Civil War, "The Race Problem" and "Black Lives Matter"

by Bill Doughty

PBS will air a restored "The Civil War" series in ultra HD this week, 25 years after it first aired.

Those who tune in will hear haunting music and see the sacrifice, sadness and devastation caused by a war about freedom: The Union fought for human rights, national unity and the freedom of all people regardless of race and gender; the Confederacy fought for the freedom to enslave others. "States' rights" meant the right to treat people as less than human.

Over the past quarter century, America's renowned historian-documentarian Ken Burns took some flak from other historians for his stately portrayal of both sides in the conflict without, in their opinion, delving deeply enough into the racial disharmony before, during and after the war. 

On Face the Nation several weeks ago, Burns made it clear about the "centrality" of the cause – slavery as the "coiled serpent," in which the the Ku Klux Klan was a "homegrown terrorist organization," portrayed as noble and heroic in popular culture for decades (even in the movie "Gone With The Wind").

A slave family moving to Federal lands. (Library of Congress)

“It’s no wonder that Americans have permitted themselves to be sold a bill of goods about what happened," Burns said, but "the reason why we murdered each other ... was over essentially the issue of slavery.”

As the documentary re-airs this week, readers may be tempted to reach for the monumental works of Shelby Foote, James McPherson or Eric Foner. Each historian describes the land and naval battles, strategies and technologies that led to victory for the Union.

Foner, most of all, provides the context for why the war was fought and the results of slavery's racial divide.

Frederick Douglass as a young man.

But Frederick Douglass provides not only context but also a first-person account as a former slave. Twenty-five years after the war Douglass spoke about the aftermath in a speech to the Bethel Literary and Historical Association. Douglass addressed the terms of the day for the racial divide – "The Negro Problem" and "The Race Problem" – precursors for what's expressed by some today as "Black Lives Matter."*

In his remarks of 1890, Douglass lays out the case for understanding, respecting and speaking truth about the legacy of slavery:

"Truth is the fundamental, indispensable, and everlasting requirement in obtaining right results. No department of human life can afford to dispense with truth. The carpenter cannot join his timbers without having the parts of contacts perfectly true to each other. The mason cannot build a wall that will stand the test of time and gravitation without applying the plumb and making the wall vertical and true. No train or cars [are] safe on the road where the relations of the rails are not true. No shot is certain of its aim where the gun-barrel is not true. As in mechanics, so in politics, morals, manners, metaphysics, and philosophies, nothing can stand the test of time and experience that does not stand on the unassailable, indestructible, unchangeable, foundation of true. Considering how important this truth is, it seems strange that falsehood should hold such sway in the world. One main advantage by which error is able to darken, blight, and dominate the minds of men is the skill of its votaries in using language deceitfully, in pandering to prejudice by misstating and misapplying terms to the existing relations of men."

Douglass examines the reality of the republic as Emancipation unfolded and blacks were left out of the new "harmony" between North and South.

"Now that the Union is no longer in danger, now that the North and South are no longer enemies: now that they have ceased to scatter, tear, and slay each other, but sit together in halls of Congress, commerce, religion, and in brotherly love, it seems that the negro is to lose by their sectional harmony and good will all the rights and privileges that he gained by their former bitter enmity."

Douglass then reveals the real "problem" – not a race problem, but:

"The true problem is not the negro, but the nation. Not the law-abiding blacks of the South, but the white men of that section, who by fraud, violence, and persecution, are breaking the law, trampling on the Constitution, corrupting the ballot-box, and defeating the ends of justice. The true problem is whether these white ruffians shall be allowed by a nation to go on in their lawless and nefarious career, dishonoring the Government and making its very name a mockery. It is whether this nation has in itself sufficient moral stamina to maintain its own honor and integrity by vindicating its own Constitution and fulfilling its own pledges, or whether it has already touched the dry rot of moral depravity by which nations decline and fall, and governments fade and vanish. The United States Government made the negro a citizen, will it protect him as a citizen? This is the problem. It made him a soldier, will it honor him as a patriot? This is the problem. It made him a voter, will it defend his right to vote? This is the problem. This, I say, is more a problem for the nation than for the negro, and this is the side of the question far more than the other which should be kept in view by the American people."

