A penetrating study of the history of our Navy brings to light a multitude of instances of determined resistance on the part of its leaders and administrators to new concepts and new methods. Many of the institutions we now recognize as essential elements of our naval organization have been established and maintained only after prolonged, heated, even vicious debate between the advocates and opponents of new ideas.
In April of 1896, a Harper's Weekly article by a naval officer expressed the reason for this situation:
There is a conservative and reactionary element in the navy, simply of the type of that which exists in all professional communities, and which not even the conditions and environment of a life somewhat peculiar and isolated, and the same for all naval officers, materially affect. Each feature of progress is opposed because it means change. Each step in advance is contested because it lacks service precedent.1
This article was, primarily, an argument supporting the value of the United States Naval War College, which had been established twelve years earlier. Yes, the College had been established, but only after the persistent endeavor of a few foresighted and determined individuals against a heavy tide of opposition. This is the story of that struggle.
The dream of Stephen Luce to organize such an institution was born, ironically, from his relations with an army man, General William T. Sherman, during the Civil War. Luce, in command of the U.S.S. Pontiac, was ordered in 1865 to report to Sherman for duty in connection with the Army on the Savannah River. The Federal Navy had been bombarding Charleston for several years but had not been successful in subduing the port. Sherman, therefore, planned to sever the communication lines to the city from inland to effect its easy capture. His tactics worked out to the letter of his predictions, leaving Luce very deeply impressed by the abilities of this famous officer. It was in the reflections of this impression that Luce conceived the idea of the Naval War College. Recognizing that the success of the campaign lay in Sherman’s mastery of the situation, he concluded that there were “certain fundamental principles underlying a military operation which it were well to look into; principles of general application whether the operations were conducted on land or at sea.”
Later, referring to the fall of Charleston, he said:
The lessons to be drawn from this experience are that the Secretary of the Navy should have, if only in justice to himself, a staff of naval experts to lean upon; that this staff should be attached to and made part of his office, and be under his immediate supervision; and that the members of his staff should be prepared for staff duty by a special course of study. In other words, the Civil War demonstrated conclusively the necessity of a War College., . .
Thus it was in 1865 that Luce had his first vision of the institution, although it was 1884 before the Secretary of the Navy, William E. Chandler issued the General Order that established the United States Naval War College. But we can not allow this event to end our story, for the struggle to prevent disestablishment equals that of the years prior to 1884.
Between the close of the War Between the States and 1883, Stephen Luce served as Commandant of Midshipmen at Annapolis, as Captain of the U.S.S. Juaniata on a cruise to Europe, and as the officer chiefly responsible for the establishment of the Training System. With this latter task reasonably well completed, he turned his active interest to his dormant idea of a “ ‘War School’ for officers—the prime object being to teach officers the science of their own profession— the science of war. . . .”
In 1877 Luce had written Secretary of the Navy R. W. Thompson to propose that the Navy Department consider the establishment of a “post graduate school” for officers to teach them the more complex branches of the naval profession. In this letter he mentioned that mere knowledge of handling fleets was no longer sufficient for a commander-in-chief.
It is not definite that this letter sparked such action, but in 1878 an officer was sent to Europe to study naval education there; however, after his report, the matter was temporarily forgotten. In 1883 Commodore Luce lectured before the Newport Branch of the United States Naval Institute on the broad subject of War Schools. After telling his audience of the recent work of the many schools for army officers, he stressed the need of a college for naval officers where they could study the principles of military operations and apply them to operations conducted at sea. He maintained that the naval officer
should be led into a philosophic study of naval history, that he may be enabled to examine the great naval battles of the world with the cold eye of professional criticism, and to recognize where the principles of the science [of war] have been illustrated, or where a disregard for the accepted rules of the art of war had led to defeat and disaster.2
Although Luce’s lecture received the attention it merited, it sparked little or no interest in the proposal to establish such a school. The prevailing opinion was that the great naval leaders of the past had not studied the “art of warfare.” Luce was indeed disappointed that his new idea had not been enthusiastically adopted, but his disappointment by no means led him to discouragement.
