Benjamin F. Tracy

Benjamin F. Tracy

Benjamin Franklin Tracy (* 26. April 1830 in Apalachin , New York ; †  6. August 1915 in Tioga County , New York) was an American lawyer and politician ( Republican Party ), of the Cabinet of President Benjamin Harrison as Marine Minister belonged .

Lawyer and army officer

After studying law , Benjamin Tracy was inducted into the New York State Bar in 1851. Two years later, he was elected District Attorney for Tioga County as a member of the Whigs ; when reelected in 1855 he was already a Republican member who had helped found his county earlier. In 1862 he became a member of the New York State Assembly .

During the Civil War , Tracy served with the rank of Brigadier General in the Union Army and commanded the 109th Infantry Regiment from New York. For his service during the Battle of the Wilderness on May 6, 1864, he was awarded the Medal of Honor . After the war he returned to work as a lawyer. From 1866 to 1877 he was the successor of Benjamin D. Silliman federal attorney for the eastern district of New York; between 1881 and 1883 he served as a judge on the New York Court of Appeals , the highest court in the state.

Political career

After the Republicans won the presidential election in 1888 , the new President Benjamin Harrison appointed him to his cabinet as Secretary of the Navy . There Tracy sought a comprehensive reform of the navy , which had been strived for before the Civil War, but was then practically forgotten. Like President Harrison, he favored a naval strategy of attack , while defending the coastline was not a priority. An ally in the plans to create the "New Navy" was Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan , president of Naval War College , who established the modern US Navy doctrine of naval superiority with his book The Influence of Sea Power upon History , published in 1890 .

Secretary of the Navy Tracy in his office

Tracy also sponsored the construction of modern warships. On June 30, 1890, Congress passed the Navy Bill , as a result of which the three battleships USS Indiana (BB-1) , Massachusetts (BB-2) and Oregon (BB-3) went into service; the Iowa (BB-4) followed two years later.

After Harrison's defeat in the presidential election in 1892 , Benjamin Tracy also resigned from government on March 4, 1893. He worked as a lawyer again and in 1896 brought Theodore Roosevelt , the chief of the New York City Police Department, against himself when he defended New York Police Chief Andrew Parker against his allegations of neglect and incompetence. He also acted as a mediator in a border dispute between Venezuela and Great Britain .

In 1897, Tracy returned to the political scene when he ran for the office of Mayor of New York City. With 19.5 percent of the vote, however, he only finished third behind the victorious Democrat Robert Anderson Van Wyck and Seth Low of the Citizens Union . He then limited himself to his legal practice and died in 1915 on his farm in Tioga County.

The destroyer USS Tracy (DD-214) used in World War II was named after the former Minister of the Navy.

Web links

• Benjamin F. Tracy in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Benjamin F. Tracy in the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)
• Benjamin F. Tracy at The Political Graveyard