ENGINEER DEPARTMENT. The report of the Chief of Engineers gives a detailed account of the operations of the Engineer Department, and of the means required to execute the duties devolved upon it. The officers of the Corps of Engineers, aided by details from other arms of the service and a number of civil engineers, have been engaged upon the permanent national defenses, survey of the lakes, river and harbor improvements, explorations and surveys, command and instruction of engineer troops, and in charge of public buildings, grounds, and works in the District of Columbia. Twenty-two officers of the corps have been doing duty in the several military divisions, departments, and districts, in the light-house establishment, and as instructors at the Military Academy. Work has been continued on the permanent defenses to the extent permitted by the small balances remaining of old appropriations. These have been exhausted for the most part during the year, and the works have consequently been closed up. Experiments and trials have been made with iron and other materials with a view to their application in the defenses, and trial has been made of a descending gun carriage for use in barbette batteries. Methods of modifying and improving our existing defenses have been determined on, the introduction of important auxiliary elements of defense is proposed, and Congress will be called upon to make appropriations, moderate in amount compared to the importance of the object, for the purpose of applying these changes, as soon as practicable, to the defensive works of several of our large seaport cities. The battalion of engineers maintains its efficiency in drill and discipline, and in the duties of its special arm. The engineer depots, for the collection and storage of pontoon trains and other engineer equipments, have been well advanced toward completion. The river and harbor works have progressed as rapidly as the means appropriated for their execution allowed. The appropriation in April last of $2,000,000 for these works was distributed in accordance with the law so as best to subserve the interests of commerce. The information respecting these improvements, which the Secretary of War is required by the several acts upon the subject to submit to Congress, will be found in the accompanying report of the Chief of Engineers. The survey of northern and northwestern lakes has progressed commensurately with the amounts appropriated for conducting it. The Lake Superior survey is drawing to completion. It has developed many new harbors of refuge, and made known dangers to navigation highly important to the commercial interests of the States dependent upon this water-line of communication for the transportation of cereals and ores. Reconnoissances and geographical and geological explorations and surveys have been continued during the year in the territory west of the Mississippi River, and the information thus obtained is supplied to the troops occupying that section of the country. The survey of the Colorado of the West has not, for special reasons, been resumed. Collateral surveys now in progress may furnish evidence of the necessity of the survey of the upper portions of the river, and of the improvement of the lower portion as a line of military supply and of travel and transportation from the mines of Southern Nevada. The geological survey just completed from the Sierra Nevada to the Rocky Mountains is fruitful in valuable results, especially in relation to the mining regions and to the extent of the coal formation. It also furnishes other scientific data of great interest. ORDNANCE DEPARTMENT. The fiscal affairs of the Ordnance Department during the year ending June 30, 1869, were as follows: Amount available from all sources Turned into surplus fund ..... In Treasury, not credited to appropriations...... In depositories, to credit of disbursing officers, June 30, 1869 ... In Treasury on June 30, 1869.. $18, 283, 812 57 2,787, 324 97 1, 000, 000 00 701, 751 91 425, 529 25 13, 369, 206 44 The expenditures of the department during the year included over $500,000 for war claims, and about $32,000 for cartridges made for the Navy Department and not yet paid for. Liberty Arsenal, Missouri, has been sold during the year under authority of the act of July 25, 1868, and realized the sum of $8,012 50. The St. Louis Arsenal will be sold under the same act as soon as it can be spared, but certain buildings thereat should be reserved from sale and devoted to general army purposes. The sale of the Harper's Ferry Armory property will take place on November 30, 1869. Rome Arsenal, New York, Champlain Arsenal, Vermont, Mount Vernon Arsenal, Alabama, Appalachicola Arsenal, Florida, and North Carolina Arsenal, North Carolina, are recommended to be sold. It is advisable that this should be done, and that the captured lands in Shreveport, Louisiana, and Marshall and Jefferson, Texas, and in Marion and Davis Counties, Texas, should be similarly disposed of. A principal arsenal of construction and deposit and a powder depot are recommended to be established on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and in the valley of the Mississippi. The sale of some of the present eastern arsenals is suggested as a means to raise funds wherewith to establish the principal arsenal for the Atlantic coast. Rock Island is the point for the principal arsenal for the valley of the Mississippi. Powder depots should be established on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, to be paid for out of the unexpended balance of the appropriations for the purchase of gunpowder and lead. Jefferson Barracks reservation answers for the depot for the Mississippi Valley. Some more buildings are required at this latter place and are recommended to be paid for out of the proceeds of the sale of the St. Louis Arsenal. The enlisted force of the department has been reduced from fifteen hundred to seven hundred and fifty. There are sixty-one officers and fourteen ordnance storekeepers in the department, and of these officers, six are on detached duty. The operations at Springfield Armory have been confined to the preparation of machinery and tools for converting the Springfield rifled muskets into breech-loaders upon the plan recommended by the ordnance board of 1868; to the conversion of a small number under the orders of the Secretary of War for fifty thousand; and to cleaning Enfield muskets for sale. The cavalry have been supplied with Spencer carbines, and with Sharp's carbines, altered to use the musket metallic ammunition. The infantry, heavy artillery, and engineers have been armed with the Springfield breech-loading rifled musket. All these arms have given great satisfaction. SIGNAL SERVICE. Instruction has continued in the several military departments during the year, the purpose being to so diffuse a knowledge of the service and distribute apparatus that every officer may have such information of the duty as may suffice, in case of emergency, to save life in or prevent disaster to his command. The signal service has been brought into active use in operations against Indians on the plains. The