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By the end of the US Civil War, the US Navy, which had been on a massive expansion program, building new warships, buying civilian ships for naval service, and converting captured blockade runners into warships. The US Navy ended up possessing a total of 671 warships and 60 monitor-type coastal ironclad gunboats. It was either the largest navy in the world, or the second-largest after the Royal Navy.

In OTL, the US allowed this power to decline rapidly, and would not be a major naval power again until the 1890s. But WI after the end of the war, the US recognized that it could now be a major power on the world stage, and decided to keep this naval might?
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