Frederick Douglass Speaks to Us in 2023: Part 3, Accountability

By Bill Doughty––

The “Big Lie” of Frederick Douglass’s time on earth was slavery. Generally, white people in the South (and many in the North) not only accepted enslavement of people with dark skin, they embraced the idea, justifying it with Bible passages such as Genesis 9, 18–27, Leviticus 25:44–46, and Paul’s Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians.

Douglass wrote about his experience as a slave, free man, and abolitionist in “Narrative of a Slave.” In “Narrative” and decades later in “My Escape from Slavery,” Douglass recounted how the sea called to him, how he was helped to learn to read in a shipyard, and how he escaped enslavement in a sailor’s uniform. We presented excerpts in our Navy Reads, “The Naval Inspiration of Frederick Douglass,” in June 2020.

The Library of America offers more of Douglass’s brilliant writing in “Douglass: Speeches & Writings” (2022, edited by David W. Blight).

Douglass confronted the Big Lie of his time with frustrated passion, a strong moral compass, and a call to arms on behalf of the truth, justice, and the ideals of the American Dream. He called for responsibility, accountability, and (as inspired by Thomas Paine) “common sense.”

His often acerbic insights reached new heights during the Civil War, during Reconstruction, and as African Americans gained more power and influence in the face of voting suppression, discrimination, and hate crimes, including lynchings. Douglass called for responsibility and accountability of the nation's leaders.

On Accountability –– For the President; For the Union; By Government of the People:

• “The President of the United States seems to possess an ever increasing passion for making himself appear silly and ridiculous, if nothing worse. Since the publication of our last number he has been unusually garrulous, characteristically foggy, remarkably illogical and untimely in his utterances, often saying that which nobody wanted to hear, and studiously leaving unsaid about the only things which the country and the times imperatively demand of him.” (09/1862)

• “Experience demonstrates that our safety as a nation depends upon our holding every officer of the nation strictly responsible to the people for the faithful performance of duty. This war has developed among other bad tendencies, a tendency to shut our eyes to the mistakes and blunders of those in power … Our rulers are the agents of the people. They are fallible men. They need instruction from the people, and it is no evidence of a factions disposition that any man presumes to condemn a public measure if in his judgment that measure is opposed to the public good.” (07/04/1862)

• “The structure of the American Constitution and Government imply the existence among the whole people of a fraternal good will, an earnest spirit of co-operation for the common good, a mutual dependence of all upon each and of each upon all. The Government is not enthroned above the people but is of, by and through the people. A despotic form of Government with its standing armies, holds its existence in large measure independently of the people and in some sort against the people, looking at them very much as a slave-holder regards his slaves, to be worked and fed when obedient, and to be flogged and otherwise punished when they disobey. When such people raise an insurrection and are put down, the path before them is plain and simple: It is submission. To obey is the fulfillment of the whole law of despotism.—But our form of Government contemplates in such a case something more than mere cold obedience. It not only requires this, but a cordial co-operation. Its whole machinery is deranged when one of its parts fail to perform its functions. The rebellion has paralyzed the Federal Government in all the rebel States, but putting down the rebels in arms does not necessarily cure this paralysis. The benumbed or dead state must be called into life, and for this the highest wisdom must be employed. The State Senate, the State Legislature, the State Courts, the State Governors, and officers generally have to be gathered in under the fold of the Constitution and Union, and brought to co-operate in good faith with the National Government. How all this shall be done, is one of the great questions of the future.” (11/1862)