It is not at all surprising that his scheme was not accepted by his fellow officers; as Commodore J. G. Walker, the Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, said in his annual report to the Secretary of the Navy in 1888:
The recent tendency of intellectual activity in the service has been rather towards subjects connected with the development of material. While no one should underrate the importance of high training for officers in this direction, it must be admitted that the material development would be useless without a corresponding training in the art of conducting naval warfare.
Shortly afterward, however, Secretary of the Navy Chandler called Luce to Washington on special duty. Here was the opportunity for which Luce had been waiting. He had written Mr. Chandler concerning the subject, whereupon the Secretary, following the advice of Admiral David Dixon Porter and Commodore Walker, decided to give Luce a chance to voice more fully his new and thus-far unaccepted opinions. His proposals before the Line Bureau Chiefs were not well received, but on 3 May, 1884, Mr. Chandler organized a board to consider and report on the subject of a “post-graduate course for officers of the navy.” The officers appointed to the board were Lieutenant Commander C. E. Goodrich, Commander W. T. Sampson, and Commodore Luce, who served as chairman.
Mr. Chandler, who proved to be a valuable supporter of the new plan, later explained to the Senate:
The constant changes in the methods of conducting naval warfare imposed by the introduction of armored ships, swift cruisers, rams, seagoing torpedo-boats, and high-power guns, together with the more rigid methods of treating the various subjects relating to naval science, render imperative the establishment of a school where our officers may be enabled to keep abreast of the improvements going on in every navy in the world.
The board met on June 13, then submitted to Chandler a full report which expressed why the board members deemed necessary the establishment of such a school. It pointed out that the knowledge required of an officer in the new era demanded that he receive more training, and that many officers needed a motive or incentive to aid self-improvement. As an illustration, the report suggested that as the Torpedo Station was to the Bureau of Ordnance, so should a war college be to the Navy as a whole. The argument continued thus:
Campaigns that have depended for success upon the cooperation of a fleet; campaigns that have been frustrated through the interposition of a fleet; the transfer, by water, of a numerous army to distant points and their landing on enemy’s coast under the guns of a fleet; the various results of the engagements between ships and shore batteries; naval expeditions which have ended in disaster that could have been foretold through an intelligent study of the problem beforehand; and the great naval battles of history, even from the earliest times, which illustrate and enforce many of the most important and immutable principles of war, should be carefully examined and rendered familiar to the naval student. For it is upon his professional skill in the larger operations of combining and utilizing to the best advantage, the floating force of the country, as well as in the more restricted one of an isolated command, that our people must rely for the protection of their interests and the guarding of their extensive coasts and coastal trade from the depredations of an enemy. . . . The bare statement that our naval officers not only do not study war as a science, but have no adequate school of practice, seems in these days of broad and liberal culture so extraordinary that it is alone, in the judgment of the Board, sufficient reason for the early founding of the institution the Department now has under consideration.
It is clear that the board saw that never again would our Navy be limited to singleship engagements; that the new functions of our Navy demanded we train a nucleus of officers in the broad picture of warfare as it was to appear some fifteen years later.
Luce and his assistants outlined a proposed course of study to make practicable their plan. Dividing the stress between the art of war and the study of law and history, they mentioned the topics of strategy and tactics, military campaigns, joint military and naval operations, landing forces, international law and treaties of the United States, rules of evidence, naval history, and modern political history. They even went so deep into their planning as to recommend that practical instruction for the college students be given aboard the ships of the North Atlantic Squadron once a year. After rejecting several possible locations for the college they named Newport, Rhode Island, as the most desirable site, insofar as the Navy had idle property near there on Coasters’ Harbor Island; furthermore, the valuable libraries in Boston would be handy for use.
Secretary Chandler was convinced. On October 6, 1884, he issued General Order No. 325, which, in establishing the Naval War College, read as follows:
A college is hereby established for an advanced course of professional study for naval officers, to be known as the Naval War College. It will be under the general supervision of the Bureau of Navigation. The principal building on Coasters’ Harbor Island, Newport, Rhode Island, will be assigned to its use, and is hereby transferred, with the surrounding structures and the grounds immediately adjacent, to the custody and control of the Bureau of Navigation for that purpose.
The college will be under the immediate charge of an officer of the Navy, not below the grade of Commander, to be known as the president of the Naval War College. He will be assisted in the performance of his duties by a faculty.
