Smedley Butler: Remember 'Making and Breaking'

Review by Bill Doughty––

“Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire” by Jonathan M. Katz (St. Martin’s, 2021) shows why we need to study history as it was, not as we want it to be.

This book toggles between the past and present as award-winning journalist Jonathan M. Katz follows the path of Smedley Butler, United States Marine, a twice-awarded recipient of the Medal of Honor. He fought in China, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Philippines; spied for the Navy in Mexico; and he served in World War I in France. 

Along the way, he helped oversee building and protecting the Panama Canal, which was envisioned by Alfred Thayer Mahan and Theodore Roosevelt. As a young Marine officer, Butler had been ordered to dig a much smaller canal across a tiny isthmus on the island of Culebra in the Caribbean.

“On a sweltering day in December 1902, Smedley Butler was standing waist-deep in a watery ditch. He dunked his shovel into the mud. Mosquitoes darted across the rust-colored ripples. Their bites itched like poison. He couldn’t decide what he hated more: this marshy hell, the solid rock his unit had to ship through he day before, or the admiral whose idea it had been to build this stupid canal in the first place.”

Katz’s superb writing is illuminated by the author’s access to Butler family letters and by his extensive travels in the footsteps of Smedley Butler.

Katz provides relevance and context in his visits to battlefields in Cuba with Public Affairs Officer MCC Barbara Meeks, to war-torn regions in China and the Philippines, and to the Marine Corps museum at Quantico, Virginia, as just a few examples.

We get some of the richest reporting and historical connections when Katz returns to Haiti. He lived there for several years and was there for the devastating earthquake of 2010. (Katz is also author of “The Big Truck That Went By” about the earthquake and humanitarian response.)

“Gangsters of Capitalism” opens with a Haitian proverb as the book’s epigraph, which also happens to be a found haiku:

...one who deals the blow

forgets. The one who carries

the scar remembers

Butler developed trust and confidence with local people in Haiti, those who would “remember.”

While he and his Marines could be ruthless in combat, their power could be tempered with diplomacy and paternalistic compassion. 

“Butler’s insights became the key to securing America’s imperial foothold in Haiti. Though Butler did not realize it at the time, he was helping invent a new approach to warfare. It would eventually be dubbed counterinsurgency: the combination of military, political, and psychological method employed by an occupying power with the goal of holistically defeating an armed resistance.”

The method would be fine-tuned as counterinsurgency doctrine: COIN.

Smedley Butler

Butler also served as commandant at Quantico and San Diego, and he took a leave of absence from the Marines to become Chief of Police in Philadelphia during the nation’s failed experiment with Prohibition. Katz shows how the militarization of policing got its start in the name of “law and order.”

The book reads like a Netflix series, each chapter an episode leaving readers hungry for the next. China might take more than one episode. Same for the Philippines. Central America could be a whole season itself.

If read chronologically, “Gangsters” shows Butler’s evolution from warrior for corporations to warrior for peace. He came to see imperialism and fascism overseas return to American shores as authoritarianism and nationalism at home. He foresaw the coming of another World War in a final eruption of colonialism and revanchist expansionism.

“Butler could not see the irony: that the imperialism he had helped foster was a direct catalyst of the World War. The conflict erupted in 1914 as a fight between empires: Germany and Austria-Hungary on one side; Britain, France, and Russia on the other. All had spent decades in a complex global struggle for colonies, resources, and prestige –– a struggle that the Americans (and Butler personally) had been parties to. The older empires, especially the British, were filled with anxiety over new competitors to their global supremacy. The Germans, as the United States’ fellow latecomers to global expansion, were reading Alfred Thayer Mahan’s tracts on sea power and empire when they declared: ‘We demand a place for ourselves in the sun.’…

Butler foresaw another war coming out of the Great War and out of the era of great empire (an era Putin's Russia seems to aspire to in 2022).

“…It was not a fight over a particular colony or sea lane that sparked the cataclysm into which millions of American families were now sending their sons, but imperial arrogance, mistrust, and the accelerating war machines that made those empires run.”

In the last ten years of his life, Butler fought against imperialism and tyranny, according to Katz, where the primary beneficiaries of authoritarianism and tyranny were banks, businesses, big oil, and bought-and-paid for politicians. His support for Bonus Marchers in Washington is recounted in a previous Navy Reads review.