• “A man sets out in life with honest principles and with high purposes inspired at the family hearthstone, and for a time steadily and scrupulously keeps them in view. But at last under the influence of some powerful temptation he is induced to violate his principles and push aside his sense of right. The water from the first moment is smooth about him, but soon he finds himself in the rapids. He has lost his footing. The broad flood, resistless as the power of fate, sweeps him onward, from bad to worse, he becomes more hardened, blind and shameless in his crimes till he is overtaken by dire calamity, and at last sinks to ruin. Precisely this has been the case with the American people. No people ever entered upon the pathway of nations, with higher and grader ideas of justice, liberty and humanity than ourselves. There are principles in the Declaration of Independence which would release every slave in the world and prepare the earth for a millennium of righteousness and peace. But alas! We have seen that declaration intended to be viewed like some colossal statue at the loftiest altitude, by the broad eye of the whole world, meanly subjected to a microscopic examination and its glorious universal truths craftily perverted into seeming falsehoods. Instead of treating it, as it was intended to be treated, as a full and comprehensive declaration of the equal and sacred rights of mankind, our contemptible negro-hating and slaveholding critics, have endeavored to turn it into absurdity by treating it as a declaration of the equality of man in his physical proportions and mental endowments. This gross and scandalous perversion of the true intents of meaning of the declaration did not long stand alone. It was soon followed by the heartless dogma, that the rights declared in that instrument did not apply to any but white men. The slave power at last succeeded, in getting this doctrine proclaimed from the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States.” (07/04/1862)

• “Do not ask me what will be the final result of the so-called negro problem. I cannot tell you. I have sometimes thought that the American people are too great to be small, too just and magnanimous to oppress the weak, too brave to yield up the right to the strong, and too grateful for public services ever to forget them or fail to reward them. I have fondly hoped that this estimate of American character would soon cease to be contradicted or put in doubt. But the favor with which this cowardly proposition of disfranchisement has been received by public men, white and black, by Republicans as well as Democrats, has shaken my faith in the nobility of the nation. I hope and trust all will come out right in the end, but the immediate future looks dark and troubled. I cannot shut my eyes to the ugly facts before me. Strange things have happened of late and are still happening. Some of these tend to dim the lustre of the American name, and chill the hopes once entertained for the cause of American liberty. He is a wiser man than I am, who can tell how low the moral sentiment of this republic may yet fall. When the moral sense of a nation begins to decline and the wheel of progress to roll backward, there is no telling how low the one will fall or hear the other may stop. The downward tendency already manifest has swept away some of the most important safeguards. The Supreme Court has surrendered. State sovereignty is restored. It has destroyed the civil rights Bill, and converted the Republican party into a party of money rather than a party of morals, a party of things rather than a party of humanity and justice. We may well ask what next? The pit of hell is said to be bottomless. Principles which we all thought to have been firmly and permanently settled by the late war, have been boldly assaulted and overthrown by the defeated party.” (01/09/1894)

Douglass recognized the corrosive aspects of fear. He called for hope and optimism in an era of negativity and hypocrisy, personified in the Big Lie of slavery. He called for integration of the military, expanded rights for women, respect for the rule of law, and diversity in society. And he demanded a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

We hope this series of Navy Reads reviews of Douglass’s “Speeches & Writings” will pique readers’ interest in the full works of the great abolitionist. Some leaders who seek power would prefer to ban books about African American history, including the Big Lie of slavery and the ongoing struggle for civil rights. The words of Frederick Douglass remain alive and relevant more than a century later. His words inspired great American presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, Harry S. Truman John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson –– and Jimmy Carter.

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.

Navigating Now in 'Sea of Despair'

Review by Bill Doughty––

In these troubled times we can and should consider advice from good, principled leaders.

Then-Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV) Ray Mabus speaks with civil rights hero and U.S. Representative of the Fifth District of Georgia, John Lewis, Jan. 6, 2016, before the ship-naming ceremony for the future fleet replenishment oiler USNS John Lewis (T-AO 205). USNS John Lewis will be the first ship of the Navy's newest generation of fleet replenishment oilers. Photo by Mass Communication Specialist Second Class Armando Gonzales)

The most respected living civil rights leader, Representative John Lewis of Georgia, asked Americans today on the Morning Joe show to "not get lost in a sea of despair but to keep the faith" and be "true to the cause of love, peace and nonviolence." (Read another moving statement from Lewis at the end of this post.)

This week, after witnessing the horror of racially charged events –– including the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmad Aubrey –– I turned to a book by Melvin G. Williams Sr. and Melvin G. Williams Jr., "Navigating the Seven Seas: Leadership Lessons of the first African American Father and Son to Serve at the Top in the U.S. Navy" (Naval Institute Press, 2011).

