The war of 1812 and the rise of the us navy

Roosevelt begins his study with an introduction to the War of 1812, including the political conditions in the years preceding the war. The book is well footnoted, which gives the reader confidence in the quality of Roosevelt’s research, and the style is not overly technical, which could have been an obstacle to readability in a work of this depth. Roosevelt also demonstrates familiarity with other historians’ work on the subject, sometimes using them as sources and occasionally using his evidence to point out their errors. The Naval War of 1812 is a scholarly work of substantial merit, with dozens of credible authorities cited, including many primary source documents such as captain’s logs, official reports and state papers, although these records are almost entirely American, and thus must be scrutinized for objectivity. Finally, Roosevelt wanted to use examples from that conflict to illustrate what he saw as the foolishness of skimping on naval expenditures in peacetime, largely because he saw these same errors being repeated in his day. xxiii) He also wished to refute the work of British author William James, whose Naval Occurrences of the War of 1812 extolled English naval supremacy and denigrated American successes. In the preface, Roosevelt says that there are no books that tell “the whole story” or “do justice to both sides.” (pg. Roosevelt’s purpose in writing was threefold.

In 1882, only two years after graduating from Harvard, Roosevelt made his mark as a military scholar with The Naval War of 1812, a detailed analysis of naval combat between the United States and Great Britain from 1812-1815.

Theodore Roosevelt, who would rise to fame as a war hero, an adventurer, and the twenty-sixth president of the United States, was before all this, a writer and historian.

The war of 1812 and the rise of the us navy