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This is to certify that the

thesis entitled
The Naval Writings of James Tenimore Cooper

presented by

Ross Parr

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

"0‘. degree in Blilh

(I 7):.

Major professor

Date W59—

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THE NAVAL ‘.-'.'RITINGS OF JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

By

Ross Clayton Parr

W

A THESIS

Submitted to the Graduate School of Michigan
State College of Agriculture and Applied
Science in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree or

MASTER OF ARTS
Department of English
1950

THE

’1;

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter . Page
I Expansion, The Fleet, and Destiny "f"”°°"'° 1
II Politics and the Navy ......................... 26

III Sailor and Novelist ........................... 51
IV The Historz and the nggg_..................... 81
v Bibliographies .....Q.......................... 110

244567

PREFACE

The peOple of the United States have never exhibited an
awareness of the function and purpose of a navy; in recent
years the segment of the people which enters politics has been
most naive in its consideration of a navy, capacially as
concerns the one time policy of Isolation. Even today, ask
any American the greatest name in American naval history, and
the answer will invariably be "John Paul Jones". This is
symptomatic of lack of naval knowledge and naval thought when
an unimportant battle between two small and unimportant ves-
sels can survive as the most famous naval tradition of a
powerful nation.

It is not a new phenomena that the public should think of
the navy as a service whose functions are best limited to
light opera. James Fenimore Cooper encountered similar thought
in his day. Both sailor and author, COOper continually regis-
tered amazement that in a country which had waged five wars on
the sea, the navy should be relegated to a minor role when war
was not actually threatening.

This study of Cooper's naval thought has been at least
personally interesting for two reasons: first, it shows that
the general interest in naval thought has remained static
these last one hundred years; secondly, it attempts to devel-
ope the idea that COOper was intensely patriotic, intensely
'nationalistic, and an intense believer in the theory that a

war fleet could preserve the new and growing nation.

CHAPTER I

Expansion, The Fleet, and Destiny

The history of the United States Navy has been a record
of frantic building in time of war, and equally frantic deple-
tion in time of peace. The years since the late war have been
filled with bitter squabbles in the American military arm as
to the value of a navy under changed modes of warfare, until
both professional and lay strategists have separated themselves
into the traditional camps of "big navy" men and "small navy”
men. One of the nation's first, and probably most outspoken
"big navy" theorists was James Fenimore Cooper, sailor, author,
social critic, and naval historian, not to say prOpagandist.
CooPer filled his sea tales with criticism of American
naval policy and naval theory, and wrote a pioneer History of
the Navy of the Unfiiigd States of America. (1859). In his
History Cooper develOped his thesis of the world power role
he envisioned for America and the need for a navy to hasten
the nation's assumption of that role. The most succinct
statement of COOper's vision was given in the somewhat red-
white-and-blue puff with which he ended his biography of Edward
Preble, the commodore who directed the United States Navy

squadron in the war on the Barbary pirates.

It is probable that the marine of this
country, long are the close of this century, will
become one of the most powerful the world has yet
seen. With a rate of increase that will probably
carry the population of the nation up to 60 millions,

within the next 50 years (he hit this almost to
the person), e commerce and tonnage that will

be in prOportion to these numbers, no narrow
policy, or spurious economy, can well prevent
such a result. In that day, when the opinions

of men shall have risen in some measure to the
level of the stupendous facts by which they

will be surrounded, the world will see the

fleets of the republic, feel their influence

on its policy, and hear of the renown of admirals
who are yet unborn; for the infatuated notion
that wars are over, is a chimera of speculative
moralists, who receive their own wishes as the
inductions of reason. In that day, all the
earlier facts of the national career will be
collected with care, and preserved with
veneration. Among the brightest of those which
will be exhibited connected with the deeds of that
infant navy out of which will have grown the
colossal power that then must wield the trident of
the seas, will stand prominent the forty days of
the Tripolitan war, crowded with events that are
inseparable from the name and the renown of
Edward Preble. 1

This Nostradamus-like burst has been borne out in almost all

phases.

Now CooPer was more than a shrewd novelist writing history
with the hope of trading on patriotism. It is possible of course
that he hastened preparation of the Navy manuscript to patch his
purse after his thundering denunciations of much in American
manners and morals in the six years since his return from EurOpe
had made him a literary leper to newspaper and magazine editors
and the public.

Even Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, which had mercilessly
attacked Cooper's post-Europe productions and reviewed Homeward
Egggg (less) with the comment that fine finds fault with everything
American except his own immaculate self", in the issue for

1. Lives of Distinguished American NavalOfficers, 1846,
I, 252, hereafter referred to as Lives.

September, 1859, praised both Cooper and the History in a two
page review, but commented that "it is surprising that h2_of all
peOple should have written it." But in the Histor , as in most
of his novels, COOper thought he had a message, or a series of
them, and used the History as a Speaking trumpet which would
ring loud and clear. He believed in the accuracy of his History,
as well as his qualification to write it, and the conviction
cost himmuch time and money in libel suits that grew out of
bickerings over details.

COOper's "big navy" thought was not a matter of inspiration
or chance political affiliation. He had shipped to England and
the Mediterranean as a deckhand in an American merchantman in
1806-7. His ship, the Sterling, had been twice boarded at sea
by the British, and several hands impressed. She had been chased
by pirates, and Cooper was in a small boat that swamped in rough
water. These events were to be reflected in his novels and the
History. In 1808, when war with Great Britain threatened, COOper
was sent as midshipman to Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain to
assist in ship building Operations. Later he was sent to the
Wasp, a navy cruiser under Captain James Lawrence of "Don't Give
Up the Ship" fame. Astrologers could claim a cycle here, for
the Cooper and Lawrence families had lived in adjacent houses in
Burlington, New Jersey, where_both COOper and Captain Lawrence
were born.

The war fever cooled in May, 1810, and early in the month

CooPer wrote to his brother that "should nothing be done for the

navy," he planned to resign his berth, and possibly to marry.

Apparently not enough was "done for the navy" for he stripped
off his sword and uniform in favor of the marriage mantle and
never again entered the military. Still, COOper was never far
from the sea and the navy. Even his language had a salty flavor;
a few weeks before his death Cooper told a friend he though
"the old hulk was about to go into dry dock."

The Pilot, Cooper's first sea story, was a tale of the
evolutions of two American naval vessels off the English coast
in the Revolutionary war. The pilot, unnamed but understood to
be John Paul Jones, flits in and out of the plot with all the
nobleness of purpose of the Long Ranger, and, like that western
worthy, collars the villains in due time. In sum, the plot is
not important.

What is important, as regards Cooper's naval writings, is
the choice of subject. He wrote of the American Navy making
landings on the coast of Angland, fighting two successful naval
actions, and coming off with the colors high; a theme well
calculated to please pOpular taste, but showing that neither the
British fleet nor homeland were invincible, appoint at which he
was to hammer mightily at a later date. The work was dedicated
to William B. Shubrick, then a Commodore in the navy, and whose
brother Cooper made the subject of a biography in the Igygg,

It is probable COOper paid honor to a former shipmate in
The Bilot in the character of Captain Barnstable. In COOper's
deckhand days an old salt named Barnstable had helped the young

sailor acquire the knots and knowledge of ships and sailing.

II

A naval historian must of necessity appreciate something
of naval theory, the purpose of a navy, the relation of a navy
to commercial and foreign policy, and the theory of naval
tactics and strategy. Cooper possessed this appreciation, in
a degree. He had served in the navy, but more than that he was
familiar with the value of the English fleet to British
imperialism, and his six years' residence in EurOpe had given
him what may be termed a world view, the relation of commerce to
naval war.

Perhaps it was a guess, and perhaps a theory of the
balance of power role passing from England to the United States,
but COOper in Agloat and Ashore voiced a sentiment that smacks
of shrewd prOphecy at this day.

Stranger things have happened than to have the

day arrive when English and American fleets may be

acting in concert. No one can tell what is in the

womb of time; and I have lived long enough to know

that no man can foresee who will continue to be his

friends, or a nation what peOple may become its enemies. 2

The Naval_History was more than a record of the American
marine, although the numerous battles were painted in typical
minute COOperesque. The work exhibited more foresight than hind-
sight, the vision of an expanding America supported by a giant
fleet and a vigorous foreign policy. In the preface to the third
edition of the History in 1846 Cooper could write:

The country appears to be touching on great

events. A war has commenced among us, (Mexican War),
which...must give extensive employment to the

2. Afloat and Ashore, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1896, p. 162.

national marine.... The Navy of the United States
presents a very different picture, in 1846, from
that it offered in 1815. Though far from being yet,
what prudence would have dictated, and the wants of
the republic actually demand, it can now bring its
fleet into line, and exercise a most essential
influence on the result of any conflict.

The phrase "what prudence would have dictated, and the wants
of the republic actually demand," is the key to Cooper's naval
thought. The knowledge that the American government had once
paid tribute to the pirates of the North African coast rankled
Cooper's personal and national pride. Connecting this fact with
his theory of national rights Cooper wrote:

In Ray of this year (1800)...Captain Bainbridge
was reordered to sail with tribute (c300,000, accord-
ing to Cooper's note) to the Day of Algiers. We now
look back with wonder at the fact, that a maritime
peOple, like those of the United States, should con-
cent to meet the unjust demands of a power as
insignificant as that of Algiers, with any other
answer than a close blockade,_and vigorous war....
Opinion had probably as much connexion with this
want of Spirit, as expediency or policy, for it
would be easy to show, not only in this but all
other cases, that there is no more certain means for
a nation to invite aggressions, than by making undue
concessions, or no surer method of obtaining justice
than by insisting on its rights. 5

If insisting on rights meant war, then Cooper would have it
so, for time and again he had written to the tune that "the
infatuated notion that were are over, is a chimera of speculative
moralists."

The policies of expansion and insistence on rights could go
hand in hand. In this vein COOper wrote in Aflpat and Ashore:

In a word, we shaped our course for that

district (Oregon and hashington( which bids fair

3. History of the Navy of the Upited States of America, third
edition, 1846, I, 185, hereafter referred to as History.

to set the mother and daughter by the ears, one

of these days, unleSs it shall happen to be dis-

posed of a la Texas, or what is almost as bad,

a la Maine, are long.... We went as far north

as 53 degrees (latitude).... 4
The cry of the expansionists was "Fifty four-forty or fightt", and
COOper here had his hero Miles Nallingford going nearly that far
north. The dispute was later settled with the boundary at the
forty-ninth parallel.

COOper exulted in the remembrance that the nation had
"insisted on its rights" when the navy subdued the Barbary pirates.

Algiers will not extort tribute again from

America, but other rights, not less dear to

national honour, national character, and national

interests, may be sacraficed to a temporising

spirit, should not the navy be enlarged, and

made the highest aim of national security. 5

National security meant a navy to COOper, and a navy meant
policy and administration. Naval policy had to be engendered
by the congress, eventually approved by the voting public, and
administered by a civilian navy department. Here, then, were
themes that required outlining. The navy, in 1812, had been
"distrusted by those who, having made the cry of economy a
stalking horse in their way to power, shrunk from the heavy
charges that this, like all other complete means of national
defence, must unavoidably entail on the public." 6

False economy was an evil peculiar to a democracy.

In a democracy there exists a standing necessity

for reducing everything to the average comprehension....

4. Ibid., p. 191,
5. History, II, 151.
6. Ibid., I, 194.

...this compromise of knowledge, is to be found
in the want of establishments that require fore-
sight and liberality to be well managed, for the
history of every democracy has shown that it has
been deficient in the wisdom which is dependent
on those expenditures that foster true economy,
by anticipating evils and avoiding the waste of
precipitation, want of system, and want of"
knowledge. ...as in ordinary transactions,
(where) the highest pay commands the best services,
so in public things, the expenditures made in a
time of peace are the surest means of obtaining
economy in a time of war. 7

The onslaught on false economy was not limited to the strictly
naval commentaries. The theme pOpped up in many of the sea tales,
notably miles Wallingford:

As for America, she was cursed with the cent
of economy.... The money paid as interest on the
sums expended in the war of 1812, might have main-
tained a navy that would have caused both belli-
gerents to respect her rights, and the shy saved
the principle entirely, to say nothing of all the
other immense losses dependent on a interrupted
trade, but demagogues were at work with their raven
throats, and it is not reasonable to expect that
the masses can draw very just distinctions on the
subject of remote interests, when present expendi-
ture is the question immediately before them. 8

Accompanying the advocacy of a big fleet as tru economy went
a suggestion for naval research.

It is by making provision for war, in a time
of peace, and, in eXpending its money freely, to
further the objects of general science, in the
way of surveys and other similar precautions,
that a great maritime state, in particular,
economizes, by means of present expenditure,
for the momenta of necessity and danger that may
await it, an age ahead. a

Naval policy was to be dictated by national interest.
7. Histor , I, 190-191.

8. Miles Wallingford, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1896, p. 169.
9. Lives, I, 44-45.

It follows that America was about to engage
in a war (1812) with much the greatest maritime
power that the world ever saw, ossessing herself
but seventeen cruising vessels Iwar ships) on the
ocean, of which nine were of a class less than
frigates. (Britain entered this war with sea
naval vessels, including 120 ships of the line
and 145 frigates. 10) At this time the merchant
vessels of the United States were Spread over
the face of the entire earth. No other instance
can be found of so great a stake in shipping with
a protection so utterly inadequate.

If any evidence were wanting to show how much
facts precede cpinion in America, it would be
amply furnished in this simple statement.

...the navy has followed the exigencies of the
state, or the absolute demands of necessity, instead
of having been created, fostered, and extended, as
the cheapest, most efficient, and least onerous
means of defense, that a nation so situated could
provide. 11

III

It is interesting to compare Cocper's naval thought with
that of later naval historians. Captain Alfred T. Mahan,
probably the world's most astute naval historian and theoriti-
cian, writing in 1890 said:

The necessity of a navy, in the restricted
sense of the word, springs, therefore, from the
existence of a peaceful shipping, and disappears
with it, except in the case of a nation which
has aggressive tendencies, and keeps up a navy
merely as a branch of the military establishment.
As the United States has at present no aggressive
purposes, and its merchant service has disappeared,
the dwindling of the armed fleet and general lack
of interest in it are strictly logical conse-
quences. When for any reason sea trade is again
found to pay, a large enough shipping interest
will reappear to compel the revival of the war
fleet. It is possible that when a canal route
through the Central American Isthmus is seen to.
be a near certainty, the aggressive impulse may

11. History, II, 40.

10

be strong enough to lead to the same result.
This is doubtful, however, because a peaceful,
gain-loving nation is not farsighted, and far-
sightedness is needed for adequate military
preparation, especially in these days. 12

This last line concerning "far-sightedness" smacks of CoOper's
big fleet propaganda, although the brief paragraph should serve to
demonstrate that Liahan' 3 work has survived largely because he
dealt with principles educing generalities from them.

And fifty years later the arguments of the big navy men were
to be essentially the same as Cooper's. Captain Dudley We Knox,
in the introduction to his History of the Ungted States Navy, 1956,

theorized:

we are, and always have been, a great commercial
nation; which beginning with the Declaration of
Independence, has never failed to assert its right
to trade freely with all the world. We cannot
doubt that in the future we shall maintain our
commercial rights, even at the risk of war, and
that the Navy will be the instrument of upholding
them.

In the conflict of national interests we
usually find the origin of wars, and every county
knows that the diplimatic arguments of its State
Department are effective in prOportion as they
are supported by military and naval force in
the background. 15

It should be clear, then, that a vital relation exists between
the size of the navy and the maritime trade of a nation, and al-
though, as demonstrated, CooPer perceived this relation, the ex-
tension of this thought results in one of the many foggy and
somewhat contradictory expressions of his nature. COOper always

used the terms "merchants" and "wealthier citizens" in a

synonomous sense, and made no bones about the fact that he despised

12. ‘Capt. A.T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History,
' Little, Brown, and Company, gBoston, 1890, p. 86.
15. Capt. Dudley W. Knox, History_of the United States Navy, G .P.
Putnam' 3 Sons, New York, 1956,

ll

commerce, being ready to charge merchants with near treason:

It ought never to be forgotten, moreover,
that the wealthier portion of the American
peOple, who, as a body, have seldom been true
to the nation, in conflicts of cpinion with
Great Britain, allowed their confidence in the
public securities to be so much impaired, that
all the heaviest Operations of Commodore
Chauncey were carried on by means of a
depreciated currency.... 14

Furthermore, COOper believed that cities could be defended from
ships by means of forts. He stated this not once, but several

times.
This was the most hotly contested engagement

of the king that ever took place on the American

coast, and it goes fully to prove the important

military position, that ships cannot withstand'

forts when the latter are properly constructed,

armed, and garrisoned. 15

While it would be going too far afield to make a definite
assertion, it does make an interesting conjecture that since
COOper felt no personal love for the merchant and importer, and
believed the nation could successfully be defended from invasion
by means of armed forts and coast artillery, his big navy thought
stemmed almost solely from a belief in the power role of American
deStinyo

In the History Cooper went to great lengths to show that the

navy had contributed invaluable service to the nation in the two

wars with England.

The first important relief was Obtained through
the cruisers (during the revolution), and it is
scarcely too much to add, that, without the succours
that were procured in this manner during the years
1775 and 1776, the Revolution must have been checked
at the outset.

14. History,II, 228.
15. gm” I, 70.

12

In addition to the direct benefits conferred
by the captures, the marine was of incalculable
advantage in bringing Europe in contact with
America by showing the flag and ships of the new
country in the old world. 16

Despite such lessons as this, COOper thought, it was a "known
national failing to defer all military preparations to the latest

possible moment, from the day the country has been peOpled." l7

COOper stood ready with his examples and theories to forestall
all protestations that navies cost money. He had thundered against
false economy on several occasions, and dipped into history for
more material.

While Washington, and his ministers, appeared
to be fully sensible of the importance of a navy,
the poverty of the treasury alone would have been
deemed in insuperable objection to encountering
its eXpense. Still, so evident was the connexion
between an efficient government and a permanent
and strong marine, in a country like this, that
when Paul Jones first heard of the change, he
prepared to return to America in the confident hOpe
of being again employed. 18

And not only was_there a close_"connexion between an efficient
government and a permanent and strong marine," but it was a force
that ”without which no war can ever be conducted with credit and
success by a country situated like America...." 19

If the navy had not received its due share of recognition,
it had manifestly been the fault of the congress. Politicians,
then, should be scored without mercy.
16. History, I., 141.
17. Ibid., p. 28.‘

18. Ibid., p. 147.

19. bide, p. 450

W

 

H

13

The recklessness Of political Opposition soon
made itself apparent, in its usual inconsiderate
and acrimonius form; a recommendation that emanated
from the government, for the establishment of dry
docks, one of the first and most important measures
in the formation of serviceable marine, meeting
with all the ridicule and ignorance which hostility
could invent, even from those who proressed to bd
the strongest friends of the navy. Profiting by
the most vulgar association that a want of know-
ledge could connect with the word "dry", the
papers of the day kept ringing the changes on this
tune, virtually accusing the administration of
wishing to have a navy on shore! Thus did the
gallant little service, which already merited
so much from the nation, and which is so inseparably
connected with all the great considerations of
national existence, find itself to struggle through
its infancy.... 20

Further, it was patent that a navy, and only a navy, could insure

the trade, freedom, and very national existence of the United

States, and yet the national legislature had shown little recog-

nition of this vital fact.