The book has been a perennial recommendation on the Navy Professional Reading Program. It serves as a lighthouse of inspiration with advice on character, courage and commitment as well as other key qualities needed to be a good leader, citizen and sailor.

Williams Sr. is a retired Command Master Chief who was in charge of the SECNAV-CNO Flag Mess at the Pentagon and played a pivotal role in helping further integrate the Navy in the late 60s, including providing advice and inspiration to ADM Elmo Zumwalt Jr., then-Chief of Naval Operations.


All Hands Update "Legacy of Service" interview with Williamses about diversity in the Navy. Hosted by PO2 Patrick Gearhiser. (DVIDS)

ADM John C. Harvey Jr. publicly commended retired Master Chief Williams in 2010 saying, "You served your Navy and your nation with honor and distinction for over twenty-seven years, during a period of time when you loved your Navy far more than your Navy loved you. You never lost faith that someday, the Navy you loved so much and served so well would take the steps that had to be taken and allow a sailor's talent to be the sole measure of what a sailor can do." Williams Sr. served in the Navy for 27 years.

Vice Adm. Mel Williams Jr., commander of U.S. 2nd Fleet, salutes sideboys aboard the guided-missile frigate USS Halyburton (FFG 40) April 28, 2010 during a ship visit while Halyburton is in port for Fleet Week Port Everglades for a celebration of the maritime services. (Photo by Seaman Travis J. Kuykendall)

Williams Jr., served as a submarine officer and aboard surface ships and aircraft carriers for 32 years. He achieved the rank of vice admiral and commanded the U.S. Second Fleet, leading sailors and Marines. He coordinated closely with NATO, where he helped develop and publish the first maritime counter-piracy tactics and contributed to NATO maritime security operations.

Williams Jr. recounts his childhood briefly in "Navigating the Seven Seas":

"I arrived on this Earth in November 1955, about one month before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. As an African American male who grew up in the United States when equal opportunity for all people was beginning, I felt a personal imperative to have the integrity and determination to fulfill the obligation that I truly believed I had to realize the dreams of those courageous African Americans who had come before me. I was not alone in this belief, which many African Americans in my generation shared."

Father and son discuss their book, "Navigating the Seven Seas"

Williams Jr. said his family instilled respect for hard work and education as well as "traits including integrity, determination, a positive attitude, fairness, a personable disposition, humility, and the elements of servant leadership."

Like all military families, there were moves and new schools. In 1968 the family moved to Washington D.C., where thirteen-year-old Mel Jr. "absorbed pivotal events of that year": Vietnam War, Tet Offensive, assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, racial riots, and Mexico City Olympics.

This book is part double-autobiography, part guide to good leadership. The "Seven Seas" is a "nautical play on words," representing the maritime global commons to show how to navigate as a leader through Seven Cs:

• Character: The first and most essential of the Cs, trumping all others –– "the commitment to take right and timely action repeatedly toward realizing the vision are central to leadership."
• Competence: "A leader must be competent as he or she guides the organization."
• Courage: "Leaders should consider the facts, opinions of a diverse group, instincts and intuition, and be decisive at the right time."
• Commitment: Developing people to their full potential, trusting others, and delegating authority are essential to being a good leader.
• Caring: Serving others is caring for others, ensuring they have "needed resources."
• Communicating: "People want to be inspired by the leader" who must "develop forward-looking plans with the team, and take action while creating a sense of urgency."
• Community: "With better-prepared and developed individuals, the leader works to create a cohesive team, so that the whole is greater than the sum of the individuals."

Williams Sr.'s great-grandparents on both sides were born into slavery. The veteran of the Korean War, Vietnam War and Cold War Navy nurtured a culture of love, empathy and servant leadership in his family and within his circle of influence in the Navy.

The authors provide quotes from Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Booker T. Washington, Thomas Paine, Lao Tzu, Albert Einstein, and others.

Among those they name in their acknowledgements (as listed): Barry Danforth, James L. Holloway III, Hugh McCracken, Elmo Zumwalt Jr., Chuck Beers, Skip Bowman, James Cartwright, Kirk Donald, Jerry Ellis, Malcolm Fages, Ed Giambastiani, the Golden Thirteen, Samuel Gravely, Mike Mullen, B.J. Penn, Hyman G. Rickover, Gary Roughead and Carl Trost.

