French Ensor Chadwick. Scholarly Warrior

317 Pages·1980·50.438 MB·English

by  Paolo Enrico Coletta

FRENCH
ENSOR CHADWICK:
Scholarly Warrior
Paolo E. -Coletta
university P~~-leJ]
of America
Copyright 1980 by
University Press of America, Inc.
4720 Boston Way. Lanham. MD 20~01
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 0-K 191-115:\-8 (Ca>c)
0-R 191-1154-6 (Perfect)
Bayerlsche
Staatsblbllothek
Miinchen
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: R0-67240
French Ensor Chadwick in 1898.
JV.:::KN•)WLEDGMENTS
Many have helped with this study. A great debt is
ow d to Mrs. Doris D. Maguire, upon whose research
most of this work is based, who edited the entire
manuscript, and permitted me to read her study of the
Perd1cairis affair. Dr . Paul T. Heffron, acting
ch~of, Manuscript Divi sion, Library of Congress ,
steered me into the letter coll ections of the imp·,·.-
tant political and naval men of French Ensor Chad
wick's time . Dr . Dean c. Allard, head, Operational
Archives, Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C . .
and such friendly helpers as William Heimdahl, Bernard
Cavalcante, Mrs . Katherine M. Lloyd, Miss Geraldine
K. Gidlund, and Miss Nina F. Statum provided the
records of the General Board of the Navy and various
letter collections. Professor Richard A. Evans ,
librarian, U.S. Naval Academy Library, and his refer
ence and special collections staffs proved i ndefati
gable in providing or acquiring needed references.
At the modern military branch of the National Archives,
special Lhanks are due Dr. Robert Krauskopf and Dr.
Gibson Smith; at the U.S. Naval War College, Lhe
curator of the Naval Historical Coll ction, Anthony S.
Nicolosi; at the West Virginia Department of Archives
and Hislory, Charleston, Mrs . Dori s Hunt; at the New
port Historical Society, Mrs . Pe er E. Bolhous ; al
Lhe N wport tax assessor's office, Mr. R. s. Wise; in
Morgantown, Mrs. Mansel Herron and Dr . Earl L. Core;
al Harvard University, Elizabeth H. Keul, administra
tive assistant to th President. Constructive criti-
i m on chapter 3 was offered by Dr. K. Jack Bauer
and on chapt r 9 by Mr . Ni olosi. The sam function
(or chapters 6 and 7 was performed by Dr. David F.
Trask, Historian, D partment of State . I have had the
moral support and constructive critici sms also of Dr .
G rald E. Wheeler, Dean, School of Social Sci nces,
San Jose State University. Mrs. Patty M. Maddocks .
Di r ctor, Library and PhoLoQra~lic Services , U.S.
Naval Institute , kindly provid('d a n\llnbeJ or pholo
qraphs . Last but nol least I nrusl U1ank my wife
Marla, son Bernarr, and d ughler Paula Maria for t heir
palienc wh nat times it seemed that I lived more Jor
Chadwick than for them.
Paolo E. Coletta
U.S. Naval Academy
1\nnapolis, Md.
v
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments v
Abbreviations used in the footnotes 190
1. From the Mountains to the Sea, 1844-1864 1
2. Junior Officer, 1864-1882 13
3. Naval Attache in the World's
Workshop, 1882-1889 21
4. The Squadron of Evolution, 1889-1891 39
5. /,dministrator, 1891-1897 53
6. The Spanish-American War: Seeking
Cervera, 1897-1898 69
7. The Spanish-American War: Death Lo
the Dons, 1898-1900 8~
8. The Naval War College, the General
Board, and the Schley Inquiry, 1899-1904 109
9. From an Admiral of the Sea to History:
Causes of the Civil War and The Relations
of the United States and Spain, 1904-1911 127
10. Causes of the Great War 151
11. Scholarly Warrior 173
Notes 191
The Writings of French Ensor Chadwick 225
Essay on Sources 22'1
Index 2t. .
·.j
vii
CHAPTER 1
FROM THE MOUNTAINS TO THE SEA, 1844-1864
French Ensor Chadwick may have been counseled to
accept an offer of appointment to the U.S. Naval
Academy by his widowed mother, relatives, and friends.
He wished to emulate the men especially on his
mother's side, all well educated and with a heritage
of military service. His prime motivations, however,
stemmed from the readinq of the gistory of the Navy
of the United States of America (1839), written by a
former naval officer named James Fenimore Cooper,l
a ~esire to see the world, and a wish to serve the
Union.
Born in Morgantown, Virginia, on 29 February 1844,
Chadwick was mature enough to sense the significance
of the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, John Brown's
raid upon nearby Harper's Ferry in 1859 and the por
tentous elections of 1860, and to see how the issues
of slavery and secession divided the transmontane from
the eastern counties of Virginia. His people, en
gaged in subsistence farming and small industrial
enterprise, were oriented toward the west and freedom
rather than toward the east and slavery. On 26 Novem
ber 1860, the men of Monongalia County resolved "that
the election of the candidates of the Republican party
docs not justify secession, and the union of the
States is the best guarantee for the present and
future welfare of the people."2 W'.ten the Virginia
legislature called for a convention to meet on 15
February 1861 at Richmond, two pro-Union delegates
were elected from Monongalia County by a vote of 2,270
to 13. The convention having decided that Virginia
should secede, these delegates and others from the
western counties not only refused to support secession
but bolted. On 17 April, with more than two thousand
