As part of legislation that also established the office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Congress created the Naval Reserve on March 3, 1915. A centennial is a significant milestone, but given that the U.S. Navy recently celebrated its 239th birthday, the question needs to be asked: What took so long? Had Congress passed Thomas Jefferson's Naval Militia Act of 1805, the bicentennial of the Navy Reserve would have been a decade ago. It was the third president's desire to create the same manpower augmentation structure for the Navy as had been done for the Army with passage of the Militia Act of 1792.
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