Quasi-War

(1798–1800)

In the 1778 treaty that created the Franco‐American Alliance, the two countries agreed to mutual defense and accepted the doctrine that neutral ships carried neutral cargoes. But under President George Washington, the United States retained its neutrality when England and Revolutionary France went to war in 1793; and in 1794, John Jay negotiated a treaty conceding both favored status in trade and a broad definition of contraband to England—in effect, agreeing to limit trade with France. French privateers responded by seizing nearly $200,000 worth of American shipping during 1796–97.

President John Adams wanted to send either Vice President Thomas Jefferson or Congressman James Madison to France. Both were Republicans, more favorably disposed to France than Federalists like Washington and Adams, but neither man would go, and Adams's Federalist cabinet refused to grant the opposition so prominent a role. When Adams learned in May that France had authorized seaborne privateering to seize neutral American ships carrying British goods, he called Congress into special session. To start negotiations, he dispatched two Federalists, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and John Marshall, and a moderate Republican, Elbridge Gerry, to France, but he also started military preparations. Three frigates begun in 1793—the United States, the Constellation, and the Constitution—were to be completed as quickly as possible; 80,000 militiamen were to be armed and trained; harbor defenses built; and $800,000 borrowed to pay for an undeclared “Quasi‐War” with France.

France's foreign minister, the comte de Talleyrand, declined to receive the U.S. commissioners formally, but made subsequent contact through agents who insisted that the United States loan France $6 million and provide $250,000 in presents. Pinckney's famous response—“[N]o; no; not a sixpence”—came just as Napoleon Bonaparte's army defeated the Austrians in Italy. Contemplating France's control of Western Europe, John Marshall commented that “the Atlantic only can save us.”

In March 1798, President Adams reported to Congress, substituting “W, X, Y, and Z” for the names of the French agents (hence the “XYZ Affair”). He vowed never to send another minister to France unless he would be “received, respected, and honored” as representing “a great, free, powerful, and independent nation.” Congress commissioned 1,000 privateers to capture or repel French vessels, established the Department of the Navy (30 April), levied $2 million in taxes, and passed the Alien and Sedition Acts to restrict domestic dissent. Pinckney and Marshall returned as heroes (Gerry, less obnoxious to the French, stayed in Paris), and “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute” became a Federalist slogan.

By May 1798, the U.S. war sloop Ganges was guarding the coast between Long Island and the Chesapeake, joined in June by the Constellation and the United States. In July 1798, Stephen Decatur, on the sloop Delaware, captured the French schooner Croyable off New Jersey. After the British navy defeated French forces in the Battle of the Nile (1 August 1798), the U.S. Navy drove the French away from the U.S. coast to the Caribbean. Ten important naval engagements ensued, six of them in February and March 1799. The Americans lost only once: the Retaliation (formerly the Croyable) was captured in November 1798. In February 1799, the Constellation captured the frigate L’Insurgente. The French captain blamed U.S. Capt. Thomas Truxtun for provoking war between the United States and France.

Despite ship‐to‐ship actions and U.S. support for former slave Toussaint Louverture's independence movement on Haiti, neither side declared war. Adams resisted Federalist pressure for war; while congressional Federalists created a provisional army with Washington as commander in chief and Alexander Hamilton as second in command, Adams favored a strong navy to make the United States independent of both England and France. The French Army, he told Hamilton, was more likely to invade heaven than the United States.

Napoleon's coup d’ état on 9 November 1799 changed French politics and policy. Needing the support of neutral Denmark and Sweden, he returned in December 1799 to the principle that neutral ships make neutral goods. American diplomats at the Hague (William Vans Murray) and Berlin (John Quincy Adams) sent word that France wanted to negotiate. In November 1799, Adams dispatched official envoys to France.

On 7 March 1800, the American diplomats—William Vans Murray, Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth, and Governor William Davie of North Carolina—met with Napoleon. In September, the Americans and French completed a convention that restored amity and deferred to future consideration the vexing issues of indemnities for seized property and the status of the 1778 treaty. The peace mission cost Adams much Federalist support. In 1800, Hamilton backed Pinckney instead of Adams for president, a split that resulted in Jefferson's election.