Current and past Chiefs of Naval Operations (CNO) came to the Pentagon for the unveiling of the CNO portraits, 26 June 1986. Left to right: Admiral James L. Holloway III, USN (Retired); Admiral Carlisle A.H. Trost, USN, CNO Designate; Admiral Robert B. Carney, USN (Retired); Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, USN (Retired); Admiral James D. Watkins, USN, then-CNO; Admiral George W. Anderson, USN (Retired), seated; Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., USN (Retired); Admiral David L. McDonald, USN (Retired); Admiral Arleigh A. Burke, USN (Retired); and Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, USN (Retired). (NHHC)

Along with the Seven Cs, the authors highlight the Navy's Core Values (including two of the Cs): Honor, Courage and Commitment. "Courage" comes up time and again in "Navigating the Seven Seas."

Williams Jr. writes, "Throughout history, the men and women who serve in the armed forces in defense of freedom, human rights, and the rule of law have been leaders who routinely demonstrate courage." He adds, "We, the beneficiaries of freedom, should be grateful to these courageous leaders. I am."

In 2020, do we have the courage to confront inequality, achieve fundamental systemic police reform as well as protect the community by demanding nonviolence? In protesting injustice, anger is justified; violence is not.

John Lewis is a courageous leader in civil rights. He calls for peace and nonviolence in the face of riots happening in 2020 so we are not "lost in a sea of despair."

Rep. John Lewis (D Ga.) dons protective gear as he prepares to weld his initials into the keel plate of his namesake ship during the keel laying ceremony of USNS John Lewis at the General Dynamics Shipyard in San Diego, May 13, 2019. (Photo by Sarah Burford)

Statement by Rep. John Lewis, Congressman from Georgia's 5th District:

"Sixty-five years have passed, and I still remember the face of young  Emmett Till. It was 1955. I was 15 years old — just a year older than him. What happened that summer in Money, Mississippi, and the months that followed — the recanted accusation, the sham trial, the dreaded verdict — shocked the country to its core. And it helped spur a series of non-violent events by everyday people who demanded better from our country.

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial (NPS)

“Despite real progress, I can't help but think of young Emmett today as I watch video after video after video of unarmed Black Americans being killed, and falsely accused. My heart breaks for these men and women, their families, and the country that let them down — again. My fellow Americans, this is a special moment in our history. Just as people of all faiths and no faiths, and all backgrounds, creeds, and colors banded together decades ago to fight for equality and justice in a peaceful, orderly, non-violent fashion, we must do so again.

“To the rioters here in Atlanta and across the country: I see you, and I hear you. I know your pain, your rage, your sense of despair and hopelessness. Justice has, indeed, been denied for far too long. Rioting, looting, and burning is not the way. Organize. Demonstrate. Sit-in. Stand-up. Vote. Be constructive, not destructive. History has proven time and again that non-violent, peaceful protest is the way to achieve the justice and equality that we all deserve.

“Our work won't be easy — nothing worth having ever is — but I strongly believe, as Dr. King once said, that while the arc of the moral universe is long, it bends toward justice.” –– May 30, 2020

Mattis/Washington & the Common Good

SECDEF James Mattis visits Sailors in Bahrain in March. (MC1 Bryan Blair) 

by Bill Doughty

When Secretary of Defense Gen. James Mattis announced his resignation this week it brought to mind the farewell speech by President George Washington, who similarly expressed his support to the Constitution, desire for other nations to become free allies, and rejection of totalitarianism.

Unlike Mattis's letter, George Washington's speech is typically dense, layered and flowery, which was the traditional style of writing at the time. Washington expresses his deep gratitude and offers this wish: 

"... that your union and brotherly affection may be perpetual; that the free Constitution, which is the work of your hands, may be sacredly maintained; that its administration in every department may be stamped with wisdom and virtue; that, in fine, the happiness of the people of these States, under the auspices of liberty, may be made complete by so careful a preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing as will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, the affection, and adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it."

Interestingly, just 65 years before the Civil War, Washington seems to see the coming divisions of North and South as well as differences between East Coast and the American West. He seems to present an early maritime strategy and an understanding of how trade and commerce can create national unity. 

