This is a military manual prepared for the use of cadets at the United States Military Academy. It provides a comprehensive guide to the various methods and techniques used to attack fortified places. The book is divided into five chapters, each covering a different aspect of the subject matter. Chapter I covers the attack without the use of regular approaches, including blockade, surprise, assault, and bombardment. It also discusses dispositions for an assault and defense against assault and bombardment. Chapter II discusses siege or attack by regular approaches, preliminary constructions, definitions, and tools and appliances. Chapter III covers trenches, approaches, parallels, saps, splinter-proofs, and the passage of the ditch. It includes articles on tracing and constructing parallels and approaches, splinter-proof cover, sapping, and the execution of the double sap. Chapter IV focuses on batteries, observatories, and magazines. It provides information on the requirements of siege batteries, construction of batteries for field guns and siege guns and howitzers, screens, embrasures, observatories, drainage, and magazines. Chapter V covers siege operations, including the attack, successive steps, the investment, fortifying camps, and parks, the point of attack, opening fire, the first parallel, opening the parallel, and breaching batteries. It also discusses counter-batteries and enfilading batteries.

Though primarily fought in the field, the American Revolution saw fortifications play an important part in some of the key campaigns of the war. Field fortifications were developed around major towns including Boston, New York and Savannah, while the frontier forts at Stanwix, Niagara and Cumberland were to all be touched by the war. This book details all the types of fortification used throughout the conflict, the engineers on all sides who constructed and maintained them, and the actions fought around and over them.