20.
21.

The condition of the navy may be said to have
been negative at the period of which we are now
writing, (1805), for while all who reflected
seriously on the subject, felt the necessity of
greatly increasing this branch of the national
defence, nothing efficient was attempted, or,
apparently, contemplated. Ships Of the line,
without which it would be impossible to prevent
any of even the secondary maritime powers of ’
EurOpe from blockading the ports of the country,
were now scarcely mentioned.... It is, indeed,
difficult to imagine a policy as short-sighted
and feeble, as that pursued by Congress at this
particular juncture. Uith political relations
that were never free from the appearances of
hostilities, a trade that covered all the seas Of
the known world, and an experience that was
replete with lessons of the necessity of repelling
outrages by force, this great interest was treated
with a neglect that approached fatuity. To add to
this oversight, and to increase the despondency Of
the service...the government adOpted a...policy...
(gun boat policy) singularly adapted to breaking
down the high tone that the navy had acquired in
its recent experience. 21

Histor I 194.
Ibid.,‘iI,’1c.

l4

COOper had neither love of nor fear for the English, and
scoffed at the suggestion that England could reconquer America,
provided, of course, the navy were maintained at peak strength.

The general peace that, owing to the downfall
of Napoleon so suddenly took place in EurOpe,
afforded England an Opportunity of sending large
reinforcements in ships and troops to America.
...and it would seem, that there was a moment
when some in England were flattered with the
belief of being able to dictate such terms to the
republic, as would even reduce its territory,
if they did not affect its independence. 22

even when instances occurred where the Congress had made
some naval preparations, COOper presented the situation in a
most unfavorable light.

If the naval armaments made by the country, under
the prospect of a war with Great Britain, are to
be regarded with the eyes of prudence, little more
can be said, than to eXpress astonishment at the
political infatuation which permitted the day of
preparation to pass unneeded. Still a little was
done, and that little it is our duty to record. 25

Despite all the failures of the legislative body to preperly provide
for the maintenance of the military arm, COOper wrote, the navy had,
through the course of events developed into a supurb fighting
organization, and the war of 1812 had witnessed the birth of a new
world power from a new nation.

Thus terminated the war of 1812, so far as it
was connected with the American marine. The navy
came out of this struggle with a vast increase of
reputation. The brilliant style in which the ships
had been carried into action...produced a new era
in naval warfare. ...The ablest and bravest
captains of the English fleet were ready to admit
that a new power was about to appear on the ocean,
and that it was not improbable the battle for the
mastery of the seas would have to be fought over
again. 24

22. History, 11, 153.
23. Ibid., p. 3a.
24. Ibid., pp. 244‘2&50

15

The key phrase here is "a new power was about to appear on
the ocean," for in 183:, when the gistory was published, the
battle efficiency of the increasing United states fleet had not
yet been tested. Still, the power was there, "dormant power,
which, when properly applied, can at any time give the republic
a commanding influence in the general concerns of the world...." 35

But COOper's big navy prOpaganda was not a blind booming
of a service to which he was most partial and in which he could
number the leading figures as his personal friends. This navy
was to support a foreign policy of expansion, an expansion that
was manifestly destined for the growing nation. Cooper could
comment on the diplomatic and philOSOphical implications for the
creation of the United States: that not only was the Revolution
the "birthday of the nation, but it was also the era when reason
and common-sense beg an to take the place of custom and feudal
practices in the management of the affairs of nations." 36 And
he could go from the general to the particular in passing along
to the reader of fiction the late naval develOpments and the
reasons for such moves.

Of late years, the government of the United
States has turned its attention to the capabilities
of the Florida Reef, as an advanced naval station;
a sort of Downs, or St. Helen's Roads, for the
West Indian beas. As yet, little has been done
beyond making the preliminary surveys, but the
day is not probably very distant when fleets will
lie at anchor among the islets described in our
earlier chapters, or garnish the fine waters of
Key Lest. bor a long time it was thought that
even frigates would have difficulty in entering
and quitting the port of the latter, but it is
said that recent explorations have discovered
channels capable of admitting anything that floats. 27

25. Histor II, 8. '
26. Them—Fillet, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1896, p. 1.
27. Jack Tier, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1896, p. 452.

16

Today Key West is a major base for surface craft and submarines.
COOper's daughter, Susan, would have it that her father had
some large scale ideas about South America. "Your grandfather,"
she wrote in the "Small Family Memories" penned for the grand-
children, "Your grandfather thought the intercourse with the
Spanish-American countries would become so close that the

language would become a necessity to an educated American." 38

It is certain that COOper exulted when the United States military
forces moved into the Mexican section of Spanish-American. Of
General Scott in Mexico he wrote, February 1, 1848: "Has not

Scott achieved marvelst The gun-thunders in the valley of the

n 29

Aztecs were heard in echoes across the Atlantic. Here, then,

was a warning to EurOpe, But while COOper thought that EurOpe
heard the echoes, he wondered whether most Americans might have
a less sensitive ear; a failing of both Americans and Europeans
at an earlier date.

The Leander (British war vessel) afterwards
became notorious, on the American coast, in con-
sequence of a man killed in a coaster by one of
her shot, within 20 miles of the spot where I
saw her now, an event that had its share in
awakening the feeling that produced the war of
1812---a war of which the effects are just
beginning to be made manifest in the policy of
the republic; a fact, by the way, that is little
understood at home or abroad. 50

28. Correspondence 0f James Fenimore- -Cooper, ed. by James
Fenimore COOper, Yale University Press, 1952, I, 56, here-
after referred to as Correspondence. '

29. Mary E. Phillips, James Fenimore Coo er, John Lane Company,
New York, 1915, p. 568.

50. Miles wallin ford, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1896, p. 171.

17

IV

The theme of the American destiny of expansion is strong in
all Of COOper's sea tales, and sometimes the destiny theme
approached the cyclical theory as advanced by Spengler in The
Decline of the West. In the Red hover, (1828) the second of the
sea stories, a story centered in New York harbor in the early
l700's, COOper wrote:

The system Of Oppression and misrule, which

hastened a separation that sooner or later must

have occurred in the natural order of events,

had not yet commenced. 51
Here was the destiny of freedom; and later:

The crew of the Royal Caroline were all from

that distant island (England) that has been, and

still continues to be, the hive of nations, which

are probably fated to carry her name to a time

when the site of her own fallen power shall be

sought as a curiosity, like the remains of a city

in a desert. 52
Here was the decline of the west. True, these are isolated state-
ments, but they are out of the pattern of the narrative, asides
to the reader, as it were, and are repeated in sentiment in the
other yarns.

COOper entertained little love for England; if she was con-
sidered "Mistress Of the Seas", he had no fear of a woman, and
wanted his nation to assume the role of master. COOper rarely
mentioned the subject of naval impressment, in which England had
been the prime Offender, without delving in war psychology:

51. Red Rover, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1826, p. 5.
32. Ibid., p. 212.

18

It may sound revolting, at the present day,
to suppose a case in which a foreigner was thrown
by violence into the military service of a '
nation, and then was put in jeOpardy of his life,
because he used a privilege of nature to fly from
such persecution as soon as circumstances placed
the means in his power. The last age, however,
witnessed many scenes of similar wrongs; and, it
is to be feared, in despite of all the mawkish
philanthrOpy and unmeaning professions of ex-
ternal peace that is now the fashion to array
against the experience of mankind, that the next
age will present their parallels, unless the good
sense of this nation infuse into the federal
legislative bodies Juster notions of policy,
more extended views of their own duties, and more
accurate Opinions of the conditions of the
several communities of Christendom, than has
marked their laws and reasoning for the past few
months. (1.)

(1.)The question of impressment is now settled
forever.The United States have now a mortgage on
the Canadas to secure the good behavior of Great
Britain. 55

This footnote, of a most belligerent tone, was added to the 1850
edition of Wing-and-Wing, but the tone of the original passage
typical of many COOper denunciations of impressment, is fat with
threats of wars and rumors of wars.

With the entry into the Mexican War, the United States had
begun to fulfill the grand destiny that Cooper and other had
envisioned, and COOper felt no call to.apologize for the nation's
wholesale extension of its borders.

Of his native country (United States), so abused

in our own times for its rapacity and the desire

to extend its dominions by any means, Mark felt

no apprehension. Of all the powerful nations of

the present day, America, though not absolutely

spotless, has probably the least to reproach to

herself with the score of lawless and purely

ambitious acquisitions. Even her conquests in

Open war have been few, and are not yet determined
in character. In the end, it will be found

55. Wing-and-Wing, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1896, pp. 254-255.

19

that little will be taken that Mexico could keep;
and had that nation observed towards this,
ordinary Justice and faith in her intercourse
and treaties, that which has so suddenly and
vigorously been done, would never have been
attempted.

It may suit the policy of those who live
under the same system, to decry those who do
not; but men are not so blind that they cannot
see the sun at noonday. One nation makes war
because its consul receives the rap of a fan;
and men of a different origin, religion, and
habits, are coerced into submission as the con-
sequence. Another nation burns towns, and
destroys their peOple in thousands, because
their governors, will not consent to admit a
poisonous drug into their territories; an
offence against the laws of trade that can only
be expiated by the ruthless march of the conqueror.
Yet the ruling men of both these communities
affect a great sensibility when the long
slumbering young lion of the West arouses
himself in his lair, after twenty years of for-
bearance, and stretches out a paw in resentment
for outrages that no other nation, conscious
of his strength, would have endured for as
many months, because, forsooth, he ;§_the young
lion of the West. Never mind: by the time New
Zealand and Tahiti are brought under the yoke,
the Californians may be admitted to an equal
participation in the rights of American citizens. 54

America,_then, had not been an aggressor in Mexico, but had
lashed back for a series of insults, and, apparently, once the
young lion took up a new piece of ground, he merely declined to
decamp. It should be noted in line with COOper's suggestion that
"little will be taken that Mexico could keep," that the diplomatic
meaning of the Gadsden Purchase could be construed in this light.

More than once does COOper give the suggestion that he

believed not only in the rise of the United States as a great

54. The Crater, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 18v6, p. 509.

20

power, but that he believed in the whole idea Of a great cycle
and eventual perfection. This is, perhaps, most strongly
voiced in the Crater.

In the meantime, the earth revolves, men
are born, live their time, and die; communities
are formed and are dissolved, dynasties appear
and disappear; good contends with evil, and
evil still has its day; the whole, however,
advancing slowly but unerringly towards that
great consummation, which was designed from
the beginning, and which is as certain to
arrive in the end, as that the sun sets at
night and rises in the morning. The supreme
folly of the hour is to imagine that perfection
will come before its stated stime. 55

It is strange indeed to hear COOper advocating patience as regards
human failings, for no one was more impatient than he with the
slowly progressing American.

But patience between nations had its breaking point, and such
was the case with Mexico.

However much Mexico may, and has, weakened
her cause by her own punic faith, instability,‘
military Oppression, and political revolutions,
giving to the Texans in particular ample just-
ification for their revolt, it was not probable
that Don Juan Montefalderon saw the force of
all the arguments that a casuist of ordinary
ingenuity could certainly adduce against his
country; for it is a most unusual thing to find
a man anywhere, who is willing to admit that
the positions of an Opponent are good. He saw
in the events of the day, a province wrested from
his nation; and, in his reasoning on the subject,
entirely over-looking the numerous occasions
on which his own fluctuating gOvernment had
given sufficient Justification, not to say
motives, to their powerful neighbors to take
the law into their own hands, and redress them-
selves, he fancied all that had occurred was
previously planned; instead of regarding it,

as. Ibid.,p. 466.

21

as it truly is, as merely the result of politi-
cal events that no man could have foreseen,
that no man had originally imagined, or than
any man could control. 56

Here is destiny at its ultimate, blind, moving, unforeseen, un-
controllable. Still while no man could hOpe to control such
forces, a big fleet kept the forces from moving toward one's

homeland.

'The United states of America!‘ repeated
the interpreter, with an ill-concealed eXpres-
sion of contempt. 'There is good picking
among the vessels Of that nation, as the great
EurOpean belligerents well know; and while so
many are profiting by it, we may as well come
in for our share.’

It_may be necessary to remind a portion
of our readers that his dialogue occurred more
than forty years ago, and long before the
republic sent out its fleets and armies to
conquer adjacent states; when, indeed, it had
scarce a fleet and army to protect its own
coasts and frontiers from insults and
depredations. 57

Not only was COOper well satisfied with the conquests in Mexico
that were adding to the physical size as well as the international
prestige of the United States, but he exulted in the force Of
American arms.

The warlike qualities Of the Americans Of
the North, as he was accustomed to call those
who term themselves, par excellence, Americans,
a name they are fated to retain, and to raise
high on the scale of national power and national
pre-eminence, unless they fall by their own
hands, had taken him by surprise, as they had'
taken all but those who knew the country well,
and who understood its peOple. Little had he
imagined that the small, widely-Spread body of
regulars, that figured in the blue books,
almanacs, and army-registers of America, as

56. Jack Tier, pp. 155-154.
57. The Crater, p. 457.

22

some six or seven thousand men, scattered along
frontiers Of a thousand leagues in extent, could,
at the back of the government, swell into

legions of invaders, men able to carry war to
the capitals of his own states, thousands of
miles from their doors, and formidable alike

for their energy, their bravery, their readiness
in the use Of arms, and their numbers. He saw
what is perhaps justly called the boasting of

the American character, vindicated by their
exploits; and marches, conquests, and victories
that, if sober truth were alone to cover the
pages Of history, would far outdo in real labor
and danger the boasted passage of the Alps

under Napoleon, and the exploits that succeeded. 58

Sometimes COOper's predictions of America's destiny were both

Optimistic and calm, where for the most part he was advocating

an expanding America while condeming the caliber Of her peOple,

her institutions, and her political administrations. In the Sea

Lions, (1849) probably the best of the sea tales, COOper suggested

hOpe for both the nation and her peOple.

38.
59.

Nevertheless, the world cannot probably
another instance of a peOple who are derived
from so many different races, and who occupy
so large an extent of country, who are so
homogeneous in appearance, characters, and
Opinions. There is no question that the in-
stitutions have had a material influence in
producing this uniformity, while they have
unquestionably lowered the standared to which
Opinion is submitted, by referring the
decisions to the many, instead Of making the
appeal to the few, as is elsewhere done. Still,
the direction is onward, and though it may take
time to carve on the social column of America
that graceful and ornamental capital which it
forms the Just boast Of EurOpe to possess,
when the task shall be achieved, the work will
stand on a base so broad as to secure its
upright attitude for ages. 59

Jack Tier, p. 505.
Sea Lions, G.P. Putnam's Sons,_New York, 1826, p. 2.

By the time COOper L88 writing The Sea Lions, in 1848 and

 

1849, the American navy had come a long way from the "infant
service" of which COOper was so proud of having been a member.
That fleet had cowed the pirates of the mediterranean, Carrib-
bean, and Malay Archipelago; Opened trade with China, and
attempted negotiations with Japan; served in reducing Mexican
armies during the war; made a five year exploring expedition
under Lt. Charles Rilkes from the Antarctic through the whole
Pacific, ending in 1845; and on down the line. This naval
activity is reflected in such later sea tales as The Sea Lions
in the boast that:

No hostile squadron, English, French, Dutch,
or all united, will ever again blockade an
American port for any serious length Of time,
the young Hercules passing too rapidly from
the gristle into the bone, any longer to suffer
antics Of this nature to be played in front of
his cradle. 40

And not only could Cooper thus snap his fingers at the
combined naval power of the snglish, French, and Dutch, but he
could cook a somewhat greedy and belligerent eye at the British
owned bermudas.

Beaufort (N.C.) lies about two degrees to
the northward of the four hundred rocks, islets,
and small islands which are known as the Bermudas;
an advanced naval station that belongs to a
rival commercial power, and which is occupied by

”that power solely as a check on this Republic

in the event of war. Had the views of real
statesmen prevailed in America, instead Of

those of mere politicians, the whole energy Of
this Republic would have long since been directed
tO the obJect Of substituting our own flag for
that Of England in these islands. As things are,

40. Ibid., p. 6.

24

there they exist; a station for hostile fleets,
and receptacle for prizes, and a depot for the
munitions ofwar, as if expressly designed by
nature to hold the whole American coast in com-
mand. While little men with great names are
wrangling about southwestern acquisitions, and
the northeastern boundaries, that are of no

real moment in the growth and power of the
Republic, these islands, that ought never to be
out of the mind of the American statesman, have
not yet entered into the account at all; a
certain proof how little the minds that do, or
ought to, influence events, are really up to the
work they have been delegated to perform.
Military expeditions have twice been sent from
this country to Canada, when both the Canadas

are not of onehalf the importance to the true
security and dependence of the country---no
nation is independent until it holds the control
of all its greater interests in its own hands--as
the Bermudas. When Bngland asked the cession of
territory undoubtedly American, because it
overshadowed Quebec, she should have been met
with this plain prOposition--'Give us the Ber-
mudas, and we will exchange with you. You hold
these islands as a check on our power, and we
will hold the angle of Maine for a check on yours,
unless you will consent to make a fair and mutual
transfer. We will not attack you for the posses-
sion of the Bermudas, for we deem a just principle
even more important than such an accession; but
when you ask us to cede, we hold out our hands to
take an equivalent in return. The policy of this
nation is not to be influenced by saw-logs, but
by these manifest, important, and ulterior
interests. ‘If you wish Maine, give us Bermuda

in exchange, or go with your wish ungratified.‘
Happily, among us events are stronger than men;
and the day is not distant when the mere force of
circumstances will compel the small-fry of
diplomacy to see what the real interests and
dignity of the Republic demand, in reference to
this great feature of its policy. 41

In addition to the specific suggestion that the United States
acquire the Bermudas, COOper here once more registered his belief

in destiny, manifest destiny amounting almost to an astrolOgical

25

assumption--"events are stronger than men", nothing could prevent
American expansion. Further along in The Sea Lions, Cooper

could put this speech into the mouth of Roswell Gardiner, the

hero: "we're beginning to put out our feelers, Old Stimson, and
shall have 'em on far better bits of territory than this (uncharted
Antarctic island), before the earth has gone round in its track
another hundred years." 42 Here, again, COOper approached
clairvoyance; in 1841, ninety-two years after the publication of
The Sea Lions, the United btates received naval bases in the
Bermudas in exchange for a gift of fifty Destroyers to the English

navy.

