1866 - Status of the Navy and Marines Prior to the Gilded Age
THE SCOPE OF THIS entry is to review the status of the Navy, and more largely the Marine Corps in 1866, the year following the Civil War. REFORM DOMINATES the discussion about the U.S. Navy in the latter half of the 19 th century. To better understand the extent of the reform, we need to understand the state of the Navy immediately following the Civil War. Despite having executed a successful campaign to interdict foreign ships supplying the Confederacy during the war and controlling communications and commerce on interior rivers of the south, the U.S. Navy quickly slid from its relative dominance. The Navy that had more ships than the Royal Navy and helped to dissuade the French from its Mexican dalliance in the Western hemisphere, also suffered from poor design decisions, corruption in appropriations and the management of the various Navy Yards, and the polarized regional politics and recriminations that dominated Reconstruction. AS ALWAYS, the course of the U.S.