William James (naval Historian) - Debate

Debate

Theodore Roosevelt, as a young Harvard University undergraduate in 1876-77, began work on a response from the American perspective. Published in 1882 as The Naval War of 1812, the book took James to task for what Roosevelt felt were glaring mistakes and outright misrepresentations of fact based on malicious anti-American bias and shabby research, despite James's painstaking research and primary sources. In places, Roosevelt becomes almost mocking in his criticism of James. The book was an immediate sensation in the United States and is still considered a source book on the subject (no less than three books on the War of 1812 written in 2006 alone quoted from Roosevelt's response); however, Roosevelt's conclusions have been disputed by Professor Andrew Lambert in his 2012 book The Challenge: Britain Against America in the Naval War of 1812.

Scholars further note that Roosevelt's effort did not actually refer to James's two books on the War of 1812. Instead, Roosevelt referred to James's Naval History series, which holds only a shortened version. This avoidance of James's arguments and detailed evidence of 1817 and 1818 is seen by some as largely undermining Roosevelt's critique of James's work. Moreover, Roosevelt is also accused of ignoring the earlier American claims that provoked James in the first place: claims that might be best understood to be beneficial to American morale at the time.

James's primary conclusion - that no American vessel of equal force ever captured a British ship - essentially remains unchallenged.

However one might also read Ian Toll's Six Frigates published in 2006 where Toll cites Roosevelt's purpose as not only showing James' distortions and fabrications but to also show James' American contemporaries as being equally guilty of being culpable. In his book Roosevelt stated:

"And it must always be remembered that a victory, honorably won, if even over a weaker foe, does reflect credit on the nation by whom it is gained. It was creditable to us as a nation that our ships were better made and better armed then the British frigates....Some of my countrymen will consider this but scant approbation, to which the answer must be that a history is not a panegyric."