Rallying to the emergency, though too late to accomplish much practical result, we built a number of excellent ships, against the votes of many highly influential men in Congress.

These ships did gallant service, and redeemed the reputation of Americans from the oft-repeated charge of being cowards and merely commercial men, though they were too few to prevent the blockade which British squadrons maintained on our Atlantic coast.

After the war, the navy was again allowed to deteriorate; and although our ships were excellent, and the officers and men were excellent, and although the war with Mexico supplied some stimulation, the War of the Rebellion caught us in a very bad predicament.

The country rose to this emergency too slowly, as before; but the enemy were even less prepared than we, so that during the four years of the Civil War we were able to construct, man, and buy several hundred ships of various kinds; with the result that, at the end of the war, our navy, if not quite so powerful as Great Britain's, was at least very close to it, and with a recent experience in actual war which the British navy did not possess.
After that war, the same story was repeated.

The people convinced themselves that they would never again be forced to go to war; that they had seen the folly of it, and the misery of it, and would devote themselves thereafter to the delightful pursuits of peace.
Gradually the fighting ships of the ironclad class were allowed to go to pieces; gradually even the larger ships of the wooden sailing class fell into disrepair; gradually the idea of war faded from the minds even of naval officers; gradually squadrons and fleets, as such, were broken up, and our ships were to be found scattered singly over all the seas, and swinging idly at their anchors in pleasant ports.
Fortunately, Admiral Luce and a very few other officers had learned the salient lessons of war during the Rebellion, and sturdily stood up against the decadent tendency of the times.