A course of instruction, embracing the higher branches of professional study, will be arranged by a Board, consisting of all the members of the faculty, and including the president, who will be the presiding officer of the Board. The Board will have regular meetings at least once a month, and at such other times as the president may direct, for the transaction of business. The proceedings of the Board will be recorded in a journal.
The course of instruction will be open to all officers above the grade of naval cadet.
Commodore S. B. Luce has been assigned to duty as president of the college.
Thus it was that the Naval War College was established; however, that was only the beginning of the real struggle of Luce and his supporters. Typical of the reaction in the Navy was the remark of one well-known admiral: “Teach the art of war! Well, I’ll be damned!”
Luce proceeded to Coasters’ Harbor Island with its sole building, which, prior to its use as an office building of the Commandant of the Training System, had been an asylum for the poor. The building was transferred to the Bureau of Navigation under General Order 325; but with no funds appropriated for its operation, Luce, in a very simple opening ceremony, proclaimed, “Poor little Poor House, I christen thee the United States Naval War College.”
When Luce selected his staff, the first man he asked for was Commander Alfred Thayer Mahan, who was at the time in command of the U.S.S. Wachusett, operating out of Callao, Peru. When Luce wrote Mahan asking him if he would consider teaching the subjects of naval history and tactics at the college, Mahan was only too eager to comply with the request, as he had found the Pacific Station most disagreeable. The Navy Department, however, would not release him until the end of his cruise, so that he did not arrive at the college until August of 1886. We shall return to Mahan and his part in our story after we suffer through the first term of classes at the college.
In February of 1885, the Senate passed a resolution of inquiry concerning the status and purpose of the college. No classes had been held yet, but Secretary Chandler temporarily calmed the brewing storm in a reply which defended the college and expressed the value of its purpose.
In September, eight officers assembled for a one-month course: the first term. Soon after General Order 325 had been issued, Lieutenant McCarthy Little, Paymaster R. W. Allen, Professor J. R. Soley, and Lieutenant Tasker Bliss, U. S. Army, were ordered to the college as faculty members. Allen was eventually sent to other duty, so Luce was aided only by Little, Soley, and Bliss. All three, however, proved to be very able and devoted assistants, so that due mention of their efforts is to be made.
Luce submitted requests to have several officers lecture to his class, but Commander H. C. Taylor was the only one so ordered. Rear Admiral Ammen, Retired, traveled at his own expense to lecture on September 8; his talk was mainly hints to young naval officers. Four other lectures were given that month; they were on the Peninsula Campaign of 1862 (by General J. C. Palfrey), Pope’s Campaign in Virginia (by General G. H. Gordon), concentration in naval battles (by Commander Taylor), and the Virginia Campaign (by Mr. John C. Ropes). These lectures constituted the entire one- month course, as there were no recitations by the class and no original papers submitted by the students.
In October, 1885, the Chief of the Bureau of Navigation submitted his report to President Cleveland’s Secretary of the Navy W. C. Whitney, who had succeeded Chandler. He therein stressed that the college staff had had little time for preparation and that several of the special instructors who had been asked for were not yet there. He expressed his confidence in the success of the infant institution and submitted an estimate of $14,000 for service of the college for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1887.
Many officers, perhaps a large majority of those who expressed any opinion, were against the War College, for they did not comprehend its value. Part of this resistance can be accredited to the standard reason that any and every new idea lacks service precedent and is, therefore, to be suspected, and partly to a general misconception of the purpose of the college. Secretary Chandler, when he created the board to investigate the feasibility of the plan for a War College, used the expression “post-graduate school.” Luce definitely never proposed or even considered a “post-graduate school.” The War College was not to provide an extension to the course at the Naval Academy; it was not intended as such at any time by its creators and supporters. The New York Herald, about the turn of the century, expressed the purpose of the college correctly as “primarily to familiarize officers who may at any time be summoned to assume maritime command, with Naval Strategy, or in other words with paramount aims of Naval Warfare.”