Because he was loved and trusted by Veterans, an attempt was made to recruit Butler in 1934 to help set up a Fascist dictatorship in the United States, subverting the will of voters. The proposal was allegedly funded by a shadowy group backed by big business and the American Liberty League. Butler reported the coup proposal to Congress. But –– unlike the current Select Committee’s hearings into the January 6, 2021 insurrection –– a full investigation was not conducted.

A YouTube interview with Katz by “Democracy Now!” (below) features a clip of retired Major General Smedley Butler, who talks about why he reported the coup attempt: “My main interest in all this is to preserve our democratic institution. I want to retain the right to vote, the right to speak freely, and the right to write,” Butler proclaims.

YouTubers can find a longer conversation with the author on the Marines Memorial Club.

Katz writes to help readers understand history “as it was” and accept the reality of past mistakes in order to prevent history from repeating.

Butler speaks to Veterans July 19, 1939 –– ninety years ago this month.

Noting that Smedley Butler has no huge statue in his name, Katz asks a question that can apply to monuments honoring leaders of the Confederacy.  “… Why does America celebrate the generals who oversaw death and destruction on a massive scale, while forgetting the exceptional few who spent their later years trying to stop them?”

Interestingly, after retiring from the Marine Corps, Butler campaigned unsuccessfully for the Senate as a Republican from Pennsylvania.

This week, Pennsylvania Republican Senator Patrick Toomey led 40 other Republicans in voting down PACT burn pit legislation that would help wounded Veterans. The Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act includes the "Camp Lejeune Justice Act" to help Marines and families.

John Stewart speaks for Veterans July 28, 2022.

Jon Stewart, sounding every bit like Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, stepped up to a microphone alongside Veterans and their loved ones to condemn the vote.

In reading this sweeping book of history, it’s amazing how many times the Navy is mentioned.

Navy readers will also be fascinated by Katz’s take on Mahan; Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels; Gen. Joseph H. Pendleton; Roger Leslie Farnum; Jose “Pepe” Azueta; Chiang Kai-shek; Gen. John Lejeune; and Commanders in Chief William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover,Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George H. W. Bush, and Donald J. Trump.

Smashing Ideas About Monuments

Review by Bill Doughty––

More than 250 years ago the federal government hired sculptor Clark Mills to cast a statue called Freedom, pictured above, that would be placed atop the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington D.C.

The first plaster model of Freedom, created in 1854, was rejected by then-U.S. Secretary of War (SECDEF) Jefferson Davis (future president of the Confederacy) because it wore a “liberty cap,”as Erin L. Thompson explains in “Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments” (W.W. Norton, 2022).

Davis insisted the cap, which represented emancipation, be replaced with a helmet. But the new design looked “more suited to a Vegas showgirl than a warrior, with a starry headband topped with feathers sprouting from a popeyed eagle.” Eventually the symbol of liberty created by Clark Mills and his team of workers moved forward and upward, headgear and all:

“When Freedom was finally hoisted into place in December 1863, it was hailed as a symbol of the universal liberty the Emancipation Proclamation had declared in January of that year. More than 150 years later, many avowed white supremacists undertook a deadly invasion of the Capitol building to dispute the results of the presidential election. You might think that a symbol of the liberty America is supposed to offer to all would have dissuaded or at least shamed them. Looking more deeply into Freedom’s history reveals why the monument instead inspired them. It is a white supremacists vision of freedom.”

To help create the cast and melt bronze for Freedom, Mills depended on his workmen, including Philip Reed, a man born into slavery in South Carolina, who was paid $1.25 per day by Mills, but was considered his property. As Mills gained fame and made more money he purchased more enslaved people.

The symbol of Freedom was, in actuality, a symbol of slavery. “Slavery shaped everything about her,” Thompson writes.

Despite an attempt to promote emancipation and liberty, seditionists in the South staged the ultimate insurrection, led by Jefferson Davis. Construction of the Capitol Building stopped for a while, but was restarted under orders from President Abraham Lincoln, who said, “If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign we intend the Union shall go on.”

The supreme irony of the statue atop the Capitol –– symbolizing liberty but built by enslaved people –– is matched in the story of Horatio Greenough, eugenic “father of our monuments,” whose “blatant racism” is found in his work.

Greenough's George Washington (Wikimedia)

Greenough created a bizarre god-like statue of George Washington that includes a subjugated indigenous “Indian chief” in the design, under Washington’s hips, as the first president holds a sword and points to the sky. Greenough had planned to include “a negro” along with the indigenous figure, but abolitionist Charles Sumner convinced him not create a tie to slavery. The sculptor included a depiction of Christopher Columbus instead.

