The decades between the War of 1812 and the Civil War would prove to be an era of diverse missions and significant changes for the U.S. Navy.
As the fledgling United States of America expanded westward, fulfilling what many called its “Manifest Destiny,” the U.S. Navy had likewise grown in size and in reach. Venturing out to the far corners of the world, the Navy explored unknown regions, established bases on distant shores, fought a war that caused our neighbor to the west to become our neighbor to the south, and acquired new realms of responsibility. By midcentury, it had become a two-ocean Navy confronting emerging new technologies as well as new geographical vistas.
A More Powerful Navy
The stunning U.S. victories over Royal Navy ships during the War of 1812, coupled with the strategically important victories on American lakes, had raised the U.S. Navy’s stock in the eyes of the public to such an extent that the end of hostilities did not bring the usual drawdown of naval forces.
Already more powerful than it previously had been, the Navy was given a huge boost when, in April 1816, Congress passed the “Act for the Gradual Increase of the Navy,” which authorized the building of nine ships-of-the-line and 12 frigates. Hailed by navalists as a great leap forward, this new trend would ultimately prove to have the opposite effect in several significant ways.
To begin with, this was an attempt to mirror the structure of European navies, rather than to build a unique entity tailored to the needs of this unique nation. Many of the missions that emerged in those years required smaller rather than larger vessels, often rendering those frigates and ships-of-the-line as impotent.
Building these powerful—and expensive—ships also poured resources into what ultimately would prove to be dying technology, as steam engines gradually supplanted sails as the primary means of propulsion and advances in weaponry changed the tactical landscape.
Barbary Again
Yet these big ships were not entirely without utility or purpose. One significant example was Stephen Decatur’s cruise to the Mediterranean within months of the end of the War of 1812. Intent on settling old scores and solving the Barbary problem once and for all—which had raised its ugly head again while the Americans had been busy fighting the British—two squadrons had been dispatched to the Mediterranean in the spring of 1815—one under Decatur and the other under William Bainbridge. While the latter was still struggling to get his ships ready for sea, Decatur got underway on 20 May.
Arriving off Gibraltar, Decatur learned that an Algerine flotilla had passed through the strait recently on its way home from a cruise in the Atlantic. Decatur hurried after them, hoping to intercept the enemy ships before they reached a safe harbor.
On the morning of 17 June, the U.S. squadron sighted the Algerine frigate Mashuda off the Spanish Cape de Gata. The Algerine tried to escape but soon was overtaken and, after a battle that cost the Algerines 30 killed—including the admiral in command of the squadron—the Mashuda surrendered her remaining crew of 406. Two days later, the Americans also captured an Algerine brig.
Having captured a sizable portion of the Algerine Navy, Decatur then sailed into the harbor at Algiers and dictated his terms to the Dey. After a “discussion” that Decatur later famously described as having taken place “at the mouths of our cannons,” the Dey agreed to end the payment of all tribute, freed all American prisoners without ransom, and granted the U.S. most-favored-nation status.
By this time, Bainbridge’s squadron, consisting of the ship-of-line Independence, the frigates United States and Congress, and six smaller vessels, also had arrived on the scene. Added to Decatur’s squadron of the frigates Constellation, Guerriere, and Macedonian—the latter two having been taken from the Royal Navy—as well as an assortment of seven sloops of war, brigs, and schooners, it was an impressive array of naval power. The Bey of Tunis and the Bashaw of Tripoli were many things, but not stupid. When Decatur demanded indemnities be paid for American prizes they had turned over to the British during the war, both the Bey and the Bashaw complied, paying $46,000 and $25,000 respectively. The tables had truly turned. No longer would the “Barbary Pirates” be a problem for the United States.
Subsequently, two frigates and several smaller vessels formed the nucleus of a Mediterranean Squadron to protect American commerce in those waters. Over time, other distant stations and squadrons were established and maintained for commerce protection and various other regional purposes.
An Odious Practice
Early on the morning of 22 March 1820, two naval officers faced one another on a small field outside of Bladensburg, just over the Maryland line from the District of Columbia. In a calm voice, one of the men addressed the other across the short stretch of grass that separated them, saying “If we meet in another world, let us hope that we may be better friends.”
“I was never your enemy,” the other quickly replied.
With these seemingly conciliatory words still hanging in the morning air, the two men raised their long-barreled pistols and took aim. How they came to this moment is a long, complicated, and tragic story, but it was ended in an instant when the sharp crack of gunfire left both men crumpled on the dew-covered grass.
