June 10th – American Minute – US Naval Academy

The United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, graduated its first class on JUNE 10, 1854.

The Academy was established under George Bancroft, Secretary of the Navy under President James K. Polk, 1845-46. Bancroft also established the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., and is the namesake of the Naval Academy’s “Bancroft Hall.”

George Bancroft published a ten-volume History of the United States, which was the first comprehensive history of America. George Bancroft wrote in “The Progress of Mankind,” published in Literary and Historical Miscellanies:

“For the regeneration of the world it was requisite that the Divine Being should enter the…hearts of men and dwell there…that He should be known, not as a distant Providence of boundless power and uncertain and inactive will, but as God present in the flesh…

The consciousness of an incarnate God carried peace into the bosom of humanity…This doctrine once communicated to man, was not to be eradicated…The idea of GOD WITH US…dwells…in every soul that sighs for redemption.”

Describing the Puritans, who founded Annapolis, Maryland, George Bancroft wrote in volume one of History of the United States:

“Puritanism had exalted the laity….For him the wonderful counsels of the Almighty had appointed a Saviour; for him the laws of nature had been compelled and consulted, the heavens had opened, the earth had quaked, the Sun had veiled his face, and Christ had died and risen again.”

With two-thirds of America’s 3 million citizens at the time of the Revolution being influenced by Reformer John Calvin’s teachings, (600,000 being Puritan English; 900,000 being of Scotch or Scotch-Irish origin; 400,000 being German or Dutch Reformed; Episcopalians having a Calvinistic confession in their 39 Articles; and numerous French Huguenots), George Bancroft wrote:

“He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows little of the origin of American liberty.”

President James K. Polk issued Order 27 to Secretary of the Navy, George Bancroft, June 16, 1845:

“The President…with heartfelt sorrow announces to the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps the death of Andrew Jackson…He resigned his spirit to his Heavenly Father…He believed the liberties of his country imperishable and…departed from this life in a full hope of a blessed immortality through the merits and atonement of the Redeemer.

Officers of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps will wear crape on the left arm and on their swords, and the colors of the several regiments will be put in mourning for the period of six months.”

The U.S. Naval Academy has a large stained glass window picturing Irish Saint Brendan of Clonfert (c.484-c.577), called “the Navigator” or “the Voyager” for his seven year voyage across the Atlantic to the “The Land of the Promised Saints which God will give us on the last day,” also called “The Isle of the Blessed,” making his band of monks possibly the first Europeans to reach America.

The U.S. Naval Academy has the oldest military monument in the United States – the Tripoli Monument, dedicated to the heroes who fought the Muslim Barbary pirates during the First Barbary War. One of those heroes was Edward Preble, for whom the Naval Academy’s “Preble Hall” was named.

The U.S. Naval Academy Chapel has John Paul Jones buried under the crypt. After the Revolution, Jefferson arranged for John Paul Jones to fight Muslim Turks on the Black Sea for Catherine the Great of Russia, as he wrote to General Washington, 1788:

“The war between the Russians and the Turks has made an opening for our Commodore Paul Jones. The Empress has invited him into her service.”

The U.S. Naval Academy’s “Maury Hall” is named for Matthew Fontaine Maury, the first superintendent of the U.S. Naval Observatory. Known as the “Pathfinder of the Seas” for pioneering the charting sea and wind currents, Matthew Fontaine Maury wrote in Physical Geography of the Sea, 1855:

“I have always found in my scientific studies, that, when I could get the Bible to say anything on the subject it afforded me a firm platform to stand upon, and a round in the ladder by which I could safely ascend. As our knowledge of nature and her laws has increased, so has our knowledge of many passages of the Bible improved.

The Bible called the earth ‘the round world,’ yet for ages it was the most damnable heresy for Christian men to say that the world is round; and, finally, sailors circumnavigated the globe, and proved the Bible to be right, and saved Christian men of science from the stake.

