The Navalist Triumph: Politicians, Professionals, and the Fight for the Direction of American Naval Policy, 1885–1889

Abstract

This chapter charts the course and outcome of a political tussle over the Naval War College and the strategic ideas its leading lights, Stephen Luce and Alfred Mahan, championed during the latter years of the 1880s. The outcome turned on the appointment of Benjamin Tracy as Secretary of the Navy in 1889. Tracy proved amenable to their arguments regarding both the College and the future direction of American naval policy. His 1889 report to Congress called for the construction of a modest force of four battleships, but he proposed eventually to amass a battlefleet of twenty such ships, capable of meeting enemy forces at sea before they could threaten the nation’s coasts. The strategic rationale came from Laughton and had been adopted to meet America’s circumstances.