The two men were Navy commodores, and one was the renowned Stephen Decatur, whose courageous exploits against the Barbary pirates and in the War of 1812 were legendary. The great hero who had many times defied death at the hands of foreign enemies was now carried to his home on Lafayette Square in Washington, where he lingered in agony for the rest of the day before death finally released him from his suffering.
While dueling was practiced by men in other walks of life in that era (Aaron Burr’s killing of Alexander Hamilton is one famous instance), it was particularly rampant among naval officers, probably because an exaggerated sense of personal honor was exacerbated by being pent up in men-of-war on distant stations for extended periods and by a stagnated promotion system that was causing a great deal of frustration in the officer corps. Shamefully, nearly as many naval officers met their deaths on the “field of honor” as were killed in all the naval battles that had taken place to that time.
The senseless waste of Decatur’s death was mitigated somewhat by the resulting public outcry that soon caused senior officers to abandon the heinous practice. But dueling continued to flourish among midshipmen and junior officers. Little effort seems to have been made by their seniors to curb the slaughter. One duel resulted when a midshipman sprinkled water over a letter being written by a messmate. In another instance a midshipman was killed by a shipmate after “giving offence by entering the cockpit wearing his hat.” One duel resulted when two young gentlemen quarreled over whether a bottle—which they no doubt had emptied together—was black or dark green. In 1811, two youngsters killed each other in a duel fought at such close range that the antagonists’ pistols almost touched.
Finally, in 1857, the Navy took the long-overdue measure of making dueling punishable by dismissal from the service. This, at long last, ended the odious practice so that American naval officers would no longer kill one another . . . until four short years later, with the coming of the Civil War.
Exploration
During this period, when U.S. Navy ships were sailing to the far corners of the world, they also began to go beyond the known corners. Exploration of previously unknown regions was added to the Navy’s missions of protecting commerce and promoting national interests by “showing the flag” in foreign ports. Besides the practical reasons—the gathering of navigational information and the potential extension of commercial interests—these exploratory ventures also were undertaken in the name of science. This was a time when science and technology were on the rise, and it was apparent that the Navy was well positioned to be an active participant and a possible beneficiary of this trend. In 1830, for example, the Depot of Charts and Instruments was established in Washington, D.C., which later became the Naval Observatory, one of the key players in the rapidly expanding world of astronomy.
But it was the Navy’s ability to travel to little-known or unknown regions of the world that was most beneficial. Given the official title of “U.S. Exploring Expedition,” six ships sailed from Norfolk, Virginia on 19 August 1838, under the command of Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, and returned to New York four years later after having sailed over 80,000 miles, charting vast reaches of the world’s oceans, surveying nearly 300 islands as well as the northwest coast of North America, and collecting thousands of scientific specimens. Reaching ever southward into the extreme southern latitudes, Wilkes’s ships sailed through iceberg-infested waters that were often blanketed in heavy fog. The sailors endured constant dampness and cold, limited rations, frequent illness, and violent storms, the latter separating the ships and causing one to disappear with all hands. These arduous adventures were rewarded on 19 January 1840, when Wilkes sighted the Antarctic continent, just one day before a French expedition made the same discovery 400 miles to the west.
Other similar achievements were realized in these decades. In June 1830, the USS Vincennes completed the Navy’s first circumnavigation of the earth, and an expedition explored the inland waters of the Jordan River and Dead Sea in 1847.
Seminole War
After a U.S. Army detachment—which had been tasked with moving the Seminole Indians from their home in Florida to a reservation west of the Mississippi—was massacred near Tampa in December 1835, sailors and Marines from the West India Squadron were sent to assist. Large ships were of little use in penetrating the tangled waterways and formidable cypress swamps, so a so-called “mosquito fleet” of a few schooners and flat-bottomed barges, augmented by many canoes, was assembled under the command of Navy Lieutenant John T. McLaughlin. This diminutive flotilla conducted many operations in pursuit of the elusive enemy, who were much more at home in this hostile environment where diseases such as yellow fever and malaria were often their allies.
Although the obscure and questionably motivated Seminole War lacked the glorious moments of previous conflicts and ended rather indecisively—many Seminoles were either captured or agreed to move, but a number of hard-core resisters eventually were left to reside in the Everglades and in an area around Lake Okeechobee—this unorthodox conflict provided valuable lessons learned that would serve the Navy in coming conflicts.
Education
As far back as the Revolution, there had been advocates—John Paul Jones being one—calling for a naval school that would educate young men in the ways of the Navy and the world instead of relying on the old system, inherited from the Royal Navy, that relied on at-sea training as the primary means of preparing future officers for leadership and command. But that old system persisted until a tragic situation served as a stimulus to seriously consider change.
