Author Chris Brady's Blog

Featured Rascal: Tank Man

 We continue our series of "Featured Rascals," considering those who have had the courage to be different in order to make a difference, the character to become a character, and original enough to stand for truth and justice. I am sure everyone remembers this one.

    The protests had gone on for seven weeks.  What began as mourning for the loss of a national leader, Hu Yaobang, grew into a gigantic demonstration known to the world as the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989.  Yaobang had been a popular figure among students and intellectuals, standing for the concepts of free markets and democracy in a communist nation.  At one point at the peak, the demonstrations were attended by more than one million people.

            Having seen enough, the Chinese government addressed the situation by sending in the military.  Throughout the course of dispelling the demonstrators, many people were killed and arrested.  An unknown number of others were later rounded up and executed.  In the typical fashion of tyrannical regimes, the outside world has no complete set of confirmed facts regarding the total killed, their names, or the charges against them.  There is not even any information about the most famous man of the incident, the "Tank Man."  All we know about him is what was shown through the camera lenses of reporters on the scene, who had to smuggle their film out of the country before what happened could be seen by the outside world.

            On June 4, 1989, as a distant line of armored tanks made their way through the square, just days after other tanks had been seen driving over cars and crushing civilians, one man stood fast.  He held a bag of some sort in each hand, and aligned himself with the obvious path of the oncoming tanks.  As the tanks reached him they stopped.  For a moment a silent stand-off ensued.  Then, the man climbed up onto the tank and appeared to be attempting to talk to those inside.  At one point, a man inside the tank stuck his head out of the top hatch and spoke to the protester.  A moment later, as the tanks started to roll away, the man again placed himself in front of them.  Another stand-off ensued.  This time, men in blue uniforms emerged from a crowd of onlookers and took the protester away.  There are no confirmed reports of what happened next, although rumors are rampant.  The Chinese government has never been able to produce the man, and claims to be unable to state whether or not he was executed. 

            Although so little is known about this man, there is a lot that we do know.  We know he was courageous.  We know he believed strongly in stopping the tanks that represented a repressive government.  We know he used a non-violent method to do it.  And we know that his example ignited the enthusiasm of Rascals around the world for the concept of freedom from tyranny.  The Tank Man, as he has been called, became an international symbol of the small standing up to the big, of the oppressed standing up to the bully, and of the defiant standing up to the enslaver.  We may never know exactly what motivated him, but we can all be motivated by him.  We may never know what happened to him, but we know what happened to many around the world as a result of his stand.  Tank Man represented the flame of justice burning inside the breasts of Rascals everywhere.               

Rascals

My friend and co-author Orrin Woodward and I are at work on many exciting projects. One lingering work is the yet-to-be-completed RASCAL book, dedicated to rebels with a cause. For the next couple days on this blog, I will be featuring interesting RASCALS we have come across in our research. These may or may not make the final cut of the book edition, so stay tuned!

(And if you're not sure exactly what a RASCAL is, you'll have to wait for the book.)

André de Jongh 

            During World War II, Britain's valiant airmen were magnificent in their stand against the fierce German Luftwaffe.  German bombers would cross the English channel intent on attacking civilian population centers and would be met with the plucky, hard-working, outlandishly brave pilots of the Royal Air Force (RAF).  

            As the fighting continued day after day it became increasingly difficult to find enough British airmen to keep in the sky.  Many pilots flew for hours on end, coming back to land only long enough to refuel before taking off to fight again.  Thousands of pilots were shot down over northwestern Europe, and it wasn't long before clandestine operations sprang into place to smuggle them back to England to fight again.  Most of these 'escape lines' forming in Holland, Belgium, and France were established under the professional guidance of trained agents. 

            One of the most successful lines, however, was established and run by mere concerned citizens, the majority of them young and idealistic, dedicated to keeping the RAF fully stocked with pilots.  This line would grow to become one of the most successful of all, accounting for over one fourth of the 2,900 airmen returned to Great Britain through escape lines between September 1939 and June 1944.  Even more surprising, perhaps, was its driving force; a twenty-four year old woman named Andre de Jongh.

            Jongh was raised in Belgium and familiar with the heroics of Edith Cavell, a woman executed in World War I for helping soldiers escape the Germans.  Jongh had promised herself that if war ever came to her country, she would follow the example of Cavell.  In May of 1940 Jongh got her chance when the German armies marched into Belgium.  At first Jongh did what she could by volunteering in an army hospital.  It was here she noticed the strict observations of the German secret police.  As more and more British soldiers came into the hospital, Jongh felt the increasing pull to do something about it.  Without funds, experience, formal training, or permission of any kind, Jongh designed an escape route intent on outfoxing the Gestapo, what W. E. Armstrong called "the most efficient and cruelly repressive secret police in Europe."  It would necessitate the involvement of hundreds of clandestine volunteers risking their lives to transport escapees across three national borders, all the way south through Europe, across the Pyrenees, and finally to Gibraltar.  From there the airmen would be returned by ship to Britain to fight again.

            Jongh began smuggling escapees along her route, enlisting the support of the British consulate in Bilbao, upon whom she left a very favorable impression.  Jongh demanded autonomy and permitted no interference in her operations, negotiated shrewdly, and soon received funding and contacts for support.  Journey after arduous journey proved successful, and soon, Jongh was in trouble.  The Brussels Gestapo had detected her involvement and slated her for arrest.  Her father got word to her during one of her escape runs that she could not return to Belgium.  He calmly took over in her place as she continued to run the line remotely. 

            Airmen safely delivered back to Britain soon began singing the praises of the youthful and vigorous André de Jongh.  They were in near disbelief that such a fragile and warm-hearted figure should be so brave in the face of mortal risk.  The legend of André de Jongh grew and grew.  Accordingly, the Gestapo predictably increased their efforts to find her and eliminate her escape line, which now was being called The Comet Line by the British secret service, after the behavior of comets in the sky to disappear and reappear again without warning.  They arrested and tortured over one hundred of the line's volunteers; but nobody cracked under pressure, and Jongh was still safely at large.  Then, during her thirty-third passage, Jongh was finally arrested.  Moved from prison to prison, the attempts of her own Comet line to rescue her all failed.  Finally, she was moved to concentration camps.  Throughout this time she was brutally interrogated twenty-one times, revealing nothing more than the fact that she was the master behind the Comet Line; a fact doubted by the Gestapo.