In 1885 Admiral of the Navy David Dixon Porter, in his annual report to the Secretary of the Navy, defended and praised the college. He had been in correspondence with Luce concerning the college from the time he had been instrumental in Luce being ordered to Washington to express himself in 1883; thus, he was well informed of the activities of the institution and had recognized the value of the college. The following extract from his report expresses his opinions:
The Naval War College of today is but the beginning of an institution that will in the future, I believe, confer great benefit on the service. There are some officers who retard its progress by their opposition, yet no one can give a single good reason why such an institution should not be maintained.
I have had as much to do with graduates from the Naval Academy as anyone, and I do not hesitate to say that the academic course does not and cannot thoroughly prepare an officer for all the high duties he will be called upon to perform. . . .
A naval officer of the present day to be eminent in his profession must be a constant student, and where could he have such an opportunity of becoming acquainted with all the improvements, modifications, and experiences in the art of war as by a course of study at the war college?
It appears that the Admiral may have been thinking along the lines of a “postgraduate” school instead of a school for the philosophic study of warfare. It does seem odd that Porter could have misinterpreted Luce after they had been in rather close contact, but yet his words, “improvements, modifications ... in the art of war” indicate that he did have technical studies in mind. On the other hand, “experiences in the art of war” hints at the concept of using the lessons of past experience to arrive at strategic conclusions, with or without reference to tactical changes affected by new technical developments. Perhaps he envisioned the War College’s following both the technical and philosophic slants on warfare. Secretary Chandler, in his earlier reply to the Senate, had created a slant not intended by Luce when he mentioned keeping “abreast of the [technical] improvements going on in every navy in the world.”
As a result of the many misinterpretations of Luce’s purpose and the natural inertia working against the new concept, Secretary of the Navy Whitney became adverse to the college as an independent institution. He was to so remain until relieved from his secretaryship.
And now back to activities at Coasters’ Harbor Island. In June of 1886 Luce was ordered to sea. Captain Mahan then stepped in to take over the presidency. Mahan, a scholar of world renown in later years, was probably better prepared for the position than any other naval officer of the era. Between leaving Callao and arriving at Newport, he was given time in New York to work in the public libraries in preparation for his lectures. Placing himself under tremendous pressure, he took notes by day and developed these into lectures by night. In October of 1885 he began to read, and in three months digested, among other works, Henri Martin’s History of France, Hamley’s Operation of War, and a great portion of the writing of Jomini. The following August, a month after Luce’s new orders were received, he entered the President’s Quarters in the western half of the college building. He was the sole occupant of the building; in fact, Lieutenant Bliss was the only permanent member remaining from the original faculty. In October Mrs. Mahan and the children moved in with the Captain. She was somewhat shocked at the poor condition of her new home, but by such ingenious tricks as attaching rubber tubing to the radiator valve for a bath-water supply she turned the suite of rooms into a comfortable home.
During the first week the U.S.S. Tennessee was in port. Her steam launches provided the class with some excellent practical experience in ramming tactics. The second term, lasting ten weeks, had opened September 6 for the class of twenty-one officers of the Navy and Marines. Luce had set up a lecture schedule, including the subjects of naval tactics and strategy, naval gunnery, naval history, naval hygiene, sea coast defense, maritime defense, and military tactics and strategy. Mahan answered the forthcoming questions concerning why Lieutenant Bliss had lectured on military tactics and strategy in this manner:
Two objects are arrived at. First to enlarge the knowledge of sea officers in the matter of conducting such expeditions as may be feasible with the forces landed from a fleet alone, familiarizing them with the best approved methods and expedients of modern armies. . . . The second may be stated thus: the great changes due to steam and modern weapons make navies susceptible of much surer and more complicated use than of old, both in strategy and tactics; but a naval war is yet needed to compel the general adoption of some system of tactics and to test it to the conviction of all. ... It is reasonably thought that the broad study of land warfare, so copiously illustrated in recent as well as earlier times, will materially aid the sea officers to correct conclusions as to the best use of the yet untried weapons [Mahan is consistently referring to the study of strategic and tactical use of weapons, not to the study of how they function individually], for whose tactical efficacy in battle he must otherwise depend upon presumptions, resulting so far in very varying opinions.
Many officers could not comprehend Mahan’s argument, and many more did not want to admit its reality. Thus was born a new faction of adversaries.