In late 1842, the brig USS Somers put to sea on a training cruise led by Commander Alexander Slidell Mackenzie. Partway through the cruise, Mackenzie learned that a trouble-making 19-year-old midshipman, Philip Spencer, was allegedly plotting a mutiny. Although Mackenzie had Spencer and several accomplices placed in irons, the commander perceived that the ship continued to seethe with unrest, so he convened a court-martial. Finding Spencer and two others guilty, Mackenzie had the three immediately hanged from the yardarm.
This unhappy episode certainly would not have gone unnoticed, but attention was greatly magnified by the fact that Spencer was the son of the current Secretary of War. Although Mackenzie eventually was exonerated for his actions, the incident stirred up much controversy. Arguing that the system for appointing midshipmen had become part of the political spoils system, with young men selected with little regard for their potential and more often for their political connections, many called for a more just, standardized system. The problems were compounded by the current practice of sending these arbitrarily selected young men to sea immediately upon appointment, where they picked up only what education as their superiors were able to impart. Some ships prepared midshipmen well; others did not.
Among the proposals for reform, the old argument for the establishment of a naval school was put forward with much vigor. Although several schools had been established at some of the Navy yards where senior midshipmen could prepare for promotion to lieutenant, the training was not coordinated and certainly not universal. Many argued for a single school, modeled after the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, which had been educating future Army officers since 1802.
In August 1845, Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft invoked the age-old principle of “it is easier to get forgiveness than permission.” Acting without congressional authorization, he managed to acquire Fort Severn at Annapolis, Maryland, from the Army, and that October the “Naval School” (renamed the “United States Naval Academy” in 1850) opened its doors with seven professors to prepare 50 “naval cadets” (later renamed “midshipmen”) as future officers of the Navy.
War with Mexico
Just a year later, the nation went to war. Trouble had been brewing with Mexico for some time. The gradual but continuous western expansion of the United States was the chief cause of that trouble.
In 1842, Commodore Thomas ap Catesby Jones, the commander of the Pacific Squadron, was falsely informed that war had been declared on Mexico. He impetuously sailed to Monterey with the frigate United States and several smaller vessels. Seizing the town, he soon learned that war had not been declared and quickly withdrew leaving profuse apologies in his wake.
Tension remained between the United States and Mexico, with a number of incidents along the border of the newly annexed state of Texas fueling the fire. Finally, on 23 April 1846, Mexico declared war and, on 13 May the U.S. reciprocated.
Early U.S. strategy established a blockade of the enemy coastline, but the larger American warships were ill-suited for the task because of the proliferation of shallow waters along the Gulf coast. Serious logistical problems and harsh environmental conditions, including violent storms and debilitating disease, further impeded the efficacy of the blockade. Despite these problems, the blockade was effective enough to capture a number of Mexican merchant ships while the rest remained bottled up in port.
On the West Coast, Commodore ap Catesby Jones’s earlier impetuosity had rendered the new commander of the Pacific Squadron overly cautious, slowing progress in that theater until Commodore Robert Stockton arrived to assume command. Over the following months, working with Army forces in the region, Stockton captured, then lost, then recaptured Los Angeles. The mobility provided by sea transport provided a significant advantage and, by the beginning of 1847 the Americans had gained complete control of California.
Back in the Gulf, it was decided to launch an amphibious landing at Vera Cruz to facilitate the subsequent capture of the enemy capital of Mexico City. A force of 12,000 men under the command of General Winfield Scott was transported southward by a naval force commanded by Commodore David Conner. It was the largest amphibious assault American forces had ever attempted up to that point. Specially designed surfboats were built in three sizes, which allowed them to be nested within one another in order to save space on the decks of the transports.
Late in the afternoon of 9 March 1847, command ship Massachusetts fired a single shot as she broke a prearranged signal from her masthead. Sixty-four surfboats, each crewed by eight sailors and loaded with soldiers, moved toward the beach in line abreast until they grounded about a hundred yards from the beach. The soldiers, holding their weapons and ammunition belts above their heads, waded ashore unopposed. The surfboats returned to the transports and the process was repeated. In five hours, nearly nine thousand troops were landed without a single casualty.
Regarded as one of the most heavily fortified cities in North America, the Navy attacked Vera Cruz from the seaward side, while Scott’s forces surrounded the city from the landward side. The Navy also brought a battery of its heaviest guns ashore to supplement those of the Army. Seven days after the shelling began, the city surrendered. A few weeks later, Scott’s army, including 300 marines, marched off to Mexico City and captured it the following year.