The public and press mocked the semi-nude statue of the first president. “American audiences paid less attention to deciphering the meaning of Washington’s symbolic sword and more to his nipples.” The statue, Thompson notes, "is on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, awkwardly wedged next to an escalator. Today, the sculptures upraised hand looks as though it points the way up to the next floor."

Greenough's "Rescue." (LOC)

Greenough’s next work was received more favorably, at least by white Americans. In many ways it was even more bizarre and offensive. Like other monuments to follow, Rescue celebrated the genocide of Native Americans, particularly after President Andrew Jackson’s “Indian Removal Act” of 1830.

Rescue is in effect a monument to Manifest Destiny –– the idea of a god-given right of white people to subjugate indigenous people –– and for men to have an ordained role as dominant protectors of women. Thompson explains the scene of a white settler holding a dying indigenous warrior he'd just shot; his wife and child hover beneath him, and a dog watches balefully. The symbolism is clear and cringe-inducing.

At Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration in 1861, Rescue was prominently on display. It was removed from the eastern front of the Capitol Building in 1958 after decades of complaints. Thompson writes, “The removal of Rescue is another example of what happens when enough people decide that the messages encoded in a monument are unacceptable to them.”

“Greenough’s sculptures, the first thoroughly American national monuments, were also the first in a long line of public artworks to address questions of how much Black and Indigenous lives matter in America. He and his monuments claimed these lives didn’t matter at all. Greenough’s monuments assert that only people of a certain gender, class, and race deserve honor.

“Greenough’s beliefs informed not only his own sculpture but all the subsequent American public monuments based on his influential examples.”

A natural progression to other monuments highlighting white supremacy extended in the wake of the Civil War, even in Thomas Ball’s controversial Freedmen’s Memorial, dedicated in 1876.

Also known as Emancipation Memorial, it depicts a fully clothed Lincoln standing over a nearly naked kneeling black man. One interpretation is of a gracious leader bestowing freedom, but another view is of ongoing patriarchal and racial inequality.

Freedmen’s Memorial was unveiled on the eleventh anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination. President Ulysses S. Grant, members of Congress, and Supreme Court justices all attended and listened to Frederick Douglass’s speech. Several days later, Douglass wrote a letter to the editor of the National Republican in which he said, “What I want to see before I die is a monument representing the negro, not couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man.”

Douglass’s descendants would live to see many hundreds of monuments erected to honor the seditionists of the Confederacy.

The rise of many of those monuments coincided with the rise of the rights and equality of African Americans as guaranteed under the Constitution.

An example is the statue of Robert E. Lee erected in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1924, shortly after Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act made segregation lawful and outlawed in interracial marriage (not overturned by the Supreme Court until 1967 in Loving v. Virginia).

“The conflict at the heart of America,” Thompson writes, is “the conflict between the freedom for all and freedom for some.”

Thompson enlightens readers with the psychology, politics, and intent of Civil War monument creators. She delves into the meaning of statues’ poses, shows the influence of donations in creating profit motives for monuments, and explains the role of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists.

Then there's Christopher Columbus.

Columbus Fountain in Washington D.C. (NPS)

Thompson reminds readers about Columbus’s contemporary, the priest Bartolemé de las Casas, who wrote about the real Christopher Columbus during his cruel reign as governor of Hispaniola (now Dominican Republic and Haiti). Columbus is condemned for overseeing torture, rape, slavery and genocide. Columbus shipped young girls back to Spain to be sold into slavery.

In recent years more people have assembled, protested, and demanded statues honoring Columbus, like monuments to the Confederacy, be taken down.

Thompson explores how, despite widespread opposition to their presence, some monuments remained in place for years. “We think our monuments celebrate our democracy, but really, they are held in place by some of America’s least democratic uses of power.”

Complacency and willful ignorance kept monuments up until catalysts of violence created a backlash: “Unite the Right” white supremacists' march (and killing of Heather Heyer) in Charlottesville; the horrific mass murder at a church in Charleston, South Carolina; and the senseless murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as examples.

Acts of civil disobedience are often the result of willful acts of bureaucratic lethargy, intransigence, and not listening to peaceful protesters. Thompson writes, "Talking about monuments is not easy. But we need to do it. We need to come together as communities to make sure our monuments leave room for everyone's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness."

