In 1950, during the Korean War, Gen. Douglas MacArthur presented a plan for an audacious amphibious landing at Inchon that he believed would reverse the course of the war. The Navy balked. The landings would be difficult, if not impossible, the skeptical admirals said, owing to the treacherous tides. To convince them otherwise, MacArthur made a melodramatic plea, punctuated by a story about the French and Indian War and how the Royal Navy in 1759 had overcome more fearsome obstacles in a daring landing above Quebec that resulted in the resounding British triumph at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. The Chief of Naval Operations pledged that the U.S. Navy would get MacArthur to Inchon.
The 1759 Quebec Expedition whose example inspired MacArthur and swayed those admirals has suffered no shortage of historians. Francis Parkman’s 1884 epic, “Montcalm and Wolfe,” framed the very meaning of the French and Indian War around the two opposing commanders who were united by both the battle and the mortal wounds they received during it. In Parkman’s telling, the Marquis de Montcalm and James Wolfe personified the broader struggle in America between French authoritarianism and British republicanism.
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