The Long Road to Annapolis: The Founding of the Naval Academy and the Emerging American Republic Review

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The Long Road to Annapolis: The Founding of the Naval Academy and the Emerging American Republic ReviewAlong with the pages of other stuff I and other plebes entering the Naval Academy had to memorize years ago were the words of John Paul Jones: "It is by no means enough that an officer of the Navy should be a capable mariner. He must be that, of course, but also a great deal more. He should be as well a gentleman of liberal education, refined manners, punctilious courtesy, and the nicest sense of personal honor." It turns out that we midshipmen were hoaxed; only over the past few years has it become plain that Jones never wrote such things but that the words were written by one of his first biographers and then attributed to Jones. Perhaps because I still have them memorized they do sound like Jones's opinion, and this is verified by _The Long Road to Annapolis: The Founding of the Naval Academy and the Emerging American Republic_ (University of North Carolina Press) by William P. Leeman. America's first great naval hero is indeed on authoritative record as recommending formal academy instruction for America's officers as early as 1782, as part of his dream of the new nation becoming a first-rate naval power, with himself in command. It did not come to pass then, and it was not until 1845 that a naval academy was begun, even though we had the Military Academy at West Point starting in 1802. Leeman's book is not just a history of the delay in forming a naval academy and how it was overcome; it represents an overview of the young nation's ambivalent attitude toward the military overall, and its initially reluctant acceptance of a professional officer corps.
Americans were proud of their first great military victory in the Revolution, but they distrusted standing armies and professional navies. Setting up an educational system for officers, the thinking went, was an invitation for setting up an elite military aristocracy. The "School of the Ship" was supposed to suffice. Naval officers were being put into new roles, however, not just as warriors but as explorers, technicians, and diplomatic representatives to foreign countries, and it was understood that shipboard training did not suffice, especially in moral development. Reformers pointed to the larger and better equipped navies of other countries. The traditional methods of educating officers were criticized for being limited to seaboard instruction in admittedly essential tasks of seamanship and navigation, when instruction in character development was also essential, as was training in such courses as science and international law. A ship, moreover, provided a poor environment for schooling; there was simply too much else going on. Legislators, however, continued to balk for various logistical and philosophical reasons. It took the maneuvering of historian George Bancroft, who was secretary of the Navy in 1845, to change things. He realized that Congress at the time would not fund a naval academy, so he bypassed it, taking the funds that had been intended for shipboard midshipman training and slyly redirecting them to an outdated ten-acre fort on the Severn River in Annapolis which he persuaded the Army to hand over. The Naval School, begun in 1845, was the small wedge that eventually got official appropriations when the Navy was reorganized in 1850 to become the United States Naval Academy.
Leeman's book is detailed and well organized, concentrating on personalities in the long process of bringing the Naval Academy into being. He has effectively summarized the nation's changing philosophies on military matters, making this not only a fine volume for those interested particularly in the Naval Academy but also anyone with general interest in the first seventy years of American history. It is also a retelling of a story with which anyone associated with the Navy will be familiar, the battle between hidebound tradition and a more modern way of doing things.
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