Quasi-War

Under the Treaty of Alliance (1778), the United States had agreed to protect the French West Indies in return for their support in the American Revolutionary War. As the treaty had no termination date, France claimed this obligation included defending them against Great Britain and the Dutch Republic during the 1792 to 1797 War of the First Coalition. Despite popular enthusiasm for the French Revolution, especially among anti-British Jeffersonians, there was little support for this in Congress. Neutrality allowed New England shipowners to earn huge profits evading the British blockade, while Southern plantation owners feared the example set by France's abolition of slavery in 1794.[4]

In 1793, Congress suspended repayment of French loans incurred during the Revolutionary War, arguing the execution of Louis XVI and establishment of the French First Republic rendered existing agreements void. They further argued American military obligations under the Treaty of Alliance applied only to a "defensive conflict" and thus did not apply, since France had declared war on Britain and the Dutch Republic. To ensure the US did not become involved, Congress passed the Neutrality Act of 1794, while President George Washington issued an Executive Order forbidding American merchant ships from arming themselves.[5] France accepted these acts, but on the basis of 'benevolent neutrality', which they interpreted as allowing French privateers access to US ports, and the right to sell captured British ships in American prize courts, but not vice versa. However, the US viewed 'neutrality' as the right to provide the same privileges to both.[6]

Caribbean, main focus of operations during the Quasi-War

These differences were further exacerbated in November 1794 when the US and Britain signed a new trade agreement, which contradicted the 1778 Commercial Treaty granting France "most favoured nation" status. The Jay Treaty resolved outstanding issues from the American Revolution, and expanded trade between the two countries; between 1794 and 1801, American exports to Britain nearly tripled in value, from US$33 million to $94 million.[7]

As a result, in late 1796 French privateers began seizing American ships trading with the British. An effective response was hampered by the almost complete lack of a United States Navy, whose last warship had been sold in 1785, leaving only a small flotilla belonging to the United States Revenue Cutter Service and a few neglected coastal forts. This allowed French privateers to roam virtually unchecked; from October 1796 to June 1797, they captured 316 ships, 6% of the entire American merchant fleet, causing losses of $12 to $15 million.[8] On March 2, 1797, the Directory issued a decree permitting the seizure of any neutral shipping without a role d'equipage, a crew manifest which listed the nationalities of each crewmen.[9] Since virtually no American merchantman carried such a document, this effectively initiated a French commerce war on American shipping.[10]

Efforts to resolve the conflict through diplomacy ended in the 1797 dispute known as the XYZ Affair.[11] However, the hostilities created support for establishing a limited naval force, and on June 18, President John Adams appointed Benjamin Stoddert the first Secretary of the Navy.[12] On July 7, 1798, Congress approved the use of force against French warships in American waters, but wanted to ensure conflict did not escalate beyond these strictly limited objectives.[13] As a result, it was called a "limited" or "Quasi-War" and led to political debate over whether it was constitutional. A series of rulings by the Supreme Court of the United States established its legality and confirmed the ability of the US to conduct undeclared war or "police actions".[14]

Benjamin Stoddert, United States Secretary of the Navy

Since battleships were expensive to build and required highly specialised construction facilities, in 1794 Congress compromised by ordering six large frigates. By 1798, the first three were nearly complete and on July 16, 1798, additional funding was approved for the USS Congress, USS Chesapeake, and USS President, plus the frigates USS General Greene and USS Adams. The provision of naval stores and equipment by the British allowed these to be built relatively quickly, and all saw action during the war.[15]

The US Navy was further reinforced by so-called 'subscription ships', privately funded vessels provided by individual cities. These included five frigates, among them the USS Philadelphia, commanded by Stephen Decatur, and four merchantmen converted into sloops. Primarily intended to attack foreign shipping, these were noted for their speed, and earned huge profits for their owners; the USS Boston captured over 80 enemy vessels, including the French corvette Berceau.[16]

With most of the French fleet confined to home ports by the Royal Navy, Secretary Stoddert was able to concentrate his forces against the limited number of frigates and smaller vessels that evaded the blockade and reached the Caribbean. The US also needed convoy protection, and while there was no formal agreement with the British, considerable co-operation took place at a local level. The two navies shared a signal system, and allowed their merchantmen to join each other's convoys, most of which were provided by the British, who had four to five times more escorts available.[17]

