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Given in memory of Charles Hudson Edge, Laura James Edge, by Eugene Edge III.

Summer Soldiers is the story of a diverse group of some 3,315 men who could not withstand the hardships and pressures of what seemed like a hopeless enterprise, and ultimately found themselves before a military court-martial.

This collection of documents, including many previously unpublished, details the role of the Army engineers in the American Revolution. Lacking trained military engineers, the Americans relied heavily on foreign officers, mostly from France, for sorely needed technical assistance. Native Americans joined the foreign engineer officers to plan and carry out offensive and defensive operations, direct the erection of fortifications, map vital terrain, and lay out encampments. During the war Congress created the Corps of Engineers with three companies of engineer troops as well as a separate geographer's department to assist the engineers with mapping. Both General George Washington and Major General Louis Lebéque Duportail, his third and longest serving Chief Engineer, recognized the disadvantages of relying on foreign powers to fill the Army's crucial need for engineers. America, they contended, must train its own engineers for the future. Accordingly, at the war's end, they suggested maintaining a peacetime engineering establishment and creating a military academy. However, Congress rejected the proposals, and the Corps of Engineers and its companies of sappers and miners mustered out of service. Eleven years passed before Congress authorized a new establishment, the Corps of Artillerists and Engineers.

A narrative analysis of the complex evolution of the Continental Army, with the lineages of the 177 individual units that comprised the Army, and fourteen charts depicting regimental organization.

The first step in determining service in the Revolutionary War is to consult this work. Alphabetically listed veterans and their widows who applied for pensions and bounty land warrents, including all additions and corrections uncovered by the National Genealogical Society in their preparation for microfilming the actual pension files. With the information contained in this book Revolutionary War pensions may be ordered from the National Archives. An excellent discourse on pension legislation is in the introductory material. N0000HB - $85.99