Stephen Mallory

Stephen Russell Mallory was an American politician who was a United States senator from Florida from 1851 to the secession of his home state and the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. For much of that period, he was chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs. It was a time of rapid naval reform, and he insisted that the ships of the U.S. Navy should be as capable as those of Britain and France, the foremost navies in the world at that time. He also wrote a bill and guided it through Congress to provide for compulsory retirement of officers who did not meet the standards of the profession.