The military branch should be distributed under the heads following.....

MILITARY I.....PLANS AND MEANS OF DEFENSIVE OR OFFENSIVE WAR.

  1. This should comprehend a topographical establishment; the preparation of complete maps and surveys of our own country; and a classification of the surface of the Union into districts of equal portions of three, five, or nine parts; and these again into lesser districts; designating all the passes, roads, rivers, &c., in each, with descriptive memoirs and references to each.
  2. The police of armies.
  3. Military exercises or discipline.
  4. Military operations, marchings, and encampments.
  5. Movements of troops by water.
  6. Military chronology, or daily and other returns, of duties, actions, retreats, &c. &c.

FISCAL II.....Subsistence, pecuniary and civil administration.

  1. Pay, receipts, and expenditures, or the treasury branch.
  2. Clothing, equipments, arms.
  3. Provisions, meat, bread, grain, liquors, fuel.
  4. Forage, hay, oats, straw, corn.
  5. Hospitals and magazines.
  6. Carriages and horses for stores and artillery.

Such is the outline of a military system adapted to the circumstances and necessities of the U. States. On a superficial glance, to timid or unreflecting men, this may appear to be surrounded with difficulties insuperable; there will be discordant opinions, envy, jealousy, folly will devise objections; no two men may concur, however equal and able; the objects are themselves too numerous and complex for any one man to prepare in time or in a satisfactory manner; the proposition itself will be said to arise from interested motives; from some lust of place or profit; it will require resolution to resist prejudice; and the requisite firmness to decide may not be found.

We shall close this part of our essay by stating generally, that whenever there shall appear a disposition to adopt this or any such system, means can be pointed out by which the insuperable difficulties shall be made appear easy to be overcome; discordant opinions reconciled and brought spontaneously to concurrence; envy, folly, and jealousy will be allowed to prey upon themselves, without danger of annoyance to the plan; the variety of the objects can be made subservient to render them more simple, practicable, and effective; and instead of the merit being ascribed to any one man, every officer in the army and the militia if they choose shall have an opportunity of laying his claim to a participation in the plan.

If the observations thrown out in this preface are well founded, the necessity of a work of this kind will be immediately perceived. Let it not however be imagined, says major James, that a Military Dictionary ought exclusively to belong to a camp or barrack, or be found in the closets or libraries of military men alone. The arts and sciences are so intimately connected together, that they eventually borrow language and resources from each other, and go hand in hand from the senate to the field, from the pulpit to the bar, and from the desk of the historian to the bureau of the statesman or politician.

We have a few words to say on certain parts of the work. The French phrases are adopted for their usefulness in reading, and often even in political reading: the words and phrases in the language of the East Indies, are adopted from the English Dictionary, in which however there were some errors which the editor of this work was enabled to correct, and to give more accurate explanations to many. Some subjects which might with more propriety be placed under one letter are placed under another; the course of reading which the editor commenced cotemporaneous with the preparation of the three first letters, not affording the illustrations until the letter to which they properly belonged had been printed. Thus under Valor will be found much of what would properly come under Courage; and under Topographical what would properly belong to Depot. There are several similar instances.

Should the disposition be manifested to cultivate the knowlege of military subjects generally, the editor proposes at some future day to publish gen. Grimoard’s treatise on the Staff of armies; the French Regulations for Cavalry of 1808; and the most modern and celebrated works on Tactics, the treatise of Jomini, the 4th volume of which was published in the beginning of 1810. All these works are already translated and ready to be put to press; beside a Dictionary of all the military actions recorded in ancient and modern history which is now in great forwardness.