This allowed the US Navy to concentrate on attacking French privateers, most of very shallow draft and armed with between one and twenty guns. Operating from French and Spanish bases in the Caribbean, particularly Guadeloupe, they made opportunistic attacks on passing ships, before escaping back into port. To counter those tactics, the US used similarly sized vessels from the United States Revenue Cutter Service, as well as commissioning their own privateers. The first American ship to see action was the USS Ganges, a converted East Indiaman with 26 guns; most were far smaller.[18]

The Revenue cutter USS Pickering, commanded by Edward Preble, made two cruises to the West Indies and captured ten prizes. Preble turned command of Pickering over to Benjamin Hillar, who captured the much larger and more heavily armed French privateer l'Egypte Conquise after a nine-hour battle. In September 1800, Hillar, Pickering, and her entire crew were lost at sea in a storm.[19] Preble next commanded the frigate USS Essex, which he sailed around Cape Horn into the Pacific to protect U.S. merchantmen in the East Indies. He recaptured several U.S. ships that had been seized by French privateers.[20][21]

For various reasons, the role of the Royal Navy was minimised both at the time and later; the first significant study of the war by US naval historian Gardner W. Allen in 1909 focused exclusively on ship-to-ship actions, and this is how the war is often remembered.[22] However, historian Michael Palmer argues American naval operations cannot be understood in isolation and when operating in the Caribbean

...they entered a European theater where the war had been underway since 1793. The Royal Navy deployed four to five times more men-of-war in the West Indies than the Americans. British ships chased and fought the same French cruisers and privateers. Both navies escorted each other's merchantmen. American warships operated from British bases. And most importantly, British policies and shifts in deployment had dramatic effects on American operations.[23]

A 20th-century illustration depicting United States Marines escorting French prisoners

From the perspective of the US Navy, the Quasi-War consisted of a series of ship-to-ship actions in US coastal waters and the Caribbean; one of the first was the Capture of La Croyable on 7 July 1798 by the Delaware outside Egg Harbor, New Jersey.[24] On 20 November, a pair of French frigates, Insurgente and Volontaire, captured the schooner USS Retaliation, commanded by Lieutenant William Bainbridge; Retaliation would be recaptured on 28 June 1799.

On 9 February 1799, the frigate Constellation captured the French Navy's frigate L'Insurgente. By 1 July, under the command of Stephen Decatur, USS United States had been refitted and repaired and embarked on its mission to patrol the South Atlantic coast and West Indies in search of French ships which were preying on American merchant vessels.[25]

On 1 January 1800, a convoy of American merchant ships escorted by USS Experiment fought off an attack by French-allied Haitian privateers near Hispaniola. On 1 February, the USS Constellation severely damaged the French frigate La Vengeance off the coast of Saint Kitts. Silas Talbot led a naval expedition against Puerto Plata in early May, capturing the coastal fort and a French corvette. When French troops occupied Curaçao in July, the USS Patapsco and USS Merrimack began a blockade of the island in September that forced them to withdraw. On 12 October, the frigate Boston captured the corvette Le Berceau.[26]

On 25 October, the USS Enterprise defeated the French brig Flambeau near Dominica. Enterprise also captured eight privateers and freed eleven U.S. merchant ships from captivity, while Experiment captured the French privateers Deux Amis and Diane and liberated numerous American merchant ships. Although US military losses were light, the French had seized over 2,000 American merchant ships by the time the war ended.[27]

By late 1800, the United States Navy and the Royal Navy, combined with a more conciliatory diplomatic stance by the government of First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, had reduced the activity of the French privateers and warships. The Convention of 1800, signed on 30 September, ended the Quasi-War. It affirmed the rights of Americans as neutrals upon the sea and abrogated the alliance with France of 1778. However, it failed to provide compensation for the $20 million "French Spoliation Claims" of the United States. The agreement between the two nations implicitly ensured that the United States would remain neutral toward France in the wars of Napoleon and ended the "entangling" French alliance.[28] This alliance had been viable only between 1778 and 1783.[29]