            Incredibly, the Comet Line lived on.  Inspired by Jongh's example and empowered by her organization, new volunteers seemed always ready to step into gaps created by arrests and murders.  Young person after young person was on hand to assume the responsibility of leadership at each of the key steps along the escape line.  "We felt we couldn't let her down," said Elvire de Greef, another young woman, "Dedee [De Jongh] was not simply the founder of Comet, she was Comet."

            Although Jongh's father and hundreds of others were arrested and/or shot, eventually the Allied armies liberated Europe and André de Jongh herself was freed.  One pilot said, "André de Jongh was one of those rare beings who felt the misery of the world and would not let it rest."  There could be no better description of a true Rascal!   

Faust's Bargain

 Being decadent is easy.  Evil is everywhere.  It takes nearly nothing to succeed by cheating, lying, stealing, or selling to the profane nature of humanity.  Violence, sex, anger, hatred, victimization, and escapism come easy to entertainers and sell easy to a crowd of nobodies.  The fastest route to tinsel-town success, the empty kind full of fame and money and no fulfillment, is to sell directly to the clamoring masses the poison for which their blackened hearts crave.  The Bible says, "And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."  Left to our own natures, we love darkness and actually gravitate toward things that aren't good for us.  I am never impressed with the angry young faces full of rebellion and hatred that I see on the covers of entertainment magazines.  All I see when I look at them is more young people who think they are being creative by being bad.  It's an old, old story that is neither innovative nor impressive.  There is nothing clever or cute about evil.  To court it is to play with fire.   

Thomas Mann's classic, Doctor Faustus (based on the old English legend of the same name: author unknown), tells the famous story of a man selling his soul to the Devil in exchange for fame and fortune as a musical composer.  In a hollow way the Devil fulfills his end of the bargain, in that the success in this life that was so dearly purchased is a Hell-on-earth of its own.  It destroys the character even before he dies.  This Faustian Bargain is exactly what results from success obtained the wrong way. 

Do Nothing Leaders and Heroes in Obscurity

Leadership is an odd thing. It is better “caught than taught.” Still, authors like Orrin Woodward and myself still labor to teach it the best we can. Often, in the course of doing so, we call upon illustrations of leaders both historical and contemporary who have demonstrated worthy leadership characteristics. There is a problem with this approach, however, one that goes beyond the obvious disclaimer that all humans are flawed and no one can truly serve as a perfect example of leadership. The bigger problem with this approach is that, often, high-profile and/or famous leaders also exhibit some really poor qualities.

For instance: Abraham Lincoln may be known for strong war-time leadership, preserving the union, and freeing the slaves, but he also ushered in America’s first dose of federal Income Tax, ran nearly his entire Presidency above the law and in violation of the Constitution, launched a fiat money system, and saddled the young country with a debt 100 times its previous peak.

Or take Winston Churchill: he is generally known for standing in the gap in “Britain’s finest hour” and staunchly defying Hitler, mobilizing the English language and sending it into battle, but there is also strong evidence that he baited the Germans into sinking passenger ships and thereby pulling the United States into the war.

Finally, consider George Washington: he is credited with throwing off the shackles of English tyranny and shepherding the young Unites States onto proper footing in its years of infancy; but he also led an army of the government against its very own citizens to put down a tax revolt.

Do these obvious concerns detract from the strong leadership characteristics for which these leaders have come to be known? Maybe. They do, however, illuminate the challenge with attempting to teach a changeless principle using the illustration of high-profile human examples.

Where else should one look, then, for effective examples of honorable and effective leadership in motion?

The answer to this question gets to the root of our book, Launching a Leadership Revolution, in which we claim that effective leadership can be found at all levels of human endeavor, not simply at the top. In fact, it is likely that the most impressive, contributory, productive, purpose-driven examples of true leadership are to be found in relative obscurity.

Take for instance the so-called “do nothing” presidents of the United States; the Franklin Pierces, the Grover Clevelands, the Gerald Fords. These men didn’t earn the high mantle of fame, the high prominence of academic admiration, nor the widespread remembrance of a thankful people, rather, they receive an obligatory earmark mention, at best, in lists of presidents.  But is it not true that these men, and the many more like them, managed to continue the ship of state chugging along in its course, successfully avoiding expensive and fatal conflict with other nations, allowing its citizens a respite of high-profile heroics and providing instead a period of peace and prosperity, where families were free to live in freedom and go about their business uninhibited by the intrusion of a nationalized government agenda?

So much for presidents, whom, no matter how unrenowned, could still be argued to be high-profile. But further down into the depths of obscurity are the everyday “common people,” those working and living “in the trenches.”  What of these? Represented in this group are fathers leading a family, mothers nurturing children, workers dependably running the engines of industry, small business owners expanding the economy, and servicemen and women standing at the ready? I would suggest that it is here, far away from the limelight, where true leadership can best be observed.

For heroes of leadership, many of us need look no further than our own parents or grandparents. Some of us have seen it brilliantly embodied at work or at church, or in some community involvement. True leadership can be found anywhere excellence resides. And it doesn’t take a “national hero” to fit the mantle. It takes an individual of character charged with a deep desire to fulfill his or her potential by “making things better.” Anywhere someone is doing that, they are providing a case study in leadership.

Do you long for heroes? Do you appreciate good examples ? Then look around. They can be found everywhere in the quiet passage of daily life, in the schools, the shops, the banks, the meeting rooms, the churches, and even sometimes in government offices (believe it or not). 

But a better place to look is within. Become your own best example. No one may ever know all you did to make things better and contribute your gifts to positive change, but notoriety is no measure of contribution, anyway. A life lived on purpose with an admirable purpose is the real measure, in which you fulfill your God-given calling with all your might.

And who knows. Maybe someone will notice, send it to this blog, and we’ll make you famous!

You never know.

Lead on!

The Curse of Wealth Unearned

Whenever modern situations become worrisome, it is nearly always instructive to peer back into history for perspective and understanding. With the crazy, off-the-wall economic policies of the current United States government, there are many historical events from which one can draw context. One such moment in time is the monarchy of Spain during the 1500s. See for yourself if there are not parallels inumerous.

