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Hanging Offense\A

 

Category: History: U.S.: 19th Century


Author:
Buckner F Melton Jr.

 

Copyright/published Year: 2003 by Free Press

 

ISBN: 0743232836

 

Binding: Cloth


In 1842, the brig-of-war Somers set out on a training cruise for apprentice seamen, commanded by Alexander Mackenzie. Somers was crammed with teenagers. Among them was Acting Midshipman Philip Spencer, a disturbed youth and son of the U.S. Secretary of War. Buying other crew members' loyalty with pilfered tobacco and alcohol, Spencer dreamed up a scheme to kill the officers and turn Somers into a pirate ship. The results shook the nation. A naval investigation of the affair turned into a court-martial and a state trial and led to the founding of the Naval Academy. Mackenzie's controversial decision may have inspired Herman Melville's great work Billy Budd. The story of Somers raises timeless questions still disturbing in twenty-first century America: the relationship between civil and military law, the hazy line between peace and war, the battle between individual rights and national security, and the ultimate challenge of command at sea.

 


Condition Information

This book is 'remaindered' and may have marks on the cover and/or bottom of pages.

 

 


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