Difference between revisions of "Quasi-War"

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-The '''Quasi-War''' was a two-year (1798-1800), undeclared war fought as a result of depredations by the privateers of Revolutionary France against the expanding merchant shipping of the United States.
-==Background==
-In an effort to resolve differences that had accumulated between the two nations since the [[Treaty of Alliance with France (1778)]], President [[John Adams]] dispatched a commission of three men to meet with French Minister of Foreign Affairs Talleyrand in 1797. After many delays, the American commissioners were approached by three intermediaries of Talleyrand, who demanded apologies for allusions critical of France made by President Adams and payment of a bribe of several million dollars before official negotiations could proceed. Convinced that further negotiations were hopeless the three commissioners returned to the United States, and President Adams released their dispatches to Congress, substituting X, Y, and Z for the names of Talleyrand’s agents. “I will never send another minister to France without assurances that he will be received, respected, and honored, as the representative of a great, free, powerful, and independent nation,” Adams declared. The American public was outraged at publication of the dispatches, and Congress enacted a series of measures to raise an army and authorize a Navy Department. It also unilaterally abrogated treaties with France, authorizing privateers and public vessels to attack French ships found competing with American commerce. Between 1798 and 1800 the U.S. Navy captured more than 80 French ships although neither country officially declared war.
-The British delighted in the anti-French uproar in America and moved to assist the United States against a common foe, revolutionary France. President Adams wanted to avoid a major war, confident that had France wanted war it would have responded to American attacks on French ships. Talleyrand feared that limited hostilities with the United States might escalate into a full-scale war and let it be known that he would accept a new American diplomatic representative. Adams nominated a new representative to France despite public and Federalist disappointment that there would be no war, but conceded to Federalist demands and expanded the single nomination into a commission of three. Although the Franco-American negotiations were initially deadlocked, France finally agreed to cancel the Treaty of Alliance of 1778 if the United States dropped financial claims resulting from recent seizures of American merchant shipping. The resulting Convention of 1800 terminated the only formal treaty of alliance of the United States. It would be nearly a century and a half before the United States entered into another formal alliance.
-==U.S. Naval actions==
-[[Secretary of the Navy]] [[Benjamin Stoddert]] realized that the navy possessed too few warships to protect a far-flung merchant marine by using convoys or by patrolling the North American coast. Rather, he concluded that the best way to defeat the French campaign against American shipping was by offensive operations in the Carribean, where most of the French cruisers were based. Thus at the very outset of the conflict, the Department of the Navy adopted a policy of going to the source of the enemy's strength. Nevertheless, by 1799, in response to the merchant's insistent demands for protection, naval vessels were convoying merchant ships in the Caribbean in addition to cruising against the enemy.
-When Stoddert became secretary in June 1798, only one American naval vessel was deployed. By the end of the year a force of twenty ships was planned for the Caribbean. Before the war ended, the force available to the navy approached thirty vessels, with some 700 officers and 5,000 seamen.
-The highlight of the first year of the undeclared war was the capture by [[Thomas Truxtun]]'s ''Constellation'' of the French frigate ''l'Insurgente'' in February 1799. In addition, American naval vessels seized nineteen French privateers during the winter of 1798-99. The French challenge to American naval forces increased late in 1799 as six French warships arrived in the Antilles with instructions to intensify the commercial war. The American squadrons responded aggressively. ''Constellation'' fought to a draw the more powerful ''la Vengeance'' on 1 February 1800. Silas Talbot engineered an expedition in the Puerto Plata harbor in Santo Domingo, a possession of France's ally Spain, on 11 May 1800 in which a naval force under Lieutenant [[Isaac Hull]] cut out the French privateer ''Sandwich'' from the harbor and spiked the guns in the Spanish fort. By the end of the war American ships had made prizes of approximately eighty-five French vessels. American successes resulted from a combination of Stoddert's administrative skill in deploying effectively his limited forces and the initiative of his seagoing officers.
-Although they were fighting the same enemy, the Royal Navy and the United States Navy did not cooperate operationally, nor did they share operational plans or come to mutual understandings about deployment of their forces. The British did sell the American government naval stores and munitions. And the two navies shared a system of signals by which to recognize each other's warships at sea and allowed merchantmen of their respective nations to join their convoys.
-By October 1800, aggressiveness of the cruisers of the United States Navy, as well as those of the Royal Navy, combined with a more conciliatory diplomatic stance by the French toward America, produced a reduction in the activity of the French privateers and warships. In mid-December 1800 news reached Washington that a peace treaty with France (Convention of Mortefontaine, 30 September 1800) ended the Quasi-War.
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-{{License|license = This work is in the [[public domain]] in the United States because it is a work of the United States Federal Government under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code.| source = [http://www.history.navy.mil/biblio/biblio4/biblio4a.htm][http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/nr/16318.htm]}}
-[[Category:United States History]]

Difference between revisions of "Quasi-War"

Revision as of 01:57, May 16, 2008

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