In the late 1400's, explorations for gold and passages to the east produced the discovery of what became known as the New World. Spain quickly edged out Portugal as the dominant player in this game throughout much of the 1500s, and literally tons of gold and silver made its way across the Atlantic from the infamous Spanish Main in Mexico, Latin and South America to the coffers in Seville, Spain. There were many unfortunate effects of this, such as the near total decimation of the Inca and Mayan native populations, as well as the instigation of the African slave trade. First the natives, and increasingly so the Africans, were needed to man the mines. As a result of this system, massive amounts of gold and silver were hauled across the Atlantic and into Europe. Some estimates say that this amount was so enormous that the total of precious metal in Europe at the end of the 1500s was more than five times what it was at the beginning of that century when the New World was discovered!

It would be logical to deduce that Spain became one of the richest nations in the world as a result of this massive influx of wealth. But interestingly, and very educationally, this was not the case.

What happened?

Author Peter L. Bernstein writes:

"Once the gold began arriving in quantity, the Spanish were far more proficient at spending than at producing. The massive imports of gold and silver stimulated the spending skills at the same time that they stifled Spain's incentive to produce. Spain acted like a poor man who makes a great windfall at the gambling tables but comes to believe that the money is his destiny rather than a nonrecurring event . . . . Late in the century the . . . Parliament declared, 'The more of [gold] that comes in, the less the Kingdom has. . . Though our kingdoms should be the richest in the world . . . they are the poorest, for they are only a bridge for [the gold and silver] to go to the Kindgdoms of our enemies.' Another Spanish observer, Pedro de Valencia, wrote, 'So much silver and money . . . always has been fatal poison to  republics and cities.  They believe money will keep them and it is not true: plowed fields, pastures, and fisheries are what give sustenance.'  Gold has always been associated with power. Once the kings of Spain realized how much new wealth the discoveries of gold in the American colonies would bring them, they convinced themselves that their wealth was great enough to bend the world to their will.'"

An apt analogy would be of 'second generation wealth.' It is almost a cliche that sons squander their father's wealth, thinking that they have somehow, by eating at the same table, sleeping under the same roof, and being sufficiently 'talked at' by the patriarch, been bestowed the 'magic touch' which their father used to produce the wealth in the first place. The squandering of the father's empire in such cases is so common as to be almost a rule. This is because there is no 'touch' of greatness, nor family superiority, nor endowments or bestowed rights, there are only the laws of success. And those laws are almost immediately broken by a son taking over the reigns of a great empire for which he was not forced to labor to create nor strive to earn. The violation of the earning principle produces harsh results and even harsher lessons. Sorry golden boys.

Another comparison, and the one that inspired this article, is made to the current United States government and its hubris and arrogance in thinking it has found its own Spanish Main in the printing of free money by the Federal Reserve banking scam (er, um, I mean banking system). Having arranged for itself a tidy little sitaution in which it can produce currency out of nothing, the government has taken to acting like the monarch of sixteenth century Spain, with figurative ships laden with "bailout money" and "earmarks." Our bureaucratic government has taken leave of its senses in a 'gold fever' all its own creation, thinking it can disdain major industrial and agricultural infrastructures while gifting billions of dollars in bailouts to its partners in banking complicit in its schemes. Worse, it seems to think it can foist this on an American citizenry without ramifications, as though Americans are naive Incas or backward Mayans.

Tellingly, however, the Incas were not naive, only trusting. The Mayans were not backwards, only fooled into thinking the Spaniards were gods. Today, Americans, or at least some of them, seem to be falling into the same traps of the Incas and the Mayans: too trusting of the government, and somehow duped into believing in political messiahs. To continue such foolishness will result in the same fate as the indiginous peoples of Latin and South America; decimation.

But America cannot stand upon its stolen spending power any more than Spain could stand upon its stolen treasure. Wealth unearned bears with it a curse. Instead, as Peter Schiff said, "Consumption is made possible by production and credit is made possible by savings." Government economic shenanigans are no substitute, but rather a drug taken to defer the pain until later, at which time the pain is even greater.

  

Actions Accumulate - Caesar Augustus

Gaius Octavius was born in 63 B.C.. Nephew to acting dictator of Rome, Julius Caesar, Gaius was (unbeknownst to anyone until after Caesar's death) named Caesar's adopted son and heir.  Only eighteen years old at the time, he was instantly a wealthy man, and had the additional clout of his adopted father's name.  In ancient Rome, however, this was not enough.  The country was not yet run as a dynastic empire, and birth was no guarantee of ascent to power.  Competing factions in the senate and former advisors and consuls to Rome jockeyed for position.  Nobody gave the young teenager much credit, and few would have predicted his determined rise to power.  Eventually, Gaius Octavious, later known as Cae sar Augustus (for which the month of August is named), became Rome's first and longest ruling emporer.  His efforts effectively killed the last remnants of Republican Rome and ushered in the approximately five-hundred year Age of Empire.  The story of his patient, brilliant, and ruthless rise to his position as the most powerful man in the world is gripping and as racey as a soap opera.  Leadership lessons abound in his long and storied career.

 

One prominant feature of Augustus's life is his incredible ability to hold the long-term view of things.  While others sought short term fixes, Octavius was patient enough to manuever for long-term solutions.  Opposed by powerful and ruthless men (and treacherous women working behind the scenes), Augustus was able to take one step at a time, carefully and deliberately, until he was literally the last man standing in the quest for power.

 

Perhaps the biggest thing a leader can learn from the life of one of the world's most successful leaders is Augustus's ability to compound the effects of his actions over a long period of time.  Augustus had the rare ability to pile one forward move on top of another, and spent very little time doing what most average men do in wasting their lives re-doing the same things over and over again.  Augustus rarely squandered a resource or opportunity, and used every advance as a stepping off point for another one. Most people do not operate this way.  Power-thirst and ruthlessness aside, Augustus is a great example for efficient use of our time and resources as leader.

 

Our money, our time, our relationships, our connections, our reputation, our name, our education, and our abilities are all assets that can help us advance througout our lives.  Sadly, however, many waste and squander much of this "capital" along the way.  We blow our money, sabatoge our relationships, deconstruct our credibility, tarnish our name, refuse to continue or utilize our educations, and fail to manage and cultivate our connections.  In so doing we find ourselve having to cover the same ground again and again.  We have to earn money to replace that which we spent so unwisely.  We seek new relationships because we haven't been able to sustain or grow the old ones.  We make new connections because people have stopped trusting us.  We are forced to learn the same lessons over and over again.  This is like an army that charges up a hill and successfully pushes the enemy off, only to endure a self-inflicted retreat back down to charge that same hill once again!  As Orrin Woodward says, "Some people who have been doing something for thirty years with little to show for it cannot claim they have thirty years experience.  They have one year's experience thirty times!"