26

CHAPTER II
Politics and the Navy

Probably the extent of COOper's political activities and
his political relations with the havy Department will never be
known. The evidence is just enough to be intriguing, too
little to be conclusive. Still, the available material serves
to show Cooper was close to governmental and navy leaders, and
that his big-navy and expansionist ideas fruited from a period
of long and steady growth.

Among Cooper's brother officers during his brief hitch in
the havy were several who were distined to reach posasions at
the head of the service, W.B. Shubrick, C.C. Chauncey, Lawrence
Kearney, W.M. Woolsey, and others. after leaving service, and
eSpecially after his success as a novelist, COOper maintained
his personal relations with military men. Susan COOper wrote
that on removing to New York from Cooperstown her father fre-
quently saw many officers of the army and navy; and at least
once brought home to dine one of the nation's heroes, General
Winfield Scott-l At this time, or earlier, COOper had learned
something of the naval history of Holland, for he kept a 20
foot 5100p called the Van Tromp, obviously named for the Dutch
Admiral Van Tromp, still called by naval men the "father of

naval tactics.”

l. CorreSpondence, I, 49.

27

When ready to embark for Burcpe, COOper believed himself
well enough known to request a consulship in Lyons. In 1826,
at a dinner given in his honor before sailing, Cooper made
known his intention to write a history of the navy. Here was
a combination of politics and the navy.

Once in Europe COOper did not forget his pride in the
United States Navy. Writing to his wife from Genoa in February,
1827 he said, "There is a French corvette here, and I went on
board her this afternoon. She carries twenty-two guns, but I
think one of our 22's would soon dispose of her." 2 Undoubtedly
Mrs. COOper would have some idea of the relative merits of a
French corvette and "one of our 22's", for all the members of the
COOper family were drilled in nautical nomenclature, indis-
pensable knowledge for members of both sexes according to
Cooper's theory. In March, 1829, he wrote from Karseilles to
his daughter Sue that "The Java (U.s. ship-offline) has Just got
into Toulon,...I have half a mind to go and see the place, and
the ship at the same time." 3 Until the Java arrived, COOper
had expressed little interest in Toulon. Later Captain W.M.
hoolsey, COOper's commanding officer in the days on Lake
Ontario, was a companion during a winter in Paris, and the pair
swapped sea stories like school girls peddling gossip.

All this time COOper had been busy on a second sea story,
The Red Rover, published in 1828. The yarn was a salt water

2. Correspondence, 1, 156.
5. Ibid., 161.

28

romance but the theme of the work carried pungent paragraphs
of the big navy argument.
Enjoying the four great requisites of a

safe and commodius haven, a placid basin, an

outer harbor, and a convenient roadstead, with

a clear offing, NeWport appeared to the eyes

of our EurOpean ancestors designed to shelter

fleets, and to nurse 8 race of hardy and

expert seamen. Though the latter anticipation

has not been entirely disappointed, how little

has reality answered to expectation in respect

to the former: 4
Government was here being placidly accused of twin failings:
failure to deveIOpe a fleet, failure to develOpe Newport, Rhode
Island, harbor. It is significant that today NeWport is a major
naval base, and the site of the Naval War College.

Not only did CoOper keep track of the navy in general, but
he followed the careers of his old messmates. In August, 1852,
he wrote S.F.B. Morse from Francfort (sic): "I see that my old
messmate George Rodgers is dead, and that Downes has been blow-
ing up the Malays, the latter is right, and the former will at
least make honest Lawrence Kearney a Captain."5 Thus casually
could COOper refer to some of the major deve10pments in the
naval establishment. "Messmate George Rodgers" was also the
highest ranking officer in the department, and his death touched
off a series of advancements that had great effects in the
department. For instance, "honest Lawrence Kearney" soon
after Opened negotiations with China, and is recognized as the

4. Bed Rover, p. 1.
5. Correspondence, I, 284.

29

man who opened the China trade. Downes who had been "blowing
up the halays" was Captain John Lownes who landed a force on
the west coast of Sumatra in February, 1832, and razed the
villages of natives who had plundered a United btates merchant
vessel the previous year. The act gained peaceful passage for
United States‘ vessels in that area for many years. But most
of all, the letter indicates Cooper's familiarity with high
ranking naval men and their relative positions within the
establishment.

Cooper arrived in haw York from hurOpe in November, 1832,
and in December he was in Washington with a friend of long
standing, Captain h.B. Shubrick, the officer to whom he had

"to

dedicated The Pilot. On the tenth he wrote Mrs. COOper: tomorrow
I see the President at.e1even." 6 But the letter of the
following day contains no mention of the interview, probably

because that portion of the letter was not published in the

Correspondence.

II

Whatever may have been COOper's political activity between
1855 and 1856, he would have his family believe that he was not
seeking office, although apparently a bit of plunder could fall
his way should he request it. On July 1, 1836, while the

presidential campaign was blowing hot, Cooper wrote his wife:

6. Corre5pondence, I., 329.

A foolish paragraph is going the rounds that

I want to be Secretary of the Navy. I have

caused it to be contradicted, though I fear some

of the officers are making a little influence

to that effect, else it is not easy to see

wherever the report should have come. 7
Certainly COOper's letter seemed to treat the rumor of his office
seeking as only a "foolish paragraph", but then the fashion had
not set in for literary men to hold the tOp civilian navy job.
It is significant that such a suggestion should be brought for-
ward at a tihe when COOper had written literally nothing in
criticism of the administration of the navy department. This was
to be a favorite theme later.

In 1836-37 COOper contributed articles to the Naval Magazine,
a short lived organ, and by early 1837 he was deep in naval
affairs in Washington, affairs that were becoming very complicated
indeed. In March in hashington COOper could dine frequently with
Commodore Chauncey, a tOp commander, and late in the month could
write his wife:

Shubrick will command the coast squadron,

though Jones is recovered, and is ap lying for

it. The secretary (Mahlon Dickerson is

dissatisfied with ahubrick on account of his

obtaining a promise from the President, through

the Secretary of War (J.P. Poinsett), but the

probability is that the Secretary of War will

become Secretary of the Navy.... 8

Apparently some of the powers in the Democratic party thought
COOper deserved some sort of appointment, even though COOper's own
words seem to deny such a desire. ,On April 12, 1837, Jacob
Sutherland wrote to President Van Buren:

7. Correspondence, I, 361.
8. Ibid., 373.

31

The Democratic tendency of hr. Cooper's
later Publications has drawn upon him the
attacks of Various Kinds from the Federal
Press. They have attempted to depreciate and
undervalue his writings both literary &
political and he thinks he has not been sus-
tained by the Democratic Press and the country,
in the manner he had a right to expect. buch
a Mark of Public Confidence and Consideration,
as would be implied in this appointment, would
undoubtedly under existing circumstances be
peculiarly Gratifying to him. 9

This year, 1837, and the following year were good seasons for
job hunting, capecially in the navy Department. The department was
riddled with dissension, and cliques within the higher echelons
were squabbling for rank and choice commands. A naval exploring
expedition, which finally put to sea in September, 1838, under the
command of Lt. Charles hilkes, had for months been fitting out
in Norfolk. But inter-service friction had sabotaged all progress.
Navy Secretary Dickerson in his annual report to congress on
December 2, 1837 reported the expeditionary force had become
unwieldy and that costs had greatly exceeded the estimates,10

Niles Rational hegiater for December 30, 1837, carried twin
announcements of the resignation of Captain Thomas A. Catesby
Jones as commander of the expedition who was "wearied out by
continued disappointments..." and a rumor story that "Captain
a. Letter, Jacob Sutherland to President Martin Van Buren, Geneva,

New York, April 12, 1837. Van Buren Correspondence, Library
of Congress. Quoted in Dorothy Naples, The Whig Myth of

James Penimore Cooper, Yale University Press, 1938, p. 299.
10. kiles Rational Register, December 23, 1837, pp. 269-271.

 

52

W.B. Shubrick has been Spoken of as likely to have command of

the expedition..." 11
On April 4, 1838, Congress considered a resolution offered

by a congressman Rise to convert the exploring squadron into a
l

to

coast Squadron. As stated in the foregoing pages, COOper had

mentioned the coast squadron, and predicted bhubrick would get
the command. In May, 1838, COOper was of the same Opinion when

he wrote to his wife: "The cabinet is breaking up and Shubrick

will get his command I think as soon as changes are made."13

Although bhubrick did not get his command, the following
month on June 20, Secretary of the Navy Dickerson was replaced
by the novelist James K. Paulding.

The friction in both the civilian and military arms of the
navy department did not escape the newspapers. Niles Rational
Register on September 8, 1838, carried an editorial reprint from
the August 1 glgbg concerning bickerson's resignation:

. However, this may be, the general impression
is that the discipline and character of the Favy
are at a very low ebb. There may be some truth
in this, though we are satisfied the truth has been
exaggerated. That the service has deteriorated
from the exalted elevation it had attained at the
close of the late war cannot be denied. But is
not this the inevitable and invariable consequence
of a long peace?

he are assured, and believe that there is a
total want of that esprit de corps, without which
there can be nothing high or ennobling in the
profession of arms. Instead of the generous
avarice of glory, which should inspire every true
sailor, it is said that a mean and pitiful Jealousy,

11. Ibid., p. 283.

12. Ibid., April 7, 1838, p.96.
3. Correspondence, 1, 378.

 

33

equally degrading to the man and to the pro-
fession, pervades all classes of officers; that
instead of cherishing the reputation of every
member as a part of their own, and viewing with
complacency any favour accorded to merit or
services, it is their fault to contemplate it
with a scowl of envy, as an unmerited reward
earned without desert, and conferred without
discrimination. 14

The same issue of Eiles National Register carried a Globe

editorial for August 2, 1838, Which is in a similar vein:
he understand and are assured on the fact

from our own cheervation, that a very degrading

and debasing practice has become prominent among

some officers of the navy, and for aught we know,

the army, too. We allude to the habit of coming

to Washington, and tagging at the heels of

members of congress, with the pernacity (sic) of

sturdy beggars, animated, or rather depressed, by

the consciousness either that their own merits

do not entitle them to the favour they ask, or

that the man in whom it rests to yield to their

claims. 15

While the Opinions of the Globe editors must be accepted
with the usual discount rate given early American journalists,
the tenor of the Globe editorials is unmistable, and must be
taken to mean that at least a segment of the public was being
presented prOpaganda adverse to the interests of the navy.

COOper's Naval History, published early in the following
year, 1839, was to contain its share of this adverse criticism,
but his barbs were to be aimed at congress and earlier adminis-
trations, and not at his brother officers within the naval

establishment.p Further, since the beginning of the Van Buren

administration, a strong feeling had been growing in congress

14. Ibid., p. 23.
13. Ibid., p. 24.

for the re-introduction of the gunboat system, a system that
had failed miserably twenty-five years earlier; in addition,
the "war with England" fever was growing stronger. Cooper's
first scathing treatment of the navy‘s civilian administration
came in the History:

It has, more or less, been a leading defect
of the civil administration of the military affairs
of the American government, that too little of
professional feeling has presided in its councils,
the men who are elevated to political power, in
pOpular governments, seldom entertaining fully
into the tone and motives of those who are alive
to the sensibilities of military pride. 16

But the Naval History was in a class by itself with its

 

criticism. The Eiggory_applauded the ships and men of the
navy, but lamented the fact that the nation had always
practiced a false economy which precluded the building and
maintenance of a large fleet. Give the United states an
efficient fleet, wrote COOper, and the growing nation would
hold the balance of power in world power politics. And the
History was to have political repercussions.

In july, 1839, Cooper wrote from Philadelphia to his wife:
"About 2,000 cOpies of the Eistory_have been sold, and new or-
ders are beginning to come in." 17 Navy Secretary J.K. Paulding
was one of the first to send congratulations on publication of
the book and by October 4 COOper could write from Philadelphia
that "The President is eXpected here in a day or two, and I

n 18

shall go and see him. The following day the president had

16. Histor , I, 215-216.
17. Correspondence, p. 395.
18. Ibid., II, 399.

55

not yet arrived, but COOper wrote his wife that "Mr. Van Buren
is carrying everything before his, and, out of question, will
be re-elected." 19 Apparently COOper was still a Jackson-Van
Buren democrat. On the eighth he wrote:

I am still detained here, for the History

is of too much importance to be neglected. I

am essentially improving it, and trying to make

it a standard work.

VI am invited...to meet the President at

dinner...but shall not go. My way is clear for

preferment if I wish it, but you know I do not

wish it. 20

Later in the year havy Secretary Paulding chose the History
and all the sea stories COOper had then written, Ehe Pilot, Ehe
Red hover, Ehe hater Witch, and Epmeward Bound, to form part of
the small library with which he fitted each vessel in the ser-
vice. These novels were the only pieces of fiction in the li-
braries. 31 The History had found favor not only with critics
and the public, but with Democratic administration heads.

It would be difficult to determine precisely the political
effects of the Histor , although some evidence does exist to
throw light on the picture. For instance, a major tenant of
the History was that the congress should create the rank of
admiral in the United States Navy, to put American officers
on a level with those of other nations. In the next session
of congress, on April 2, 1840, a senator Nicholas offered a
resolution "that the committee on naval affairs be instructed
19. CorreSpondence, II, 401.

20. Ibid., pijéos.
21. Borothy Waples,,gp. cit., p. 254.

36

to enquire into the expediency of giving a more perfect
organization to the navy be creating the rank of admiral,
and, limiting, by law, the number of officers in the several

22 '
existing ranks." But nothing came of the resolution, and
Cooper did not live to see an American admiral. David G.
Faraagut was named the.first rear-admiral in 1862 and full
admiral in 1866.

Late in 18i0 COOper was again hobnobbing with his crony
Shubrick, this time aboard the warship Macedonia in New York
harbor, and on the tenth of October wrote his wife:

I have come off today to make a feast on

chowder with Dhubrick, but must go ashore again

tonight. he own a ship of the line, a frigate,

and a s100p of war, and make a figure.

Shubrick did not wish to leave the squadron.

The offer came from the Department, and probably

has a pOlitical bearing. The elections are tre-

mendous, and no one knows what will be the result....

Everybody thinks and talks politics. 23

Whatever may be the meaning of the phrase "we own a ship
of the line, etc.”, the section is clear where "everybody
thinks and talks politics." COOper's statement about Shubrick
suggests that which the Globe editorial had charged earlier,
that naval officers were playing politics.

Although the success of General Harrison in the presiden-
tial race could be expected to come as a shock to COOper, he
wrote a strange letter on the subject to Shubrick, dated

February 28, 1841:

I have made a great political discovery
lately, which must not go further than Mrs. ohubrick

22;, Niles National aggisteg, April 11, 18:0, p. 92.
23. 'GOrrespondence, II, 4246425. ‘.

37

and Mary. In 1799, when Congress sat in Phila-
delphia, my father was a member as was also
General Harrison. You know I had a sister
killed by a fall from a horse in 1800. This
sister passed the winter in Philadelphia with
my father. Miss Anne COOper (the author's
daughter) was lately in Philadelphia where

she met Mr. Thomas Biddle, who asked if our
family were not Harrison men. The reason for
so singular a question was asked, and Mr.
Biddle answered that in 179% Mr. Harrison was
dying with love for hiss Cooper, that he (Mr.
Biddle) was his confidant, and that he thinks
but does not know that he was refused. If

not refused it was because he was not encouraged
to prOpose, so you see I stand on high grounds
and am ready to serve you on occasion. Don't
let this go any further, however. I confess to
think all the better of the General for this
discovery, for it shows that he had forty years
ago both taste and Judgement in a matter in
which men so often fail. 24

.This letter could mean that COOper was angling for a Harrison
alliance, or it could have been written in jest, for the brief
history of Harrison's love life could not strike many persons

as "a great political discovery."
III

Late in 1841 the Edinburgh Review published a review of
COOper's Histor , comparing it unfavorably with William James'
Naval Occurrences. James was an attorney who practiced as a
proctor of the English vice-admiralty court, and was interned
in the United States during the war of 1812. In 1816 he published
a pamphlet entitled "an Inquiry into the Merits of the Princi-

ple Ravel Actions Between Great Britain and the United States"

24. hary 3. Phillips, pp. cit., pp. 15-16.

“D.

58

in which he attempted to prove that in American naval victories
over the British, American frigates were larger, stouter,

more heavily manned and more heavily armed than their adversar-
ies, and said American accounts were lies which attributed the
victories to superior courage and superior seamanship. James
published enlarged editions in angland in 1817, 1818, and 1819,
and in 1832-24 published The Naval History of Great Britain,
from the Declaration of War by France in 1793 to the Accession
of George IV. This work, also entitled Naval Occurrences, the
Edinburgh cited as a pattern for the writing of naval history,
and, since COOper's cpinion as regards the merits of the American
navy were diametrically Opposed to those of James, the
ddinburgh found COOper's History to be slightly less than
nothing.

The Democratic neview, a political organ, came to COOper's
defense, publishing a twenty-four page partial refutation of
the Edinburgh piece in the issue for May, 1842, and a thirty-
five page blast in the issue for June. The COOper defense
carried many paragraphs of anti-British sentiment, as well as
threats to the English to beware the American fleet.

As to Angland, and the peculiar relation in

which she now stands to this country, we have a

word to say. It is a fact not to be concealed,

that_the national hostility which has so long

prevailed in England towards this country, is

now being first transferred to America. The

hold which angland had on our failings has now

got to be slight indeed, and is now confined

principally to a few bookworms, devotees of

monarchy, and the remains of the old school of
doctrinaries in politics. Setting aside the

Ci]
{C

direct interests of trade, we believe a war
with that country might, at any hour, be made
extremely pOpular in this. 25

.Re sincerely hOpe that the difficulties
which now exist between this country and
England may be...amicab1y disposed of. If
war should come, however, we will know what to
expect in a naval point of view. Le shall by
no means be annihilated. 26

The June article concluded with a sentiment foreign to the usual
Democratic party line:

We meet in the Edinburgh article but a
single remark that is worthy of the ancient
reputation of that journal; and that is,
where it tells us that America has yet to
send forth her fleets, and achieve victories
that may influence the politics of the
civilized world, before she can prOperly claim
to be a great naval power. To this
cpinion the writer of this paper fully sub-
scribes, as yet, American has rather given
pledges of her naval capabilities, than
.accomplished anything to take a high place
in history.... At this moment, she ought to
have a fleet of six or eight line-of-battle
ships collected and practising for the
purposes of comparison and discipline. 27

“"1

ror months the Lemocratic heview had been publishing peace
articles, but the two pieces on COOper amounted to war prOpaganda.
Cooper believed that "the illusion that were are over is a chim-

era of Speculative moralists". The Lemocratic articles were

 

unsigned, but the editors wrote that "the authorship of the
preceding article is too transparent on its face to escape the

observation of any reader." 28 At this late day the authorship

25. "hdinburgh heview on James' Naval Occurrences, and COOper's
Naval'fiistory", The Democratic Review, X (June 18a2), 538-339.

