Does America Need Warships? Part I,
Comparing yesterday and today

The issue of whether the young United States should build costly warships was hotly debated at the end of the 18th century. Today, we debate whether we should build a stealth bomber or another nuclear powered Seawolf attack submarine. Have students research the arguments then and now and compare them. Are the essential arguments similar or different? Henry Adams’s biography of Albert Gallatin, a congressman from Pennsylvania who felt strongly about this issue, and Marshall Smelser’s Congress Builds a Navy are excellent resources.

Credit to Robert Allison, associate professor of history, Suffolk University, Boston, MA