"The North, in an unrestrained intercourse with the South, protected by the equal laws of a common government, finds in the productions of the latter great additional resources of maritime and commercial enterprise and precious materials of manufacturing industry. The South, in the same intercourse, benefiting by the agency of the North, sees its agriculture grow and its commerce expand. Turning partly into its own channels the seamen of the North, it finds its particular navigation invigorated; and, while it contributes, in different ways, to nourish and increase the general mass of the national navigation, it looks forward to the protection of a maritime strength, to which itself is unequally adapted. The East, in a like intercourse with the West, already finds, and in the progressive improvement of interior communications by land and water, will more and more find a valuable vent for the commodities which it brings from abroad, or manufactures at home. The West derives from the East supplies requisite to its growth and comfort, and, what is perhaps of still greater consequence, it must of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of indispensable outlets for its own productions to the weight, influence, and the future maritime strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest as one nation. Any other tenure by which the West can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength, or from an apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious."

Washington's warning of "unnatural connection with any foreign power" is reinforced by his outright warning to remain vigilant against those who would drape themselves in the mantle of patriotism and threaten the democratic federal republic he, Jefferson and other founders created.

In her small but profound new book, "The Death of Truth" (Penguin Random House, 2018), Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michiko Kakutani, provides brilliant insights. Her epilogue examines Washington's warnings:

"George Washington's Farewell Address of 1796 was eerily clairvoyant about the dangers America now faces. In order to protect its future, he said, the young country must guard its Constitution and remain vigilant about efforts to sabotage the separation and balance of powers within the government that he and the other founders had so carefully crafted.Washington warned about the rise of 'cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men' who might try to subvert the power of the people' and 'usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.'He warned about the 'insidious wiles of foreign influence' and the dangers of 'ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens' who might devote themselves to a favorite foreign nation in order 'to betray or sacrifice the interests' of America."

Kakutani notes that America's founders embraced concepts of "common good," "common concerns" and "common cause." 

"Thomas Jefferson spoke in his inaugural address of the young country uniting 'in common efforts for the common good.' A common purpose and a shared sense of reality mattered because they bound the disparate states and regions together, and they remain essential for conducting a national conversation ... Jefferson wrote that because the young republic was predicated on the proposition 'that man may be governed by reason and truth,' our 'first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions' ... Without truth, democracy is hobbled. The founders recognized this, and those seeking democracy's survival must recognize it today."

Kakutani

Speaking of "common," Thomas Paine, the great agitator and critical thinker, brought reason and truth together in the unflowery and striking prose of "Common Sense," helping to bring freethinkers together against totalitarian Imperial Britain. 

What Americans can share together now is what Mattis's letter, Washington's address and Jefferson's words have in common: respect, devotion and loyalty to the Constitution and commitment to truth, justice, freedom and democracy.

Defense Secretary James N. Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., brief reporters on the current U.S. air strikes on Syria during a joint press conference at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., Apr. 13, 2018. (DoD photo by U.S. Army Sgt. Amber I. Smith.

New York Says What to Read. Wait, What?

Review by Bill Doughty

The trouble with a book that recommends 1,000 books for your bucket-list is this: What prism is the editor/compiler looking through.

"A Thousand Books to Read Before You Die" (Workman Publishing, 2018, New York, NY) is a beautiful book offering an impressive spectrum of colorful titles and great authors.

You'll find great writers and thinkers like Isaac Asimov, Ulysses S. Grant, Maya Angelou, Stephen J. Gould, George Orwell, Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy, Oliver Sacks, Homer, Dorothy Parker, D.H. Lawrence, J.K. Rowling, Jon Krakauer and Agatha Christie.

There are a relative handful of selected books that would appeal to Navy readers, including Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," Tom Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October," Erich Maria Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front," "The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant," Shelby Foote's "The Civil War," Robert Hughes's "The Fatal Shore," William Manchester's "Goodbye Darkness," John Keegan's "The Face of Battle," David McCullough's "Truman," David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest," Herman Melville's "Moby Dick," Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea," Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five," Joseph's Heller's "Catch-22" and Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game":

"...Just try to put it down. Tracing Ender's path to Battle School – a space center in which the best and the brightest children are trained for high-tech war – and, ultimately, to Command School, on the edge of the interstellar front lines. Orson Scott Card's novel is riveting... Ender's fierce initiation reveals his unparalleled gifts for warfare. As the stakes mount, the simulated battles he dominates are transformed from complex and dangerous games into sinister – and spectacular – realities."