26. Ibid., X, 540.

27. Ibiai, 540-541.

28. Ibid., 541.

 

40

is a bit more opaque, but there it seens almost certain that
Cooper penned the heview articles.
Also in 1842, Cooper published two more sea tales, The

Two Admirals, which again suggested the creation of the rank

 

of Admiral in the American navy, and Ving-and-Wing, a romance
with religious overtones.

In 1843 Cooper published ged Myers, fashioned somewhat in
the manner of Lana's Two Years Befgge the East, which had
appeared in 1840. But the tone of bed myers was different from
that of Dana's work; Dana had protested against the practise
of flOgging, and coarse treatment for sailors, while Ned
Myers was,in parts, a pat on the back for COOper's beloved
navy, which, in recent years, had received adverse publicity.
fled, an old ship mate of Cooper's is on the Sterling, had writ-
ten to COOper the previous year from Sailor's Snug Harbor, and
COOper invited the old tar to COOperstown. Together they com-
piled the story of Ned's life:

I can say conscientiously, that were my life

to be passed over again, without the hOpe of

commanding a veSSel, it should be passed in the

navy. The food is better, the service is

lighter, the treatment is better, if a man behave

himself at all well he is better cared for, has

a port under his lee in case of accidents, and

gets good, steady wages, with the certainty of

being paid. ...Then he is pretty certain of

having gentlemen over him, and that is a great

deal for any man. 29

COOper published Afloat and Ashore and the sequel Miles

Lallingford in 1844, when the election was waxing hot, both

 

29. Red Myers, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1896, pp. 181~182.

41

works replete with political suggestions:

This is an unpleasant subject to me. I
could hardly have passed it over, for it proves
that the political association of this country
failed in one of the greatestends of all such
associations; but nothing is ever gained by
suppressing truth, on such a matter. Let
those who read reflect on the past; it may
possibly have a tendency to render the future
more secure, give to the American citizen in
reality, some of those rights which it so
much accords with our habits to boast of
possessing. If concealment did any good, I
would gladly besilent; but diseases in the
bony politic require a bold and manly treatment,
even more than those in the physical system. 30

Perhaps this outburst was just another evidence of COOper's
bitterness over the land problem, and, perhaps, this and similar
pot shots in the two tales were timed to coincide with the
candidacy of Folk, a big navy man.

In any case, this year, 1844, was a big year for Cooper

both in person and in publishing. In July the Democratic

 

Review carried COOper's picture as a frontpiece. In August
COOper made the frontpiece of Eggham's Magazine, and inside
was a four page biography of Cooper by Rufus W. Griswold. The
November issue of Cgaham's carried the first of COOper's Ellgg
of Distinguished American Naval Officers. In the Liygg, of
which eleven were published in Eggpgmfs and ten published in
volume form in 1846, COOper hammered away at the themes he had
set forth in the Laval Historye-expansion, big fleet, smart

fleet, high rank.

30. Miles Wallingford, p. 382.

42

On January 13, 1845, Cooper received a letter from Commodore
Jesse D. Elliot which seems to be an offer of the position of
Secretary of Eavy.

Every days eXperience satisfies me of the

prOpriety of having the medal struck of you.

COOper, answers me right to the pgint, I am

urged to take a position at Washington, how

would you like to fill the galy office? 51
Ten years had passed since COOper wrote his wife about the
"foolish paragraph" concerning his hopes of political plum.

Yet here, deSpite Cooper‘s continued denial of political
aspiration was an outright offer of a job from a man who could
probably swing the deal, and who must have had some encouragement
on CoOper's part in order to make the offer and to request an
answer "right to the point."

No doubt the offer was made out of gratitude, and Elliot
owed COOper a great debt. Elliot was second in command to
Perry at the Battle of Lake Erie in the Var of 1812. Since the_
war officers in the navy had lined up in Perry and Elliot camps,
one claiming Elliot did not prOperly support Perry in the battle,
and Elliot supporters denying the charge. The Elliot group

pointed most of all to Perry‘s own battle diSpatches which had

highly praised Elliot's battle activity. In the Naval History

 

COOper reviewed the battle, and, although it is said he did not
even know Elliot at the time of writing, Cooper found no fault
in Elliot's maneuvering, praising both Perry and illiot. Later

historians, such as Dudley W. Knox, have theorized that Elliot

31. Correspondence, II, 531.

43

was at fault. Without dipping too deeply into the cess pobl of
antiquarianism, it can be related that Cooper became involved
in several libel suits over the Perry-filliot controversy, and
Elliot himself was acq itted by a courts-martial. Elliot then
had a medal struck with COOper's profile on the reverse, and
distributed the medal to prominent peOple. Then came dlliot's
offer.

Whatever may have been COOper's answer, the historian
George Bancroft was named Navy Secretary by President Polk. But
Polk himself seems to have owed more to COOper than to Bancroft
for his navy theory. Polk's message to congress on December 2,
1845 reads like a page out of Cooper's History:

Whatever may have been our policy in the
earlier stages of the government, when the nation
was in its infancy, our shipping and commerce
comparatively small, our resources limited, our
pOpulation sparse, and sparsely extending beyond
the limits of the original thirteen states, that
policy must be essentially different now that
we have grown from three to more than twenty
millions of peOple--that our commerce, Carried
in our own ships, is found in every sea, and
that our territorial boundaries and settlements
have been so greatly extended. Neither our
commerce, nor our long line of coast on the
ocean and the lakes, can be successfully
defended against foreign aggression by means
of fortifications alone. These are essentials
at important commercial and military points,
but our chief reliance for this object must be
on a well-organized, efficient navy. 52

IV
President lolk's big navy call, in the face of approaching

02. Niles National Register, December 6, 1845, p. 223.

44

war, strangely enough must have been the death note for

COOper's political relations, for neither the Correspondence

 

nor the later sea tales indicate COOper was involved with
changes in the department or movements in the government.
However, COOper, ever the apoligist to the public for the navy,
did not fail to continue his applause of the service and to
suggest ways and means of using the fleet to back up a foreign
policy.

By the time of the publication of Jack Tier, 1848, which
had earlier appeared in serial form in Graham's Magazine under
the name of Islets of‘the Gulf, COOper seems to have cast off
relations with all political parties.

Those grounds, (government grounds in

Washington) which so long lay a reproach to the

national taste and liberality, are now fast be-

coming beautiful, are already exceedingly pretty,

and give to a structure that is destined to

become historical, having already associated

with it the names of Jefferson, Madison, Jackson,

and Quincy Adams, together with the oi Dolloi of

the later Presidents, an entourage that is

suitable to its past recollections and its

present purposes. 53
Democrats Van Buren and Polk, with Whigs Harrison and Tyler,
were here lumped under "oi polloi". This casual casting off of
Van Buren's memory harks back to the fall of 1839 when COOper
seemed so willing and anxious to see President Van Buren when
he wrote his wife on October 4, but on October 8 wrote that he

was invited to "meet the President at dinner...but shall not

go." There is just enough here to suggest that COOper was

33. Jack Tier, p. 478.

45

disappointed in Van Buren, yet not enough to prove the state-
ment.

Although COOper's political associations had come to an
end, he was still a staunch booster in his fifiotion for the
navy, and the plugging usually took the form of criticism of
Congress. In the years between 1840 and 1850 the navy depart-
ment was undergoing changes. In 1842 the department had been
reorganized, breaking the administrative and down into five
bureaus. The service had also come in for criticism as regards
treatment of enlisted men, and some question had been raised as
to the quality of the officer corps. Congress had ordered
several investigations, but had accomplished little. COOper
resented all congressional tampering with the navy:

That ship, then, is called the Poughkeepsie,
is she, sir? inquired Spike.
Such is her name, thanks to a most beneficent

and sage provision of Congress, which has extended

its parental care over the navy to far as to

imagine that a man chosen by the people to

exercise so many of the functions of a sovereign,

is not fit to name a ship. All our two and three

deckers are to be called after states; the frigates

after rivers; and the SlOOpS after towns. Thus it

is that our craft has the honor to be called the

United States ship, the Poughkeepsie instead of

the Arrow, or the waSp, or the Curlew, or the

Petrel, as might otherwise have been the case.

But the wisdom of Congress is manifest, for the

plan teaches us sailors geography. 34
This is a bit of cavilling, but, much as COOper could decry that
Sport, he was very adept at it. This attitude toward Congress
was much the same as that of COOper's friend Shubrick. Still

much of Cooper's partiality to the navy was legitimate, and

340 JECK Tier, I). 11]..

both in fact and fiction he tried to show the use and value

of a navy, a use and value that navy men are still trying to

impress on laymen in Congress and at home.

At all events, it is some answer to those
who ask ”What is the navy about?’ that months
of war have gone by, and not an american has
been captured. Take away that navy, and the
insurance offices in Wall Street would tumble
like a New York party-wall in a fire. 35

COOper, formerly on the inside track on some of the military-

political maneuvers in hashington, could not resist a blast at

such actions:

35.
36.

He ascribed the victory to the great super-
iority of the American officers of inferior rank;
it being well known that in the service of the
'hepublic of the North', as he termed America, men
who had been regularly educated at the military
academy, and who had reached the period of middle
life, wereserving in the stations of captains,
and sometimes in that of lieutenants; men who, in
many cases, were fitted to command regiments and
brigades, having been kept in these lower stations
by the tardiness with which promotion comes in an
army like that of this country.

Don Juan Montefalderon was not Sufficiently
conversant with the subject, perhaps, else he
might have added, that when occasions gg_offer to
bestow on these gentlemen the preferment they
have so hardly and patiently earned, they are
too often neglected, in order to extend the circle
of vulgar political patronage. He did not know
that when a new regiment of dragoons was raised,
one permanent in its character, and intended to
be identified with the army in all future time,
that, instead of giving its commissions to those
who had fairly earned them by long privations and
faithful service, they were given, with one or
two exceptions, to strangers.

ho government trifles more with its army
and navy than our own. So niggardly are the
master-spirits at tashington of the honors justly
earned by military men, that we still have fleets
commanded by captains, and armies by officers
whose regular duty it would be to command brigades. 36

Jack Tier, p. 107.
Ibid., p. 363.

47

In the years between Ewe Ybars Before the hast in 1840 and

 

hhite Jacket in 1850, both works which deplered the conditions
of common seamen in the navy and merchant service, many reform
groups were demanding changes in the naval coces. but Cooper
would not hear of civilian dictation to military men. still,
he would admit that earlier in the history of the navy, rank
had worked abuses:
It may be well to remark here, that the
Rev. hr. Rollins was not one of the 'Leunch'd
chaplains,’ that used to do discredit to the

navy of this country, or a layman dubbed with
such a title, and rated that he might get

the pay and become a boon companion of the

captain, at the table and in his frolics

ashore. Those days are gone by, and

ministers of the gospel are now really employed

to care for the souls of the poor sailors.... 57
Cooper had a similar speech to make on the improved caliber of
naval surgeons, contending that in the early days of the navy
men would joke about having the ship's carpenter perform an
amputation, since he could likely do a better job than the
docton, but that at the time of writing, "all this is vastly
changed for the better, and a navy-surgeon is necessarily a
man of education and experience...." Yet, in 1850 Melville
could write in hhite Jacket the famous, not to say notorius,
passage on the surgeon of the fleet who amputated a man's leg,
in the face of solid Opposition of all the other ship's sur-

geons, because he was a sadist, and wanted to demonstrate his

surgical technique to the younger doctors.

57. Jack Tier, pp. 577-578.

48

Reform groups at this time were complaining of methods
of discipline, especially on the Question of flogging. As
early as 1852 havy Secretary Levi Loodbury had unsuccessfully
recommended the abolition of flogging. Lana had nearly wept
over "A man-~a human being, made in God's likeness--fastened
up and flOgged like a beast." 38 In the preface written
August 10, 1849, for a later edition of The Pilot, Cooper had
his say on the issue of flogging:

It is the judgement in administration, and
not the mode of punishment, that requires looking
into; and, in this respect, there has certainly,
been a great improvement of late years. It is
seldom, indeed, that any institution, practice,
or system, is improved by the blind interference
of those who know nothing about it. Better
would it be to trust to the experience of those
who have long governed turbulent men, than to
those impulsive experiments who rarely regard
more than one side of a question, and that the
most showy and glittering: having cuite half
the time some selfish personal and to answer. 5s

The navy had become notorious for its flogging, if the
accounts of some writers are to be believed. "The chivalric
Virginian, John Randolph of hoanoke, declared in his place in
Congress, that on board of the American man-of—war that
carried him out Ambassador to Russia he had witnessed more
flogging than had taken place on his own plantation of five

"40

hundred African slaves in ten years. The discount system

must be applied doubly here, once for southern rhetoric and

again for Melville's prOpagandizing, but the statement is at

least an indication of conditions on a particular ship of the

38. hichard H. Dana, Ewe Years Before the East, dveryman's
Library Edition, p. 84.

59. Ibid., iv.

40. Herman Melville, Epite Jacket, Constable and Company Ltd.,
London, 1522, p. 176.

49

navy.

Early in his administration Kavy decretary Eancroft had
put an end to the practice of officers of the watch inflict-
ing chastisement on seamen, that function under the naval
codes being delegated to the captain but apparently some
watch officers were still using the colt, the rope end used as
a whip:

It is believed that, even at the present
day, there are inatances of commanders still
violating the law, by delegating the power of
the colt to subordinates. At all events, it
is certain that, almostto a man, the lieutenants
in tre navy bitterly rail against the officious-
ness of Bancroft, in so materially abridging
their usurped functions by snatching the colt
from their hands. At the time, they predicted
that this rash and most ill judged interference
of the Secretary would end in the breaking up
of all discipline in the Navy. But it has not
so proved. These officers now predict that,
if the 'Cat' (of nine tailsT be abolished, the
same unfulfilled prediction would be verified. 41

Late in 1850 the Congress voted to abolish flogging as a punish-
ment, and Cooper's friend dhubrick was one of five high ranking
officers appointed to draft a new navy code. The abolition of
flogging was no more pOpular in the naval establishment than it
was with Cooper. On March 17, 1851 dhubrick wrote to Cooper:

_8tewart,Morris, Berry, Breese and myself
are still at work on the revision of the Laws,
Rules, and negulations, etc., etc., for the
Government of the Navy. I think we shall be
able to mend matters a little if Congress can
be prevailed upon to carry out what we recom-
mend, but it is difficult to get that
enlightened and pgtriotic body to attend to any
thing but the dirty lpgrolling necessary to
carry on the business of President making. 42

41. Herman Melville, fihite Jacket, p. 175.
42. Corregpondence, II, 704.

 

50

On May_2, lel, Shubrick had more discouraging navy news for
COOper:
hell, ye are to have Stockton in the

Senate-~he is on the Ravel committee, and I

am told talks large about what he intends to

do. He is full of wild schemes, such as

doing away with necessary ships and recruit-

ing officers. His plan is, that when a

captain is appointed to a ship he shall

recruit his own crew, and they shall not be

transferable.... 43
This sort of thing must have been bitter news indeed to the
dying COOper. He had written dozens of eXpositions on the
need for a navy, and yet, here was a member of a congressional
military committee who had not the slightest notion of the
operation of the military arm. COOper had been discouraged
earlier and amazed that legislators failed to appreciate sea
power after the experience of three naval wars; could he have
seen the naval debacle after the Civil iar as well as subse-

quent American wars, he probably would not have taken the

trouble to write the history.

51

CHAPTER III

Sailor and Novelist

’ .1

When COOper published The Pilot in 1825 he set the pattern
for a new school of friction, a school that still reaps rewards
in the manuscript market. Later writers of sea stories learned
something that didn't occur to COOper, that the interest in a
sea story lay not in the sea itself, but in the men and the
little wooden world in which they crossed the seas. Only once
did COOper approach a plot in a sea story, in the much neglected
Sgg Lions.

COOper's daughter, Susan, summed up her father's character
in a few words. "In general, his thoughts seem to have turned
upon ships, and the sea, and farming, and landscape gardening."1
This attitude is evident in COOper's work, for even in his front-
ier romances the sea would find an allusion in such spots as the
title of The Pathfinder, or the Inland Sea, or in the case of
Floating Tom Sutter's Castle in The Degrslayer.

In later years Cooper realized that he had set a new fashion
in fiction, but never realized how it had happened. It seems that
he thought the use of technical sailing terms had turned the
truck, and apparently did not know that John Dryden had debated

that question more than one hundredetifty years earlier in the ,

preface to Was.

1. Co res 0 dance, I, 55.

52

In the preface to The Pilot Cooper wrote that he had engaged
in a conversation regarding Sir Walter Scott's The Pirate, and
cpined that the story obviously was written by a land lubber.

Cooper observed further that there was room for diapute
as to the "seamanship displayed in The Pirate, a qualityto
which the book has certainly very little just pretension. The
result of thisconversation was a sudden determination to
produce a work, which, if it had no other merit, might present
truer pictures of the ocean and ships than any that are to be
found in The Pi;ate."2

Whether or no this was the true inspiration for The Pilot
is'e matter of conjecture, but the fact remains that the book
was financially successful, and the path was Opened for the sea
story. In reviewing The Pilgt, the Edinburgh Review wrote that
”the empire of the sea is conceded to him by acclamation." In
the preface to the 1850 edition of The Pilot Cégper wrote:

It would be affectation to deny that The

2;;Q1,met with a most unlocked-for success.

The novelty of the design probably contributed

1a large share of the result. Sea-tales came

into vogue, as a consequence; and, as every

practical part of knowledge has its uses,

something has been gained by letting the lands-

man into the seaman's manner of life. 5

There seems to be little question that CQOper fathered the
American sea story. Dana, in the preface to Two Yegrs Before
the Mast in 1840 wrote that "Since Mr. Cooper's Pilot and Egg
Rob r, there have been so many stories of sea life written...."

2. Ibid., 111.
3. Ibid., iv.

53

--tacit knowledgement of COOper's lead. And a glance through ,
contemporary magazines will confirm the notion that see stories
were pOpular, many of the stories having titles only slightly
different from COOper's, such as The Black Rover, The Reefer,
The Pziygteeg, Deramg g: the Land and Sea.’

The Pilot is the story of two American naval mussels and
crews, loitering off the coast of England during the Revolutionary
War. John Paul Jones, though never named, is_the pilot, and ‘
his mission is, apparently, to direct the ship crews in the
capture of hostages to be used in a later exchange of
prisoners.

The American lieutenants Griffith and Barnstable engage
in byplay with two young coldnial ladies whose Tory uncle had
taken them to England at the outbreak of war. In the end the
officers marry the girls, but the pilot does not line up the
hostages. I

While the plot is not important, the choice and treatment
of the subject do enter into a consideration of COOper's naval
thought. The tone of The Pilot is most favorable to Jones and
most deprecating toward the French whom Cooper believed had
thwarted Jones' efforts in the Revolution. COOper has Jones
say:

But I was born without the nobility of
twenty generations to corrupt my blood and

deaden my soul, and am not trusted by the
degenerate wretches who rule the French marine. 4

40 Tag P1;Ot, pp. 216-2170

54

In later years, when writing the History and the Lives,
COOper was forced to compare Jones with Edward Preble, and
Cooper saw fit to make Jones come off second best, for the
project of An American fleet was dear to CeOper's heart, and
Jones had engaged in single combat while Preble had marshalled
the first American fleet against an enemy. This is typical of
Cooper's naval maturation, from the incident to the general
picture. The story of Tpe Pile: further shows the two
American vessels in combat with English craft, with the
Americans coming out on t0p in courage, gunnery, and seamanship,
a combined theme that was to come in for a good deal of
discussion later.