Towering over all the monuments to the Confederacy is the incomparable Stone Mountain in Georgia. Cut into the face of the mountain, it is the world’s largest bas-relief sculpture: images of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, along with Civil War generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee on horseback. The sculpture inspires white racists and believers in the Lost Cause Big Lie, including the KKK.

Thompson writes about eccentric anti-semitic sculptor and con artist Gutzon Borglum, who was involved in creating the Stone Mountain monument. Borglum would go on to create the monument at Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, on land that was sacred to indigenous people.

There’s a lot more in this book about Borglum and Stone Mountain –– stories “to startle us out of our assumptions,” as Thompson writes.

[While reading this book I came across a new Americana CD by Bill Edwards, “61356,” with a great song from the perspective of a statue of a Union soldier on a Civil War monument in Illinois: “We Don’t See It Yet.” Edwards sings: “Since nineteen hundred and thirteen/I’ve stood in my place on this stone/In the middle of my Bureau County/But I haven’t stood here alone/Above me, a guardian angel/To my right, left and back, over Vets/We watch the horizon for justice/Alas, we don’t see it yet.” It’s a terrific song and album, highly recommended. Read more about "61356" on The Stratton Setlist.]

In “Smashing Statues” Thompson laments the lack of monuments to African Americans who fought for the Union in the Civil War.

There are also a relatively small number of monuments to women in the United States, but last week Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi unveiled a statue of Mary McLeod Bethune in the Capitol Building. Behune was “an unyielding force for racial justice, a pioneering voice for gender equity” from Florida, who was also “a devoted advocate for education,” Pelosi said in her remarks.

Bethune statue unveiled at Capitol Building July 13, 2022. (CNN)

The statue of Bethune joins statues of Rosa Parks, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall. Bethune’s statue replaces that of a Confederate general.

On January 6, 2021, Trump-supporting insurrectionists, many wearing helmets or other headgear, walked through Statuary Hall during the coup attempt. Some rioters carried Confederate flags into the Capitol. High above them, on top of the building stood the statue in plumed helmet with an American eagle, mouth agape, eyes bulging –– Freedom.

This is an indispensable book for military readers interested in the reasons for the initiative to rename installations, facilities, and ships named for Confederate white supremacists or Confederate battle victories.

Washington’s Navy, Privateering & ’Rebels at Sea’

Review by Bill Doughty––

George Washington wasn’t just “father of our country.” He was also father of our Navy, according to “Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution” by Eric Jay Dolin (W.W. Norton, 2022).

Washington first dismissed the idea of deploying a seagoing force, especially to face the great Royal Navy. But during a stalemate on land and after listening to advice from his officers, he saw a need for American vessels to capture munitions and other supplies from British ships. So Washington armed and commissioned the schooner Hannah and soon followed up with orders for two more vessels. His ships were not privately operated since sailors were paid from his army’s funds.

While there was a question whether he had authority from Congress, nevertheless Washington moved forward, according to Dolin. “On September 7 (1775), the Hannah set sail. Washington had launched his own navy.” His minuscule naval force joined hundreds of “privateers” operating outside of government control along the Atlantic Coast and beyond.

Early in “Rebels at Sea,” Dolin tells the story of the Machias Affair in Maine/Massachusetts, in which colonists clashed with British autocracy over trade, authoritarian rule, and even voting rights!

The Machias Affair, called by James Fenimore Cooper the “Lexington of the Sea,” was “a clarion signal that Massachusetts men and, more broadly, Americans were ready and able to fight at sea.”

“Privateers were armed vessels owned and outfitted by private individuals who had government permission to capture enemy ships in times of war. That permission came in the form of a letter of marque, a formal legal document issued by the government that gave the bearer the right to seize vessels belonging to belligerent nations and to claim those vessels and their cargoes, or prizes, as spoils of war. The proceeds from the auction of these prizes were in turn split between the men who crewed the privateers and the owners of the ship. Typically, governments used privateers to amplify their power on the seas, most notably when their navies were not large enough to effectively wage war. More specifically, by attacking the enemy’s maritime commerce and, when possible, its naval forces, privateers could inflict significant economic and military pain at no expense to the government that commissioned them. Privateers were like a cost-free navy. One late nineteenth-century historian dubbed them ‘the militia of the sea.’”

There’s no question the maritime militia and other sea fighters made a difference.

