patriotic organizations such as the "Daughters of the American
Revolution" and a host of others, sought to trace out American
genealogy and to perpetuate the memory of American military and
naval achievements. Respect for the American flag was taught in
schools, and the question was debated as to whether its use in
comic opera indicated respect or insult. This new nationalism was
unlike the expansionist movement of the fifties in that it laid
no particular stress upon the incorporation of the neighboring
republics by a process of federation. On the whole, the people
had lost their faith in the assimilating influence of republican
institutions and did not desire to annex alien territory and
races. They were now more concerned with the consolidation of
their own country and with its place in the world. Nor were they
as neglectful as their fathers had been of the material means by
which to accomplish their somewhat indefinite purposes.

The reconstruction of the American Navy, which had attained such
magnitude and played so important a part in the Civil War but
which had been allowed to sink into the merest insignificance,
was begun by William E. Chandler, the Secretary of the Navy under
President Arthur. William C. Whitney, his successor under
President Cleveland, continued the work with energy. Captain
Alfred T. Mahan began in 1883 to publish that series of studies
in naval history which won him world-wide recognition and did so
much to revolutionize prevailing conceptions of naval strategy. A
Naval War College was established in 1884, at Newport, Rhode
Island, where naval officers could continue the studies which
they had begun at Annapolis.

The total neglect of the army was not entirely the result of