He was born in the hamlet of
Apalachin located in the Town of
Owego, New York, on April 26, 1830. Later that year, he became commandant of the
Elmira prisoner of war camp, before being appointed Colonel of the 127th Infantry, U.S. Colored Troops, on August 23, 1864. Tracy was discharged from the volunteer service on June 13, 1865. On January 18, 1867,
President Andrew Johnson nominated Tracy for appointment to the
brevet grade of
brigadier general of volunteers, to rank from March 13, 1865, and the U.S. Senate confirmed the appointment on February 21, 1867. He resumed the practice of law after the war, and became active in New York state politics. He was
United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York from 1866 to 1877. In December 1881, he was appointed by Governor
Alonzo B. Cornell to the
New York Court of Appeals to fill the vacancy caused by the appointment of Judge
Charles Andrews as
Chief Judge after the resignation of
Charles J. Folger. Tracy remained on the bench until the end of 1882 when Andrews resumed his seat after being defeated by
William C. Ruger in the
election for Chief Judge. In 1875, Tracy defended the well-known preacher
Henry Ward Beecher during his highly publicized trial for adultery. On March 5, 1889, Tracy was nominated by President
Benjamin Harrison to become
Secretary of the Navy and was confirmed by the
Senate in a ten-minute session without objection. He formally took office on March 6. On February 3, 1890, Tracy's wife and younger daughter died in a fire at their residence in
Washington, D.C. His wife, Belinda, died by falling out a window in an attempt to escape the building, and his daughter, Mary, died from
smoke inhalation. Tracy himself lost consciousness due to the smoke but was rescued by Chief Joseph Parris of the
D.C. Fire Department. The secretary's elder daughter, Emma (Mrs. Ferdinand Suydam Wilmerding), and his granddaughter, Alice Wilmerding, sustained injuries from jumping out a window, but both survived. After regaining consciousness some time later, Tracy learned of the deaths of his loved ones from President Harrison. A funeral was held at the
White House several days later, and the bodies of the dead were buried in
Rock Creek Cemetery. Following a brief period of mourning, during which he received many messages of condolences from heads of state and other prominent individuals, Tracy returned to his official duties. Tracy was noted for his role in the creation of the "New Navy", a major reform of the
service, which had fallen into obsolescence after the
Civil War. Like President Harrison, he supported a naval strategy focused more on offense, rather than on coastal defense and commerce raiding. A major ally in this effort was naval theorist Captain
Alfred Thayer Mahan, who had served as a professor at the new
Naval War College (founded 1884). In 1890, Mahan published his major work,
The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783—a book that achieved an international readership. Drawing on historical examples, Mahan supported the construction of a "blue-water Navy" that could do battle on the high seas. Tracy also supported the construction of modern warships. On June 30, 1890, Congress passed the Naval Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 1891 (also known as the Battleship Act of 1890), a measure which authorized the construction of three
battleships. The first three were later named , , and . The battleship was authorized two years later. In the
1896 presidential election, Tracy was a
presidential elector for
William McKinley and
Garret Hobart. After leaving the Navy Department, Tracy again took up his legal practice. In 1896 he defended New York City Police commissioner Andrew Parker from accusations of negligence and incompetence by fellow commissioner
Theodore Roosevelt in a performance that significantly embarrassed Roosevelt. He also helped end the
Venezuela Crisis of 1895 by assisting
Venezuela in negotiating a settlement to their boundary dispute with
Great Britain. Tracy was the Republican candidate to be the first Mayor of
Greater New York City when the
five boroughs consolidated in 1898. He came in third behind Democrat
Robert A. Van Wyck and
Seth Low of the
Citizens' Union, winning 101,863 of the 523,560 votes cast in the
election of 1897. Tracy was the president of the
New York State Agricultural Society in 1897 and 1898, during which time he invited Van Wyck to attend the society's annual fair. On April 3, 1900, seven men from the International Banking and Trust Company were elected as directors of the
North American Trust Company. They included president
Oakleigh Thorne of the International, as well as Tracy. ==Family and death==