“By early 1776, the upstart Americans had made considerable progress in taking the fight to sea. Between state navies, Washington’s navy, privateers from the individual colonies, and the nascent Continental navy, the colonies were demonstrating their maritime creativity and potency. But one major feature of their maritime strategy was conspicuous in its absence: privateers commissioned by Congress.”

And as Britain cracked down further on the Colonies, it only made the Americans’ resolve stronger.

The British Parliament drove the Colonies to codifying privateering when Britain passed the Prohibitory Act in February 1776. Also known as the Act of Independency, Parliament’s act cut off trade, permitted British ships to seize colonial vessels, and allowed American sailors to be impressed –– kidnapped, conscripted, and forced into serving in the Royal Navy.

Within weeks, Congress was ready to order authorization and letters of marque to privateers. It did so April 3, 1776. Privateering, therefore, pushed the Colonies more in the direction of independency. “It was another tear in the gossamer fabric holding the colonies and Britain together,” Dolin writes.

“Congress had no alternative but to provide for the defense and security by authorizing the colonies to fit out privateers to cruise against the enemy,” Dolin writes. He provides a number of surprising anecdotes about people, unknown and well-known, who were involved in privateering.

We learn about black patriot James Forten, whose great-grandfather was brought to the Colonies as a slave and whose grandfather obtained freedom. Forten was one of only a few black families in Philadelphia, where some historians argue the U.S. Navy was born. (A drive to the Philadelphia airport today and a glance toward the East shows the evidence of Philadelphia as a big Navy port.)

Forten served aboard the 450-ton Pennsylvania privateer Royal Louis captained by Stephen Decatur Sr., father of Steven Decatur Jr., hero in the first Barbary War at the turn of the century and later in the War of 1812. Forten went on to become a successful business leader in Philadelphia as the city’s leading sailmaker, according to Dolin.

This book is packed with photos, vignettes, and colorful characters. Thomas Paine, author of the earthshaking “Common Sense,” had a near-death brush with privateering. For a short time Paine was a crew member of the Terrible, a British privateer captained by William Death. Great names.

Check out these names of the privateer ships mentioned in this book: Rattlesnake, Hibernia, Tyrannicide, Black Sloven, Active, Thorn, Revenge, Enterprize, Eaglet, Impromptu, and Grand Turk; sweet names like Betsey, Nancy, Diana, Patty, and Sally, and inspiring names like General Washington, Marquis de Lafayettes, Liberty, Union, Hope, Yankee Hero, Retaliation, and Independence.

Hundreds of privateers and their captains and crews risked a great deal to fight for liberty. “When the United States was only a tenuous idea, they stepped forward and risked their lives to help make it a reality,” Dolin says.

Portrait of John Barry by Gilbert Stuart, circa 1801. (White House, NHHC)

“For many young men, joining a privateer represented an opportunity for adventure and fortune and also, perhaps, a chance to escape stultifying manual labor.” Privateering proved a training ground for the new United States Navy. Consider the names of some crew members, backers, and captains of privateers: John Barry, Thomas Truxton, Silas Talbot, Henry Knox, David Porter (father of Commodore David Porter, of the War of 1812, and grandfather of Adm. David Dixon Porter, hero of the Civil War.)

In 1781, the Privateer Pilgrim captured the Duke of Gloucester with an impressive science library aboard. The great mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch then gained access to the resources to write “The New American Practical Navigator” (1802), known to sailors as “the Bowditch,” a landmark work explaining accurate nautical and navigational information for mariners.

Some powerful leaders backed the concept of privateers. They included John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin (for a time), and, notoriously Benedict Arnold, who helped the British spearhead “the deadliest raid of all,” targeting American patriots at New London.

Some privateers became intertwined with the slave trade. Dolin calls it the “greatest blemish” of privateering.

HMS Jersey, used as a prison ship during the Revolutionary War. Painting by R.B. Skerrett from drawing by one of the prisoners held in captivity there. (NHHC)

Americans captured by the British for privateering usually found themselves in fetid and septic prison ships. Dolin calls the use of the floating prisons, especially the Jersey, “one of the most horrific and shameful chapters in the history of the Revolution.” Dolin's account of the foul and disgusting depravity in the prison ships rivals that of many historians’ descriptions of POW camps. Jersey, nicknamed “Hell Afloat,” held up to 1,200 prisoners, many of whom were mariners who'd served aboard privateers.

Eric Jay Dolin

Privateering, Dolin says, was not the same as piracy since it was federally endorsed. Nevertheless, opposition to the practice grew. “Part of the reason privateering was scorned was that many believed the practice undermined the republican ideals of the Revolution, which called for the sacrifice of private interests in the pursuit of liberty.”

