Mahan's religion complicates a simple account of his racial views

Mahan's life extended beyond naval strategy into writing about the Episcopal Church, Anglicanism, and moral conduct. Armstrong describes him as a racist shaped by a Southern family and the United States of the 1840s. In the early twentieth century, Mahan also worked through an Episcopal organization concerned with racial equality and exchanged letters with Booker T. Washington about opportunity for African Americans. These activities belong alongside his prejudice in an account of his life.