Congress Buys a Navy offers a new look at the nexus of American politics, economics, and the funding and creation of what is thought of as the "modern" U.S. Navy. Filling in significant gaps in prior economic histories of the era, Paul Pedisich analyzes the roles nine presidencies and cabinets, sixteen Navy secretaries, and countless U.S. congressmen have played in shaping and funding our maritime forces. In the years following the American Civil War, the peacetime Navy deteriorated considerably. By 1881 the legislature earmarked virtually all of its naval appropriations to expensive repair work to maintain decrepit wooden and iron ships. Congress reversed that direction at the end of its final session in March 1883 and began building a new Navy by approving the construction of a few modern steam-driven steel warships. Initially, events in the Caribbean and South America, along with U.S. business interests in international trade, provided a stimulus for increased naval expenditures for ships and shore facilities. Thanks to the legislative actions of the twenty congresses that met from 1881 to 1921, the Navy was transformed from a perceived embarrassment to the United States to one of the best fighting forces in the world. Although Navy officers prepared extensive annual recommendations for fleet composition and increases, they were not principal decision makers. Pedisich's narrative begins with President James Garfield's appointment of William Hunt as Secretary of the Navy and the formation of the Forty-seventh Congress in March 1881, and continues on to the reduction of naval forces by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. While the main acts in U.S. political history often privilege the actions of the president and his cabinet, Pedisich brings to light the individual rationales, voting blocs, agendas, and political intrigue that drove this process of making a modern Navy. -- Inside jacket flaps.

The first hundred years -- A beginning: 1881-1882 -- Politics versus progress: 1882-1883 -- Incubation: 1883-1885 -- Some movement: 1885-1889 -- A turning point: 1889-1893 -- Reasonable progress: 1893-1897 -- War and imperialism: 1897-1899 -- Reorganization and growth: 1899-1901 -- An offensive Navy: 1902-1905 -- Power projected: 1905-1909 -- Steady as she goes: 1909-1913 -- Neutrality: 1913-1915 -- Second to none: 1915-1921.