 

The best leaders leverage all that they have to get everything they want.  This requires a long term view, a respect for the assets in their possession, and an ability not to sabatoge their own progress.  Life is too short to learn the same lessons over and over again, or to re-do what has previously been done.  Consistency is also key.  Effort upon effort, consistently applied over time, produces tremendous compound results.  Conversely, inconsistency is one of life's supreme inefficiencies.

 

In the end, success is largely a matter of hanging on after others have been shaken off.  It is also the accumulation of consistent effort over time.  The best leaders build an edifice out of their lives, taking steps each day to add to previous accomplishments.  The rest struggle in futile repeats.  We only get one life.  The choice is ours.

 

  

They Were There

"Why do you like history?" someone once asked, "It's so dull; dates and places and names I can't remember."

Somewhere along the line in this person's life he was given the wrong sample of the subject of history.  This led to a grave misunderstanding.  It would be like giving you an icecream sandwich that you spit out because you don't like the taste of the paper.  If no one ever unwrapped it properly for you, or taught you to do it for yourself, you might be stuck your whole life thinking icecream sandwiches taste like paper.

Amatuer teachers and poor writing have contributed to this effect as regards history and its interest.  There are few things quite as interesting, or "tasty" as history clearly presented.  History is not names and places and dates, although those features are present.  History is also not about politics and war and government, although these aspects seem to get a large share of the focus.  Rather, history is the consideration of life lived by others, in previous times, in differing circumstances than ourselves, but from the same human perspective.  History is the mystery of time, the wonder of others, and the finality and authority of God's laws all mixed together.  History is pain and suffering, joy and celebration, and relationships good and bad.  History is memory and tradition and lightness and darkness.  History is human nature and nature in juxtaposition.  History is a story told in old photographs, a myth told around campfires, the meaning in old-fashioned words.  History is real.  It happened.  And what makes it most interesting; it happened to them.

They will always be the most interesting part of it all; the ones before us.  They were the ones who lived it first hand.  Our ancient is their modern, our old was their new.  Our mystery of history was their reality.  Our fictions their truths.  I see them in yellowed photographs, staring blankly while holding still for a process that took minutes to our milliseconds.  I see them in their writings and their architecture and their art.  I see them in their descendents and their creations, and I see them in myself.  Each tragedy, each triumph, each dramatic scene, however painted by the sketchiness of the facts that remain to us, each of these were real and vivid to them.  They were not better than us, and they were not worse.  They were not backwards, and they were not always right.  But they do have one thing over us, an advantage we cannot claim until the wheel moves further round its axis, and that is the plain, solid fact that they were there.

This is where history comes alive for me.  I feel what it might have been like to have been amongst them.  I sense their fears and aspirations as they faced events blindly that we see through the adventageous lense of the passing of time.  I wonder at their decisions and choices, and yearn to learn from both their failures and weaknesses.  I stand in awe that God arranged to put them here before me, and wonder why it is so.  I think about why we are placed where we are, and when we are.  And I remember that many of them, an extreme many of them, if I understand the mathematics of the generations properly, were my ancestors.  Their blood is pumping through my vines.  We have inherited not only the very dirt upon which they have trod, but the very tour of duty they have already completed.  They have had their turn, and now we have ours.  As George Washington said to John Adams at Adams' inauguration, "Now I am fairly out and you are fairly in."  It is our turn, now.  Let's see if we can do any better at it than they did.  We do have an advantage, after all.  We can learn from them.  As long as we first take off the wrapper.            

The Lesson of Initiative - Part 2

Hawke’s Blockade of Brest 

 

 

            Thirty-six years before Captain Pellew made his courageous interference with a French squadron escaping out of the harbor of Brest, another English captain was in a similar position.  The year was 1759, the pivotal year in the Seven Years War between France and Great Britain. Britain’s Royal Navy had grown in size and professionalism.  With a clear understanding that its objective was to rule the seas, the Royal Navy had taken a terrible toll on French shipping and commerce.  The English had been so successful that France was increasingly cut off from its colonies in Canada and the West Indies.   It was feared, correctly as it turned out, that without a turn in fortunes, Canada would be lost to the English.  Just as they had previously, and would again decades later, the French concluded that their best hope was an invasion of England.  Three years earlier, the mere assembling of a force to invade England had kept most of the Royal Navy close to home in the English Channel for protection, freeing French ships to sail where they pleased.  Perhaps the same result would occur again, allowing French fleets to supply the beleaguered soldiers in Canada.  Preparations for the invasion moved forward, with major activity taking place in the harbors of Brest and Quiberon Bay, France.    

            Admiral Sir Edward Hawke was in command of Britain’s Western Squadron, which had responsibility for the protection of the English coast.  Hawke had orders to cruise to Brest within fourteen days, check on French invasion preparations there, and return to a home port for reprovisioning.  When Hawke got to Brest, however, he was confronted with eleven full-size battle ships appearing capable of sailing out of the harbor at any time.  Hawke immediately decided to countermand his orders and began a close-blockade of the harbor. 

            Blockading an enemy harbor was not new.  Amassing a fleet of ships off the coast of an enemy port was an effective strategy, because the ships at sea had a distinct advantage over those that would try to come out of the port and engage in battle.  With the slow speeds of sailing ships, their reliance upon wind and its direction, and the large amount of space required to bring a fleet of ships into proper formation for battle, any fleet emerging from port into the waiting ships of an enemy blockade would be in for utter destruction. 

            Hawke, however, took the concept of close-blockade a step further than usual.  Already low on provisions, he knew he and his fleet could not last long outside the enemy port.  Water was in short supply, and it wouldn’t be long before all the other victuals would run out.  So Hawke initiated a system of re-supply at sea.  What sounds so obvious and simple to modern ears was actually quite revolutionary at the time.  Hawke sent ships back to English ports to obtain supplies, and had them rendezvous with various ships under his command out to sea.  The ships on blockade duty would then either go out in small groups to meet those ships for re-supply, or would have supplies brought to them.  This idea had been considered before, and even tried in limited ways, but never had met with much success or favor with commanders.  With Hawke, however, an aggressive and strategic commander, the concept worked remarkable well.