As to the reception of TQQ Pilot, the review of the North
American can be accepted as indicative if not typical:

The choice of incidents and actors, and

the frequent allusions to our history, manners

and habits, make the story strike deep into

the feelings of American readers; and by im-

plicating the tale with our naval history,

the author possesses himself of one of the

few positions from which our national

enthusianm, is accessible.

But in the subject of our naval skill and

prowess, although we are not willing to con-

fess it, we are, yet, real enthusiasts. This

is a string to which the national feeling

vibrates certainly and deeply; and this '

string the author has touched with effect. 5

Apparently the North American reviewer was given to

enthusiasm, for by present day standards The Pilet does not

5. Norte American, April 1824, pp. 514-529, quoted in Marcel
Clavel, Fenimege CQQDQI £99315 Czitiee, 1958, p. 195.

55

merit such praise; and yet the tale was new and different. It
did, however, have more action on land than on board ship. Stand-
ard criticism makes much of the naval battle and the storm in the
story, particularly the storm; this is all very well, but the

true significance of The Pilot lies in the theme, the prowess of
the American navy, and in the fact that COOper had originated a
new literary tradition.

Five years later, in 1828, the second sea story was published,
Th§_§9d Revez. This was strictly a romance, with naval
commentaries on the side; still, present day pulpsters make
use of the devices Cooper employed in The Red Rover. For
instance, an American, Harry Wilder, a lieutenant in the
English navy in the days before the Revolution, masquerades
as a civilian and sings on as first mate with the piratical
Red Rover. This device is still in good favor in pOpular
detective fiction when the undercover man joins the bandit
gang and secretly sends information to headquarters. Another
example is the Rover himself, a man of intellect, although
sensual, a man superior to his environment and companions.

This stereotype of the wonderful rogue was exploited to the
full in recent years by Rafael Sabatini in such pieces as the
widely read Ceptain Bloog.

After Wilder joins the Rover's band in Newport Harbor,
the Rover, through personal contact, obtains command of a

merchant vessel for first mate Wilder, planning to plunder the

vessel at sea. Wilder has a young woman, Gertrude, and her

56

governess Mrs. Wyllys aboard, bound for Charleston. Wilder's
vessel goes down, though he and the ladies escape together in
a boat, and are picked up by the Rover. When contact is made
with a vessel of the English fleet, Wilder is discovered to be
a spy, but generously released. The Rover then captures the
English vessel, and, while his crew is preparing to execute
Wilder, by one of COOper's providential reunions, finds that
Mrs. Wyllys is Wilder's mother. The Rover then stOps the exe-
cution, disperses his crew, and blows.up his ship, after set-
ting Wilder and the ladies adrift. Wilder, whose name is
found to be Henry De Lacey, marries Gertrude, and becomes
Captain De Lacey of the United States Navy. In the final
chapter, when the De Lacey's have been married many years and
the war of the Revolution is in full swing, a dying man is
one day carried into their home, and is found to be the Red
Rover, fatally wounded while fighting at sea for the colonists.
Henry's mother then announces the Rover is her brother. This
combination of circumstances gives the rogue an honorable
death and all are happy.

There was nothing particularly new about The Red Rover,
except that the action was carried on more at sea than in
The Pilet. One minor develoPment of mechanics wasthe sea
story formula of storm, ship wreck and rescue that, with
variations, COOper was to work into all the sea tales. ,The
,Ei;e§ had only the storm. The chase, always a part of a

COOper tale, was inevitable in a sea story, and any Cooper

57

sea story, without title or by-line, could eventually be
identified by virtue of the fact that at the beginning of
a chase a brine freckled wag would advise the ship's coms
mander that "A starn chase is a long chase, Cap'n." This
line appears invariably.

The Wgter Witgh, written in Italy and published in 1851,
was one of the strangest of COOper's tales, although he sug-
gested in the preface to the 1850 edition that "this is pro-
bably the most imaginative book ever written by the author.
Its fault is in blending too much of the real with the purely,
ideal.“6 No one will deny that the work is one of imagination,
not to say fantasy.

The tale concerns a New York Dutch merchant, Alderman
Van Beverout, whose goods are smuggled to himby the notorious
Skimmer of the seas. Captain Ludlow of HMS Coquette, enamored
of the Alderman's niece, Alida Barberie, would like to
catch the pirate Skimmer. The Water-Witch is the Skimmer's
ship, and supposedly protected by the Sea-Green Lady, a type
of water sprite who mysteriously appears in the cabin when
summoned by weird music. The real character of this creature
is never satisfactorily resolved, and this may be COOper's
meaning of "blending too much of the real with the purely
ideal."

The Water-Witch is significant primarily in that it is
CoOper's first example of a stolen character, or at least

part of a character, and the prorer part at that. The one

6. The Water Witch, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1896, iii.

58

really interesting personality in the 31322.13 the Alderman
Van Berverout, a true prOphet of profit, who relates all
knowledge and activity to the field of merchandising. The
Alderman is patterned after good Bob Acres, at least as far
as cursing,of Sheridan's comedy The Rivals. As Acres would
shout an oath relating to the subject under consideration,

so the merchant would scream "Bonds and balancest" "Legacies
and foreign Tonguest" and a hundred others. A character
patterned on Mrs. Malaprop of The Rivals later appeared in
Jack Tier.

II

Whatever may have been the faults of the Witgh, Cooper's
other projects were paying great dividends at this time. .
Writing from Paris to his sister-in-law Caroline De Lancey,
December 3, 1831, he said:

I am making money so fast, Just now, and

it is so important to me to be on the epot,

that I should be culpable to the last degree,

to let the Opportunity of providing for the

girls go by. 7
COOper had then suggested that Caroline join the family in
EurOpe, and that she could serve as his cOpyist, mentioning
that he had "the prospect of receiving this year near or
quite twenty thousand dollars."8

But with the increasing social criticism, Cooper's
returns from writing were to diminish, and there was even

7. Correspondence, I, 248.
8. Ibid., 249.

59

some question later as to whether Carey, his publisher, would
accept his work. On May 25, 1888, COOper wrote his wife

that he did not "expect that he (Carey) will publish either
Home-as-Found or the Naval History,” 9 Carey had accepted
Homeward Bound for publication in 1858, the fourth of COOper's
tales with the action placed on the sea.

‘Egmewagngound, however, was not prOperly a sea tale,
or fiction of any kind, for that matter. The work was some
sort of bastard breed, too long for an essay, too obvious
for satire. Here COOper poured out the accumulated bitterness
of his hatred of what he termed American mediocrity, little
realizing that his own loudly critical tirades were as much
a symptom of that mediocrity as were the patriotic puffs of
Editor Stedfast Dodge, the target of most of COOper's splenetic
darts. figmeward Egggg is not in the tradition of Cooper's
sea tales, and must be by-passed as a mere literary tantrum,
an evidence that COOper did not know what to print and what
to throw away.

The next of the sea stories, Mercedes of Castile, ap-
peared in 1840, and stands as a monument to the bad Judgement
of a mature novelist. Mercedes is a story of Columbus's
voyage to America, but is related to the efforts of Queen
Isabella's favorite, Mercedes, in behalf of Columbus, to
secure for him ships and provisions to make the American

Journey. Mercedes's interest is the hOpe that riches from the

9. Corr 3 onden e, I, 249.

60

new world will finance a new crusade. The entire voyage of
Columbus is narrated for more than two-thirds of the pages,
when the action is transferred to a marriage mixup between
Mercedes, Luis, her intended, and Ozema, an Indian girl
brought to Spain on the return trip. After working for
dramatic effect on the voyage west, tinkering with the
domestic affairs of three rather unimportant people smacks of

anti-climax. Mercedes is described adequately, in the
Litergry History of the United States as a "masterpiece of

tediousness."

Mercedes does, however, illustrate one nasty prOpensity
into which Cooper had drOpped at this time-~the tabloid
newspaper trick of making fiction in fact, or emphasizing
the trivial.

The lustre that was thrown around the
voyage of Columbus brought the seas into favor.
It was no longer deemed an inferior occupation,
or unsuited to nobles to engage in enter-
prises on its bosom; and that very pr0pensity
of our hero, which had so often been mentioned
to his prejudice in former years, was now fre-
qwently named to his credit. Though his real
connection with Columbus is published, for the
first time, in these pages, the circumstances
having escaped the superficial investigation
of historians, it was an advantage to him to
be known as having manifested what might be
termed a maritime disposition, in an age when
most of his rank and expectations were satis-
fied with the adventures of the land” 10

In the Naval Histo , published in 1839, COOper had pointed
out that the officer morale suffered in the American navy be-
cause officers could not advance past the rank of Captain,

10. Mercedes of Castile, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1896,
p. 5000

61

highest existing rank in the navy, but far below that of other
nations. The senate in 1840 had considered a resolution ad-
vocating the creation of the rank of admiral, but the resolution
was table bait. Piping on the high rank tune, Cooper in 1842
published The Two Admirals, a hodge podge of dramatic motives
and prOpagandizing. The story early connects a young American
(in the days before the Resolution) an officer in the English
navy, with the daughter of a lighthouse keeper. The two .
English admirals are Sir Jervis Cakes, a Tory in politics, and
his second in command, Admiral Bluewater, a Jacobite Whig.

When the admirals are described, the reader is firmly admonished
with the knowledge that "it is a symptom of the diffusive
tendency of everything in this country that America has never
yet assembled a fleet." The story then continues. After a
series of adventures, a kindly providence finds the young
American to be the true heir to a vast English estate, and the
lighthouse keeper's daughter to be something of a foundling who
is truly Admiral Bluewater's niece. The boy and girm marry,
Bluewater is killed in action and buried in Westminster Abbey.
Years later the happy pair and their children meet Cakes, who
has become senile, at the tomb of Bluewater. It may be that
COOper considered this the true ends of Whit and Tory. The
plot is not stimulating, but it did provide Cooper an instru-

ment to play his "big fleet-high rank" tune. 11

11. Thg 239 Agmigals, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1896,

62

Wing-and-Wing, 1842, again involved a laughing, dashing
pirate, but this time the conflict between the pirate, Raoul
Yvard, and the girl he loved, Ghita, involved a religious
question, for Raoul was an atheist, and Ghita would not
marry an unbeliever. The religious element in Cooper's sea
stories takes a greater number of pages in each succeeding
story from.The Pilot through The Sea Lions. The pagan Raoul
is killed by the English after a protracted chase, and a
villainous fight, in addition to other adventures. While the
story is not attractive to present day readers, COOper wrote
in the preface that he felt a ”strong paternal feeling in
behalf of this book, placing it very high in the estimate of
its merits, as compared with other books from the same pen."12
And it is true that a fat passages in Wing-and-Wing are top-
notch, such as that describing the temperament of the sailor,
a description that any sailor would admit to be both true and
telling:

of all men, the sailors get to be the most

blase in the way of the sensations produced by

novelties, and fine scenery. It appears to be

a part of their calling to suppress the emotions

of a greenhorn; and, generally, they look upon

anything that is a little out of the ordinary

track, with the coolness of those who feel it

is an admission of inferiority to betray sur-

prise. It seldom happens with them, that any-

thing occurs, or anything is seen, to which the

last cruise, or, if the vessel be engaged in

trade, the last voyage, did not at least fur-

nish a parallel; usually the past event, or

the more distant object, has the advantage.

Strand, the boastswain, was one of those
who, on all such occasions, "died hard". He

12. Ibid., 11.

65

was the last man in the ship who ever gave up

a prejudice; and this for three several
reasons: he was a cockney, and believed himself
born in the centre of human knowledge; he was

a seamen, and understood the world; he was a
boatswain, and stood upon his dignity. 13

III

With Ned Mygrs (1843) COOper entered a new field of writirg ,
a type of writing which would appear today under the title of
The Life of Ned Myers, as told to J.F. Cooper. Myers had been
a cabin boy on the Sterling, the merchantman in which COOper
had gone to sea. In 1841, Ned, now a decrepit old seaman liv-
ing at the Sailor's Snug Harbor, a sort of pensioners home
near New York, wrote asking whether COOper was the young man
from the Sterling. In due_time, COOper got in contact with
Myers and carried the old tar to COOperstown for a lengthy
visit. After the publication of Ned Myers, Geoper divided
the receipts with his old shipmate.

Ngd Myers was also something of a democratic venture
for COOper; this was the life story of a common man. 219
Yeggg Befgrg thg Mgst, published in 1840, may have suggested
the possibility of such a tale to Cooper, although he would
attribute the suggestion to another source:

4 It is an old remark, that the life of any

man, could the incidents be faithfully told,

would possess interest and instruction for the

general reader. The conviction of the perfect

truth of this saying has induced the writer to

commit to paper the vicissitudes, escapes, and
Opinions of one of his old shipmates as a

13. Wing-and-Wing, pp. 344-345.

sure means of giving the public Some just notions
of the career of a common sailor. 14

The narrative of Ngd Myegs is written in the first person
and purports to be written as nearly as possible in Ned's own
words; such seems to be the case. The tale follows Ned's
adventures from his cabin boy days, through his naval service
in the war of 1812, smuggling tobacco in Ireland and cpium in

China, drunkenness and theft, filth and misery until Ned gets
religion from reading the Bible.and Pilgrim's Progress while

convalescing from a fever in Batavia.

Much of Ned Myers is of a tone similar to the old song,
usually accompanied by a tambourine, "cigarettes and whiskey,
and wild, wild women...."

My great wish is that this picture of a
sailor's risks and hardships may have some
effect in causing this large and useful class
of men to think on the subject of their habits,
I entertain no doubts that the money I have
diaposed of far worse than if I had thrown it
into the sea, which went to reduce me to that
mental hell, the "horrors", and which on one
occasion at least, drove me to the verge of
suicide, would have formed a large sum, had
it been preperly laid by....

On the subject of liquor I can say
nothing that has not often been said by
others.... It was fast converting me into a
being inferior to a man, and but for God's
mercy might have rendered me the perpetrator
of crimes that it would shock me to think of
in my sober sane moments.

The past I have related as faithfully as
I have been able so to do. The future is with
God-~to whom belongeth the power and glory
for ever and avert 15

14. Ned M.ers, G.P. Putnam's Son, New York, 1896, i.
15. Ibid'.', 'p. 242.

65

Despite COOper's theory that the life of any man would
prove interesting "could the events be faithfully told," Egg
_My§;g stands somewhere in the middle category of the sea
tales, and its main distinction is its extreme brevity, being
only one-half as long as the remainder of the story. This
may be an argument against the true-story formula. One
interesting bit is the religiosity of Ned Myers, stronger than
any of the preceding stories.

Afloat ang Ashore (1844) and the sequel Miles Walling-
ford (1844) concern the life history of a young man called
Miles Wallingford. The yarns are written in the first person
style adOpted in Ned M are, and the narrator is described as
being sixty years old, ten years older than COOper at the
tnme of writing. In the choice of the hero's name COOper may
have paid tribute to John Paul Jones' first mate, Lieutenant
Wallingford, who was killed in action. Afloat ang Ashore is
significant among Cooper's work if for no other reason than
that it swings right into the story without the usual one—hun-
dred pages of stage setting. Miles, his mother and father dead,
runs away to sea at 16, makes a voyage to China, another to
London, a third around the Horn to the northwest and through
the south sees, the whole interspersed with fights with French
and English, captures, escapes, and the remainder of the
C§0per catalogue. The first person method is too much for

COOper, and, aside from the naval commentaries already men-

66

tioned, the story has comments and suggestions on English
newspapers, proper keeping of the Sabbath, the Episcopal
church and bishops, dramatic theory, lack of decent inns in
America, medical theory on the causes of various pulmonary
diseases, beauty of American women, the unreasonable theory
that all men are equal, methods of life saving, and even
the superfluity of door knockers.

After a series of profitable ventures and adventures
Miles, at twenty-one, becomes a ship owner and captain. In
,Miles Wgtltngford, COOper resorts to his old habits. Miles'
sister dies and the stage is set (this, including the funeral,
takes 113 pages). Miles mortgages his country estates to
procure money to buy a cargo intended for France. Then
follows a long series of chases, captures, escapes, and the
grand although rather obvious conclusion that "there is something

fascinating about a race." 16

Next come storm, shipwreck, and
imprisonment, followed by escape and a return home. The mort-
gage has been foreclosed, but, like a good sea lawyer, Cooper
cuts that knot, and marries his Lucy, very likely drawn from
Mrs. Cooper.

Deepite the petulance of some portions of Afloat sad
Actors, the yarn is certainly one of CQOper's best salt water
tales. In the preface Couper had promised the reader the work
would contain no asides;

The writer has published so much truth

which the world has insisted was fiction, and
so much fiction which has been received as truth,

67

that, in the present instance, he has resolved
to say nothing on the subject. 17

. And for the first one-fourth of the tale Cooper did say
nothing on the subject, sticking strictly to story-telling;
then he began lapsing into the old habit of tweaking the
reader by the ear with a comment on politics or a boast of
the prowess of the navy. He could also put in a boost for
the sale of his own books. When the novelist James K. Paulding
was secretary of the navy in 1839, he began outfitting each
,naval vessel with a small library. Among the works selected
were COOper's Histor , and the four sea stories that had
then been published. These were the only pieces of fiction
selected. In Afloat and Ashore Cooper, who concentrated on
naval policy and theory and left others to think about wel-
fare, tcuched on sea going welfare.
The leisure of a sea life, in a tranquil,

well-ordered vessel, admits of much study; and

books ought to be a leading object in the fitting

out that portion of a vessel's equipment which

relate chiefly to the welfare of her officers

and crew. 18
COOper might well broadcast this suggestion, for, with high
ranking friends in the naval establishment, he couldebe cer-
tain that if more works of fiction were added to ship's

libraries, the tales of Cooper would be high on the list of

books recommendid for purchase.

