Dr. Mark A. Smith, an assistant professor at Fort Valley State University, in Engineering Security: The Corps of Engineers and Third System Defense Policy, 1815–1861 masterfully chronicles the Third System of coastal fortifications, the militia, and small army, but also, the values of the society that created it. It was so named as it was the federal government’s third attempt to guard the nation’s coasts.

Principally through Joseph G. Totten (1788-1864) of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who spent nearly his entire career with the Third System Defense Policy, and served as chief engineer from 1838 until 1864, at which time he was a major general, Smith narrates how from 1816 to 1861 the Corps of Engineers developed and implemented the masonry coastal fortifications into the nation’s first integrated and comprehensive system of national defense.

Smith details the stresses of how budgets were affected by numerous factors, including tensions between coastal and inland statesmen, such as John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, at which time the engineers were assuming a preeminent role in defense issues.

The Third System was impacted by various crises, including the 1834-36 dispute with France over spoliation claims, border clashes with British North America from 1837-42, the financial panic of 1837 which extended into the mid-1840s, the 1845 tensions with Britain over the Oregon territory.

Also, there were the 1855 dispute with Great Britain over the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, the Panic of 1857, and the corruption of Secretary of War John B. Floyd, which resulted in General Totten, at odds with Floyd, to take a leave of absence in 1857, only to return after Floyd’s resignation in December 1860.

Indeed, during the antebellum period, Britain was the perceived main threat to the country, and the Corps of Engineers’ coastal forts, which extended from Maine to Louisiana, were the primary defense.

The technical and evolving military expertise of the engineers, the elite of the Army in this era, led to their sense of special responsibility to defend the nation and role as a strategic advisor to the government, which contributed to American military professionalism.

The long reign of Totten, a superb engineer, was conflicted by his circumventing the Board of Engineers and his attempts to standardize the technical aspects of fort construction, which led to disputes with engineers’ innovation of forts for local circumstances.

Two examples cited are Fort Taylor off Key West and Fort Jefferson on Garden Key in the Dry Tortugas, both begun in the 1840s. Noted are the forts’ engineers affect on the social and economic development of Key West and the Gulf Coast, e.g., strengthening slavery by using bondsmen in construction and developing local manufacturing.

During the Civil War, the use of steam navigation, smoothbore artillery and rifled ordinance rendered obsolescent the Third System defense policy. Nevertheless, Dr. Smith concludes that the basic outlines of the policy remained valid as it achieved many of its original goals, and its objectives could have been attained by replacing masonry fortifications with strong earthworks, but, after the Civil War, Congress abandoned the Third System.

Engineering Security contains 278 pages, 7 illustrations, and 9 tables. It is published by the University of Alabama Press, P.O. Box 870380, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0380, 800-621-2736.

This was published in The Herald-Advocate, 8B, November 19, 2009.

Posted Nov. 5, 2009