            Hawke’s close blockade effectively took the French fleet at Brest entirely out of the plans for invasion.  That was not all.  With the English ships on constant duty at sea, keeping watch over the trapped French ships, the morale of English sailors soared while that of the French plummeted.  There was just something intimidating about being trapped at harbor, watching an enemy off shore show its flag every day, baiting you to come out and fight.  Additionally, the English used their time to hone their skills, getting actual sailing time twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and practicing their gunnery.  The French were growing rusty while the English were growing strong.  Additionally, the French port was effectively blocked off from receiving any waterborne commerce or supplies.  The large French fleet there instead had to be sustained with expensive and slow overland operations. 

            According to author Peter Padfield, “This relentless grip on the enemy fleet base formed the cornerstone of a series of victories that year which established Great Britain as the final winner at sea and across the seas; as such it ranks among the most decisive naval campaigns in world history.”  And it all began with Hawke’s decision to cast aside his orders and pioneer the idea of a sustainable close-blockade.

             Finally, frustrated by the effectiveness of Hawke’s blockade, the French fleet made an ill-advised escape when winds were favorable to them and had blown the British out into the Atlantic.   It was the kind of move for which Hawke had been hoping.  With incredible decisiveness and almost reckless abandon, Hawke pursued the French south as they fled into QuiberonBay.   With terrible weather and dangerous rocks all around, and the day’s light fading quickly, Hawke charged ahead for the attack.  Padfield wrote, “The scene was the grandest in the long history of Anglo-French wars: under low skies darkened with lines of squalls, the two fleets drove down the spume-lathered swell from the Atlantic, ships heeling wildly as the wind gusted up and shifted a degree or so, tiers of canvas whipped taut, topmasts, t’gallants and slender stunsail booms quivering with the strain, weather rigging stretched bar-tight, timber groaning, water torn through the head gratings as the bows plunged, pressing out wide patterns of foam, the sea surging swiftly down the sides . . . Quiberon Bay . . . put an end to [king] Louis XV’s invasion plans and to his battle fleet, which ceased to exist as an effective fighting force.  The victory was a natural outcome of the close blockade which had preceded it . . . .”  Hawke’s victory at Quiberon Bay was total.  J. Creswell wrote, “It has been observed, with justice, that ‘no more courageous decision in the handling of a navy’s main battle fleet has ever been taken.’”    

 

 

Understanding and Application

 

 

            Being a sea captain in the nineteenth century was a picture of loneliness.  Far out to sea, separated from superiors and all lines of communication, with orders that were usually months old, these men were forced to rely upon their own judgment.  There was no one else on scene to guide their actions or concur with their decisions.  It is a beautiful picture of leadership. 

Leaders know that their very calling requires action, decision, and courage.  Often, leaders are confronted with facts that they don’t like, circumstances that put them at peril, and adversaries that mean them harm.  Further, there will not always be time to gather adequate intelligence before taking action, and the odds will not always be in a leader’s favor.  A leader takes stock of a situation, confronts brutal reality without denial or panic, and calculates the best plan of action.  Since time is almost always of the essence, leaders are normally faced with making decisions on their own.  Usually there just isn’t time for consultations and committee approval.  Then, once the leader makes a decision and takes action accordingly, he or she takes great pains to make the decision into a correct one.  As one lawyer stated, “I have never seen a case I couldn’t win, if properly handled, and I’ve never seen a case I couldn’t lose, either.”  A true leader makes a decision, and then works to make the decision right. 

In the course of “making it right,” leaders are often forced to improvise.  The incredible story of Cochrane and his tiny Speedy capturing the much larger El Gamo is a study in creative leadership and innovation.  Each time the battle turned against him, Cochrane was ready with a quick ruse or creative stroke.  He strung enough of these together fast enough to pull off an upset against incredible odds.  He made decisions quickly and confidently, then backed them with immediate action.  His innovative ruses then ensured that each previous decision didn’t turn out to be the wrong one.  Cochrane took initiative, created solutions, and progressed through the incredible drama with such alarming success that it enthused his crew to follow him boldly.  That’s the power of a leader’s initiative.

Hawke’s courageous decision to countermand his orders and blockade Brest, which he was unprepared to do, was bold enough.  But then creating a way to sustain his decision proved to be the master stroke.  It not only gave him an enormous strategic advantage over his enemy, but ultimately caused one of the most devastating battles in naval history.  It should also be noted, that Hawke’s innovation became a new standard of operation for the Royal Navy and a major weapon against the French in its own right.  The impact of Hawke’s methods of re-supply at sea and resulting long-term close blockade were used extensively in the later Napoleonic Wars to enormous effect.              

Action and the habit of initiative, in addition to developing a leader’s effectiveness, also tend to foster creativity.  Innovation in the face of adversity is a key component in the initiative required of a leader.  Where many people, when confronted with difficult circumstances, hesitate, gather more information, and seek to ask superiors for advice and assistance, leaders enact creative solutions and take action.  If there isn’t a ready-made solution, they invent one.  What others may perceive as a gamble, leaders understand to be a mere calculated risk.   In the face of superior odds, a leader must have the courage to innovate.

The Lesson of Initiative - Part 1

  One trait common to all leaders is initiative.  Leaders don't have to be told to do something, they don't need managers above them, and they don't wait for the all lights to turn green before departing on a trip.  Leaders take action, they take responsibility, and they don't take their time waiting and wondering if they should act.  There is an old line that there are three types of people in the world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.  Leaders are the ones in the first group making things happen.  A component in initiative is the courage to act.  Another is decisiveness.  Leaders display a willingness toward action, seeing what needs to be done and doing it without further delay.  Initiative is not to be confused with recklessness.  Instead, it is a mixture of a spirit of enterprise, courage, and competent decisiveness.