17. Ib d. W: ”
18. Ibid.: %. 293.

 

 

68

IV

ng Crgteg, which is at least superficially a sea story,
conéfins Cooper's clearly eXpressed theories on God and
Government. The narrative relates the adventures of mark
Woolston, son of a Pennsylvania doctor, on a salt water reef
in the middle ofthe Pacific Ocean. After Mark, and his
friend Bob Bette, are cast up on the reef, they decide to
make a long range plan for survival, planting seeds from the
ship's stores, and subsisting on the ship's food. The ship
itself is landlocked inside a lagoon, and cannot be floated,
and the other members of the crew have deserted in a small
boat when the situation became critical earlier. Through
hard work and good fortune, Mark establishes contact with
the outside world, and founds a colony on the reef and_
adjacent islands that appear through volcanic eruption. The
colony commences a thriving whaling trade, and for the second
time Cooper relates the romance of whaling, the first time
having been Long Tom Coffin's venture in The Pttgt. Working _
the allegory for all its religious and political significance,
'Cooper introduced into the colony some members of the bar,
a cavilling editor, and sectarian clergyman, who, naturally,
according to Cooper's beliefs, would create dissention. Then
follows a tirade against majority rule, with a cry, related
to that of Calhoun, that the Constitution was intended to

protect minority rights; and a blast at nominating conventions

69

and caucuses, instituted under Jackson. Mark goes to
Philadelphia, and, on his return to the colony, the islands
have subsided into the sea.

That The Crater is a work of bitterness cannot be
denied for too many passages attest to the fact:

How this was to happen, the worthy doctor
certainly did not know. This was because he
lived in 1796, instead of 1847. Nowadays,
nothing is easier than to separate a man from
his wife, unless it be to obtain civic honors
for a murderer. 19

And yet, along with the bitterness, The Crater also shows
Cooper's belief in the religious and political progress of
humanity, incorporating a belief in American destiny.

Among the many things that have been revealed
to us, where so many are hid, we are toold that
our information is to increase, as we draw
nearer to the millennium, until "The whole
earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the
Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” We may be
far from the blessed day; probably are; but he
has lived in vain, who has dwelt his half
century in the midst of the civilization of
this our own age, and does not see around him
the thousand proofs of the tendency of things
to the fullfillment of the decrees, announced
to us ages ago by the pens of holy men. Rome,
Greece, Egypt, and all that we know of the'past,
which comes purely of man and his passionsl'
empires, dynasties, heresies, and novelties,
come and go like the changes of the seasons;
while the only thing that can be termed stable
is the slow but sure progress of prOphecy.

The agencies that have been employed to bring
about the great ends foretold so many centuries
since, are so very natural, that we often lose
sight of the mighty truth in its seeming sims
plicity. 20

Many of Cooper's pronouncements are contradictory in themselves,
and can only be interpreted when made to fit the general

20 Q Ibidq ’ p 0 143 0

70

pattern of his thought. Here he has stated that the "only
thing that can be termed stable is the slow but sure progress
of prOphecy", more or less ruling out the material. Yet the
prudence forpthis belief is that "he has lived in vain; who
has dwelt his half century in the midst of the civilization
of this our own age, and does not see around him the thousands
of proofs of the tendency of things to the fulfillment of
the decrees...." patent recOgnition of progress and destiny.
In 1848 COOper published Jack Ti r, a tale that had ap-
peared in Graham's Magazine in 1846 under the title of Islets
of the Cg; . The story involves the villainous Captain
Stephen Spike, owner of the brig Molly Swash, a smuggler of
gun powder to the Mexicans during the war. Harry Mulford, a
typical COOper salt water hero "standing over six feet in his
stockings"--this is standard--is Spike's first mate, but no
friend. Rose Budd, and her aunt, Mrs. Budd, agree to sail with
Spike, that rogue having approached each of the ladies
separately, convincing each that the other needs a sea voyage
for reasons of health. His purpose is that he wises to marry
Rose. A fair bit of humor creeps in the tale in the character
of Mrs. Budd who is confused by such nautical terms as ”land
fall", "shooting the sun",--this brings on a complete course
in the theory and practice of navigation-~"on soundings", and
others. She is patterned on Mrs. Malapr0p of The Riggls, as
Bob Acres of The Rivals showed in Alderman Van Berverpdt in
The Water Witch. Another similarity with the flitgh.is in the

71

character of Jack Tier, a weather beaten old salt who is the
ship's steward, taken aboard Just as the voyage begins. After
a series of chases by naval patrols, squabbles between Spike
and Mulford, who also wants to marry Rose, captures, escapes,
and recaptures, Spike is fatally wounded in a chase by a naval
patrol. In the hospital, where Spike is dying Jack Tier is
revealed to be a woman, in fact the deserted wife of Spike,
who has been trying to catch his ship these twenty years. This
device was also used in the Water Witch when Master Seadrift,
the Rover's aide, is found to be a woman, and the daughter of
Alderman Van Bererout at that. As for Tier, or Mrs. Spike,
she ends her days with Harry and Mrs. Mulford, nee hose Budd.
As has been explained in preceding chapters, Jack Tier is
distinguished by what it reveals of COOper's eXpansionist
thought. But it has also another peculiar fact-~some hideous
death scenes. For instance, in the final chase in the tale,
a cutter from a naval patrol is chasing Spike and the peOple
from the Swash, in a small boat. When the cutter gains,
Spike begins pushing peOple overboard to lighten his craft.
When it comes Mrs. Budd's turn, she Jumps overside, but grasps
the gunwale and the boatswain's hand. Spike orders her cut

loose.

The struggledid not last long. The boastwain
drew his knife across the wrists of the hand that
grasped his own, one shriek was heard, and the
boat plunged into the trough of the sea, leaving
the form of poor Mrs. Budd struggling with the
wave of its summit, and amid the foam of its
crest. This was the last that was ever seen of the
unfortunate relict. 21

21. Ibid., p. 445.

'78

Jack Tier is also marked for an inordinate number of deaths, but
COOper's device on killing off characters may have seemed to
him the most natural thing in the world, for in his own family
his five brothers had all died between 1815 and 1819.

V

The Sea Lions, last, most neglected of the sea stories,
and yet one of the most interesting, was published in 1849.
Standard criticism of The Beg Liong tosses it off with the
comment that it is Cooper's treatment of the doctrine of
Trinitarianism. This is true, but it is a rare occurrence to
discount a book for the reason that it deals with the philoSOphy
of Christianity.

The Sea Diggg is, ostensibly, the story of a sealing
voyage and a hunt for buried treasure, but, as is always stated,
and truthfully, large sections of it could be lifted for re-
printing in a missionary manual. Deacon Israel Pratt, richest
and closet man in Sag Harbor, is the instigator of the action.
As the tale opens the Deacon has got hold of Tom Daggett, a
dying old sailor, landed at the Harbor by a passing ship, who
claims to know the locations of a pirate treasure and uncharted
islands virtually carpeted with seals. All this Tom reveals,
but not the positions, contracting with the Deacon to lead
out an expedition on shares, if the Deacon will finance the
trip. But Tom dies, leaving the Deacon with a scent of great

wealth. That worthy, hOping to follow the scent to the source,

73

leafs through Tom's sea chest, and, finding the treasure and
seal islands positions recorded there in pencil, cOpies the
locations and erases the marks from the map. The deacon is
then ready to send out a ship, under the command of Roswell
Gardiner, to retrieve the gold and furs: A conflict similar
to that in Wing-and-Wing is introduced between Rgswell, a
deist, and the Deacon's niece, Mary, an orthodox Christian.
After Tom dies, a Captain Daggett, Tom's nephew from Martha's
Vineyard across the $3, shows up to claim Tom's body. The
Daggett's have heard of Tom's seal and gold islands, though
he has not been home in fifty years. On finding nothing
indicated on the dead man's charts, the Daggetts watch the
Deacon's preparations, and decide he has pilfered the informa-
tion. The Deacon buys a ship, and the Vineyard men follow
his lead; both craft are namengea Lion.

The ship's fall in at sea, Captain Daggett obviously
planning to follow Gardiner. Through shrewd maneuvering
Gardiner loses Daggett at Cape Horn, and pushes through the
ice fields to the south to find the fabulous seal islands.

The islands prove all Tom Daggett had said, and Gardiner's

men begin filling the ship with furs and oil. When the
operation is nearly completed, Daggett's ship turns up at

the island, and Gardiner and his men agree to help the Vineyani
men take on a cargo. However, some of the Vineyard men disobey

Gardiner's orders as to the method of catching seals, scaring

the herd and delaying operations. The delay is a threat

74

because an early winter will block the passages with ice,
trapping the sealers in the Antarctic. Eventually they are
trapped, the Vineyard Sea Lion being forced out of the water
onto the island by the pressure of the ice, and even crushed
by the weight of the ice; while the Sag Harbor Sea Lion is
embayed by the ice.

It now becomes necessary for the men to winter on the
island, but the problem of fuel is a serious one. It is
certain that the Vineyard Lion can never be repaired and
floated, yet Daggett is so greedy he will not let himself believe
the truth, nor let the Vineyard Lion be broken up for fuel.
The men separate into two groups, Gardiner's men living in a
shack on the beach, and Daggett's men on the Vineyard Lion,
to make sure the others do not pull a sneak attack to break
her up for kindling.

The story of the Antarctic winter is one of the most
interesting of COOper's tales, such as the system whereby the
men are "hardened” to the winter by learning to take cold
water baths each day, and to get along with as little fire as
possible. Finally, when the fuel runs out, Gardiner is forced
to begin dismantling the Sag Harbor Lion for fuel.

Through the whole winter, Gardiner, still a deist, disputes
on duestions of divinity with Stimson, a devout Christian and
able seaman. Finally, when one day Gardiner's men hear calls
for help and eventually reach the Vineyard Lion, they find

most of the peOple dead, and are in danger of freezing to

75

death themselves until Stimson is able to kindle a fire.
Only three of the Vineyard men remain alive.

In the spring, when the ice begins to Open, Daggett
dies of exposure suffered in the winter, the seals return to
the island, and the Sag Harbor men begin refitting their
craft from the timbers of the Vineyard Lion.

The scene shifts to Sag Harbor, where the Deacon is dying,
and, since Gardiner is more than a year over due, the money
conscious Deacon believes his investment is lost, and inci-
dentally that Gardiner and his men are dead. But Gardiner
sails into Sag Harbor, and the Deacon takes heart at the
thought of the seal profit and fabulous treasure in gold that
will now be his. In one of his better curtain scenes, CooPer
has Gardiner report to the Deacon, and hand over the treasure,
amounting only to some'gz,000, and the deacon eXpires with the
bag of money in his hands. After the Deacon is buried, the
relatives squabble over his money, but everything goes to Mary.
She and Gardiner, converted by his experience in the south,
marry, and settle down to a peaceful and comfortable life.

The Sea Lions has many features to redeem its sometimes
overemphasis on religious matters. For instance, Cooper is
almostAaccused of being humorless. Yet in his treatment of the
Deacon and the peOple at Sag Harbor, or even in the family
tiff over the Deacon's will, the most anti-Cooper man would
find laughable scenes. True, some of COOper's humor is sardonic,

but on the whole it is honest humor with a pleasant twist.

76

Quite naturally the work is interlarded with gems of
wisdom, in COOper's usual catechising fashion. At one point
Cooper interrupts the narrative to point out that his friend
Samuel F.B. Morse, is the true inventor of the telegraph,
there being some litigation on the point at the time. He
also registers a few slams at the Lhig party, but on the whole
is willing to content himself with the tale, penning such
descriptions as that of the Deacon who finds so painful the
idea of parting from his money that he will not hear a sugges-
tion that he make a will.

COOper had a serious purpose in writing The Se Lions,
as he stated in the preface to the first edition: "In this
book the design has been to portray man on a novel field of
action, and to exhibit his dependence on the hand that does
not suffer a sparrow to fall unheeded."za The novel field of
action was well chosen, and it seems certain that CoOper was
the first to use polar regions and polar exploration in fiction,
although such writers as Jack London were to capitalize on
it later. In the years preceding publication of The Sea
Laggg, public interest had been stirred by the polar expedi-
tions of Wilkes, Sabine, Ross, Franklin, and others, and in
1845 Wilkes had published the account of the four year navy
exploring expedition which incorporated a report on the Ant-
arctic. This is cited only to show that the charge of some

critics is manifestly absurd that COOper was in The Sea Lions

22. Ibid., 11.

77

merely reaching for the startling and bizarre as a background
for his tale.

Perhaps it is only a coincidence, but Mrs. Stowe's The
Minister's tooin , uses a device of The Sea Lions, in sending
the young hero to sea, the Bible of his mistress in hand,
and through shipwreck coming home a confirmed Christian.

This conversion is the crux of Cooper's problem in The Sea Lions.
Often had he wondered, while reading the

Bible Mary Pratt had put into his hand, at the

stubborn manner in which the chosen peOple of

God had returned to their "idols" and their

"groves", and their "high places"; but he was

now made to understand that others still erred

in the great particular, and that of all the

idols men worship, that of self was perhaps
the most objectionable. 23

This is a sample of Cooper's contribution to religious thought,
serious, but not original; much rises to a more fervent
plane, and in some parts Cooper wage a knowing finger at the
reader concerning the merits of the Episcopal Church.
Obviously, with greater artistry, The Séa Lions would have
been a greater book, but Herman Mcdville, a consummate
artist, could praise CoOper and The Sea Lions, when such an
occupation was not a pOpular one.

Upon the whole, we warmly recommend The

Sea Lions; and even those who more for fashion's

sake than anything else, have of late Joined in

decrying our national novelist, will in this

last work, perhaps, recOgnize one of his

happiest. 24

The number of Cooper's sea tales, thirteen, is alone

enough to suggest that they were pOpular in his day, and

25. Ibig., p. 421.‘
24. James Grossman, James F nimore Coo er, The American Men

of Letters Series, William Sloan Associates, New York,
1949, p. 235.

78

some contemporary critics were willing to suggest that his
true merit lay in that field.
We gladly turn to that class of his novels,

on which, we believe our author's reputation will

ultimately depend. He has Opened a new mine of

romance, by displaying the interest that attaches

to a sailor's life, and the fortunes of the sea;

and his success has been attested in the usual

way, by a crowd of imitators. 25
While this cpinion is disputable, Cooper was at least to
make merchandising history in the sea story, even with a
start-toward the pocket-book system.

We are pleased to learn that the publishers

have fixed the price of Wing-and-hing at half a

dollar, lower by fifty per cent at least than an

American novel has ever sold before. 26

Politically and socially COOper was not partial to the
Great Unwashed, but he was quite willing to hand out literary
castile for cleansing the populace, a tendency which em-
barrassed even the friendly magazines. Graham's Ma azine,
which carried COOper's name on the title page as a contributor
and at various times published his naval Lives and Jack Tier,
as well as a biography and picture of Cooper in August of
1844, in October of that year was forced to sound off in a
review of afloat and Ashore in a protest against "The guer-
illa war of sneers, sarcasms and innuendos, which the
author wages upon everything in American manners and customs
which he dislikes.”27

25. North American Review, January 1838, quoted in Marcel
Clavel,‘gp. cit., p. 197.

26. Book Review in Graham's Ma azine, December 1842, p. 342.
27. Ibid., 1844, p. 192.

79

In a preface dated January 1, l850, and written for a
late edition of The Red Rover, Cooper complained of American
history in a manner that has already been suggested in the
foregoing pages in the cpinion that the Naval History was
primarily a foreward looking work because the actual history
of the navy had little to compare with what COOper envisioned
for the navy and the country.

The history of this country has very

little to aid the writer of fiction, whether

the scene be laid on the land or on the

water. With the exception of the well-known,

though mea re incidents connected with the

career of Captain William) Kidd, indeed, it

would be very difficult to turn to a single

nautical occurrence on this part of the

continent in the hope of conferring on a

work of the imagination any portion of that

peculiar charm which is derived from facts

clouded a little by time. The annals of

America are surprisingly poor in such

events; a circumstance that is doubtless

owing to the staid character of the peOple,

and especially to that portion of them
which is most addicted to navigation.28

Seven years earlier, in fied Myers, CoOper had been at the
other pole, theorizing that "the life of any man, could the
incidents be faithfully told, would possess interest and
instruction for the reader."

Probably some of the bitterness of the 5312; preface was
induced by the fact that at the time several reform groups
were levelling barbs at methods of naval discipline, attacks

which COOper was likely to consider a personal affront. Still

28. Ibid., 1.

80

more likely, he had been disappointed politically, a fact
which would color his writing from preface to epilogue.
When all the chaff of criticism is sifted, at least
one grain of undisputed nature is found patent to all:
Cooper originated the pattern of the American sea story,
excelled in his own day, and used it to express his ideas

on matters religious, social, and particularly political.

81

CHAPTER IV
The History and the Lives

It was plainly to be seen, as Cooper pointed out, that
a large navy was actually indispensable to the nation which
would be truly economical. This large navy would need a
corps of efficient officers and men; but Cooper worked on
the theory that efficient officers would see that their men
were both obedient and efficient, and centered his arguments
on personnel on the need for a rigid system of rank and pro-
motion. The United States Navy had never had an admiral,
and Cooper wanted that rank created for his countrymen,
especially since Englishmen had had admirals as early as
1650, maneuvering one hundred ship fleets.

The policy of the navy has been characterised

by acts of...vascillating and short-sighted nature;

and thus...veterans have lingered in the stations

they have held for quite forty years, through the

neglect of the prOper authorities to create a new

and superior rank.... ...the corps...ia entitled

at all times, to have its interests protected by

a uniform, consistent, rigidly Just, and high-

toned code of civil regulations. 1

The question of rank, too, was to pervade the later sea
tales. In The Two Admirals, COOper wrote:

In the course of a checkered life...we have been

thrown into contact with no less than eitht

English admirals of American birth; while it has

never yet been our good fortune to meet with

a countryman who has had this rank bestowed on
him by his own government. ...(Any one of these

1. Histor , II, 60.

82

commanders) might have toiled for half a

century in the service of his native country

and been rewarded with a rank that would

merely put him on a level with a colonel in

the army: 2

Naturally the rank question would be reflected in the
Igggg, and COOper touched off half a dozen broadsides to
the effect that "The service requires an entirely new arrange-
ment of its grades, as well as the establishment of some
that are new, in order to impart to it fresh life and hope." 3

Cooper charged that the congress had "neglected" the
navy, and asserted that it had been "a leading defect of the
civil administration of the military affairs of the American
government, that too little of professional feeling has
presided in its councils...." 4

In the Li§g_of Preble, COOper issued another of several
blasts at the naval administration of the country, finding
that "as a directing Spirit capable of wielding the force
committed to its care with activity and intelligence, it
did not then, nor has it since existed in any emergency. In
an intellectual, professional sense, the navy has scarcely
had a head, nor is it likely to possess one while the
selections of its chiefs are made from among state-court
lawyers, ex—masters of merchant vessels, and politicians by
trade."5'The phrase "existed in any emergency" must be taken

a. The Two Admirals, pp. 2-5.
3. Lives, I, 1540

4. Histor I 215-216.
5. IIve's,'J:'i, 246-247.

83

to mean that "activity and intelligence" had not existed.
The tone of COOper's meaning is always clear, although his
word choice often occasions wonder.

