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,