Thomas Cochrane and the Capture of the Gamo 

            Englishman Thomas Cochrane’s first command was the tiny brig misnamed the Speedy.  It was actually quite slow and difficult to handle.  But this fact hadn’t stopped Cochrane and his crew from amassing an impressive string of victories, capturing scores of enemy vessels along Spain’s Mediterranean coast.  In fact, their successes had been so numerous that the crew of the Speedy was at about half strength, the remainder of the men having been sent off as “prize crews” responsible for sailing the captured crafts back to home ports.  There were barely enough men left on board to sail the ship.  The Speedy and its plucky commander had become more than a nuisance to the Spanish, whose trade had been significantly interrupted by the capture of nearly fifty ships in less than a year.

            On the one year anniversary of his command, Cochrane was in pursuit of two Spanish gunboats that fled into the harborof Barcelona.  Apparently acting as decoys, the gun boats led the Speedy into the path of a thirty-two gun Spanish frigate named El Gamo, which had been sent out in search of Cochrane.  The Gamo was four times the size of the Speedy, and had over three hundred sailors and marines on board compared to Cochrane’s mere fifty-four.  Whereas the Speedy had only fourteen guns, the El Gamo had thirty-two.  The capability of the guns was all out of proportion as well, with the broadside of the Gamo being 190 pounds to the Speedy’s 28 (a broadside was the total weight of shot capable of being fired from one side of a ship’s guns and was a common measure of firepower). 

Being too close to the larger ship to run for safety, Cochrane surprised his crew by deciding to turn and fight rather than surrender.  According to biographer Donald Thomas, “The one factor in Cochrane’s favour was the improbability of what he was about to do.  The officers of the Gamo would never believe that anyone but a lunatic would try to attack them with a brig whose mastheads hardly reached much above their own quarterdeck.”  Cochrane sailed in close to windward (the side offering the advantage of the wind), and to cause confusion, he flew the American flag.  Flying the colors of other countries, particularly a neutral like the United States, was a common ruse during the age of fighting sail.  Nonetheless, it caused hesitation on the part of the Gamo.  For the moment the menacing gun ports of the Spanish ship remained silent.  Then Cochrane turned the Speedy and came around on the leeward side of the Spanish (giving the Gamo the wind advantage); another move designed to confuse.  At this point, Cochrane quickly had his crew raise the British flag.

As the Speedy sailed closer at high speed, it somehow survived the first broadside of the larger ship.  This was by design.  Cochrane had surrendered the coveted “weather gauge” by giving the Spanish ship the windward position, and he purposely took the leeward side.  Although battle maneuvers were more difficult from that side, it was also harder for a ship in the Gamo’s position to fire at an enemy so close to leeward.  The wind heeled the ship over and shots were likely to go into the sea.

 

Cochrane told his men to hold their fire, and he instructed them to double-shot their guns.  This meant they would have less of a firing range, but would spew forth twice the amount of projectiles and have the potential for causing much more destruction.  “Grape” or “grapeshot” was a mixture of metal pieces and balls designed to scatter like a shotgun blast and inflict maximum damage to personnel and rigging.  A double-shot dose of it, properly aimed, would be deadly to all in its path.  It was risky to sail in close enough to use a double-shotted broadside, but it just might give the Speedy a chance.

 

A second broadside for the Gamo had no affect on the charging Speedy, which was approaching as though it meant to ram the bigger vessel.  Then there was a crash as the masts and rigging of the two ships entangled upon impact.  The Gamo’s guns fired again, but the shot went over the heads of all aboard the tiny Speedy and only damaged sails and rigging.  Finally, the Speedy aimed its comparatively little four-pounders as high as possible and fired.  Because of the angle of the shots, upward and through the Gamo’s gun ports, the effect was devastating.  The flooring under some of the Spanish guns was blown upwards as the grapeshot scattered in its deadly patterns. The captain of the Gamo was killed instantly.  The firing continued furiously from both sides, but because of the mismatch in size and gun position, the Speedy inflicted more damage.

Because of the ineffectiveness of their firing, soldiers aboard the Gamo made three attempts to “board” the Speedy and force a hand-to-hand fight.  Each time, however, Cochrane would let the Spanish assemble for the jump across, then maneuver his ship to widen the gap of ocean between.  Once perched in such a position, musket and small arms fire from the Speedy would wipe out the would-be attackers.

The fight continued in this manner for over an hour.  Then, according to Cochrane, “The great disparity of force rendering it necessary to adopt some measure that might prove decisive, I resolved to board.”  His men, in disbelief over what they had so far achieved, enthusiastically responded to this practically suicidal order.

Cochrane split his men into two groups, leaving only the ship’s surgeon aboard and at the wheel.  One group, with faces painted black for effect, went to the front and climbed aboard the Gamo from the bow.  The other, led by Cochrane himself, climbed straight up the side of the Spanish ship.  In the smoke, noise, and confusion, the Spanish were unnerved by the screaming black faces rushing at them from the front of their ship while they were engaged with attackers from the side as well.

 

In the tight quarters aboard the deck of the Gamo, the superior numbers of the Spanish could not be brought to full advantage.  Even so, Cochrane was not out of surprises.  In the middle of the melee, he called over to the only man left aboard the Speedy and instructed him, very loudly, to send the second wave of attackers.  Somehow the recipient of the bogus order managed to contain his surprise, and pretended to comply with loud shouts and orders to sailors who didn’t exist.  Many of the Spanish apparently concluded that the Speedy had been packed with Marines and the whole battle had been a trap. 

Next, someone noticed that the Spanish ensign was being lowered from the mast: the sign of surrender.  But it wasn’t the Spanish lowering it. Rather, it was one of Cochrane’s men who had previously been instructed to do so at a proper point in the struggle.  Before they could figure out that it was a trick, the disheartened Spanish, with their captain dead, laid down their weapons.  Afraid the Spanish would discover how few had defeated them, Cochrane and his men were quick to shuttle the Spanish below decks, where they were held in position with the Gamo’s two largest guns. 

The tiny little Speedy proceeded to the British port in Minorca towing a prize ship four times its size.  Donald Thomas wrote, “The Gamo should have been able to blow the Speedy out of the water before the British ship came near enough to fire a shot.  The Spanish troops should have been able to overwhelm the depleted crew of the brig as soon as she came alongside.  A man who was so foolish as to lead forty-eight seamen on board an enemy ship with a crew of more than three hundred ought to have found himself and his men prisoners within a few minutes.”  But it didn’t happen that way.  Instead, Cochrane had pulled off what Nathan Miller called “the finest single-ship action of the Napoleonic Wars.”

