That's the tradition, but its not entirely true; the Continental Navy was formed in 1775, but disbanded 10 years later in 1785, and it was nearly another decade before the US Navy was formed in 1794.
In any case, anything in the 18th century is well before Eisenhower... ;)
I didn't mean literally "no military" but we've had extreme drawdowns after every conflict . By "no military" in scare quotes I mean that there was an aversion to a standing army dating back to the Revolution. I was ( apparently overly simplistically) identifying that as a principle. The Legislature literally did not want the Executive to use the standing army as a political tool.
Obviously, the inventory ... lag of ships means that we'd have larger navies in some peacetime intervals than others. We only had permanent forces after the advent of the Cold War.