A forerunner to the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Revenue-Marine, which was later named The U.S. Revenue Cutter Service, was established by Congress on August 4, 1790.
The maritime fleet was proposed by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton as a desperate measure to secure revenue for a deeply indebted young nation. At the time, the United States had no standing navy, leaving its coastal waters entirely unprotected and vulnerable to massive smuggling networks that bypassed import tariffs. The armed cutters of the Revenue-Marine served as the nation’s only defensive enforcement force on the water, effectively stabilizing the federal treasury and establishing a tradition of maritime law enforcement that lives on today.
Image: U.S. Revenue Cutter Salmon P. Chase before 1907 via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