(To be continued)

The Desire to Secure Property - Taken to the Extreme

I recently came across a very scholarly work regarding slavery in early America and was fascinated by the interesting angle from which it analyzed that horrible institution.  I have chosen a few segments upon which to comment, my remarks in blue following each section.

A New Perspective on Antebellum Slavery: Public Policy and Slave Prices

Yanochihk, Ewing, Thornton

Atlantic Economic Journal, Sept. 2001

Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman [1974] revolutionized the economics of slavery and established the "capitalistic character" of antebellum slavery. They showed that the price of slaves and the profitability and long-run viability of slavery in the American South were based on economic factors such as the demand for plantation output, capital markets, and the entrepreneurial ability to organize slave labor and increase productivity. Fogel [1989, p. 11] recognized that "the slave economy did not operate in a vacuum. Both its original economic successes and its ultimate collapse were heavily influenced by the legal and political conditions." However, while Fogel [pp. 11, 201-417] places great emphasis on political forces in the destruction of slavery, he maintains that economic conditions were the overriding factors for explaining the success of the institution [pp. 60-80]. Many scholars have recognized the importance of the slave codes for determining the legal character of American slavery and the treatment that slaves received from their owners, but public policy and the slave codes continue to be ignored as a factor in the economics of slavery. [1]

This article posits that one of the over-riding reasons slavery continued to work in the south was because it was carefully established to remain economically viable.  This was done through several factors, but two that are rarely heard about are Public Policy and Slave Codes (using the government and the legal system).  The whole arrangement of slavery was for the "many" (slaves) to do all the work so that the "few" (slave owners) could be prosperous.  I guess it should not be surprising that the large plantation owners of the antebellum south used their clout, wealth, prestige, resources, and influence to bend the local laws to their advantage. 

The relationship between public policy and the profitability of antebellum slavery is explored here with an empirical investigation of the impact of manumission laws and slave patrol statutes on the market value of slaves. Empirical testing confirms that these public policies did have a sta tistically significant relationship with slave prices. These results provide a new perspective [2] on antebellum slavery: the profitability of slavery and the political institutions of slavery--the slave codes--were dependent on public choice. [3]

The more successful the wealthy slave owners were at getting statutes passed and using laws to "trap" slaves into their condition of bondage, the wealthier they became as a result.  In essence, the more trapped the slaves were, the more valuable they were to the wealthy plantation owners who amassed all the resultant wealth of production and shared almost none of it with the slaves.

The Political Economy of Slave Security

Economists John S. Mill [1987] and John Cairnes [1863] identified public policy and other institutions as important constraints on the value of slaves. They also recognized that monitoring slaves was the important variable in determining the efficiency and profitability of slave labor. Combining these insights, this paper investigates the role that public policy played in the monitoring of slaves and, thus, the economic viability of slavery in the Antebellum South.

Monitoring slave labor consists of both supervision and security. Productivity supervision is common to both free and slave labor and is necessary to prevent shirking and increase labor productivity. This type of monitoring includes direct supervision, the threat of punishment, output incentives, and other advanced management techniques. A central contribution of the new economic historians was to identify the supervision of labor in the gang system as the key to the productivity and efficiency of slave labor in the Antebellum South.

Security monitoring or policing was necessary to prevent slave labor from escaping and was unique to slave management. [4] Security monitoring to prevent the loss of slave capital has both internal and external functions. Internal security involved the use of lookouts, armed guards, spies, natural and artificial barriers to escape, as well as intimidation of slaves with guns and whips. External security consisted of resources to track down escaped slaves and discourage escape attempts. Internal security is a private sector function while external security can be both private and public.

Private external security included the use of free labor with guns, horses, and dogs to find and capture escaped slaves. Slave owners also posted reward notices, took out newspaper advertisements, and hired bounty hunters to track, capture, and return escaped slaves. Public external security consisted of laws and public policies that were designed to increase the cost and reduce the likelihood of successful escape. The slave codes were state statutes that provided public external security. [5]

The value of the whole system rested upon the ability to keep the slaves trapped.  To manage this, a complex arrangement of Internal and External controls were erected, over time.  First, there would be direct supervision and tight security provided by the slave owners themselves.  If any slave ever got caught fleeing, he or she would be brutally and publically punished, sometimes unto death.  The purpose of this was to deter the others from "getting notions of freedom."  In effect, Internal Control required a physical example that others who would try to escape could expect the same drastic fate.  External Controls were the contrivances of local laws, statutes, and even the sermons of local preachers, all which combined to ensure an external threat to slaves attempting escape.  Even if they could outrun the restrictions of bondage provided by their direct slave owner, "out there" awaited a system equally constructed to infringe upon their freedom.  In essence, to "get away" was not to escape, it would simply take the slave into the second ring of defense - the public system.

In addition to being the distinguishing feature of slave management, there are several reasons why security was crucial to the management of slave labor. First, the primary concern of any investor is the preservation of capital, and a single slave represented a substantial investment. Second, large-scale slave escapes or rebellions represented a great risk to other property such as homes, barns, and livestock as well as the lives of slave owners and their families. Thus, while the subject of supervision was relegated to agriculture and business journals, security issues such as the slave codes, the Dred Scott decision, and John Brown's Raid were topics of intense political and public debate. Indeed, Franklin [1952, pp. 52-3] has described the South as an "armed camp" and labeled the efforts to subjugate the slave population a "cornerstone of Southern civilization."

As is true of many enterprises, it is easier to secure for itself the prizes of its investment, rather than to risk it on the open market of competition.  Business history is full of examples of companies and leaders who, once having secured an asset or market share or whatever, suddenly leaves the realm of capitalism and begins scrambling for whatever means possible to secure their holdings and procure an advantage that doesn't have to continue to be earned in the free market. 

Notice how slave holders were fearful that a successful slave revolt could lead to a large-scale revolt, which would threaten their whole system.  It is a clear understanding of this that explains the barbarity with which a single escaped slave was treated.  In essence, the other slaves had to "see a dead body."  Otherwise, if escape, especially on a large scale, were ever shown to be possible, the remaining masses of slaves just might rise up together and escape en mass.  This, in effect, would topple the whole institution. 

Since the whole economy of the antebellum south was predicated upon extracting value from people against their will, the protection of this entrapment had to have top priority.  In fact, it is quite easy to speculate that more effort was placed on keeping, trapping, and enslaving the slaves than was expended in making them more productive, comfortable, or efficient.  Instead, slave owners placed their focus upon Internal and External means of keeping the slaves in bondage, rather than on becoming more competitive in an open market.