• List of wars between democracies

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• Clodfelter, Micheal (2002). Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Reference to Casualty and Other Figures 1500-1999. McFarland & Co. ISBN 978-0786412044.
• Coleman, Aaron (2008). ""A Second Bounaparty?" A Reexamination of Alexander Hamilton during the Franco-American Crisis, 1796-1801". Journal of the Early Republic. 28 (2): 183–214. doi:10.1353/jer.0.0004. JSTOR 30043587. S2CID 143138929.
• Combs, Jerald A (1992). The Jay Treaty: Political Battleground of the Founding Fathers. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520015739.
• DeConde, Alexander (1966). The Quasi-War: The Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France, 1797–1801. Charles Scribner's Sons.
• Eclov, Jon Paul (2013). Informal Alliance: Royal Navy And U.S. Navy Co-Operation Against Republican France During The Quasi-War And Wars Of The French Revolution (PhD). University of North Dakota.
• Fehlings, Gregory E (2000). "America's First Limited War". Naval War College Review. 53 (3).
• Hickey, Donald R. (2008). "The Quasi-War: America's First Limited War, 1798–1801" (PDF). The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord. XVIII (3–4).
• Hyneman, Charles (1930). "Neutrality during the European Wars of 1792–1815: America's Understanding Of Her Obligations". The American Journal of International Law. 24 (2): 279–309. doi:10.2307/2189404. JSTOR 2189404. S2CID 147162918.
• Knox, Dudley W., ed. (1939). Naval Documents related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers, Volume I. Washington: United States Government Printing Office. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
• Lyon, E Wilson (1940). "The Franco-American Convention of 1800". The Journal of Modern History. XII (3): 305–333. doi:10.1086/236487. JSTOR 1874761. S2CID 144516482.
• Mackenzie, Alexander Slidell (1846). Life of Stephen Decatur: A Commodore in the Navy of the United States. C. C. Little and J. Brown.
• Mooney, James L., ed. (1983). Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. Vol. 6. Defense Dept., Navy, Naval History Division. ISBN 978-0-16-002030-8.
• Palmer, Samuel Putnam (1989). Stoddert's War: Naval Operations During the Quasi War with France, 1798-1801. University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 0872494993.
• Sechrest, Larry (2007). "Privately Funded and Built U.S. Warships in the Quasi-War of 1797–1801". The Independent Review. XII (1).
• Williams, Greg H. (2009). The French Assault on American Shipping, 1793–1813: A History and Comprehensive Record of Merchant Marine Losses. McFarland Publishers. ISBN 9780786454075.
• Young, Christopher J (2011). "Connecting the President and the People: Washington's Neutrality, Genet's Challenge, and Hamilton's Fight for Public Support". Journal of the Early Republic. 31 (3): 435–466. doi:10.1353/jer.2011.0040. JSTOR 41261631. S2CID 144349420.

• Bowman, Albert Hall. The struggle for neutrality: Franco-American diplomacy during the Federalist era (1974), online free
• Daughan, George C. (2008). If By Sea: The Forging of the American Navy – From the Revolution to the War of 1812. Philadelphia: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-01607-5.
• Harris, Thomas (1837). The life and services of Commodore William Bainbridge, United States navy. Carey Lea & Blanchard. p. 254. ISBN 0945726589.
• Hickey, Donald R. (2021). "The Quasi-War". The Journal of Military History. 85 (April). A history of the use of the term "Quasi-War" in the years after 1800.
• Jennings, John (1966). Tattered Ensign The Story of America's Most Famous Fighting Frigate, U.S.S. Constitution. Thomas Y. Crowell. OCLC 1291484.
• Kohn, Richard H. (1975). Eagle and Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783–1802.
• Leiner, Frederick C. (1999). Millions for Defense: The Subscription Warships of 1798. Annapolis: US Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-55750-508-8.
• Love, Robert (1992). History of the U.S. Navy Volume One 1775–1941. Harrisburg PA: Stackpole Books. ISBN 978-0-8117-1862-2.
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Quasi-War.

• "Selected Bibliography of The Quasi-War with France" Archived 8 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine compiled by the United States Army Center of Military History
• U.S. Department of State "The XYZ Affair and the Quasi-War with France, 1798–1800"
• "U.S. treaties and federal legal documents re 'Quasi-War with France 1791–1800'", compiled by the Lillian Goldman Law Library of Yale Law School