Bibliography

• Alexander DeConde, The Quasi‐War: The Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France 1797–1801, 1966

(1798-1800) a series of incidents between France and the United States where French ships or French privateers seized neutral American ships carrying British goods. (France and Britain were at war at the time.) France declined to receive the American representatives and demanded $6 million in loans and $250, 000 in presents to stop the depredations. It was during this conflict that “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute” became a Federalist slogan. In ten important naval engagements in 1799, the Americans only lost once. After Napoleon's return to power in 1799, a convention was signed that restored amity between the two nations.

During the conflict, President John Adams remarked that France was more likely to invade heaven than the United States.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

The Quasi-War, or naval war, with France, included a series of battles and diplomatic tensions between the U.S. government and the French as a result of attacks against American merchants shipping off the Barbary Coast and in the Caribbean. The brief undeclared war that occurred between 1798 and 1801 was one of the main catalysts for the building and support of the U.S. Navy. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress lacked the power to maintain more than a token naval force. Furthermore, American suspicion of a standing army prohibited plans for organized forces. As a result of French pillaging and the demands of American merchants for protection, Congress found an increased naval force a necessity.

In consequence of the Franco-American misunderstanding of 1798–1800, the French, with no declaration of war, began to seize and plunder American merchant vessels. Despite U.S. attempts to settle the matter diplomatically, no solution could be reached. From March through July of 1798, Congress passed acts empowering the U.S. merchant marine to "repel by force any assault," to commission privateers, and to order the navy to seize all armed French craft found along the U.S. coast or molesting trade. George Washington was recalled from retirement and appointed commander in chief of the army. The American navy, consisting of only three ships, was rapidly enlarged by construction, purchase, and gifts to fifty-five vessels. The first went to sea on 24 May 1798. France sent no heavy vessels to the western Atlantic, because it was occupied with European wars. Rather, knowing the weakness of the untrained American navy, the French relied on privateers supported by a few frigates and sloops of war.

As American vessels were commissioned, they organized into small squadrons to guard the chief trade areas in the East and West Indies. The small American navy faced few engagements and mostly guarded against numerous privateers. Despite the hasty organization of the U.S. Navy, however, each of their three engagements against French forces resulted in victory. Those battles involved the Insurgente, 40 guns, and the Constellation, 36 guns; the Vengeance, 50 guns; and the Constellation, 36 guns, the Berceau, 24 guns, and the Boston, 32 guns. Congress presented Captain Thomas Truxtun, commander of the Constellation in both engagements, with two gold medals. Two vessels, the schooners Enterprise and Experiment, had especially notable careers—the former taking thirteen prizes on one cruise. Although the United States made no attempt to seize the French islands, on 23 September 1800, Captain Henry Geddes, with the ship Patapsco, successfully dislodged the French forces that had taken possession of the Dutch island of Curaçao. About eighty-five French vessels were captured, not including recaptures of American craft and small boats. Although the French took only one American naval vessel, the schooner Retaliation, France seized several hundred American merchant vessels both abroad and in home waters. These were condemned at farcical admiralty trials, and in most instances the crews were imprisoned and brutally treated.

On 30 September 1800, France and the United States concluded a convention of peace, commerce, and navigation, and shortly thereafter, hostilities ceased.

Bibliography

De Conde, Alexander. The Quasi-War: The Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France, 1797–1801. New York: Scribner, 1966.

Fowler, William M. Jack Tars and Commodores: The American Navy, 1783–1815. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984.

Nash, Howard Pervear. The Forgotten Wars: The Role of the U.S. Navy in the Quasi War with France and the Barbary Wars, 1798–1805. South Brunswick, N.J.: Barnes, 1968.

Palmer, Michael A. Stoddert's War: Naval Operations during the Quasi-War with France, 1798–1801. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987.

—Marion V. Brewington/H. S.

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