Lloyd J. Matthews

With little doubt, three of the most pressing and frequent problems grappled with in Western defense and geostrategic literature over the past 20-30 years have been how to fight asymmetric wars, how to win the hearts and minds of an enemy populace, and how to terminate wars and devise exit strategies successfully. None of these problems is new in the history of warfare, of course, but they have achieved particular saliency in the United States because of Korea, Vietnam, and the first Gulf war. After that war, with an unrepentant Saddam Hussein still on the scene making threatening gestures, fourth and fifth problems-how to counter weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and how to conduct urban combat-came to the fore in the literature. Most recently, with the terrorist destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and our continuing wars of reprisal against the Taliban in Afghanistan and against al Qaeda in that country...

General Henry Lockwood of Delaware: Shipmate of Melville, Co-builder of the Naval Academy, Civil War Commander depicts the fascinating and accomplished life of nineteenth-century Delaware son, Brig. Gen. Henry Lockwood. Excerpt for a leave of absence to fight as a Union general during the Civil War, Lockwood was a U. S. Navy professor of mathematics from 1841–1876, serving on the USS United States in the Pacific, at the Asylum Naval School, at the U. S. Naval Academy, and the U. S. Naval Observatory. Lockwood sailed aboard the U. S. Navy frigate United States, participating in Commodore Thomas Catesby Jones’s seizure of Monterey from Mexico and figuring importantly in shipmate Herman Melville’s novel White-Jacket. Later he was a co-builder of the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. During the Civil War Lockwood pacified the slavery-bound Delmarva peninsula, and commanded a brigade at Gettysburg, the Maryland Heights at Harper’s Ferry, the Middle Department/8th Corps, and a division at Cold Harbor. All these accomplishments occurred in the face of Lockwood’s tendency to stutter which afflicted him throughout his life. This book also takes note of family members such as his son Lieut. James Lockwood, who died of starvation during the Greely polar expedition after having reached the furthest point north of any human; brother Navy Surgeon John Lockwood, whose essays in conjunction with Melville’s White-Jacket were major factors in outlawing punitive flogging in the Navy; and son-in-law Adam Charles Sigsbee, who was in command of the USS Maine when it blew up in Havana Harbor. Several pivotal events in Lockwood’s life have unjustly led to his historical neglect. Here Matthews finally gives Lockwood his due.