navy, the indispensable instrument by which, when emergencies arise,
the nation can project its power beyond its own shore-line.

Whatever seeming justification, therefore, there may have been in the
transient conditions of his own day for Jefferson's dictum concerning
a navy, rested upon a state of things that no longer obtains, and even
then soon passed away. The War of 1812 demonstrated the usefulness of
a navy,--not, indeed, by the admirable but utterly unavailing
single-ship victories that illustrated its course, but by the
prostration into which our seaboard and external communications fell,
through the lack of a navy at all proportionate to the country's needs
and exposure. The navy doubtless reaped honor in that brilliant sea
struggle, but the honor was its own alone; only discredit accrued to
the statesmen who, with such men to serve them, none the less left the
country open to the humiliation of its harried coasts and blasted
commerce. Never was there a more lustrous example of what Jomini calls
"the sterile glory of fighting battles merely to win them." Except for
the prestige which at last awoke the country to the high efficiency of
the petty force we called our navy, and showed what the sea might be
to us, never was blood spilled more uselessly than in the frigate and
sloop actions of that day. They presented no analogy to the outpost
and reconnoissance fighting, to the detached services, that are not
only inevitable but invaluable, in maintaining the _morale_ of a
military organization in campaign. They were simply scattered efforts,
without relation either to one another or to any main body whatsoever,
capable of affecting seriously the issues of war, or, indeed, to any
plan of operations worthy of the name.

Not very long after the War of 1812, within the space of two
administrations, there came another incident, epoch-making in the