Thursday, October 1, 2026
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On May 6, 1864, in the tangled woods of Virginia’s Wilderness, Col. Benjamin F. Tracy led his 109th New York infantry into battle. Part of the IX Corps, the regiment was positioned at the center of the Union line, between the Orange Turnpike and the Orange Plank Road.
Tracy had raised the 109th in 1862, but this was its first major combat, having spent most of the war guarding the defenses of Washington, D.C. In the chaos of the Wilderness fighting, the regiment began to break. Tracy grabbed the colors, rallied his men, and led them forward—an act of courage that later earned him the Medal of Honor. His citation read: “Seized the colors and led the regiment when other regiments had retired and then reformed his line and held it.”
Later that year, Tracy commanded the prison camp at Elmira, New York, before ending the war in command of the 127th United States Colored Troops. He mustered out in 1865 and later received a brevet promotion to brigadier general. His Civil War service was short but distinguished—yet it may not have been his greatest contribution to his country.
In the two decades after the Civil War, Tracy held a variety of prominent legal and political offices. On March 6, 1889, President Benjamin Harrison appointed him Secretary of the Navy. The U.S. Navy Tracy inherited was a shadow of the powerful fleet that had helped win the Civil War. By the late 1880s, it consisted mostly of small coastal defense vessels, with little ability to project power abroad. Meanwhile, rapid technological change was transforming navies around the world, as iron and steel warships replaced wooden hulls and new doctrines emphasized the balance between gunnery and armor.
Although Congress had authorized several new ships in the mid-1880s—including the USS Maine—their designs were already outdated. When Tracy took office, he found a Navy eager for reform. Drawing on the Naval War College and inspired by Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History (1890), Tracy began advocating for a modern fleet. With President Harrison’s backing, he persuaded Congress in 1890 to authorize a major new construction program, including the Navy’s first four true battleships: USS Indiana, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Iowa.
During the remainder of his tenure, which ended in 1893, Tracy oversaw this ambitious building effort and the development of doctrine to employ the new ships effectively. Most of the vessels were completed by 1895–96, just in time for the Spanish–American War.
When U.S. forces defeated the Spanish fleet off Santiago de Cuba on July 3, 1898, the victory ended 400 years of Spanish naval power in the Caribbean. All four of Tracy’s battleships played prominent roles in the victory, as did a host of lesser ships.
Benjamin F. Tracy died in 1915 and is buried in Brooklyn, New York. His leadership helped lay the foundation for America’s emergence as a global naval power.