Indeed, so vigorous and repeated were Cooper's accusa-
tions and suggestions regarding administration of the navy
that the Whig newspapers of the day stated editorially that
Cooper was seeking the position of secretary of the navy. 6

The training of naval officers also came under fire.
Cooper deplored the fact that many officers had been recruited
from what he termed the "rude and imperfect school of the
merchant service." He agreed that the merchant service did
not lack for "competent navigators or brave seamen," but
thought that this service did not promote the "high moral
qualities which are indispensible to the accomplished
officer...."7 Although proud of the early record of the
navy, Cooper admitted that some of the officers were not
up to standard, and excused their conduct because of lack of
training.

The habits of subordination; the high

feelings of personal pride and self respedt

that create an esprit de corps, and the moral

courage and lofty sentiments that come in time,

to teach the trained officer to believe any

misfortune preferable to professional dis-

grace, were not always to be expected under

such circumstances. 8
In sum, it is "as much a regular qualification in the accome
plished naval captain, to be able to make distinctions that

6. T.R. Lounsbury, James Fenimore Coo er, Houghton, Mifflin
' and Company, Cambridge, 1884, p. 175.

7. History I 48.
8. hide, i, 18‘490

84

shall render him superior to sophism..., as to work his

Ship ."9

COOper felt the highest regard for the marine corps,
which has always been administered as a department of the
navy, and dedicated the History to the navy in general and
the marines in particular. Still, he was indifferent, not
to say contemptuous of common seamen, and on one occasion
wrote that a fact had been ascertained "by means of an
intelligent seamen on board the Scourge."10 The man was,
not named, and the word "intelligent" seems unnecessary.

Although a romantic by trade, COOper was a realist if
not a classicist in temperament. In commenting on the

treatment of sailors, he wrote in the preface to the 1849

edition of The P110 :

It is not easy to make the public com-
prehend all the necessities of a service
atloat. With several hundred rude beings
confined within the narrow limits of a
vessel, men of all nations and of the lowest
habits, it would be to the last degree indis-
creet to commence their reformation by re-
laxing the bonds of discipline, under the
mistaken impulses of a false philanthropy.

It has a lofty sound, to be sure, to talk
about American citizens being too good to

be brought under the lash, upon the high seas;
but he must have a very mistaken notion who
does not see that tens of thousands of these
pretending peOple on shore, even, would be
greatly benefitted by a little Judicious
flogging. It is the judgement in administra-
tion, and not the mode of punishment, that
requires looking into.... 11

9. Ibid., I, 161.
10. THE” II, 272.

11. Ibid,, iv.

85

II

Cooper had insight into the history of the English
navy and its relation to English commerce. Further, he
perceived that if a navy is the "first line of defense"
it is also the first line of offense. But before proceeding
with COOper's theories of naval policy and foreign policy
it will be well to list several more or less widely accepted
definitions and naval maxims.

Naval policy refers, in a general sense, to the size
and disposition of fleets, and the functions of the fleets
in the areas to which they are asigned. This name is changed
to strategy in wartime, the term tactics being reserved to
actions in which a fleet engages the enemy. The function of
a navy is generally reGOgnized to be that of keeping cpen
the lines of communications, or, more explicitly, lines of
transportation.

A fleet is said to have command of the sea when that
fleet can enable its own marine to carry on commerce in a
sea while denying those waters to enemy shipping. The terms
"carry on" and "deny" are not, of course, meant in a abso-
lute sense. A belligerent holding command may suffer losses
from raiders, and enemy vessels may escape patrols. It is
also possible that Opposing powers may maintain communications
in the same waters with neither side holding command, as in

the Mediterranean Sea in the late war when the communications

86

lines of the belligerents bisected each other.

The purpose of naval Operations may be said to be to
aid and sustain armies which achieve the final decision. A
distinction between foreign plicy and naval policy may be
seen in the sometime Open Door policy in China. Foreign
Policy dictated the Open Door. Naval Policy dictated a
small fleet and ill prepared bases. A combined policy would
have made a door stop of the navy. This combination has
long been a guiding principle in the history of sea power-~-
"a national policy of commercial expansion sturdily backed
by foreign policy and wherever necessary by naval force." 12

It should be evident that a nation pursuing such a
policy will prefer war to a restriction of its commercial
interests. Without entering into a controversy as to the
cause of war, the tone of these definitions will makeit
clear that a navy serves two main purposes: to transport
armies, whatever may be the ultimate goal of those bodies;
and to protect and control maritime trading areas.

Now COOper arrived early at the conception of the com-
bination of a world wide commerce and a large navy. He also
voiced a cry of what might be termed American "Manifest
destiny" with sea legs. Further, he was honest enough to
reckon with the possibility of war, and he knew that the
United States was already being recognized as a commercial

rival of Great Britain, although he would put the rivalry

12. W.O. Stevens and A.Westcott, o . cit., p. 101.

87

the other way around. In 1807 the English war ship LeOpard
had fired on and subdued the American frigate Chesapeake
after the Chesapeake's commander had refused an English
order to heave to that a press gang might come aboard the
Chesapeake to search for English deserters. In writing of
this encounter CoOper voiced his cpinion of American policy.

The assault of the LeOpard on the Chesa-
peaks, was replete with political lessons
for the peeple of the United States. It
showed the insults and outrages to which
nations render themselves liable, when they
neglect the means of defence; it demonstrated
how boldly their great commercial rivals
calculated on the influence of that spirit
of gain which was thought to predominate in
the councils of the republic.... But...the
policy pursued by the American government,
as a means of punishing the aggressors, and
of vindicating the rights of the country,
was quite out of the channel of correct
reasoning. With a foreign trade that
employed 700,000 tons of American shipping
alone, Congress passed a law...declaring an
unlimited embargo, for all the purposes of
foreign commerce, on every port in the
union; anticipating a large portion of the
injuries that might be expected from an open
enemy, by inflicting them itself! 13

Although the situation was not quite as simple as Cooper
presented it, the statement serves to indicate his awareness
of the commercial function of a navy.

As to the circumstances of the embargo of 180?, Cooper
was either ignorant of foreign develOpments, or deliberately
misrepresented the facts. There can be little doubt that

American policy was influenced by English and French moves.

15. History, II, 22-23.

88

In the Berlin Decree of November, 1806, Napoleon had
invoked his Continental system, a "paper blockade" of
England, which put under ban all EurOpean trade with England.
Under this system goods of British origin, regardless of
subsequent ownership, were confiscated or destroyed wherever
French agents could lay hands on them. Neutral vessels
were seized for entering British ports, or even submitting
to British search. England had retaliated with the
Orders in Council of November, 1807. The Orders had as a
motive to compel the aid of neutrals by exclusing neutral
ships from the continent unless they should first enter
British ports, pay British dues, and thus assist in carry-
ing on British trade. Napoleon had lined up all of EurOpe
in his scheme to cut off the markets of English trade, but
the scheme cracked when the Czar Opened his ports in 1810-
1811, and the Orders in Council were revoked on June 23, 1812,
five days after the United btates had declared war on England.

But this over-simplification, to adapt the lenient view,
is typical of much of the History. COOper apparently
possessed more enthusiasm than historical parapective.

For instance, he does not mention the one naval action
that is regarded by later historians as having an important
bearing on the Revolutionary War, the Battle of the Virginia
Capes which resulted in the French Fleet sealing off Chesa-
peake Bay, the avenue by which Cornwallis had heped to effect

an evacuation. True, this action did not involve the

89

American navy, but it would have made a prime local example
of the value of a navy, examples in which the American Navy
was sadly lacking at the time of COOper's writing.

Indeed, it was this lack of examples of American naval
prowess which forced COOper to the position of what the navy
should be in America, and what it ygpgg;be with a "very
moderate application of that dormant power, which, when
prOperly applied, can at any time give the republic a com-
manding influence in the general concerns of the world." 14
It should be remembered that when the History appeared no
American fleet had ever engaged an enemy on the sea, although
Preble had commanded a small squadron engaged in shore bom-
bardment against the Barbary pirates, and Perry and Mc
Donough had won squadron victories over the British in
actions on Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain in the War of 1812.
Add to this the fact that there was, at least according to
CoOper, a widespread belief as to the excellence of the .
English and the invincibility of British ships and sailors,
and here was another theme that cried out for comment.

In Afloat and Ashore he wrote:

The miserable moral dependence of this

country on Great Britain, forty years since,

cannot well be brought home to the present

generation. It is still too great, but has

not a tithe of its former force. 15
It is not too much to say that CoOper could speak from ex-
perience here, for his first novel, Precaution, was an

14. Histor , II, 8.
15. Ibid., p. 470.

90

English manners novel, and purported to have been written
by an Englishman, although it is clear he was early weaned
from his inepirational mother.

But in the History he could at least cite minor
examples to bolster his beliefs:

As this was the first combat of the

war (1812 between the beep, American, and

Frolic, British) between vessels of a

force so nearly equal as to render cavilling

difficult, the result occasioned much

exultation in America, and greatly increased

the confidence of the public, in supposing an

American ship had quite as many claims to

conduct, courage, and skill, as her enemies.

Persons of reflection attached but little

importance, it is true, to the mere fact

that a few cruisers had been taken in single

combat, but the idea of British invincibility

was destroyed, and the vast moral results

were distinctly foreseen. 16

Obviously Cooper considered himself one of the "persons
of reflection" and in consequence a fit commentator on
naval theory as well as naval policy. Remarking on new
weapons, CQOper observed that in 1777 Dave Bushnel "made
several unsuccessful attempts to blow up the ships of the
enemy by means of torpedoes, a species of warfare that it
can hardly be regretted has so uniformly failed, since its
tendency is to aggravate the evils of hostilities, without
essentially conducing to bring them to termination." 17

But torpedoes had not uniformly failed. Robert
Fulton had developed submarines and marine mines to a

16. Ibid., II, 65-66.
17. Ibid., I, as.

91

fairly high degree, and about 1802 interested Napoleon in
the project. The scheme was vetoed by the French admiralty
as "immoral" and contrary to the laws of war, approximately
COOper's attitude. Later England negotiated with Fulton,
but when the French fleet was, for all practical purposes,
annihilated at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805, there was
no further need for Fulton's weapon. "As the old Admiral
Ear St. Vincent remarked, 'Pitt (prime minister) would be
the greatest fool that ever existed to encourage a mode of
war which they who command the sea do not want and which

if successful would deprive them of it.’ So Fulton took
15,000 pounds and dropped his schemes." 18 The digression
is worthy only in that it takes the edge off COOper's ora-
cular pronouncements.

Although the History is filled with statements as to
the grand destiny of America and her navy, it is strongly
lacking in any mention of developments of the period during
which the work was being written, developments which forced
changes in modes of naval warfare which had existed for
500 years. For instance, the introduction of steam vessels
made ships independent of wind, enabling them to reach any
desired point at a predetermined time. Robert Fulton,
launched the first steam man-of-war, the U.S.S. Fulton, in

1815. Ericsson's successful application in 1857 of the screw

18. W.O. Stevens and A. Westcott, 9p. cit., p. 253.

92

prOpeller rendered obsolete the side paddle wheel and
made steam feasible for warships. Here was meat for pro-
pagandizing, but COOper declined to feast on it.

In Afloat and Ashore he did condescend to mention
steamer and Erriccson's screw, and give it out that in his
cpinion such craft were "the safest in the world."19

This does not mean that Cooper was unaware of naval
theory. He cited examples "to prove the important military
position, that ships cannot withstand forts when the latter

”20 The

are properly constructed, armed, and garrisoned.
longevity of this belief is evidenced in the British base

at Singapore prior to the late war, a base no fleet in the
world would have dared approach, although the fort fell
quickly from.the land side. But, like naval officers whom
COOper would endow with most of the characteristics of the
heroes of his momances, he conceived of war as something of

a gentleman's affair. As regards privateers, private vessels
commissioned by a government to raid enemy shipping, Cooper
called it a "profession of which reason and good morals can
scarcely approve; for whatever may be its legality, its

aim is to turn the waste and destruction of war, to the

benefit of private avarice."21

The §_i_m_ of privatering was
to effect a policy of attrition on enemy shipping similar
to the aim of submarine warfare, the motive of private per-

sons being financial.

190 Ibigc, p0 4330
20. Histo I 70.
21. mean" i, 130.

93

Cooper took a slightly different view of commerce
raiding by naval vessels, but only slightly different.
Writing on an American attack on a British convoy, COOper
suggested:

In this affair, Captain Thompson

discovered a prOper spirit, for he might

easily have cut out of the fleet half

a dozen merchantman, but he appears to

have acted on the principle that vessels

of war should first seek vessels of war. 22

COOper diSplayed a knowledge of tactical theory, es-
pecially as regards the speed of vessels. An example of
later speed theory may help in emphasizing Cooper's stand
on the problem. In the late war many naval men came to
look on the Pearl Harbor fiasco as a boon to naval tactics.
The theory here was that the sinking of old, and necessarily
slow, vessels, necessitated the building of new high-speed
capital ships, battleships capable of swift movement in a
naval war which revolved greatly around air strikes
launched from aircraft carriers. Obviously, if the older
battleships had not been sunk, they would have been em-
ployed in these carrier strikes, reducing the speed of the
Operations to the speed of the slow moving battle ships.

In the days when vessels depended on wind, the princi-
ples of construction that related to the working of war

craft were of Special importance, and COOper continually

pounded away at the need for uniform qualities of performance.

22. Histor , I, 83.

94

The vice-admiral was familiar with
that all-important fact--one that members
equally of Congress and of Parliament are
so apt to forget or rather not to know at
a11--that the efficiency of a whole fleet,
as a fleet, is necessarily brought down to
the level of its worst ships. Of little
avail is it, that four or five vessels of
a squadron sail fast, and work well, if the
eight or 10 that remain behave badly, and
are dull. A separation of the vessels is
the inevitable consequence, when the pro-
perties of all are thoroughly tried; and
the division of a force is the first step
towards its defeat; as its prOper concen-
tration is a leading condition of the
victory. As the poorer vessels cannot
imitate the better, the good are compelled
to regulate their movements by the bad;
which is at once essentially bringing down
the best ships of a fleet to the level of
the worst; the prOposition with which we
commenced. 23

But this was not a new theory; it was only one that needed
to be widely disseminated. And this must be considered as
one of COOper's major contributions to the writing of

American naval history, the broadcasting of American naval
requisites to the American public, both in the History and

the Lives.
III

COOper was fond of repeating both outrightly and in a
backhand manner that the navy was too small. Sometimes the
phraseology Would even be the same. In Miles Wallingford
he wrote:

Then an American shipmaster is usually
superior to those of other countries. This

23. The Two Admirals, p. 153.

95

arises from some of the peculiarities
of our institutions, as well as from
the circumstance that the navy is so
small. 24

In the Life of Bainbridge the tune had nearly the same notes.

The merchant service of America has
ever been relatively much superior to
that of most other countries. This has
been owing, in part, to the greater dif-
fusion of education; in part to the
character of the institutions, which throws
no discredit around any reputable pursuit;
and in part to the circumstance that the
military marine has not been large enough
to give employment to all of the maritime
enterprise and Spirit of the nation. 25

Not only did COOper broadcast suggestions for major
changes in national and naval policy, but often drOpped the
tone of his study to incidents, making, for instance, the
nation's first plea for the return of war dead. In the
Tripolitan War Lt. Richard Somers and a crew of volunteers
had attempted to sail a ship loaded full of explosives into
the enemy harbor, with the intention of firing the ship,
escaping by boat, and blowing up the enemy fleet and town.
Unfortunately the ship blew up on the inward voyage, with-
out damaging the enemy. The bodies of Somers and two others
were recovered by the enemy and buried in a common grave.

Here, then, lie the remains of Somers,

and his two gallant friends; and it might

be well to instruct the commander of some

national cruiser to search for their bones,

that they may be finally incorporated with

the dust of their native land. Their iden-

tity would at once be established by the

number of the skeletons, and the friends of

the deceased might experience a melancholy
consolation in being permitted to drOp a

24. Miles Wallin ford,p. 82.
25c Lives, I, 140

96

tear over the Spot in which they would
be finally entombed. 26

But on the whole Cooper confined himself to larger
issues. The question of a series of grades for officers
makes a prime example. As has already been stated, Cooper
had a good deal to say about rank. The general cpinion
among legislators seemed to be "What difference does it make,
as long as we have captains for ships?" Cooper, then, con-
sidered it necessary to make a crusade showing the reason
for an increased rank. In the"Life Of Bainbridge"he wrote:

To this vessel Bainbridge was appoint-
ed, with the commission of lieutenant-com-
mandant; a rank that was subsequently
and wisely drOpped; for the greater the num-
ber of gradations in a military service,
while they are kept within the limits of
practical necessity, the greater is the
incentive for exertion, the more frequent
the promotions, and the higher the discipline.
First lieutenants and lieutenant-commandants
exist, and must exist in fact, in every
marine; and it is throwing away the honoura-
ble inducement of promotion, as well as
some of the influence of a commission,
not to have the rank while we have the
duties. It would be better for the navy
did the station of first lieutenant, or
lieutenant-commandant, now exist, those
who hold the commissions furnishing officers
to command the smallest class of vessels,
and the executive officers of ships of
the line and frigates. 27

There was also the recurring theme that the armyhas rank,
why not the navy?

A captain in command of a squadron,
now, ranks temporarily with a brigadier—
general. The youngest captain on the list
may hold this trust, yet, when he lowers
his pennant, or even when he meets his senior

26. Lives, I, 111-112.
27. ifbid., I, 15.

97

in service, though in command Of a
single ship, the date or number Of the
commission determines the relative
rank Of the parties. 28

And a similar theme might be expected to appear in the

fiction:

The two captains and Wycherly fol-
lowed the vice-admiral into the after-
cabin, where the latter seated himself on
a small sofa, while the others took chairs,
in reSpectful attitudes near him, no fam-
iliarity or jocularity on a part Of a
naval superior ever lessening the distance
between him and those who hold subordinate
commissions-~a fact that legislators would
do well to remember, when graduating rank
in a service. 29

As has been pointed out, Cooper thought Commodore Ad-
ward Preble, the Tripolitan commander, the most brilliant
man in the history of the navy, and Preble could be cited
as an example in the high rank argument:

Every man in his (Preble's) squadron
knew and felt that he was governed; though
it is not improbable that Preble was, in
a degree, aided in the exercise of his
authority, by the fact that an entire grade
existed between his own rank and that of
all his commanders. A stronger practical
argument in favor of the creation Of
admirals cannot be cited, than the manner
in which Preble held all his vessels in
hand, during his Operations against Tripoli. 30

Undoubtedly one reason for COOper's partiality to Preble
was that Preble was the first American naval Officer to
command a squadron or fleet in action against an enemy.
Fleets actions in the War of 1812 took place on fresh water

lakes. The greatest competitor for Preble's crown of glory

280 Lives, II, 97-98.

29. The Two Admirgls, pp. 408-409.
30. Lives, I, 250

was Paul Jones, hero of ship duels with the English. The
psychology involved in lauding either of the two men
considering COOper's theories and hopes, necessarily in-
volves the question of fleet Operation as compared with
single combat, and in this aSpect Cooper tended to favor
Preble, while denying nothing to Jones on the question of
personal courage. even in The Pilot, in which Jones is
not named, but still recognized as Jones, Cooper played
down Jones' glory.