Benjamin Franklin, who supported privateering early on, did an about-face after he saw rampant greed and lawlessness. Another strong opponent was William Whipple Jr., a “fervent patriot devote to the republican ideals of the Revolution, signer of the Declaration, and hero of the Battle of Saratoga.”

Whipple called privateering “the most baneful to society of any that ever a civilized people were engaged in.” Dolin writes about Whipple: “His main concern was that privateers were draining the Continental Navy of men, because so many chose privateering over naval service for financial reasons.”

Navy hero John Paul Jones agreed.

There was much less effectiveness in individual states’ navies or privateers compared with he power of a United naval force. Resources, including sailors, needed to be directed to the Continental Navy, according to Jones, Whipple, and others; the fledgling American navy struggled to survive, some frigates never making it to sea.

Dolin writes: “The American Revolution was the Navy’s first hour, but not its finest.”

“The Continental navy’s record in battle is not an enviable one. Twenty-eight vessels were captured or destroyed, and many others were out at sea, sold, returned to France, or burned to keep them from being taken but he enemy (as in the Penobscot Expedition). Only seven of the original thirteen frigates authorized by Congress actually made it to sea, and one of those survived long enough to witness the victory at Yorktown in 1781, a year in which the entire naval fleet was comprised of only nine vessels, with a total of 164 cannons. The Navy’s only truly large ship, the 74-gun America, took six years to build, and by the time it was ready to sail, in November 1782, the war was essentially over. Instead of fighting for the American cause, America was given to the French as gift. At war’s end just a few navy ships were left. These were sold, and the navy disbanded.”

Carving of Franklin at U.S. Naval Academy, circa early 1900s. (NHHC)

The (non-Navy) privateers, as the “militia of the sea,” were similar to the colonial concept of a non-Army armed citizenry: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…” per the Second Amendment. Whipple, Jones, and Franklin saw privateering as more harmful that good. Franklin called it an “abomination.”

Eventually, the new nation would evolve to see the need for unity in the maritime domain. This was especially true as platforms, armaments, logistics, strategies, training, and capabilities modernized.

But in the War of 1812 the Navy was still “puny,” in Dolin’s words. “Just a handful of frigates, sloops, and gunboats.”

So President Jefferson returned to privateering.

“Despite Jefferson’s dream of a privately waged war on the seas,” Dolin writes, “the U.S. Navy, small though it was, had some notable and heroic engagements that burnished its reputation, contributed much to America’s success, and won the respect of the British.”

Privateers proved successful again in those days of wooden boats, but their days were numbered.

Model of privateer Rattlesnake.Scale: 3/16”=1’, built by Raymond W. Stone of the Washington Ship Model Society. (NHHC)

A generation later, the concept of privateering became part of a seditious conspiracy as the Confederacy embraced the strategy. The Confederates’ attempts at privateering were ill-fated, however, as the United States Navy and Union itself in Washington, D.C., grew stronger. Washington's navy became Washington's Navy.

Individual states’ navies were not as strong as the centralized U.S. Navy. Dolin closes his book with this bottom line: “America now has the most powerful navy in the world.”

This review barely scrapes the surface of a book that puts the reader on blood-stained wooden decks, running with the wind, cutlass in hand. Accessible history. Highly recommended.

“Rebels at Sea” dedication: “To librarians everywhere who, through hard work and dedication, support writers, researchers, learners, and book lovers alike. This writer couldn’t have done it without you.”

Adm. James Stavridis (ret.) offers wholehearted endorsement: “Yet another maritime masterpiece by one of the top historians of the oceans! Rebels at Sea is a brilliant exposition of a little-understood and under-appreciated part of the American Revolution underway. Like his earlier works, it is full of fresh thinking and sharply observed anecdotes that both inform and delight. Eric Jay Dolin's books deserve a prominent place on every sailor's bookshelf.” Stavridis is author of "The Sailor's Bookshelf: Fifty Books to Know the Sea," reviewed earlier this year on Navy Reads.

Exceptional When United

Review by Bill Doughty––

Liz Cheney and her dad, former Vice President Dick Cheney, show unbridled passion for their country in “Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America” (Threshold Editions, Simon & Schuster, 2015).

Published a year before Donald J. Trump became president, the Cheneys slam both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton throughout this book and conclude, “Our next president must be committed to restoring America’s power and strength.”