The college’s most influential backers continued to be Commodore J. G. Walker, the Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, and David Dixon Porter, the Admiral of the Navy. Walker, in his report to the Secretary of the Navy in November of 1886, stated: “The Naval War College may now be said to be fairly established, and I beg to commend it to the earnest support of the Department.” Porter, in his report, also praised the college, explaining again that the opposition to it was without good cause. He said:
It is eminently proper that the Navy should have a higher school of education than the Academy at Annapolis, where, after all, the cadets only acquire the elements of their profession, and it is very desirable that the graduates should embrace every opportunity to see these principles practically applied or made plain to the understanding by a course of able lectures, which have become so popular in Newport that visitors consider it a great privilege to be permitted to attend them.
During 1887 and 1888 the controversy mounted in intensity. The college managed on its $12,000 annual appropriation to give its classes of about twenty officers a ten-weeks lecture course.
Mr. Whitney, who had been opposed to the independence of the college, decided to consolidate it with the Torpedo Station on Goat Island in Newport Harbor. Learning of this threat, Walker and Mahan rose to the defense. Walker expressed the hope that whatever 'administrative changes were to be made, the main object of systematic study of the practice and methods of warfare would not be confined to torpedo applications alone.
Mahan remarked that a purely administrative consolidation would be acceptable, but “if by consolidation is meant the merging of two lines of thought radically distinct and in temper of mind opposed under a single directing intellect, the result will be the destruction of one or the other.” He was now very much afraid that the opponents of the philosophic approach to warfare would succeed and cause the War College to become just another technical school. He expressed this in the following manner: “The present predominant tendency of the naval mind, as evidenced by the literature in which it finds expression and the work on which its practical energies are expanded, is toward mechanical progress and development of material, rather than toward the study of the military movements which that material is to subserve.”
Despite the arguments offered to him, Whitney, in the winter of 1888-89, had the college consolidated with the Torpedo Station. Mahan was ordered to Puget Sound to choose a site for the new navy yard, and Commander C. F. Goodrich was put in charge of the entire station, which was under the control of the Bureau of Ordnance.
Luce, who was still at sea, wrote General Whitthorne, the Chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee, asking for his support, and then wrote Porter asking him to further press his influence. Porter wrote back that he thought the administration would back the college completely if “we can get a Secretary who wishes to run the Navy on true principles. ...”
Just at this darkest moment, Mr. Whitney was replaced by Mr. B. F. Tracy, who saw the value of the college and who, after vigorous persuasion by Porter, Luce, Mahan, and a few others, proposed that the school be relocated on Coasters’ Harbor Island. An act of Congress on June 30, 1890, transferred the college back to the Island and returned it to the control of the Bureau of Navigation. Soon plans were laid for a new $100,000 building. The tide had turned, and the college was now secure. With her new building completed in September of 1892, she began to grow until all opposition was finally removed.
A few near-catastrophes did occur in later years. Secretary of the Navy Herbert, who succeeded Tracy, and Commodore F. M. Ramsey, who succeeded Commodore Walker as the Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, both opposed the War College System; they wanted to move the school to Annapolis and reduce it to a mere post-graduate technical school. Secretary Herbert proceeded to Newport aboard the Dolphin to close the college, but enroute the captain of the Dolphin handed him Mahan’s Influence of Sea Power, which was very closely related to the theme and purpose of the institution. The Secretary was so deeply impressed by the book that he was immediately converted to an active supporter.
In 1898 a plan was proposed to dissolve the college, to move the staff to the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, to give the building over to the Training System, and to allow any future theory to be evolved by the operating forces. Captain C. H. Stock- ton, the President of the College, managed, however, to preserve the present status.
The Spanish-American War provided arguments sufficient permanently to secure the college. The class program was later expanded to include an annual problem concerning the defense of some chosen portion of our coastline against an assault by a fictitious enemy. The Naval War College has steadily grown since then to its present size and scope; it now requires a staff of about eighty officers to conduct its four resident and three correspondence courses.
By nature of its mission, “To further an understanding of the fundamentals of warfare, with emphasis on their application to future naval warfare, in order to prepare officers for higher command,” it is now undisputably recognized as one of the essential institutions in our modern Navy.
1. The officer was S. A. Staunton, top man in the Naval Academy’s Class of 1871.
2. For Luce’s lecture see page 633, Vol. IX, U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings.