The Best Quote Jones Never Wrote
By Lori Lyn Bogle and Ensign Joel I. Holwitt, U.S. Navy
The "Qualifications of a Naval Officer" quotation variously attributed to John Paul Jones and force-fed to U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen in the publication Reef Points presents a clear sign of naval transformation at the turn of the 20th century. The action of a recent Commandant of Midshipmen, however, officially acknowledges that Jones had nothing to do with this 100-year-old mantra.
In 1986 naval historian James C. Bradford carefully constructed a case proving that Augustus C. Buell (1847-1904) was a fabricator. "Qualifications of a Naval Officer," long memorized by all midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy, was not written by John Paul Jones, as first cited by Buell in his 1900 two-volume Paul Jones: Founder of the American Navy . 1 Rather, Bradford convincingly argued in a 33-page pamphlet published by the Naval Historical Foundation that the popular biographer had rewritten some of Jones's letters and created other documents to offer turn-of-the-century naval officers a model of modern professionalism. 2
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Dr. Bogle is an associate professor of history at the U.S. Naval Academy and the author of The Pentagon's Battle for the American Mind: The Early Cold War (2004). Her monograph concerning Theodore Roosevelt's use of publicity and modern sociological principles to convince the American public of the need to acquire an offensive fleet is under contract with Texas A&M Press.
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