Author James Mustich features his one thousand books, mentions many others and merely names a slew of extras. In other words, there are thousands of books discussed in this readable, interesting and hefty offering: a beautiful book about books.

So, what's the problem?

BM3 Ivan Naranjo reads aboard USS Anchorage (LPD 23), 2018. Photo by MC3 Ryan M. Breeden

As great as this book is, the personal lens of the editor understandably distorts reason, trumps objectivity, and begs questions as to how some of the authors and their works were selected. 

I mean, Anne Rice? Moss Hart's show business autobiography? Richard Ford's adventures in making artisan bread and pizza? "Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer's Tour of France"? "When French Women Cook"? "Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris"? "The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth"? 

Mustich, a New York bookseller with an apparent deep love of fashion, fine dining, Broadway, the Big Apple, Provence and France, all but admits his bias and certainly is upfront about his selections not being perfect. "Hot dogs to haute cuisine," as he says. But if comfort foods of literature are allowed, where are Edgar Rice Burroughs, Mario Puzo, Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey?

Stephen King gets "Carrie" and "11/22/1963," but where are "The Stand," "The Shining" and "Cujo"?

William Shakespeare

As one would expect from a polished bookseller, this is like a bookstore readers can hold, complete with a detailed general index and 1,000 book checklist.

Overall, Mustich does a pretty good job of ensuring diversity, including different age groups and interests – both fiction and non-fiction; poetry and philosophy; youth and adult; U.S. and international; escapist and pay-attention-this-is-important.

The Bhagavad Gita, Bible and The Book of Job find themselves co-located, thanks to alphabetical listings, as are Plato, Pliny the Younger and Plutarch. Shakespeare is the overall winner in number of works listed, with 13 titles.

Nice surprises include personal favorites such as Gould's "The Panda's Thumb," Loren Eiseley's "The Immense Journey," Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove," Richard Dawkins's "The Selfish Gene," "Portable Dorothy Parker," Taylor Branch's "Parting the Waters," "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave," Carl Sagan's "Dragons of Eden," Edward O. Wilson's "The Naturalist," and Charles Darwin's "The Voyage of the Beagle."

Thankfully there's a heavy helping of science, including Thomas's wonderful collection of essays, "The Lives of a Cell":

"Every genre has its native charms, and the allure of the essay is its easy way with rumination. In the best examples of the form, the essayist communicates not just learning, but thinking, inviting the reader to share the satisfactions of a mind at play on a field of observation or experience. When an essay's author is as masterful as Lewis Thomas, it can shine like a jewel, glittering with truths small and large."

But where are shining lights by Christopher Hitchens, Steven Covey, Desmond Morris ("The Naked Ape"), John Hersey ("Hiroshima"), Thomas Paine ("The Age of Reason"), Steven Pinker, William Zinsser, Mary Roach, Craig Symonds, Jared Diamond, Nathaniel Philbrick, Erik Larson, James D. Hornfischer, Hector Hugh Munro a.k.a. Saki, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Thomas Friedman, Noah Yuval Harari and Stephen Hawking?

It's a tragedy that Mary Roach and Hope Jahren ("Lab Girl") are missing.

So many great authors are left on forgotten shelves, so many books. It can be difficult to choose any individual one. That's where a book like this can help. Perhaps there will be more versions of "1,000 Books to Read" – even someday "1,000 Navy Books to Read."

Bazelon, Richardson and Plotz of Slate's Political Gabfest.

This book first came to my attention after hearing it recommended by David Plotz, anchor of Slate Magazine's Political Gabfest podcast with Emily Bazelon and John Richardson.

Plotz said this about editor Mustich: "He's a reader of such joy and bouyancy. ... He has a real knack for recognizing what in a book is wonderful ... He's a spirit you'll want to spend time with."

