There Will Still Remain Heroes and Patriots: The Politics of Resignation in the Early American Navy, 1794–1815

It is widely accepted that there is no tradition of protest resignations in American military history. This article argues that rejection of such a practice was far from foreordained, and officers in the early American navy had no qualms about resigning their commissions, or using the threat to do so, as a bargaining tactic with the Navy Department. Changing cultural norms within the officer corps, along with firm opposition to protest resignations by early secretaries of the navy, had almost entirely eliminated the practice by the end of the War of 1812, thus establishing the absolute respect for civilian control that remains a cornerstone of the modern U.S. military.