.  Hoover’s deliberate alienation of Curtis was not entirely unfounded: the two had a history of political disagreements. Curtis found himself, typically, shelved.

Since Curtis was a widower upon his election to the vice-presidency, he asked his half-sister Dolly to come live at his Washington residence. She served as hostess for the social events required of the Vice President.

Curtis made the most of his position as vice president.  He presided over the Senate on a regular basis. He displayed artifacts from his Kaw, Osage, and Pottawatomie culture in his offices, and was rightfully proud to be the first Native American to reach such high office.

After five decades of public service, Curtis’ youthful vigor faded, his innovation dimmed, his resiliency stiffened. He was 69 on Inauguration Day. During his term with Hoover, the Washington press of long duration noted that he wasn’t the man he had been. He had hardened and become shrill and querulous, demanding and pompous. His behavior during the “Bonus March” can only be attributed to this ossified and eroded personality, not to the political dynamo he had been for the bulk of his career.

A group of World War I veterans converged on Washington in July 1932, calling themselves the “Bonus March,” seeking to embarrass Washington into issuing them their promised bonuses for service. When the four hundred arrived at the White House, Curtis made a panicky request of the president, asking him to call out the army to arrest them as they paraded in single-file around the building. When Hoover didn’t comply, Curtis contacted the Marines directly, who sent out two companies in trench helmets, riding on the city trolleys to the White House. The story went public, and the press heaped derision on Curtis’ head. He became a national laughingstock.

Hoover and Curtis served only one presidential term. With the inauguration of the Great Depression, the Hoover administration was doomed. The disaster of the bonus march was just one more log on its funeral pyre.

When he left public service at the termination of the Hoover administration, Curtis decided to remain in Washington, DC, where he renewed his legal career.  He died three years later, at age 76, on February 8, 1936, from a heart attack.

Despite the setbacks, disappointments, and frustrations of the last leg of his public service career, his contributions over the course of fifty years cannot be diminished. Charles Curtis was all American, in every sense of the word.

SOURCES

Charles Curtis: Native-American Indian Vice-President  http://www.vpcharlescurtis.net/

Wikipedia: Charles Curtis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Curtis

United States Senate: Charles Curtis, 31^st Vice President (1929-1933) http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/VP_Charles_Curtis.htm

Dorman, Michael, The Second Man: The Changing Role of the Vice Presidency, New York: Delacorte Press, 1968.

Harwood, Michael, In the Shadow of Presidents, Philadelphia, New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1966.

PHOTOS

Charles Curtis:  photo from Library of Congress, via Biographical Directory of the United States Congress: Charles Curtis (1860-1936) http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=c001008

Wah-Shun-Gah, Kaw Chief, c. 1900: photo from Chapman, Berlin B., “Charles Curtis and the Kaw Reservation,” Kansas Historical Quarterly, Topeka, KS: Kansas Historical Society, November 1947  http://www.kshs.org/p/kansas-historical-quarterly-charles-curtis-and-the-kaw-reservation/13069

ANOTHER DELAY

I'm back again, finally, after a promise of more regular posts. I actually have something of an excuse this time, though, which might qualify as valid. (If it doesn't, well, that's too bad. It's the only one I have.) I was hired to do five months of at-home work, but I had to go for ten days for training in the Washington, DC, area, with a team of seventeen others. We are doing real property asset inventory for the US Coast Guard. In effect, if we do our job and get all of the real property assets inventoried correctly on each USCG site, station, or base, then these assets can be financially assessed accurately. Then if a tornado wiped out a site entirely, these assessment records would allow for adequate budgeting for replacement of all of the facilities on the site. (If the financial office doesn't know that the base built a new mess hall last year, it's not going to pay to replace it.)

Training days were twelve hours long, and where the team was stationed, in guest housing on a US Coast Guard base, we had no access to the internet except in one of the rooms through a wi-fi hot-spot on one guy's cell phone, onto which those who had brought their laptops would take turns glomming onto to check home emails and such business. Then I spent the bulk of last week getting settled again at home.

The subject of today's blog post drew my interest, since we hear very little about Native Americans in prominent political positions. Immediately to follow is a post about Charles Curtis, one such Native American.