And Plotz said this about the book itself: "Over 948 magnificent pages, well-illustrated. The familiar and the highly unfamiliar ... It's so much fun."

Gabfest's John Dickerson said, "So, does that make it a thousand and one?"

The best endorsement may be through the prism of writer, historian, producer Ken Burns: "If you've ever doubted that books were the greatest invention of all time, and that they carry within them our collective memories and dreams as well as any semblance of intelligence we have as a species, pick up this book and start reading."

To Tell the Truth, Mr. President

Review by Bill Doughty

Autocratic dictators lie.

So said President Harry S. Truman, American everyman leader-philosopher.

"The dictators of the world say that if you tell a lie often enough, why people, will believe it," Truman wrote, as quoted in Jon Meacham's insightful "The Soul of America" (Random House, 2018). "Well, if you tell the truth often enough, they'll believe it and go along with you," Truman wrote.

Our previous Navy Reads post shows some of the ways the Navy was influential in history – an unintended subtext in Meacham's book. This blogpost focuses on Truman's and other leaders' roles, especially during the Cold War, when democracy was threatened by a politician who sought to divide people with fear, hate and intolerance: Wisconsin's Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.

Using fear, religion and his version of patriotism, McCarthy spewed the conspiracy theory of a deep state with communists behind every tree. Meacham reports McCarthy's words: "'Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity,' McCarthy told the Ohio County Republican Women's Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, on Thursday, February 9, 1950."

McCarthy reveling in headlines about himself.

McCarthy "exploited the privileges of power and prominence without regard to its responsibilities; to him politics was not about the substantive but the sensational," Meacham writes. "A master of false charges, or conspiracy-tinged rhetoric, and of calculated disregard for conventional figures (from Truman and Eisenhower to [Gen. George C.] Marshall), McCarthy could distract the public, play the press, and change the subject – all while keeping himself at center stage."

"McCarthy was an opportunist, uncommitted to much beyond his own fame and influence."

"How he loved the story of himself as a brave warrior, a story that dominated the newspapers of the day. McCarthy needed the press, and the press came to need McCarthy. He was fantastic copy, a real life serial. The twists and turns of the McCarthy saga meant more bylines for the reporters, more exciting headlines for the editors, and, given the subject matter – alleged infiltration of the government of the United States by a fatal foe – more copies sold for the owners. Radio and television amplified McCarthy's impact."

He manipulated the media and news cycles and kept the spotlight on himself. He advocated for banning books by authors such as Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Thin Man" because of the author's leftist leanings.

McCarthy and Cohn

According to McCarthy's own New York attorney, Roy M. Cohn, who ultimately turned on his boss by reflecting about McCarthy: "He was impatient, overly aggressive, overly dramatic. He acted on impulse. He tended to sensationalize the evidence he had ... He would neglect to do important homework and consequently would, on occasion, make challengeable statements," Cohn said.

"He saw the dramatic political opportunities connected with a fight on Communism. McCarthy was gifted with a sense of political timing," Cohn added. "Sometimes he misjudged, but on balance his sense of what made drama and headlines was uncommonly good."

Sen. Margaret Chase Smith

Allied against McCarthy were Eleanor Roosevelt, who compared McCarthy's tactics to "hitlerism"; Winston Churchill, who called for defending "the Anglo-American tradition of fair play"; Maine's Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who said McCarthy created "a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and everything that we Americans hold dear"; editor Palmer Hoyt, who told his reporters to call out lies when statements were "demonstrably false"; reporter Edward R. Murrow, who said, "We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men"; and (former Army captain) Truman, who believed in telling the truth in plain English.

"On Thursday, March 30, 1950, at a press conference at his Florida retreat in Key West – where Truman could indulge his fondness for Hawaiian shirts, bourbon and poker – the president told the assembled journalists exactly what he believed, 'I think the greatest asset that the Kremlin has is Senator McCarthy,' Truman said ... The net effect of the McCarthyite campaign,Truman said, was to undermine confidence in the country in a time of cold war. 'To try to sabotage the foreign policy of the United States,' he said,'is just as bad in this cold war as it would be to shoot our soldiers in the back in a hot war."

