Description: This is volume two of a three volume set History of the Navy of the United States of America was originally published in 1866. From the hour when the navy was first called into existence, during the arduous struggles of a most important revolution, down to the present moment, its services have been material and brilliant, and he is but an equivocal friend who shall attempt to conceal its real exploits behind the veil of flattery. Such expedients may serve a purpose, and answer for a time; but the truth will be certain to assert, and recover, its ascendency. The country appears to be touching on great events. A war has commenced among us, though scarcely of a maritime character, must give extensive employment to the national marine, and may indeed demand, the exercise of all its energies. The Navy of the United States presents a very different aspect, in 1846, from that which it offered in 1815. Its existence has been trebled as to time, within the last thirty years, and its force increased fifty fold. As respects the navies of this hemisphere, it is supreme; the united marines of all the rest of this continent being unable to contend against it, for an hour. About the AuthorJames Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) was an American novelist, travel writer, and social critic, regarded as the first great American writer of fiction. He was famed for his action-packed plots and his vivid, if somewhat idealized, portrayal of American life in the forest and at sea. Born in Burlington, New Jersey, Cooper grew up in Cooperstown, a central New York State town founded by his father. Much of Cooper's knowledge of the forest and Native Americans was gathered firsthand during his boyhood in a region still very much a wilderness. After being expelled from Yale University in 1805 for his prankish behavior, Cooper served as a sailor in the merchant marine and as a midshipman in the United States Navy. He left naval service in 1811 to marry Susan DeLancey, and for several years managed his wife's income-producing estates in Westchester County, New York. Cooper began his writing career at the age of 30. He wrote his first book, Precaution (1820), primarily to demonstrate to his wife that he could write a better novel than the one he was reading to her at the time. Precaution was a conventional novel of English manners and was not a success. Cooper chose for his second book a subject closer to home, and the result, The Spy (1821), a novel about the American Revolution (1775-1783) in New York State, was successful both in the United States and abroad. In 1823 Cooper wrote The Pioneers, the first of the five novels that make up the Leatherstocking Tales. The remaining four books were ---The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841).

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