The Cheneys blame Obama and Clinton for alienating allies, weakening the military, and failing at nuclear arms control. “Maintaining America’s nuclear superiority is more important than ever, but President Obama has abandoned this goal.” He should not have signed the New START Treaty with the Russians or agreed to terms with Iran to prevent development of nuclear weapons, they say.

As for weakening the military: In 2011 Obama “announced a broad shift in American policy, a ‘pivot to Asia” … Particularly on the military front, however, there was a decided lack of follow through.”

Furthermore, Obama did not confront China strongly enough, in the Cheneys’ opinion. "Exceptional" predicts China would have a stronger navy than the U.S. Navy in the Pacific by 2020.

“Ignoring international law, the Chinese have claimed sovereignty over most of the South China Sea and are embarked upon a massive land reclamation and construction program to bolster these claims.” The U.S. Navy conducted six Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPS) during President Obama’s presidency.

Seaman Malik Flynn transfers a pallet aboard the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam (CG 54) during a replenishment-at-sea with dry cargo ship USNS Amelia Earhart (T-AKE-6) in the Philippine Sea, June 29, 2022, underway in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific. (MC3 Santiago Navarro)

‘Exceptional’ History Lessons

“Exceptional” opens with a jolt in the late 1930s with the rise of Hitler and Roosevelt’s resolve to wake up U.S. citizens to the threat of fascism and ethno-nationalism in Europe.

“Roosevelt’s determination to mobilize the nation was crucial to the success of the effort he knew we needed to mount. It had not been an easy or clear path getting to this point. The American people were war-weary and isolationist sentiment was strong. In the aftermath of World War I we had demobilized and retreated behind our oceans, hoping, as George Washington had advised, to avoid entangling our ‘peace and prosperity’ in the fortunes of Europe. While we were turned inward, Adolf Hitler began his Blitzkrieg.”

In rapid time, readers receive a history of World War II –– with emphasis given to the Lend-Lease Act (where we see parallels to current support to Ukraine), Battle of Midway, and D-Day.

“June 6, 1944, was a day when America’s greatness was on full display, from the unparalleled heroism of the soldiers who stormed the beaches; to the ingenuity of men like Henry Higgins, who invented the landing craft that made the invasion possible; to the courage and fortitude of the Rangers who took the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc; to the business leaders like Bill Knudsen and Henry Kaiser who had driven American industry to turn out the thousands of ships ad planes necessary to win the war; to the commanders like Marshall, Eisenhower, and Omar Bradley who built the force and planned and commanded the invasion. The world had never seen anything like it.”

The history lessons continue through the Cold War: “the triumph of freedom over tyranny, of the courage of millions who fought the oppression of Soviet dictatorship around globe, and of the importance of achieving peace through strength.

Liz and Dick Cheney, 2015

Naturally, the Cheneys defend invading Iraq in the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11: “We did the right thing.” And they say it was a mistake to remove troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

They devote several pages to Benghazi, the need for the Guantanamo detention camp, justification for “enhanced interrogation,” and recommendations to continue increased funding to fight ISIS.

Father and daughter denigrate Obama and Clinton dozens of times in this book after their presentation of post-WWII history.

Their vitriol seems boundless. They accuse Obama of having a “prominent” role, along with others, who “want us to see the United States as having had and continuing to have a malign role in the world … In the books they are assigned, in the tests they take, and in the instruction they receive, our children and grandchildren are too often being told that the legacy they ave inherited is a shameful one.”

Yet, they admit:

 “Neither we nor our children and grandchildren should be uncritical of our country. Despite the self-evident truth that ‘all men are created equal,’ slavery continued after we declared our independence. The Constitution, signed in 1787, failed to end the system of slavery nor did it address the oppression of women. Among the wonders of this country, however, is that that document, our Constitution, was the instrument for remedying our failure, for abolishing slavery, granting women the right to vote, and working to ensure equality of opportunity for all. That we are a resilient country, able to correct wrongs, is among the lessons we should embrace and our children should learn. We have worked to make ourselves better –– and we have succeeded. No nation has ever been freer or more prosperous. No nation has ever worked so successfully to extend freedom to others. No nation, in the history of mankind, has ever been such a force for good.”

The Cheneys denigrate Obama for his nuanced view of America’s exceptionalism, including what Obama calls, the “distortions of politics, the sins of hubris, (and) the corrupting effects of fear.”