Douglass's moral logic would resonate into the next two centuries. His words bridge the Civil War through the Civil Rights movement and into the civic discourse today in communities riven by racism. The sampling of quotes above, is just a taste of what readers can find in his collected works. In today's distracted Twitter and Instagram society, books can still offer deep and thoughtful perspective, cured over time. 

So can documentaries like "The Civil War."

"We live in a world in which we are being buried in an avalanche of information that comes from this mere constant present moment. And if you live in the present, in a disposable present, nothing else matters. We are desperate, though, for meaning. We're desperate for curation," Burns said.

A black regiment, circa 1861-65. Officers and civilian volunteers taught reading and writing. Some of the soldiers hold primers. (Library of Congress) 

* Regarding the term "Black Lives Matter," post Ferguson and Charleston, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in a recent Time essay offers a carefully considered way of thinking about the term, echoing some of the same sentiments as Frederick Douglass. Abdul-Jabbar writes: "Most Americans are already in agreement that all life matters – it's just that blacks want to make sure they are included in that category of "all," which so many studies prove is not the case. In the future think of "Black Lives Matter" as a simplified version of "We Would Like to Create a Country in Which Black Lives Matter as Much as White Lives in Terms of Physical Safety, Education, Job Opportunities, Criminal Prosecution and Political Power." 

Our Key Founder Thomas Paine?

Review by Bill Doughty

Craig Nelson makes a convincing case that a writer (not a lawyer or an elected official) was the key "founding father" of our nation. Writer and immigrant Thomas Paine inspired Thomas Jefferson, John and Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, and he encouraged a new nation-in-the-making. Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" and "American Crisis" series led to the American Revolution and helped hold the Continental Army together in the lowest points of 1776.

Paine's genius was in seeing, thinking and writing clearly. He used words to conquer fear and build confidence. From "Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution and the Birth of Modern Nations":

"In the America of 1776, everywhere they looked, Americans saw reasons to be profoundly afraid -- afraid of what the redcoats would do to them, their families, and their property; afraid of losing their British Empire and their British citizenship; afraid of what this new homemade government would do, and what it would require. Paine answered all of these vague and paralyzing terrors in a mere eight pages."

A low point came in the dead of winter of 1776, just six months after the Declaration -- "we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

Paine gave away his copyright and all he earned from "Common Sense" in order to help fund the army. On December 23, when the future of the Revolution seemed to hang by threads, "George Washington ordered his officers to gather their men into small squads and read aloud what Paine had written":

"These are the times that try men's souls ... Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives every thing its value ..."

Historians, and the founders themselves, credit statesman Paine with not only inspiring the army and success in the war but also instigating the Revolution itself.

His "Common Sense" took on the "divine right of kings" and sought to replace it with democratic ideals of individual rights and freedom. He embraced "the eighteenth-century stoic view of selfless devotion to the greater good as key element of virtue."

For Paine and the founders, virtue -- like Navy core values of honor, courage, commitment -- was rooted in Roman and Greek culture but also included "virtue of the heart" gained from the Enlightenment, thanks to Isaac Newton and others. Paine's freedom in thinking spanned centuries and would lead to wider and more open acceptance of science by the end of the 19th century.

Portait by Laurent Dabos.

As a person, Thomas Paine (whose family name was originally Pain) was not the most lovable person. He was generous but strongly opinionated, focused but known to imbibe heavily, fearless but petty about perceived insults. An unnamed contemporary said, "He is as great a paradox as ever appeared in human life." He famously verbally dueled with another thinker of his time, Edmund Burke, arguing with Burke that 'ordinary' people "are civilized enough to govern themselves."

At first loved and respected, Paine would eventually become vilified and hated by most Americans by the end of his life. In later decades he would inspire Americans as diverse as Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Thomas Edison, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.

Nelson describes him as a visionary who was always ahead of his time. He was one of the first champions of equal rights by editing and publishing in his Pennsylvania Magazine "An Occasional Letter on the Female Sex," which Nelson calls "one of the first arguments in favor of women's rights in America."

