35. Reforming the Navy
Uriah Levy spent 49 years in the US Navy, but of those, only 16 years were on active duty. He spent the remaining years in the day’s equivalent of an inactive naval reserve, “awaiting orders”, signifying that he was on call and could be activated at any moment. He spent those inactive years making himself wealthy with investments in New York City’s real estate market.
Levy nonetheless played an outsized role in shaping and reforming the Navy. Among his naval legacies, the greatest was probably the lead role he played in abolishing flogging as a punishment – a reform that was quite controversial at the time. To ensure against backsliding or a future reversal of his reforms, he successfully lobbied Congress into passing an anti-flogging bill in 1850, cementing the ban as a matter of federal law.