courses at the military and naval academies have been pursued as in the preceding year. The drill embracing that of the field electric telegraph and flag stations in the field, at West Point, before the board of visitors, received their commendation, and all the duties of sending messages by signals or by telegraph were performed by the cadets. Fort Whipple has been maintained as a post of practice, instruction, and experiment in the duties of the signal service. The force maintained constitutes a nucleus of organization for any emergency. The organization and development of the field telegraph has received especial attention and continued tests have been made with portable lines, such as are used with trains in the field. The field telegraph trains are organized in a military form, which requires all movements to be executed at the word of command. An object has been to provide a train so equipped and organized as to enable four portable lines carried in it to be erected simultaneously, at about the rate of three miles an hour. FREEDMEN'S BUREAU. The operations of this bureau have been closed, except the educational and bounty divisions, and two hospitals for freedmen. The num ber of officers, agents, and clerks has been reduced from nine hundred and one to one hundred and fifty-eight. No further reduction is practicable so long as the present operations shall continue. The bureau has had under its care, up to June 30, 1869, 584,178 persons. All the hospitals but two have now been closed or transferred to the civil authorities, and one of the remaining two is about being closed. There will then remain but one, which is located in the District of Columbia, and cannot be dispensed with at present. The general average during the whole period of the existence of the bureau shows that about one in two hundred, or one-half of one per cent. of the freed people have been supported by the government. The freedmen were advised to make written contracts with their employers, and have the same explained and approved by a bureau officer. In a single State more than fifty thousand such contracts were made. The labor of the freedmen has produced nearly all the food consumed in the South, besides large amounts of rice, sugar, and tobacco for exportation, and about two million bales of cotton per year, on which were paid into the United States Treasury, during the years 1866 and 1867, taxes amounting to more than forty millions of dollars. Much disappointment and ill-feeling was caused by the failure of the original plan to lease or sell the abandoned lands in small tracts to refugees and freedmen. Information has been published respecting lands under the homestead act of June 21, 1866, and some aid given to those who desired to enter them. Attention is beginning to turn in that direc tion, and about four thousand families have already made entries and obtained homes of their own. In a few instances freedmen have united in the purchase of farms under cultivation. They are very anxious to become land owners, and the possession of lands and homes is one of the chief means of their elevation. But the most urgent want is education, and more attention has been paid to this than to any other subject. In each State at least one normal school has been organized. Several chartered colleges for freed people are in operation; also a university, in the District of Columbia. In the 2,118 schools under the care of the bureau, and officially reported, the number of teachers employed is 2,455, and the number of pupils is 114,522. Adding those estimated in private and Sabbath schools, the number under instruction of some kind during the last year is not less than 250,000. The freed people are doing what they can for their own education, having, during the last year, paid for tuition and the construction of buildings about $200,000. The whole amount of bounties paid since April 17, 1867, when the first Treasury certificate was received, is $5,831,417 89. The balance on deposit now due to claimants is $1,220,066 52. Three thousand three hundred and eleven applications for bounty are now under examination in this office, and 18,000 such claims are now on file in the Second Auditor's office awaiting settlement, and it is believed that about 25,000 claims of this kind remain to be presented. The work of paying bounties is therefore not yet complete, and it is believed that the system now in operation should be continued. The freedmen have been protected as far as possible from injustice. The means adopted have been conformed to the wants of different communities. The expenses of the bureau were met the first year with the proceeds of rents, sales of crops, school taxes and tuition, and sale of "Confederate States" property. The amount received from all these miscella neous sources was $1,865,645 80, and from appropriations by Congress since July, 1866, $11,084,750, making a total of $12,950,395 80 received from all sources. The expenditures, including the accounts of the "Department of negro affairs," from June 1, 1865, to August 31, 1869, have been $11,194,028 10. In addition to this, subsistence, medical supplies, and quartermaster supplies, were expended, amounting in cash to $2,330,788 72, but whose real value when transferred to the bureau was probably less than one million of dollars. Adding their original cost to the cash expended, the total expenses of the bureau have been $13,524,816 82. Attention is called to the recommendation of the report that the hospital in this District be continued, and that the payment of bounties be continued, by this or some other agency, until all should have a reasonable time to present their claims. MILITARY ACADEMY. The report of the Board of Visitors to the Military Academy for the present year is one of unusual importance and interest. The condition of affairs generally was found to be all that could be desired or expected under the present organization of the Academy, but the organization itself, which has remained unchanged since the days when the army was but 10,000 strong and the nation was very far below its present size and importance among other nations, is declared to be inadequate to meet the future demands of the country, and a reorganization is accordingly recommended: The institution to be greatly enlarged; the number of cadets greatly increased; the standard of admission to be raised, and the cadets to be divided into two classes-one pursuing an ordinary course of military instruction and its members returned to civil life upon graduation, to spread a knowledge of the military art throughout the land, and supply trained officers for the emergencies of war; the other, selected from the promising members of the former class, and equal in number only to the yearly wants of the army, to pursue their studies and practice to the very limits of military science. These recommendations are reviewed by the Inspector of the Military Academy, who does not advise any present enlargement of the Academy itself, but recommends an increase of the cadets to four hundred, a number which the Academy can accommodate without enlargement, and which |