Statues of Tom Paine are in Shetford, Norfolk, England; Paris; and Morristown & Bordentown, NJ.

Paine also planted some of the first seeds of the civil rights movement, seeds that would take nearly two more centuries to fully flower.

Cowritten with Thomas Pryor in November 1775, Paine (then still "Pain") wrote "African Slavery in America," an essay "that assaulted every excuse for the trade and demanded immediate emancipation of all Africans in every colony." His was a fearless defense of reason over ignorance or any other justification for human bondage, body and mind.

After Washington's army and navy defeated the British and around the time the founders created the Constitution, Paine, ever-restless and fully committed to egalitarian republicanism, sought to export the idea of individual liberty and representational government.

After the American Revolution, Paine began his "Rights of Man" to help bring democracy and individual freedoms back across the Atlantic to Europe. His ideas and the founders' ideals would eventually reach to the Pacific and beyond. Nelson writes: "Paine's 'Rights' ... brilliantly anticipated, two hundred years ahead of its time, the style of government for close to half the world's nations today."

One of his greatest and most controversial works, condemned by many who never read it, was "Age of Reason." Nelson explores the influence of deism in a chapter called, The Religion of Science: "Besides identifying the deist principles that underlay all faiths, deists suggested that Socrates, Jesus, the Buddha, and Mohammed were each attempting to return his society's corrupt religion back to its natural state -- the state of deism."

Paine's positions in "Rights" and "Reason" led to contempt and condemnation, including by John Adams and Samuel Adams, and charges of sedition in England and France, for which he faced imprisonment and near execution by guillotine.

Prison changed Paine. His disillusionment and feeling of failure were mirrored by other "founding fathers" late in their lives.

"Almost all of Thomas Paine's Enlightenment colleagues spent their last years as he did, believing that their revolutionary programs had failed, that the philosophy of the light had been proved a pipe dream, that their life's work had been entirely for naught and the great dreams of their youth would go forever unrealized. Instead, of course, it would be the shared, hopeless despair of their last years that would in time be proven 'almost categorically' the modern paradox of the world they made."

The founders were in part disillusioned by the growing aristocracy, greed, materialism, disparity of wealth, and anti-intellectualism -- what they saw as a move away from virtue and core values.

"Yet, for anyone needing to be reminded of core Enlightenment beliefs -- that government can only be empowered by its citizens; that such citizens are born with certain natural rights; that none are born superior to any other; that all will be treated equally before the law; and that the state has a duty to help the neediest of its people -- reading Paine offers a political and spiritual inspiration, one that has driven men and women to achieve greatness across history."

Nelson concludes his biography with an excerpt from the final letter written by Thomas Jefferson, "one last bravura manifesto combining the ideas of the Enlightenment, the American and French Revolutions, and Thomas Paine."

Jefferson called for "arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government..."

Imagine if those words and insights could be read and understood in countries harboring violent extremists like ISIS/ISIL, the self-proclaimed "Islamic State."

Nelson quotes a 2004 survey by the Freedom House human rights organization showing democratic elections in 89 countries with "freedom of expression, assembly, association, education, and religion." Sadly, the most recent Freedom House annual country-by-country report on global political rights and civil liberties, Freedom in the World 2014, concludes: "The state of freedom declined for the eighth consecutive year in 2013."

Professor Eric Foner, another Paine biographer.

The Navy, working with other world navies, protects the freedoms, opportunities and "army of principles" Paine, Jefferson and the other founders achieved and that we celebrate every July 4th, "Independence Day," in the United States. Paine's description of the new nation he helped found: "the noblest work of human wisdom, the grandest scene of human glory, the fair cause of freedom..."

Nelson's "Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations" was published in 2006. It is one of dozens of biographies by great writers and thinkers like Eric Foner, Christopher Hitchens, Bertrand Russell, Owen Aldridge, David Freeman Hawke, and John Keane. The works by and about Paine are recommended reading for every world citizen interested in the concepts of virtue, freedom and individual/collective responsibility.