of the county's approximately forty thousand people in
Morgantown, Union flags flying, and cheers for pro
Union speeches, the separation of West Virginia from
Virginia was foretold. Indicative of popular feeling,
five men from the western counties fought for the
Federal cause for every one who fought for the South.3
In letters he wrote as a midshipman, and in histories
he subsequently wrote, Chadwick revealed himself to be
a thoroughgoing nationalist much adverse to slavery
even though his family owned slaves.4
In 1760, Chadwick's paternal great-grandfather,
John Evans, of Welsh descent, crossed the mountains
1
from Alexandria, Virginia, to the small settlement at
Morgantown. John served as the lieutenant and countY
clerk of Monongalia (a variant of Monongahela) county,
formed in 1776, and gained fame as a colonel in the
Revolutionary War.5 One of his eight children, named
~ohn (b. 1768), also a captain in the militia, i~hcr­
lted the estate. "Captain Jack" and his wife, G1.lleY
Coleman Strother, had six sons and four daughters.
T~e sons were well educated, helped defend the fron-
t_: er, and not only held local office but often served
as representatives in the House of Delegates.6 one
of ~he daughters, Margaret Eliza (b. 1821), marr~ed t
D".nlel Clark Chadwick, a grocery merchant operat1.ng a
the_corner of High and Fayette Streets. They called
the1.r first child French Ensor, French being the name
of his maternal grandfather, the Ensor remaining a
mystery.
Little is known about Daniel Chadwick except that
he was born in Virginia, earned his living as a grocer,
frequently hailed debtors into court, owned real es
tate valued at $5 400 when he died at the age of
t~irty-one years ~n 27 September 1851, and left his
Wlfe Margaret the entire charge of four children, one
having died. At the time of his death, French Ensor
was seven years old and his youngest brother only one
year of age.7
Morgantown, seventy-five miles south of Pittsburgh,
nestles in a narrow valley where Deckers Creek joins
the Monongahela River, and is surrounded by hills to
t~e north, east, and south. At the turn to the
e1.?hteenth century it served as a highway transfer
p··-1.nt Where travelers from the East could reach navi
gable Western waters, the river being more than two
hundred yards wide and seven to eight feet deep at
Morgantown, a depth sufficient for steamboating. High
Street is the "white way" of the town, while the main
c~m~us of West Virginia University occupies terraces
n.s1.ng from the river to the top of Observatory Hill.
To t~e West, along the river, are the tracks of the
Balt1.more and Ohio Railroad and the warehouses and
glass and iron factories that employ most of the
P·~ople of the region. Others work in coal mines
nearby.
. ~mphasis upon education being an Evans character
~Stlc, the original Colonel John Evans not only had
ta~yers and ministers among his sons but also con-
rlbuted to the public subscription by which the
P·-ople of Morgantown established Monongalia Academy
..,;
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The Chadwick store stood at the corner of High
and Fayette Streets. From Earl L. Core, The
Monongalia Story: A Bicentennial History. Parsons,
wv: McClain Printing Co., 1976, 2:495. Used by
permission of Dr. core.
~~----------------
{1814). There Chadwick, who began the study of Latin
at the age of eight years and of Greek at ten, fol
lowed a strictly classical curriculum.8
Southeast of Morgantown lies Kingwood, home of
William G. Brown, who was elected from the Tenth Vir
ginia District to the Thirty-seventh Congress in 1860
and in 1863 was largely responsible for the legisla
tion admitting West Virginia to the Union as a sepa
rate state. That Brown sought out Chadwick as a
Naval Academy candidate is revealed in one of the rare
autobiographical statements Chadwick made, during a
visit to Morgantown in October 1899:
I entered the Navy in the stormy period of
1861. I was suddenly offered the appointment
as a midshipman by our then member of Congress,
Wm. G. Brown. . I well remember the going
to Kingwood to discuss the subject of his
offer. I hired a horse. . I stopped at a
house midway between here and Kingwood, got a
dinner and my horse fed. • I visited Mr.
Brown that evening, and sitting on a stool at
the side of the fire place was a little fellow
of fourteen whom Mr. Brown said he intend8d
sending to the Naval Academy did I not accept.9
Academy regulations stated that
No candidate will be admitted into the Naval
Academy until he shall have passed a satis
factory examination before the Academic Board,
and is found in the opinion of a medical
board physically sound, well formed, and of
robust constitution, and qualified to endure
the arduous labors of an officer of the Navy.
The candidate must be between 14 and 17
years of age, be of good moral character, and
be able to pass examinations in reading,
writing, spelling, arithmetic, geography, and
English grammar.lO
Chadwick received from the Secretary of the Navy,
GidE~on Welles, via Commander George Smith Blake,
s'·.perintendent of the Naval Academy, a form letter
directing him to proceed to Newport, Rhode Island, to
be examined. When he was admitted to the Academy on
28 September 1861 and given a physical examination by
a board of three physicians, he was seventeen years
3