The Antebellum South is generally characterized as a free market, agricultural economy based on slave labor. Slave owners exploited the value of slave labor and benefitted from the rising world demand for cotton generated by the Industrial Revolution. However, slave owners were also in a position to control the political process. It has often been noted that slave owners had political power at the national level, and indeed, the history of the antebellum period centers on the conflicts and compromises between the slave power of the South and the mercantile interests in the North. Slave owners certainly had dominating political influence at the state and local levels.

One of the most effective ways of maintaining the bondage of slaves (and therefore their unfair economic advantage) was for wealthy plantation owners, many of them second and third generation, to use their influence in the public processes to enact laws to their advantage.  The more influence on the political process they could weild, the more External help they would have in keeping their institution protected.

While large-scale slave owners were not a majority, there is little question that they could control the political process. First, restrictive voting laws ensured that white male property owners dominated the electorate. Second, the economic power of slave owners surpassed that of nonowners. Third, the combination of slave owners and aligned interest groups suc h as financiers (bankers and factors), lawyers, brokers, and owners of transportation facilities ensured that slave owners could manipulate the political process to their own advantage. With respect to slave security issues, their power was reinforced by the general population's fear of slave uprisings and racist ideology.

Because of their wealth, large-scale slave owners could muster a disproportionate level of influence on the public policies of their state and local governments.  In effect, they had more power to help shape laws and control the various forms of government than anyone else.  Their wealth also opened doors with other powerful figures in what today would be called "special interest groups." 

Also, the wealthy plantation owners had successfully propagated a common public fear of a general uprising, so that, unwittingly, the non-wealthy local populations inadvertently added to the constraints on the freedoms of the slaves.  As long as an argument could be made to show how what was bad for the wealthy plantation owners was also bad for the "common, little guy," this process of mass exploitation could continue.

Slave patrol statutes were state laws that mandated local police patrols to examine the passes of traveling slaves, monitor slave meetings, enforce other aspects of the slave code, and capture escaped slaves. Naturally, these patrols enhanced the security of slave assets and reduced the private costs of security to slave owners. Public security against escape in effect extended the average work life of a slave at public expense, and this was expected to increase the capital value of slaves. [6]

The longer wealthy plantation owners could keep slaves trapped, the more valuable they were.  The more they could get external forces to work to their advantage, the more complete the encirclement of the individual slave.  The more the wealthy plantation owners could get the forces of government to do their work for them, the cheaper it became for them.  In effect, by employing the forces of public policy, the wealthy plantation owners were getting the government to help them trap slaves, and at a discounted rate!

Manumission laws restricted the right of a slave owner to grant freedom to slaves or to allow someone to purchase a slave's freedom. [11] The purpose of these laws was to prevent the emergence of a large, free black population who could facilitate the escape of slaves or help organize slave rebellions. Most importantly, black slavery in a free white society provided a distinct security advantage because slaves could be identified by the color of their skin. [12] If slave owners were allowed to free their slaves (or to sell them their freedom), then the proportion of free blacks would rise as it had in other slave societies. A large population of free blacks would reduce the security advantage of black-only slavery and drive down the profitability and the price of slaves. Generally, manumission laws did permit owners to free their slaves, but only if the slaves were exported to other states or to Liberia, a fact that emphasizes the security nature of such laws. [13]

Not only were wealthy plantation owners doing everything in their power to entrap their own slaves, but, in order to keep the whole house of cards standing, they had to infringe upon the rights of other slave owners to free their own slaves!  "Since I'm working so hard to keep mine trapped, you don't have the right to free yours!"  Notice how the motivation for this was how dangerous it would be to have a bunch of "free blacks" walking around.  This could lead to confusion as to who was free, and bring us right back to that old fear again of a general uprising.  The phrase for these genteel plantation owners was, "Once a slave, always a slave."  Notice how it also, once again, is all about profitability.

There is much more in this article by Yanochik, Ewing, and Thornton, but I have culled the main points for our purposes here.  For those interested in digesting the whole thing, you can find it here. 

Why this negative illustration from history?  What can someone on the journey of leadership development learn from all of this?

Benjamin Franklin once said, "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security deserves neither, and loses both."

This is true in an economic sense, as well.

Leaders must understand that the pursuit of "advantage" is a losing proposition.  What is gained in the battle of free enterprise cannot and should not ever be secured by means other than competition.  A leader must always guard against the tendency to arrive at a place only to "pull up the draw bridge" behind them.  Instead, real leaders must understand the need to stay in the battle, to be willing to continue doing the things that brought them success in the first place, and to resist the temptation to become more concerned about securing what they have than in advancing to new accomplishments.  Whenever "securing property" takes precedence over "fulfilling destiny," leaders are simply not leading anymore.  Worse, they are becoming weak and increasingly succeptable to becoming eclypsed by a new competitor who does not fear the battle of free competition.

African slavery in the Antebellum South is one of history's most glaring examples of what happens when men strive to secure for themselves an unfair advantage at the expense of others.  Protectionism, tariffs, import duties, and the like, in the economic world, weaken those who are "protected" until they no longer are fit to compete.  Their abilities grow so weak under this protected position that they become slaves themselves to the protections they have set up for themselves.  In other categories, the principles are true, as well.  Whenever someone tries to arrange "security" at the expense of competition, weakness results. 

In such cases, as Benjamin Franklin said, BOTH security and liberty are lost.

The wealthy plantation owners not only lost everything they had, including their entire way of life in a bloody civil war, but they will live on in the memories of time as some of the most vile, greedy, mostrous examples of ambition-gone-wrong.  By refusing to compete with the outside world on even terms, by enslaving human beings against their will, by manipulating the public system of laws and security to aid them in their efforts, they corrupted themselves and became one of history's "best" worst examples of leadership.

And those they enslaved, whipped, tortured and killed in an effort to suppress the thoughts of freedom and rebellion in the breasts of all the other slaves?  History remembers them with respect and admiration, for the dignity and perseverence they showed in unbelievable circumstances.  The scars from whips and chains, meant to deter and frighten, instead look to us like badges of courage and honor, and serve as a constant reminder of the evil man is capable of.