‘Web-feet’ of Lincoln and His Admirals

by Bill Doughty

Esteemed Lincoln historian (and Navy Reads contributor) Eric Foner said this about Craig L. Symonds’s “Lincoln and His Admirals”:  “Despite the numerous volumes on Lincoln and the land Civil War, this is the first full study of Lincoln's relationship to the war at sea, and it reveals him mastering the nuances of naval warfare.”

The War of 1812 has been called the second Revolutionary War and the real birth of the United States Navy; the Civil War was an internal revolutionary rebellion over slavery, in which the Union fought for a “new birth of freedom” for all. It was also a watershed event for the Navy.  By the end of the Civil War, the Navy proved its worth as a littoral and open-ocean force with global implications.

Symonds’s brilliant “Lincoln and his Admirals” shows strengths and weaknesses of military and political leaders, the Army-Navy relationship, and the president’s intense interest in the strategy and management of the Navy, through Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles.

Symonds explores the relationship of Admirals Farragut, Porter, DuPont, Dahlgren and Wilkes, not only with Welles and Lincoln but also with Generals Grant, McLernand and Halleck, among others.

Ego, politics and power are revealed behind the curtain of history.  Symonds shows how Lincoln sought to understand before being understood, as “a neutrally patient navigator.” “Lincoln remained a reluctant commander in chief, and once he had a command team in place that he trusted, he backed away,” Symonds writes.

Du Pont

“Lincoln and his Admirals” is a great read, showing the personalities of the leaders and containing fascinating side notes that go further behind the curtain.  These are just a few examples:  The interesting case of Cmdr. George Preble, grandson of Edward Preble, hero of the Barbary Wars; the vanity, weakness and overreaction of Rear Adm. Samuel Francis Du Pont (to a newspaper story written April 15, 1863); and the sweet-and-sour opposites of Lincoln, the forgiving, and Welles, the vengeful.

“Welles’s tendency to chastise, however, was as instructive as Lincoln’s to soothe,” Symonds writes.  Lincoln’s natural empathy and political skill helped him deal with a fiery cabinet and strong-willed military leaders.

Sometimes flawless, occasionally dysfunctional, the joint efforts of the Union Army and Navy were an important reason the North prevailed.  Lincoln could see the effectiveness of combined operations when there was a willingness to operate outside of narrow and arbitrary lines of authority.  He valued collaboration and cooperation, he encouraged innovation and new technology, and he rewarded aggressive, decisive action in battle.

Read “Lincoln and his Admirals” to understand not only the Navy’s achievements in saving the Union but also the strategies and tactics of good leaders who see bigger themes.

According to Symonds, Lincoln showed “determination to put the good of the country ahead of personal ambition.  He expected his admirals -- and his generals -- to tolerate inconvenience and disappointment for the good of the cause.  The broader goals of Union and victory were more important than anyone’s personal trials, including his own.”  Through it all he continued to support modernization of the Navy.

The Navy had 588 warships by the end of 1863, according to Symonds, with 75 of the ships armored and with more and bigger ironclads coming.  Some of the ironclads featured 11-inch and 15-inch guns.

Anticipating the arguments of Alfred Thayer Mahan a generation later, Lincoln wrote, “Our country has advantages superior to any other nation in our resources of iron and timber, with inexhaustible quantities of fuel in the immediate vicinity of both, and all available and in close proximity to navigable waters.”  Although “other governments have been making large expenditures ... with a view to attain naval supremacy,” it seemed likely to him that “this government is destined to occupy a leading position among maritime powers.  After he wrote this passage, however, he (or perhaps [Secretary of State] Seward) decided that the British might construe it as too direct a challenge to their maritime supremacy, and he deleted it, replacing it with a slightly less confrontational sentence: “The events of war give an increased interest and importance to the navy which will probably extend beyond the war itself.”

In the summer of 1863 Lincoln wrote this in a public letter to James C. Conkling, showing his appreciation for the Navy team: “Nor must Uncle Sam’s Web-feet be forgotten.  At all the watery margins they have been present.  Not only in the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been, and made their tracks.”