As the war continued, the Navy attacked various coastal and inland river targets, capturing two forts on the Tuxpan River, seizing the village of Minatitlán 24 miles upstream of the Coatzacoalcos River, and recapturing Tabasco.
On 2 February 1848, the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo officially ended the war with Mexico, although a landing party from the USS Dale—unaware of the war’s end—continued to fight several skirmishes in California until 9 April. The treaty ceded a half-million square miles of territory—including present-day California, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, as well as most of New Mexico and portions of Wyoming and Colorado—effectively achieving the so-called Manifest Destiny and adding vast new responsibilities to the U.S. Navy as it now faced two oceans instead of one.
Black Ships
As American economic interests expanded into the Pacific, Japan—feudal and extremely isolationist—began to take on increased significance in U.S. thinking. In 1846, Commodore James Biddle in the ship-of-the-line Columbus, with the sloop-of-war Vincennes in company, knocked on the Japanese door but was rebuffed. Two years later, Commander James Glynn in sloop-of-war Preble called at Nagasaki to pick up 15 American whalers who had been shipwrecked on a Japanese shore. But the reclusive Japanese were uncooperative, causing Glynn to threaten that he would open fire if the Americans were not delivered within two days.
Shortly after dawn on 8 July 1853, a squadron of American ships, commanded by Commodore Matthew C. Perry, appeared off the entrance of Edo (Tokyo) Bay. As the sun burned away the early-morning mist, the American ships steamed into the bay at 8 knots with their guns loaded and run out. Thousands of Japanese, who had never before seen a steamer, lined the shore to see the “burning ships.” With their black hulls and clouds of coal smoke pouring from their funnels, they soon became known to the Japanese as “the black ships.”
That evening Perry’s squadron anchored in line of battle, 30 miles from the capital, to begin a chess game of Far Eastern diplomacy, something for which Perry, with his dignified—some would call “pompous”—manner, was ideally suited. Feudal Japan had long resisted contact with the outside world, and Perry had been dispatched to deliver a letter to the reclusive Japanese Emperor from President Millard Fillmore, proposing a treaty of “peace and amity” (translation: “open markets”) between the two nations.
Insisting that the President’s letter had to be delivered to someone of imperial rank, Perry remained quietly but firmly aloof for a week as he waited for a reply. When Prince Izu, one of the emperor’s counselors, agreed to receive the letter, Perry proceeded with much fanfare. A 13-gun salute echoed over the anchorage as he stepped into his barge and 15 boatloads of sailors and Marines accompanied him ashore, where he marched to a special pavilion that had been hastily constructed. Formally handing over the letter to the Japanese dignitary, Perry then informed him that he would take his squadron to China and would return with more vessels the following spring to receive the Emperor’s reply.
The following February, Perry returned. With his ships close inshore where the Japanese could clearly see them, he again went ashore amid much pomp and circumstance. Having effectively played the show-of-force card, Perry understood the importance of allowing the Japanese to save face and now settled into a lengthy process of negotiations. As part of that process, it was customary to exchange gifts, and the differences in their respective cultures were evident in what was exchanged. For their part, the Japanese gave the Americans gold-lacquered furniture and boxes, bronze ornaments, delicate porcelain goblets, and a collection of seashells. In turn, the Americans gave firearms, 100 gallons of whiskey, farm implements, clocks, stoves, a telegraph, and a quarter-sized train, complete with tracks, locomotive, coal tender, and coach. The track was laid down, and soon Japanese dignitaries were rolling around the oval at 20 miles per hour, their ceremonial robes trailing in the wind.
As the negotiations progressed, the Japanese agreed to properly assist castaways and offered two sites as coaling stations. Still reluctant to agree to trade with the outside world, they compromised by accepting an American consul, which Perry correctly surmised would serve as a catalyst to further negotiations, eventually opening the door to trade.
Perry’s ability to blend implied power with diplomatic skills saw fruition on 31 March 1854, when the Japanese signed the Treaty of Kanagawa. Japan entered the modern world, creating new trade opportunities while opening a Pandora’s box that would lead to cataclysm in less than a century, when Japanese planes arrived with the rising sun at Pearl Harbor.
In less than half a century, the U.S. Navy had progressed from a defensive force, whose main roles involved the protection of merchant shipping and coastal defense, to a world-ranging navy whose missions now included exploration, power projection, and showing the flag for diplomatic and strategic purposes. But naval officers would soon have to put down their long glasses and focus inward, as the bold new American experiment was threatened by disintegration and self-destruction when the threat of Civil War loomed ominously over the horizon.