And as for the general system of circulation which I have been so long endeavoring to describe, the Bible tells it all in a single sentence: ‘The wind goeth toward the South and returneth again to his circuits.'”

Maury’s tombstone at the U.S. Naval Academy has engraved the Bible verse, Psalm 8:8, which had inspired him, “Whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.”

In front of Maury Hall is a Japanese Bell, commemorating Commodore Matthew Perry opening trade with Japan in 1855. Matthew Perry stated:

“I have just finished the Bible; I make it a point to read it through every cruise. It is certainly a wonderful Book-a most wonderful Book…From boyhood I have taken a deep interest in Christianizing the heathen, and in imparting a knowledge of God’s revealed truth everywhere.”

On a Sunday in 1853, on his way to Japan, Commodore Perry set his Bible on the capstan, read Psalm 100, then sang:

“Before Jehovah’s awful throne
Ye nations bow with sacred joy.”

Civil War hero, Admiral David Dixon Porter, became superintendent of U.S. Naval Academy. He wrote:

“When one sees how much has been done for the world by the disciples of Christ and those professing the Christian religion, he must be astonished to find anyone who hesitates to believe in the Divine origin of Jesus and the wonderful works He performed, all of which are so beautifully portrayed by the author of the work under consideration;

and no man or woman of real intelligence would hesitate to believe that it is only through Christ that sinners can be saved, unless their vanity is so great that they are capable of saving themselves without an intermediary.”

The U.S. Naval Academy’s “Luce Hall” was named after Rear Admiral Stephen Bleecker Luce, who was a hero of the Civil War and founder of the U.S. Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island. When asked to write a comment in Stephen A. Northrop’s book “A Cloud of Witnesses” in 1884, Stephen Bleecker Luce wrote:

“Surely seamen are worthy to appear in your ‘Cloud of Witnesses.’ Not only did our Saviour consort with the seamen of Galilee, but there are many examples in history of noted naval heroes who exhibited the highest Christian virtues. I wish to be counted among this great company of believers in the divinity of Christ, and in the inspiration of all Scripture.”

The U.S. Naval Academy’s “Mahan Hall” is named after Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, whose books on naval strategy influenced President Theodore Roosevelt to increase U.S. Naval strength. Alfred Thayer Mahan stated:

“Upon the Bible my life rests for whatsoever is good and strong. Convinced that Christ is the Son of God, in the deepest sense attributed to those words, I not only find in this belief all the power of my life, but, in the account of His personality, an intellectual satisfaction that surpasses any other in its inexhaustible freshness, daily renewing my strength, and throwing an ever-increasing light upon the problems and difficulties of life.

It is this intellectual satisfaction that most impresses me; that the teachings of Jesus Christ contains a philosophy of life in fullest accord with experience, and also inexhaustible, in that its revelation is continuous.

While the faith in His teachings thus meet all my mental exigencies, I in no way derogate from its supernatural sanctions. He is to me one who speaks with authority no less than Divine, to whom I submit where I do not understand.”

President Woodrow Wilson addressed the graduating class of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, June 5, 1914:

“You are champions of your fellow men, particularly of that great body one hundred million strong whom you represent in the United States…Things that show the moral compulsions of the human conscience, those are the things by which we have been building up civilization.”

President Calvin Coolidge addressed the graduating class of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, June 3, 1925:

“Not long ago I heard a Navy chaplain refer to the sage advice of the Apostle to put first things first…If we are to heed the admonition to put first things first…one of the main essentials which lies at the very beginning of civilization is that of security.

It is only when people can feel that their lives and the property which their industry has produced today will continue to be safe on the morrow that there can be that stability of value and that economic progress on which human development has always rested…

Unless we lay our course in accordance with this principle, the great power for good in the world with which we have been intrusted by a Divine Providence will be turned to a power for evil.”

William J. Federer is a nationally known speaker, best-selling author, and president of Amerisearch, Inc., a publishing company dedicated to researching America’s noble heritage.

To learn more about the author please visit  William Federer