(CNO Adm. Greenert unveiled the latest iteration of the Navy’s Professional Reading Program at the Ford Center for Education and Leadership in front of a sculpture of 6,000 books about President Lincoln.  His program and list of books are focused on history, tradition, and leadership/management, tailored around his three tenets (warfighting first, operate forward, be ready)   We’ll continue to showcase the influence of Lincoln this year, along with books from and related to the CNO’s reading list.  In the previous blog post, Symonds shared a list of top five books with Navy Reads.)

Symonds: Novels, Narrative and Nature of War

(Professor, author and distinguished historian Craig Symonds, who is at work on his next book, took time to share a top five list of books with Navy Reads.  We featured his “The Battle of Midway” last year, a top ten recommendation from the Naval History and Heritage Command.  Also last year, Eric Foner, the esteemed Lincoln historian, recommended “Lincoln and His Admirals” by Craig Symonds, a book we look forward to reviewing in the weeks ahead. -- Bill Doughty)

By Craig Symonds

I suspect that many--maybe even all--of these will overlap suggestions by others, but here's a list of five:

C.S. Forester, “The Good Shepherd”

Covers a single day in the life of an escort commander during the Battle of the Atlantic.  It shows better than any other book I know the kind of unrelenting pressure that comes to bear on a commander in the midst of a prolonged crisis.  Though it is a novel, it is a true-to-life study by a man who spent time at sea on the Atlantic convoys and who is also one of the best wordsmiths in the English language.

C.S. Forester, “The General”

In this Forester novel, the main subject is an Army officer who, by virtue of circumstances and simple longevity, rises to command an Allied army on the Western Front in World War I.  The task is utterly beyond him, for he has failed to learn new solutions to new problems.  It is a cautionary tale for those who think they do not need to adapt and can simply apply old lessons to new problems.

Barbara Tuchman, “The Guns of August”

This is not a novel, but a narrative history of the circumstances that led the world into holocaust in 1914.  Tuchman shows how momentum and inertia stole the initiative away from the heads of government and the generals.  World War I did not need to happen at all, and wiser men might have prevented it.  This is another cautionary tale for decision makers at the highest level.

Michael Shaara, “The Killer Angels”

In this novel of the Battle of Gettysburg, the reader experiences the dilemmas of commanders at every level, from Lee and Mede (the army commanders) through various corps and division leaders down to regimental commanders, and in particular Joshua L. Chamberlain.  My students at the Naval Academy loved this novel and it helped them understand both the nature of 19th warfare and the burden of command.

and, less modestly,

Craig Symonds, “Decision at Sea”

This work shows how changing technology and changing culture affect the nature of war at sea from the Battle of the Capes in 1781 to Operation Praying Mantis in 1988.  From iron broadsides to missile warfare, many of the problems of command and control remain the same even if the technology has changed.  If there is a cautionary tale here, it is that wars often create their own momentum and that it is hubris to think that they can be completely controlled.

(A special thanks to Professor Symonds. We will go back in time 150 years with him soon when we review his “Lincoln and His Admirals.”)

A Long Arc Toward Justice

by Bill Doughty

Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles was one of the first people to learn about President Lincoln's commitment to free enslaved human beings in the South.  Lincoln confided in Welles and Secretary of State William Seward on July 13, 1862, according to Seward’s diary, that emancipation was part of a military strategy.

Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, center, at Lincoln's right hand.

Was Lincoln motivated by morality or practicality -- or both?

A new book by John Burt, “Lincoln’s Tragic Pragmatism,” joins over 16,000 titles published to date about the 16th president and explores the question. 

Regarding Lincoln's practical motivation, Burt writes:

“He explained to Welles that emancipation ‘was a military necessity absolutely essential to the salvation of the Union, that we must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued.’ Such an act would, at the least, weaken the power of the Confederacy, since it used its slaves to do such things as dig intrenchments or move supplies, jobs which otherwise would have to be performed by white soldiers. He further noted that the border states would do nothing, left to themselves, and could only be persuaded to free their slaves if the slaves were freed in the Confederacy first.”

