John Adams Quotes

He was referring to attacking the Barbary States. The Barbary Pirates had an incredible extortion racket going in the Mediterranean. If nations would pay them an annual sum each year, they would not attack and seize merchant ships of that country and sell the ships and goods while holding the sailors for ransom. See {640846}.

The United States had no navy at that point.

He didn’t succeed until Mahan wrote his marvelous treatise.

This quotation illustrates some of the interesting attitudes of early Americans. First, note the backhanded slap at a standing army. The navy was much preferred by early Americans as history had demonstrated that most republics had been destroyed by their own armies taking over in some “emergency” of time of “crisis.” This also helps explain why the army and navy were different departments of government—a tradition that lasted until after WWII. The two departments had totally different purposes and objectives and presented different potential dangers to the nation.

Plan Orange was the code name of the united states plan for possible war with Japan. In this ironic quotation, American military planners realized five years before Pearl Harbor that surprise attack was the major vulnerability. We were surprised and had no help from our intelligence service which despite the recommendations was almost nonexistent.

This quotation illustrates several historical differences of the past with today. To be a world superpower, one had to have a dominant navy. Yet that navy was, in Churchill’s concept, a defensive system. It could protect the nation from invasion, and its merchant ships on the seas, but a navy provided no threat to invade towns and villages in Europe or elsewhere. Germany and France in contrast, with their large armies could invade other nations and menace Europe and Asia. It also illustrates why the navy and the army were considered completely separate departments of government in that they had different functions. The early American government had a Navy Department and Secretary but no Secretary of the Army or standing army.

Most Americans do not realize that our naval forces were disbanded after the Revolution and even the Constitution did not require a navy. We had some Federal revenue cutters to interdict smugglers but no warships and no permanent sailors or officers. The Barbary Pirates had an incredible extortion racket going in the Mediterranean. If nations would pay them an annual sum each year, they would not attack and seize merchant ships of that country and sell the ships and goods while holding the sailors for ransom. See {640850},86703,{640846} & {640848}

Political disputes over the degree of defense spending are classic in American political history. In the early 20th century, most conservatives were opposed to government spending for the military and the President had great difficulty getting the Conservative wing of his own party to support increased military appropriations. The remains of the great naval hero John Paul Jones had just been brought to the United States from France in which he had died. A large ceremony was held in Annapolis, Maryland and most of the conservatives who had opposed the military spending proposed by Roosevelt attended the ceremony to demonstrate their patriotism. TR shocked them by turning the solemn ceremony into a political embarrassment for them.

Germany had a very small and insignificant navy. It was Tirpitz who persuaded the nation to develop sea power.

America’s oldest foreign policy problem has been freedom of the seas for American shipping. Since the end of WWII, the U. S. however performed this function—and pays for it—for the entire world with some minor exceptions.

This is another example of the preparation that the American patriots were making before 1776 for the coming Revolutionary War. In this case they were urging the arming of ships. There were plenty of ships, and it was a matter of building or buying cannon and mounting them on the decks of the ships. While these were no match for a British Warship in a one-to-one duel, they could be effective against British Smaller Ships that could navigate the shoals, coasts and inlets where the large vessels dared not navigate. This foresight gave George Washington a small navy which he made very good use of. He had 8 schooners ranging from 40-80 tons, each armed with 4-10 cannon and manned by overly large crews (for sailing and firing the guns at the same time) of volunteer expert seamen from Marblehead and Beverly. Of the 35 supply ships the British sent to Boston in 1775, only 8 got through Washington’s Navy. Also note the form of the Continental Congress Resolutions. In effect they mandated nothing as there really was no federal government. Each colony was sovereign, so resolutions were suggestive only with the important decisions all left to the individual colonies and their various governments as some of the colonies had very strong local governments which made all the important decisions.