Young Navy war hero Sen. John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert F. Kennedy aligned themselves with McCarthy in the early 1950s and later regretted it. RFK even served as a young lawyer on McCarthy's staff.

McCarthy tried to associate himself with a hero of naval history when his adversaries spoke out against him:

"In the early 1950s legions of people were entranced by McCarthy's Manichaean vision of life. He spoke in the starkest of terms, savoring superlatives. Everything was dramatic, contentious, perilous: So few things, McCarthy implied, stood between American freedom and Communist slavery. But one of those things – perhaps the most important of them – was McCarthy himself, who quoted John Paul Jones: 'I have just begun to fight.'"

Eisenhower failed to take on McCarthy when he became president, but he did address the nation about resisting fear. "His April 1954 speech about fear, which falls about midway between these landmarks (of his speeches about D-Day landings and warning about the 'military-industrial complex') ... described the disposition necessary to survive life in an age of strain and uncertainly.'"

Department of Army attorney Welch and Sen. McCarthy in Senate hearing."Have you no sense of decency?"

McCarthy's downfall came after Eisenhower's speech on fear, Murrow's public denunciation and an event that occurred in Congress involving the U.S. Army and Roy M. Cohn, when McCarthy seemed to slander and call into question the integrity of an army lawyer.

"In an iconic moment, the counsel for the army, Joseph N. Welch, attacked the senator, who had clumsily attempted to impugn the loyalty of a young lawyer on Welch's team. 'Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your selfishness,' Welch told McCarthy. 'Little did I dream you would be so reckless and cruel to do injury to that lad ... I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think that I am a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.' McCarthy blundered forward and took up the theme again. Welch was ready and struck with force. 'You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? You have done enough. Have you left no sense of decency?'"

President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Sen. Prescott Bush

Meacham points out that even after the wind left McCarthy's sails, he still had a base support within the country, with 34 percent still backing him. It took a Senate censure to finally evaporate his power. Among those senators who spoke in favor of censure was a senior senator from Connecticut, Prescott Bush, father of President George H. W. Bush and grandfather of President George W. Bush.

"When Joe McCarthy died at Bethesda Naval Hospital on Thursday, May 2, 1957, he was once more the center of attention," Meacham writes. "'Years will pass before the results of his work can be objectively evaluated,' Vice President Nixon said, 'but his friends and many of his questions will not question his devotion to what he considered to be the best interests of his country.'"

Meacham's book serves a tray of rich appetizers from history. He reveals how Americans have survived division and dissension, how we've been able to vanquish real threats to our democracy and live up to our ideals set forth by the nation's founders. We're left hungry to learn more, and fortunately we have a list of books and authors from Meacham, both in the chapters and in the extensive bibliography, all of which contributed in some way to the soul.

For example:

Garry Wills's "Inventing America"

The works of Thomas Jefferson, Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, St. Augustine, Shakespeare, Ulysses S. Grant, Frederick Douglass, Emerson and Thoreau

Corey Robin's "Fear: the History of a Political Idea"

Jacob A. Riis's "How the Other Half Live"

Sinclair Lewis's "It Can't Happen Here"

Nathaniel West's "A Cool Million"

Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"

Robert Penn Warren's "Segregation" and "The Legacy of the Civil War"

John Lewis's "Walking with the Wind"

Authors: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Alexis de Tocqueville, Stephen Ambrose, Taylor Branch, W.E.B. Dubois, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Eric Foner, Chris Matthews, Theodore C. Sorensen, Thomas Aquinas, Barbara Tuchman, David McCullough and Fareed Zakaria, among scores of others.

Meacham dedicates the book to fellow historians Evan Thomas and Michael Beschloss. "They are reassuring, selfless, and kind."

"The Soul of America" is a recent #1 New York Times bestseller, supplanted this week by Navy veteran Senator John McCain's "The Restless Wave" (Simon and Schuster, 2018).

In closing, we share these words from Thomas Paine, quoted early in Meacham's book: "As in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king."

Remembering the thoughts of Truman and Paine: Dictators and kings who think they have absolute power lie. The law – based on the Constitution, the support of the American people and the better angels of our nature – stands for truth.