Burt’s book was showcased this week on one of America’s best radio shows,  Tom Ashbrook’s On Point, and is available as a podcast. The acclaimed new book examines Lincoln’s philosophy and approach to democracy.  Listen to the discussion here.

Ashbrook opens his podcast with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

He quotes a passage from Burt:

“Lincoln provides a model for moral agency in a complex world in which one must make one’s way among various half-understood alternatives, none of which leaves ones hands clean.”

Burt discusses conflicting beliefs and values, the tension between democracy and morality, and the fundamental principles of persuasion.

He tells Ashbrook, “My conscience commands me, but it has to persuade you.  And, indeed, if I don’t persuade you and compel you, then I’m not behaving in a democratic way either.  It may be a high-minded tyranny, but it’s still a tyranny.  I have an obligation to get you to accept defeat on things that matter to you highly.”

The On Point conversation brings out contemporary parallels -- from Martin Luther King’s strategy in the 1960s to current challenges of the ongoing Continuing Resolution and impending Sequestration in 2013.  In considering Lincoln, the lessons in leadership, compromise and warfare -- concessions without “fatal sacrifices” -- are striking.

Another one of the 16,000+ Lincoln titles (used as a backdrop by CNO Adm. Greenert to announce his revamped Professional Reading Program) is Ronald C. White, Jr.’s “The Eloquent President.”  White examines some of the president’s greatest speeches, addresses and public letters between 1861 and 1865, pulling them apart and looking at the poetry, cadences and conviction inside.

Like Burt, White also describes the role of Welles and Seward as Lincoln’s close confidants on the issue of emancipation.

Welles wrote detailed entries in his diary and recounted Lincoln’s growing belief in “Divine Will.” According to Welles, Lincoln saw victory in the Battle of Antietam as an indication that “God had decided this question in favor of the slaves.”

In "The Eloquent President," White writes:

“What was most remarkable, in an atmosphere charged with religious fervor and hyperpatriotism, was Lincoln’s new belief that God’s purposes may not be able to be identified by either side.  What sets him apart, in this musing, from his contemporaries in both North and South was his absence of pretension.”

White puts Lincoln’s passionate and compelling speeches under a magnifying glass, peeling off words and phrases and examining the inspiration, techniques and underlying morality of the president’s rhetoric.

He considers the Annual Message to Congress, delivered Dec. 1, 1862, as  “Lincoln’s finest message to Congress.” In that address, Lincoln calls for a “plain, peaceful, generous, just” way to save the Union.

Lincoln’s conclusion includes the phrase “fiery trial”:

“Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free--honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.”

White concludes, “His words transcended the limitations of the event.  He used this occasion not simply to report to Congress but to mobilize public opinion. He offered a powerful appeal to history but also invited Americans to think in the future tense.  Lincoln’s message represented a breadth of conception and height of imagination in his expanding rhetorical arsenal.”

Lincoln balanced the highest ideals of morality with a tough, clear-eyed practical approach to achieve compromise and cooperation.  Using the art of the long view, he kept his commitment to the arc of the moral universe that would lead to justice for future generations.

Every Sailor a Leader, Each a Communicator

Review by Bill Doughty

Just as every Sailor is empowered and expected to be a leader, each is also a communicator, especially now in the Information Age, where the world is flatter and getting smaller and more connected.  Whether on Kindle, iPad or Nook or between hard covers and on paper, reading is a key to being better at both leading and communicating. 

In 2012 Navy Reads has offered lists of suggested reading by such notable authors and thinkers as James Hornfischer, Mary Roach, Eric Foner and Rear Adm. Kate Gregory, among others.  Today’s list comes from professors who facilitate and coach at the Center for Executive Education at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

Here’s a suggested top ten reading list for leaders and communicators from Professors Gail Fann Thomas, Rebecca Weintraub, Patricia Riley and Thomas Hollihan and NPS research associate Anita Salem:

“Leading Up” by Michael Useem is a “call to action” toward macrothinking and good communication, where giving courageous advice from the bottom up can prevent problems.  This book opens with a compelling discussion of Lincoln and his generals.  It is a natural fit with “The Courageous Follower” by Ira Chaleff.

