An analysis of the complex tasks associated with Army procurement and economic mobilization featuring the War Department2s business relationships from prewar planning and the determination of military requirements to the settlement and liquidation of the wartime procurement effort.

"The Pre-emption Line in Western New York: What happened? For more than two centuries, questions have lingered about the survey of the Pre-emption Line, the eastern boundary of the Phelps and Gorham land purchase in western New York State. The line was to have run due north from the 82nd milestone on the Pennsylvania border along a geographic meridian to Lake Ontario. Oliver Phelps planned to make his land office headquarters at Kanadesaga, a Seneca settlement near present-day Geneva, N.Y. According to reckoning by eye even on the most rudimentary maps of the day, a line drawn north from the 82nd milestone on the Pennsylvania line would pass through Seneca Lake. The Indian settlement would be just west of the line and on the Phelps and Gorham Purchase. Mr. Phelps hired an experienced surveyor of impeccable credentials--Col. Hugh Maxwell (1733-1799), a Revolutionary War veteran--to make the survey. But in Col. Maxwell's trial survey of June 1788 and his formal survey in July and August of that year, the Pre-emption Line veered to the west. From the results of the trial survey, Mr. Phelps became aware that the line was not where he thought it would be. Without hesitation, he instructed his land agent William Walker to move headquarters to Canandaigua, N.Y., about 15 miles west and a settlement that was certain to be on the Purchase. What happened? Why was the Pre-emption Line skewed to the west? Some say it was the surveyor's error. Others suggested it was fraud by members of a competing land company who infiltrated the survey team. Still others wrote that the colonel went to Geneva for supplies, or became ill and went home to Massachusetts, leaving his assistants to complete th survey. Col. Maxwell kept a notebook of his surveys. It remained in his possession until his death when it was passed down to his children and grandchildren. Historians writing in the period from 1788 to 1882 perhaps never knew that the notebook existed. The first published excerpts appeared in the Ontario County Times in 1883 and 1884. In 1965, the notebook was presented to the Geneva Historical Society. What really happened? The transcription of the notes provides some clues"--Back cover.