Then-Senator Barack Obama is sworn in by then-Vice President Dick Cheney, Jan. 3, 2005, as the Obama family look on.

Obama and Exceptionalism

The Cheneys had to admit that Obama said in a NATO meeting in Afghanistan, “I believe in American exceptionalism.” Obama said the same thing March 7, 2015, in his speech at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Selma, Alabama, for the 50th Anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery Marches.

Obama compared Selma to other significant historical and historic sites such as Concord and Lexington, Independence Hall, Appomattox, Gettysburg, Seneca Falls, Kitty Hawk, and Cape Canaveral. A willingness to risk everything (personified by Liz Cheney in 2022) in order to protect the republic, ensure justice, and bring about positive change is what makes the United States exceptional, according to Obama.

The most recent Sisters In Law podcast recommended listening to Obama’s Selma speech for Independence Day, July 4th.

The Obamas and Congressman John Lewis lead the 50th anniversary commemoration in Selma, March 7, 2015.

Here’s an excerpt related to Obama’s view of American exceptionalism, starting with our collective duty to recognize how far our country has evolved and improved over time:

“We do a disservice to the cause of justice by intimating that bias and discrimination are immutable, that racial division is inherent to America. If you think nothing’s changed in the past 50 years, ask somebody who lived through the Selma or Chicago or Los Angeles of the 1950s. Ask the female CEO who once might have been assigned to the secretarial pool if nothing’s changed. Ask your gay friend if it’s easier to be out and proud in America now than it was thirty years ago. To deny this progress, this hard-won progress -– our progress –- would be to rob us of our own agency, our own capacity, our responsibility to do what we can to make America better.

“We know the march is not yet over. We know the race is not yet won. We know that reaching that blessed destination where we are judged, all of us, by the content of our character requires admitting as much, facing up to the truth. ‘We are capable of bearing a great burden,’ James Baldwin once wrote, ‘once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is.’ There’s nothing America can’t handle if we actually look squarely at the problem. And this is work for all Americans, not just some. Not just whites. Not just blacks. If we want to honor the courage of those who marched that day, then all of us are called to possess their moral imagination. All of us will need to feel as they did the fierce urgency of now. All of us need to recognize as they did that change depends on our actions, on our attitudes, the things we teach our children. And if we make such an effort, no matter how hard it may sometimes seem, laws can be passed, and consciences can be stirred, and consensus can be built.”

Obama spoke about the importance of voting and voting rights in order to bring about change and protect our democracy from authoritarian aristocracy and autocracy.

“Fellow marchers, so much has changed in 50 years. We have endured war and we’ve fashioned peace. We’ve seen technological wonders that touch every aspect of our lives. We take for granted conveniences that our parents could have scarcely imagined. But what has not changed is the imperative of citizenship; that willingness of a 26-year-old deacon, or a Unitarian minister, or a young mother of five to decide they loved this country so much that they’d risk everything to realize its promise.

“That’s what it means to love America. That’s what it means to believe in America.

"That’s what it means when we say America is exceptional.

“For we were born of change. We broke the old aristocracies, declaring ourselves entitled not by bloodline, but endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. We secure our rights and responsibilities through a system of self-government, of and by and for the people. That’s why we argue and fight with so much passion and conviction –– because we know our efforts matter. We know America is what we make of it.”

His speech only gets better as he shows how much we all have in common, again recognizing how much our nation has improved over time.

The Last Word –– July 4th

During an appearance on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell this week, Isabel Wilkerson, author of “Caste,” spoke about how this Independence Day is a watershed year.

“This particular Fourth of July is a very significant one, because this is the year when the United States will finally have been a free and independent nation for as long as slavery lasted on this soil. It`s humbling, and it is really staggering to think about the fact that we are alive at this inflection point, this moment, where the United States, we think of it as, you know, 1776 is a long time ago. We think about the country as being here for a very long time. And this is a sobering reminder of exactly how long slavery lasted, it lasted for 246 years from 1619 until 1865, with the 13th Amendment that finally ended legal slavery. And then the United States, it`s 246 years, and the United States turns 246 on Monday.”

Perhaps Wilkerson is right, and this exceptional watershed Independence Day will mark an epochal shift of positive change in 2022. “Caste” is one of the best books I’ve read in the past year, hopeful, powerful, and inspiring. “Exceptional,” by comparison –– while at times celebrating America’s greatness –– falls unfortunately into bitterness, pettiness, and disunited negativity. Quite a contrast.