“Leading Change” by John P. Cotter, who encourages a sense of urgency, a promotion of good ideas, and a need for lifelong learning in individuals and organizations, where ideas and teams who build together as a coalition are more important than egos and uncooperative “snakes.” 

“Moneyball” by Michael Lewis, the baseball book brought to film starring Brad Pitt as Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, with Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman, shows the importance of statistics and metrics used in rational thinking, communicating and decision making. 

“Talk, Inc.” by Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind shows the importance for a boss to be a good listener as she or he communicates and to be willing to engage face-to-face and via social media to align the organization.

“Speed of Trust” by Stephen M. R. Covey was brought up in discussion and is on the reading lists of several top Navy commanders.  From the Speed of Trust website: “We believe that a powerful, global renaissance of trust has begun. Sparked by recent world events, business ethics, and the transparency of conversations enabled by the worldwide web, this call for a renaissance of high trust leadership is reverberating around the globe.”

“The Third Wave” by Alvin Toffler, a futurist who literally spans generations, from “Future Shock” published in 1970 to world changes he predicted in the past four decades.  Toffler reveals the value of innovation and integration.  According to the Associated Press, "Toffler has imagination and an ability to think of various future possibilities by transcending prevailing values, assumptions and myths."  

“If Mayors Ruled the World” by Benjamin R. Barber, also author of the prescient 1995 book “Jihad vs. McWorld” (another pre-2001 must-read to explain how and why we arrived at 9/11 and experienced the Arab Spring ten years later). “If Mayors Ruled the World” recognizes the importance of cities as a new paradigm in leadership, moderation and cooperation.

“Intrinsic Motivation at Work” by Kenneth W. Thomas, a book that fits in well with Covey’s “Seven Habits” and  Levitt and Dubner’s “Freakonomics,” proving that the best motivation comes from within.

“Made to Stick” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, is all about memes, urban legend and truth “stickiness.”  With so much information flowing and so little time to ingest and analyze, how can leaders get to the core of a message, ensure credibility and verify their message was successfully communicated and remembered?

“Digital Strategies for Powerful Corporate Communications” by Paul A. Argenti and Courtney M. Barnes is promoted as “a corporate survival guide for the Web 2.0 world.” It’s written for leaders who want to understand and engage in a rapidly networking flattened world of blogs, wikis and transparency.

The Naval Postgraduate School’s Dudley Knox library is rich with books about strategy, history, technology, science and engineering, as one would expect.   Also in the stacks, three copies of Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos,” several copies of Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat,” Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner,” and books by Steinbeck and Eudora Welty. Students from dozens of countries, in a wide diversity of uniforms, come to read and learn and think.

Adm. (ret.) Mullen at NPS's Center for Executive Education.

According to former CNO and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. (ret.) Mike Mullen:

"The Naval Postgraduate School is a national - and international - treasure. With its rigorous curriculum, talented faculty and a diverse student body that includes students from all the U.S. armed forces, other federal agencies and more than 60 nations, NPS contributes greatly to enhanced joint, coalition and interagency effectiveness. Knowledge and imagination are the keys to dealing with the challenges of this new era, and here at NPS those keys are forged."

Fiery Trial - Lincoln and Slavery

by Bill Doughty

The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery earned Eric Foner the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in History.  His book is a remarkable dissection of a complicated man, issue and time in American history 50 years after the War of 1812, in the heat of the War Between the States.

As much as some people, including Lincoln, himself, wished to separate the issue of slavery as a cause of the Civil War, Foner shows us how aligned and combined they were.  He shows how unresolved issues from 1812 and unfulfilled promises of 1776 continued to broil as the nation expanded.  

Although the book begins with his birth and ends shortly after Lincoln’s assassination, much of the text focuses on the pivotal war year of 1862.  Several significant events for naval historians occurred that year, starting in February.