His devotion to American proceeded

- from desire of distinction, his ruling
passion, and perhaps a little also from
resentment at some injustice which he
claimed to have suffered from his own
countrymen. He was a man, and therefore
not without foibles--among which may have
beenreckoned the estimation of his own
acts; but they were most dearing, and
deserving of praise! Neither did he at
all deserve the Obloquy he received from
his enemies. His love Of libery may be
more questionable; for if he commenced
his deeds in the cause Of these free states,
they terminated in the service of a
despottl (Catherine of Russia) He is now
dead-~but had he lived in times and under
circumstances when his consummate know-
ledge Of his profession, his cool, deli-
berate, and even desperate courage, could
have been exercised in a regular and well-
supported navy, and had the habits of his
youth better qualified him to have borne,
meedly, the honors he acquired in his age,
he would have left behind him no name in
its lists that would have descended to the
latest posterity Of his adOpted country
with greater renown. 31

The "Life of Jones" was written from the same slant--
Jones was tough and able, but what a pity he was not a

greater man; i£_he had lived later, he would have won re-

31. Ibid., pp. 442-443.

98

99

nown as the t0p of the list of naval officers. The History
has a similar expression. "Had circumstances put him in a
situation of high command, there is little doubt that he

would have left a name unsurpassed by that of any naval
captain, or have perished in endeavoring to obtain it." 52

The significance of this treatment of Jones is to show the .
consistency and extent of COOper's big-fleet, high-rank though,
at least from the publication of The Pilot in 1825, through
the Lives in 1844 until his death in 1851.

In the "Life of Preble" COOper ticked off the whole list
of naval heros, comparing each with fleet commander Preble,
and finding each to be a lesser man:

...it may be questioned if any other

name in American naval annals has as high

a place in the estimation of the better

class of judges, as that of Treble.

...yet no man competent to judge of

merit of this nature would think of compar-

ing Hull to Preble.... The names of

neither Lawrence, Bainbridge, nor Perry, will

ever be placed by the discriminating at

the side of that of Preble....

Paul Jones along can claim to be

placed on the same elevation as to re-

sources and combinations, but few who are

familiar with the details of the events

concerned with both, would think of placing

even Jones fairly at rreble's side. 33
By playing down Jones' role, in good faith, of course, COOper
could show the public mind that single combat as regards naval
action has no value to the war fleet. The war fleet is a de-
fensive-offensive unit, while single combat serves only propa-
ganda or commercial purposes.

52. Ibid., I, 118.
33. Lives, I, 244-245.

100

One of the reasons COOper voted against Jones was that
Jones had no naval training, as even COOper's contemporaries
had little enough. Officer training, than, was a problem that
should be presented to the public, but strangely enough COOper
had few suggestions to offer beyond the general shout of the
need for "possessing a corps of trained and instructed officers
to command vessels of war...." 34

It may be that COOper was Opposed to the establishment
of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, although such Opposition
would seem to be in violation of his own principles. Navy
Secretary George Bancroft established the Academy in 1845,
following a lead voiced as early as 1830, and clearly enun-
ciated in the annual report of Navy Secretary J.K. Paulding,
November 30, 1838,55 Still, in the "Life of Berry", published
in ngham's Magazine in 1845, COOper took a slam at shore
training.

This was a fair rate Of preferment, and

one that would be observed even at the present

time, with a prOper division of the grades, and

a Judicious restriction on the appointment of

midshipman, a class of officers that ought

never to be so numerous as to allow Of idle-

ness on shore, and which, in time of peace,

should be so limited as to give them full

employment when at sea. 36
If this brief bit was directed against the establishment of

Annapolis, it was certainly not an example of militant Oppo-

sition, for it was not followed up in any of the later publications.

34. Historfi, I, 161.
35. Niles ationa; hggistaz, January 5, 1839, p. 248.
36. Lives, II, 160.

101

One shaft of COOper's criticism was levelled at the
nation's legislators who were, for the most part, devoid of
military theory and practice and who often "betrayed that
ignorance of the details of the service (navy), which has
been so common in the legislature of the country, omitting

many directions that were indispensible in practice, and

laying stress on others that were of little or no moment."57

A good Democrat, although certainly not party line,
COOper often sent out of his way to vindicate Jefferson from
the charge of hostility to the navy:

‘While Jefferson affected, and probably
felt, a profound reapect for legality, he is
known to have used the power he wielded with
great political fearlessness.

They prove even more in favor of the
statesman, as they show that he did not deserve
all the accusations of hostility to this branch
Of the national defenses that were heaped upon
him; but rather that he was diaposed to stretch
his authority to foster and advance it. The
introduction Of a new class of vessels, too,
required the revival of a class of Officers
of a rank proper to command them; and, though
we wish never to see illegality countenanced
in the management of interests as delicate
as those of a marine, it is desirable to see
the prOper authorities of the country imitate
this feature of the case, now that the re-
public has fleets which flag officers (admirals)
along can ever lead with a prOper degree of
dignity and authority. 38

But while Jefferson might receive an occasional pat on the back,
the legislature, including any and all legislatures, was a

universal culprit, guilty of the most dastardly neglect.

37. Histor ,‘I, 192.
38. Liyes, I, 98.

102

...it may well be questioned if any
impartial person (probably COOper), who
cooly examines the whole subject, will not
arrive at the conclusion, that the real delin-
quents (Congress) were never put on trial.
It must be remembered that in the year 1807,
America possessed the eXperience of three
naval wars; that by the force Of things, she
had created a corps of Officers...which had
no superior...; that her artisans put on the
ocean as fine vessels of their classes as
floated, and that the confiction of the neces-
sity Of an efficient marine was deep and
general. In the face of all these striking
facts, it is seen that four months were '
required to fit a single frigate for sea,
at a yard immediately under the eyes of
Congress.... '

It is an aciom, as true as it is
venerable, that a "divided power becomes an
irreSponsible". Such, in fact, is the
nature of the authority wielded by the
national legislature, the neglect Of which,
in the way of military preparations, would
long since have ruined most of the statesman
of the country, had they been guilty of the
same ommssions, as individuals, that they
had sanctioned as bodies of men. We may la-
ment the infatuation, condemn the selfishness,
and denounce the abandonment of duty, which
impel ambitious politicians to convert the
legisative halls into arenas for political
controversies that ought never to degrade
their deliberations, or impair the sanctity
of their oaths; but when we find the conse-
quences of such unconstitutional innovations
putting in jeOpardy the lives and honours
of those who are subject to martial law, a
solemn and reproving sentiment must mingle
with the views of every honest citizen, as
he maturely considers the hardships of the
case. 39 .

Legislators, then, had failed the navy, and while this was
easily demonstrated, it was equally easy to show that navy
men were superior diplomats. Writing of the negotiations of

negotiations with the Bay Of Tunis in 1805 after the signing

39. Histor , II, 21-22.

103

of a treaty with Tripoli, COOper suggested:

But times had changed. The temporary
control Of events had been taken out of the
hands of timid politicians at a distance,
and had passed into those of men on the
spot, who desired nothing better than to
teach the barbarians justice. 40

Quite naturally the way to "teach the barbarians justice"

was by vigorous prosecution of war, but then "the infatuated

notion that were are over is a chimera of speculative mora-

lists"--the key stone Of all Cooper's naval thoué? and theory.
War was always implicit in Cooper's writings, and he

repeatedly accused American newspapers of having thrown sand

in the eyes of the citizenry regarding the power and efficiency

of the English navy.

But Preble had served in the Revolution,
and, while he knew that an English ship was
usually to be reSpected, he also knew that
she was far from being invincible. It is
a proof of the influence of the current
literature and newSpaper Opinions of the
day, that all the old Officers Of the “evolu-
tion had a far less exalted idea of English
porwess, at the commencement of the war of
1812, than the bulk of the pOpulation. 41

With a strong anti-British feeling running at the time
of publication of the Histor , COOper did not fail to take his
licks at England.

It is a matter of notoriety that the
legal authorities of that country (England)
export families of paupers to this hemis-
phere, in order to be relieved from them. 42

It ought to be mentioned too, that a
base and selfish policy prevailed, in that
day, on the subject of the Barbary Powers,
among the principal maritime states

40. Histor , II, p.
41. Lives, I, 196.
42. HistOr , II, 55.

104

of EurOpe. nngland, in particular, was

supposed to wink at their irregularities, in

the hOpe that it might have a tendency to

throw a monOpOly of the foreign navigation Of

the Mediterranean into the hands of these

countries which, by means of their great

navies, and the proximity to the African

coast, were always ready to correct any

serious evil that might affect themselves.

English policy had been detected in the

hostilities of the Day (of Algiers), a few

years earlier.... 43

The primary significance of the Histor , and the Lives,
must be recognized as an expression, a nationalistic eXpres-
sion, of COOper's demand for a big navy to backiof a destined
expansion. A typical statement of this view is that the
United States is "a Republic that has already taken its
place among the great powers of Christendom, and which has
only to be true to itself...to stand foremost in the rank
of nations."44 In fact Cooper certainly bears a relation to
the war birds and expansionists satirized by Melville in the
speech of Alano in Mardi: "Awake: 0h Vivenza. The signs of
the times are portentious."45 The first line of the preface
to the 1846 edition for the History might almost serve for
the model for Melville's satire: "The country appears to be
touching on great events."46 In any case, Cooper's stand is
clear on the subject of destiny and expansion.

COOper's best qualities as a naval historian lay in his

enthusiasm and his access to sources. Apparently the History

43. Lives, I, 240

44. 11181301. , I, 14.
45. Herman Melville, Mardi, sveryman's Library, p. 315.
46. Ibid., 1.

105

was born from long effort, for he announced before leaving
for Europe in 1826 that he planned such a work. In a letter
to Cooper, dated September, 1831, his friend William Dunlap,
the painter, asked, "...when is J.F.C.'s History of the Navy
of his country to appear?"47 But the major work of writing
and gathering material did not go on until later. As late
as November 15, 1838, he was still combing his sources, for
that day he wrote his wife from Washington: "I am gleaning
away; with great success, and have the promise of much more.
Barron, Porter, and Chauncey, (three tOp men in the department)
are all here, and tomorrow I shall get to work in earnest".48
Cooper went straight to the source for most Of his material.
For data on Paul Jones and the battle between the Bon Homme
Richard and the Serapis, COOper interviewed Captain Richard
Dale, Jones' first lieutenant.

As for technical knowlege, COOper was familiar with
naval architecture as well as ship handling. Much Of the lan-
guage in the History is better adapted to sailors than divilians:

In jibing, the schooner carried away‘

her main boom, but continuing to stand on,

she ran into Holmes' Bay, and took a Spar out

Of a vessel that was lying there. While

these repairs were making the leOp hove in

sight again, and the Margaretta stood out

to sea. 49
Any_landsman, while he could not explain all described here,
could grasp the general meaning of the paragraph, but in other
places he might have trouble.

47. Correspondence, 1, 245.
48. Ibid., I, 385.

49. Ibid., 1, 41.

106

Instead of the ends of the planks having

been let into a rabbitting groved in the stem

itself, they had been fastened into one made

by the Junction of the apron-piece and the

stem, so that when the piece was wrenched off,

the seams of the woodends remained tight.50
Yet the Histgry was aimed at the general reader, and only
on occasions, such as that cited, when technical eXplanation
would benefit a naval student and yet not deter the landsman,

oid COOper leave the general reader dangling.
IV

Later historians, on the whole, have voted against
Cooper's historical Judgement, notably in considering the
battle tactics at Lake Erie in the war of 1812. Commodore
Perry, long after the engagement charged that Jesse Elliot,
second in command had not properly supported him. The die-
pute caused much bitterness in the department, and in the
History COOper found Elliot innocent of any charge of
failure. Present day Judgement is somewhere in between.

This splendid tradition (Perry at Lake

Erie had 'Don't fiive Up the Ship on flags)

has fortunately outlived the forgotten

controversy over Elliot's failure to support

Perry prOperly during the battle which seems

to have been mainly due to the backward state

of tactical training and indoctrination at

that time. 51

Like all good sailors, Cooper believed in sea serpents.
In the "Life of Preble" he relates an instance of Preble chasing

a monster in a boat, a monster whose head was ten feet out of

the water, who was 100 to 150 feet long, and larger around than

50. History I 203.
51. dley a. know, 2p. cit., p. 119.

107

a barrel.52

Another officer told COOper of seeing a similar
creature twenty years after Preble's experience; CoOper

believed him an ridiculed those who doubted the existence

of serpents. And this is but one of the man's peculiar

facets, that he should, as a rule, be such_a stickler for
evidence, yet, on the flimSiest of hearsay, chronicle the doings
of sea serpents.

Critical literary cpinion of the History has remained
static since the day of publication; professional, or naval
opinion has either rejected or failed to discover COOper.
But scholars these past one hundred years have approved with
one voice.

, The best contemporary historian, George

Bancroft, who was an admirer of COOper's

'genius, manly character and great career' said

before the New York Historical Society that

the History of the Navy was the 'MOst

admirable composition of which any nation

could boast on a similar subject.‘ 53

Professor Lounsbury was more guarded, but equally laudatory:

Of the original work, it is safe to say,

that for the period it covers it is little

likely to be superseded as the standard

history of the American navy. 54
The COOper scholar Robert Spiller approximates Lounsbury's
Opinion:

Even the first edition made a bid to
become the standard treatment of the subject,

and, in many respects, it still retains this
position. 55

52. Lives, 1, 181.”

53. Dorothy Waples, pp,|g;3., pp. 227-228.

54. T.R. Lounsbury,.gp..g;§., pp. 229-230.

55. Robert E. Spiller, Fenimore COOper: Critic 9f His Times,
Minton, Belch, and Company, New York, 1931, p. 273.

108

It will be noted that the later the Opinion, the less
territory it covers, and justly so, for Cooper's History is
now more interesting to the antiquarian than the historian.
The commentaries in the History killed the historical value
of the work while making it a pOpular book in its time, and
preserving the naval thought of the nation's first, if not
greatest, naval historian.

In the Lgygg, COOper did little more than re-hash the
material already published in the History. The biographies
were short sketches which presented some biOgraphical data
along with a detailed account of the naval event or events in
which the subject had most prominently figured. But the
major themes were there---national expansion--big fleet--
fast fleet-~additional ranks-training-~adm1nistration.

CoOper has often been accused of taking the middle ground
on principle, regardless of the issue. But in the tale of
Miles Wallingford Cooper objects to the principle, telling
the story of three men squabbling over a problem in mathema-
tics: the first said four and four make seven; the second
said four and four make eleven; but the middle grounder,
with perfect equanimity, said four and four make nine.
Cooper chortled over this one and suggested that "much is
produced that ought to be retained, and much is generated
that ought to be rejected. ...the solution is in knowing

how and when to make the prOper distinctions."56

56. Ibid., p. 36.

109

COOper would not swallow the jingoism of "My country,
right or wrong." Four and four did not make seven or nine,
or eleven, but most emphatically eight. Expansion and a
big fleet were as obvious as the two 100ps of the eight,
and the problem remained to make the nation adept in addition;
for in 1844 the effects of the war of 1818 were "just beginning
to be made manifest in the policy of the republic; a fact,
by the way, that is little understood at home or abroad." 57

It would seem that Cooper's stature as a naval historian
must rest on his reputation as a novelist. He added nothing
new to the perspective of naval history. He by-passed all
mention of develOpments that were to revolutionize naval
warfare, confining his themes to a belief in imperialism and a
plea for a big navy, a demand for high rank and a rigid system
of promotion, and a stout declaration that the nation and her
fleet were to occupy commanding positions in the world picture.
This is not to say that COOper was incompetent as a naval
historian. On the contrary, as has been explained, he showed
insight into naval theory, training, and administration.

If Cooper was not one of the most profound of American
naval historians, and when considered in relation to Captain
Alfred T. Mahan, it is certain that he was not, he was at
least early and adequate. COOper wrote on the navy with
sincerity and aplomb and must be re00gnized as the first
American man of letters to present a cOgent statement of the
relation of the American navy to the security and defense of

the nation.

57. Miles tailingrggd, p. 171.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

PRIMARY SOURCB

110

The Pilet, Mohawk Edition, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons
1896. (All novels used are in this edition.)

The Bee Rovey.
The Water-Witch.

Homeward Bound.

History of the Navy of the United States of America, Third
Edition, 2 vols., Philadelphia: 1847.

 

Mercedes of Castile.

"Edinburgh Review on James's Naval Occurrences and Cooper's
Naval History," first article, The United States
Magazine and Democratic Review, May 1842, 411-435.

“Edinburgh Review on James's etc.", second article, June

1842, 5l5-54l. (These articles are definitely
attributed to Cooper in Spiller and Blackburn,

Warn—121W
ames enimore Cooper. See Background Sources.)
The Two Admirals.

Wing-and-Wing.

Neg Myers.

Afloat and Ashore.

Miles Wallingford.

Lives of D s n uishe Amer ca Naval 0 f cars, 2 vols.,
Auburn, New York: 1846.

The Crater.
JBCK Tier 0

The Sea Lions.
Correspondence of James Fenimore-COOper, Ed. by James
Fenimore COOper, the author 3 grandson, 2 vols.,

New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932.

BACKGROUND S OURCES

111

Boynton, Henry W., Jemes Pepimore Cooper, New York: The
Century Company, 1931.

Brander, Matthews, "James Fenimore Cooper," in Americanisms
and Briticisms, New York: Harper and Brothers,
1892.

Brodie, Bernard; A Layman's Guide to Naval Strategy, Princeton;
Princeton University Press, 1942.

Brownell, William 0., "James Fenimore COOper," in American
Prose Masters, New York: 0. Scribner's Sons,
1923.

Clavel, Marcel, Fenimore Cooper and His Critics, Aix-en-
Provence: 1938.

Dana, Richard H., Two Years Before the Mast, Averyman's
Library 0

Grossman, James, James Fenimore Coo er, The American Men of
Letters Series, New York: William Sloan
Associates, 1949.

Knox, Captain Dudley W., A History of the United States Navy,
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Lounsbury, Thomas R., James F nimore Coo er, American Men of
Letters, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and
Company, 1884.

Mahan, Captain Alfred T., The Influence of Sea Power qup
History, Boston: Little, Brown, and Company,
1890.

Phillips, Mary E., James Fenimore Coo er, New York: John Lane
Company, 1913.

hobinson, Rear Admiral 5.8., A Histor of Nava ' m
1530 to 1930, apolis: The United States
aval nstitute, 1942.

Spiller, Robert E., Fenimore CoOper Cpitic ofrHis Times, New
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Spiller, Robert E. and Blackburn, Philip C., A Descriptive
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New York; The American Book Company, 1938.

 

 

112

Melville, Herman, White Jacket, London: Constable and Company
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Stevens, William 0., and Westcott, Allan, A Historyof_§ea
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