410 Nortu Carorina Troops, 1861~’65.

tion, the immediate need of the hour, and the availability of
officers to meet the demand.

It may be said that the great wants of the navy and the
army of the Confederate States were of an opposite charac-
ter. The navy had a fine corps of brave and skilled officers,
unexcelled in the world, but they were almost without ships;
or ports, in the absence of ships. The army had control of
many natural positions of defence, but had very few en-
gineers to improve them, and these were hampered by the
lack of skilled artisans and labor to construct; of ordnance
for works of sufficient strength to meet military require-
ments; and of troops to man the same.

It was more difficult to learn the delicate and responsible
duties than in any other arm of the service. An engineer
officer might be called upon to lay off earth works, build a
bridge, repair roads for artillery, map the territory, construct
magazines, or casemates, scoop out a mine, put together a
pontoon, make and set a torpedo. All these were done, in
the department of North Carolina, and also the obstruction
of harbors and rivers, and the building of torpedo-boats, and
laying of electric, then called “galvanic” sub-terra shells.

The history of this service throughout the war for South-
ern Independence will probably never be written. It cannot
be readily followed like the events in the life of a regiment or
a brigade, nor does it present the dramatic scenes of the
charge of the infantry, or the onset of the cavalry. Indeed,
so little of the pomp of war attends the quiet and steady per-
formance of the indispensable work of the engineers, that
few seem to be aware of their existence; few apparently know
the name of the distinguished General at the head of that
service, who was a native of North Carolina (Major-General
J. F. Gilmer), and never in any painting or sculpture, is
there any emblematic representation like that of the artillery,
cavalry, infantry and navy, to remind the observer that the
military art was in the ranks with Southern valor. And this
in a State upon whose soil was constructed the greatest for-
tress in the Southern Confederacy, the Malakoff of America.

But there was one man, who had himself been the chief
engineer of Scott, the commanding general of the Mexican

Corps oF ENGINEERS. 411

war, who was deeply concerned in developing that arm of the
service, and the writer need not remind you that he was Rob-
ert E. Lee. Nor was General Jackson behind him in appre-
ciation; he who was the best topographical engineer of the
Army of the Valley, unless we except his alter ego in this re-
spect, Major Jed. Hotchkiss, his faithful engineer.

The first services were performed by the officers resigning
from the old army, and military assistant engineers, who only
had rank by courtesy. The Engineer Corps contained of-
ficers who served on the staff of generals for work of emer-
gency in the field, directly with the troops, and others who
were employed, with the respective details under their com-
mand in topographical work, or fortification, ete., and re
ported for orders, maintenance and equipment to the En-
gineer Bureau of the War Department, at Richmond.

Topographical work was indispensable, for no accurate
map existed, except of such outlines as the Coast Survey had
made on the exterior of the bay and ocean coasts. It is well
known that the enemy possessed much better maps of the
peninsula between the Chesapeake and the James at the time
of the Seven Days Battles, than the Confederate authorities,
a fact which had its influence in the failure to reap the results
of victory gained at such bloody cost. No one now doubts
that there should have been no Malvern Hill.

Military maps must be absolutely accurate, in all essential
features. The roads must show exact length and direction,
and all possible branches and by-ways—cleared and wooded
land separately, and location of every house, fence, ford, hill
and valley; the depth of rivers, nature of swamps, character
of soil, everything, in fact, necessary to form a correct judg-
ment of the problem of moving troops, and the use of natural
advantages for protecting the men and giving greatest effect
to artillery or other arms.

So important was such information in General Lee’s opin-
ion, that after the battle of Chancellorsville had occurred and
Hooker had been driven across the Rappahannock, by an
army greatly inferior in numbers, the Confederate com-
mander, as if foreseeing that Spottsylvania, the North Anna,
ete., were again to be some day the battle ground, asked of