Eight days after Lincoln’s birthday, on Feb. 20, 1862, his young son Willie died after a long illness.  Lincoln contemplated the meaning of life and his place in history, according to Foner, cementing his desire to place slavery “on the road to extinction.”

That month, Samuel F. DuPont led a naval expedition to capture Port Royal in the Sea Islands, where he witnessed the inhumanity of slavery.  DuPont “accounted himself a conservative until he had seen the institution in all its horrors,” but he now considered himself an abolitionist, Foner writes.

Also in February, Lincoln met with Edmund L. Pierce, who traveled to the Sea Islands.  Lincoln would later take steps to assist former slaves in Port Royal, South Carolina so they could buy farm land at $1.25 per acre.

Foner writes about a key decision Lincoln made 150 years ago:

"In February 1862, ignoring numerous pleas for clemency, including one from the Republican governor of New York, Lincoln refused to intervene to prevent the execution of Captain Nathaniel Gordon, an illicit slave trader whose ship carrying 900 slaves had been captured off the coast of West Africa by a U.S. naval vessel.  A week after Lincoln’s election, a New York jury had convicted Gordon of international slave trading, a crime legally equivalent to piracy and punishable by death.  Gordon became the first and only American to be hanged as a slave trade.”

The Fiery Trial shows how cooperation with the British had grown in the 50 years from the War of 1812 to the American Civil War.  Secretary of State William H. Seward signed a treaty in 1862 allowing the British to board American-flagged vessels and search for slaves.

"Contraband" slaves escaping the Confederacy.

Foner writes about an incident in May 1862, a small Union flotilla sailed up the Stono River in South Carolina and witnessed Confederate troops pursuing a “stampede of slaves” who were trying to flee forced relocation.

"After opening fire on the Confederate forces and dispersing them, the naval commander took more than seventy slaves on board.  He settled them in a safe location near the coast.  That same month, in one of the war’s most celebrated acts of individual daring, Robert Smalls, the slave pilot of the Confederate naval vessel “Planter,” brought on board his wife, child, and a dozen other slaves, guided the ship out of the Charleston harbor and surrendered it to the Union navy."

On July 17, 1862 President Lincoln signed the Militia Act to recruit black soldiers, though black service members had served with George Washington in the Revolutionary War and later at the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.

His Second Confiscation Act, which allowed for confiscation of Confederates’ property, including slaves, was a precursor to the Emancipation Proclamation.  How could a nation committed to the Constitution, democratic principles and liberty tolerate the idea of people as “property”?  Lincoln’s draft order reads: “All persons held as slaves with any state or states shall then, henceforth, and forever, be free.”

Freed slaves in South Carolina 1862.

The Fiery Trial describes the institutional racism of the Dred Scott decision and colonization (a proposal to deport blacks to Central America).  Emancipation, itself, is revealed as being for strategic military advantage, rather than for social or ethical reasons of equality.

Foner shows how our 16th president “grew into greatness” with “a willingness to listen to criticism, to seek out new ideas.”  Through careful research, Foner explains how Lincoln’s antipathy toward slavery deepened as the institution grew, poised to expand westward.

"By the eve of the Civil War, the slave population in the United States had reached nearly four million.  The economic value of these men, women and children were considered as property exceeded the combined worth of all the banks, railroads and factories in the United States.  In geographic extent, population, and the institution’s economic importance, the South was home to the most powerful slave system the modern world has known." 

Lincoln’s conviction evolved from expediency to passion.  “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong,” Lincoln wrote. 

Lincoln considered the views of thinkers and activists, supporters and rivals, like Frederick Douglass, John Stuart Mill, Salmon P. Chase, Susan B. Anthony, Charles Sumner, and many others.  We see the intense pressures and strong statesmanship of Lincoln and his affinity for Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson and Henry Clay.  Like Paine, Madison and Jefferson, Lincoln penned some of the greatest passages in American history.  It was President Lincoln who said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  “(Let us) unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal... I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosom until there shall be no doubt that all men are created free and equal.”

(Photos and art, Library of Congress)

At this moment Sailors aboard USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) are promoting those ideals in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.