A New Force at Sea: George Dewey and the Rise of the American Navy by David A Smith

Author:David A Smith
Format: epub

TEN

Westward the Course of Empire

Three and a half decades before the guns fell silent in Manila Bay, and half a world away, the American Civil War was raging. In November 1862, as Lieutenant George Dewey strolled the streets of occupied New Orleans, in Washington, DC, a dour-looking man with wavy hair, bushy mustache, and sleepy eyes climbed the marble staircase in the newly constructed House of Representatives wing in the U.S. Capitol. He carried buckets and paint brushes. His name was Emanuel Leutze, and he was an immigrant from Germany, having arrived in the United States decades ago with his parents when he was nine years old. When he was eighteen and living in Philadelphia, he began to study art, and in 1851, his massive painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware became a national sensation. In New York City, 50,000 people lined up to see it and it made him the leading “history painter” of his generation. Now he had a new commission for a mural in the Capitol that would become “the most epic of all his historical designs.” Titled Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, it would dominate the landing of the grand staircase.¹

In part because of Leutze’s high-profile commission and his subsequent familiarity with politicians like Secretary of State William Seward and even President Lincoln, his young son Eugene Leutze received an appointment to the Naval Academy when he was only fifteen, entering in 1863. Now, thirty-five years later, in August 1898, that former U.S. Naval Academy cadet who had once briefly served under George Dewey on the Juniata was Commodore Eugene H. C. Leutze, and he was sailing the powerful double-turret monitor USS Monterey into Manila Bay, bringing the title of his late father’s famous painting quite literally to life. Just then, no one in the Philippines was happier to see the Monterey and Leutze than his old captain. A whaleboat ferried him across to the Olympia, where Dewey welcomed him aboard warmly. It had been a tough crossing. “A trip like that once in a lifetime is more than enough,” Leutze said wearily.²

Much had transpired here in these waters since the first of May, as a tropical sunset softened the heat of the day and the Olympia’s band serenaded the anxious residents of the ancient city with traditional Spanish folk melodies. Historian Stanley Karnow in his Pulitzer Prize–winning account of the relationship between the United States and the Philippines says that the destruction of the Spanish fleet that morning “was not only a remarkable battle, but a rite of passage.” This is a particularly perceptive way of describing the dramatic events of that Sunday morning. Dewey’s victory is not to be compared to other famous battles between great naval powers like, say, Trafalgar, Jutland, or Midway. By contrast, the best analogue to the Battle of Manila Bay would probably be the victory of the English over the Spanish Armada in 1588. It was from that point that England’s trajectory toward global power began to rise.

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