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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have enjoyed a long history with the subject matter of this book and over the years, I have benefited immensely from the encouragement, advice, guidance , and support offered by my family and my professors as well as by various scholars. I am grateful to them all. I first learned about the naval academy debate as an undergraduate while researching and writing about historian George Bancroft’s tenure as secretary of the navy under President James K. Polk. The topic continued to fascinate me and eventually became the subject of extensive research during my graduate school years at Boston University. At BU, my adviser, Nina Silber, made numerous contributions to my professional development as a historian and to the study that formed the basis for this book. She has a unique ability to ask exactly the right questions , which enabled me to look at the naval academy debate in new ways. Three other professors—Jill Lepore, Julian Zelizer, and Andrew Bacevich— read an early version of the manuscript and raised insightful questions that challenged me to improve the book’s main arguments concerning American nationalism, the politics of the early republic, and military education and professionalism, respectively. William Fowler, of Northeastern University, agreed to read an early draft of the manuscript before he had even met me; his expertise and enthusiasm for early American naval history contributed a great deal to this book and to my development as a historian. I could not have asked for better role models for outstanding scholarship than these five historians. Four excellent scholars of American naval history provided valuable advice , encouragement, and constructive criticism. Peter Karsten and James C. Bradford read the entire manuscript, offered several helpful suggestions for improvement, and saved me from making a few errors of fact or interpretation . Christopher McKee also read the entire manuscript and offered an in-depth critique of my work, using his unmatched knowledge of the social history of the early American navy to help me improve my book in matters great and small. I benefited from a conversation about naval education and the early history of the U.S. Naval Academy with Craig Symonds, professor of history emeritus, during one of my research trips to Annapolis. Three of my former undergraduate professors also deserve recognition. The late Robert Deasy, my undergraduate adviser, directed my research project on [ xii ] Acknowledgments George Bancroft’s tenure as secretary of the navy, which ultimately led to this book. His infectious enthusiasm for history and his genuine kindness influenced the lives of thousands of students over the course of a remarkable fifty-two-year career. James McGovern and Joseph Cammarano have encouraged my scholarly endeavors since I was an undergraduate; each has had a major influence on my development as a historian and a professor. I am also grateful to Steven Kenny, one of my former history teachers, for his encouragement during my graduate school years and beyond. I was very fortunate to receive generous financial support for this project from the Naval Historical Center, the Boston University Humanities Foundation , and the Boston University Department of History. In the summer of 2004, I was selected to participate in the West Point Summer Seminar in Military History at the U.S. Military Academy. In addition to imparting a great deal about West Point and the military history of the Western world, the seminar provided a generous stipend, much of which I used to cover research expenses. I thank the staffs of the following libraries and museums for their professionalism and their contributions to this book: the Special Collections and Archives Department, Nimitz Library, U.S. Naval Academy; the Special Collections and Archives Division, U.S. Military Academy Library; the National Archives; the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress; the Massachusetts Historical Society; the Hagley Museum and Library; the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library; the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University; the Special Collections Research Center, Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William and Mary; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Samuel Eliot Morison Memorial Library, USS Constitution Museum; the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command; the U.S. Naval Academy Museum; and the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library. The American Memory project at the Library of Congress deserves particular mention for three outstanding online collections that made my research considerably easier: “The George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741–1799”; “The Thomas Jefferson Papers...

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