The
Quasi-War was an undeclared war fought almost entirely at sea
between the United
States and France from
1798 to 1800. In the
United States, the conflict was sometimes also referred to as the
Franco-American War, the
Undeclared War
with France, the
Undeclared Naval War,
the
Pirate Wars, or the
Half-War.
Background
The
Kingdom of France
had been
a
major ally of the United States in the
American Revolutionary War, and
had signed in 1778 a
Treaty of
Alliance with the United States.
But in 1794, after the
French Revolution toppled that
country's monarchy, the American government came to an agreement
with the Kingdom of
Great Britain, the Jay Treaty, that
resolved several points of contention between the United States and
Great Britain that had lingered since the end of the Revolutionary
War. It also contained economic clauses.
The fact that the United States had already declared neutrality in
the conflict between Great Britain and (now revolutionary) France,
and that American legislation was being passed for a trade deal
with their British enemy, led to French outrage. The French
government was also outraged by the U.S. refusal to continue
repaying its debt to France on the basis that the debt had been
payable to the French Crown, not to Republican France.
France began to seize American ships trading with Britain and
refused to receive a new United States minister when he arrived in
Paris in December 1796. In his annual message to
Congress at the close of 1797,
President John Adams reported on France’s refusal to
negotiate and spoke of the need "to place our country in a suitable
posture of defense." In April 1798, President Adams informed
Congress of the "
XYZ Affair," in which
French agents demanded a large bribe for the restoration of
relations with the United States.
The French inflicted substantial losses on American shipping.
Secretary of State
Timothy Pickering reported to
Congress on June 21, 1797 that the French had captured 316 American
merchant ships in the previous eleven months. The hostilities
caused insurance rates on American shipping to increase at least
500 percent, as French marauders cruised the length of the U.S.
Atlantic seaboard virtually unopposed. The administration had no
warships to combat them; the last had been sold off in 1785. The
United States possessed only a flotilla of
revenue cutters and some neglected coastal
forts.
Increased depredations by
privateers from
Revolutionary France required the rebirth of the then-defunct
United States Navy to protect the
expanding merchant shipping of the United States. The United States
Congress authorized the president to acquire, arm, and man no more
than 12 vessels, of up to 22 guns each. Under the terms of this
act, several vessels were purchased and converted into ships of
war.
July 7, 1798, the date that Congress rescinded treaties with
France, can be considered a semi-official beginning of the
Quasi-War. The act was followed two days later with
Congressional
authorization to attack French vessels.
Naval engagements
The fight between USS
Constellation and the
Insurgente (William
Bainbridge Hoff)
The U.S. Navy operated with a battle fleet of roughly 25 vessels.
The Navy
patrolled the southern coast of the United States and throughout
the Caribbean, seeking out French privateers. Captain
Thomas Truxtun's insistence on the
highest standards of crew training paid handsome dividends as the
frigate
USS
Constellation captured
L'Insurgente and severely damaged
La Vengeance. Often,
French privateers resisted, as was the case with the privateer
La Croyable, which was captured
on July 7, 1798, by
USS
Delaware outside of
Egg Harbor, New Jersey. The
USS Enterprise captured eight
privateers and freed 11 American vessels from captivity. The
USS Experiment
captured the French
Deux Amis and the
Diane.
Numerous American merchantmen were likewise recaptured by the
Experiment. The
USS
Boston summarily forced
Le
Berceau into submission.
Silas Talbot
engineered an expedition to the Puerto Plata harbor in St.
Domingo, a possession of France's ally Spain, on May 11, 1800, in
which sailors and marines of the USS Constitution under Lieutenant Isaac
Hull cut out the French privateer Sandwich from the
harbor and spiked the guns in the Spanish fort.
During the conflict, one U.S Navy vessel was captured by—and later
recaptured from—French forces:
USS Retaliation.
Retaliation was the captured privateer
La
Croyable, recently purchased by the U.S. Navy.
Retaliation
departed Norfolk on October 28, 1798, with Montezuma and Norfolk and cruised in the
West
Indies protecting American commerce. On November
20, the French frigates
L’Insurgente and
Volontaire overtook
Retaliation
while her consorts were away on a chase and forced commanding
officer Lieutenant
William
Bainbridge to surrender the out-gunned schooner. However,
Montezuma and
Norfolk escaped after Bainbridge
convinced the senior French commander that those American warships
were too powerful for his frigates and induced him to abandon the
chase. Renamed
Magicienne by the French, the schooner
again came into American hands on June 28, when a broadside from
USS Merrimack forced
her to haul down her colors.
Revenue cutters in the
service of the Revenue-Marine, predecessor of the
Coast Guard, also participated in the conflict.
The cutter
USRC Pickering,
commanded by
Edward Preble, made two
cruises to the West Indies and captured several prizes. After
Preble turned command of the
Pickering over to
Benjamin Hillar she captured the much larger
and more heavily armed French privateer
l’Egypte Conquise
after a nine-hour battle. In September 1800, Hillar, the
Pickering, and all of her crew were lost at sea in a
storm.
Preble was given command of the frigate
Essex, which he sailed around Cape Horn into the Pacific to protect American merchantmen in
the East Indies where he recaptured a
number of prizes that had been seized by French
privateers.
American naval losses for the entire war were light, consisting of
only one armed U.S. navy vessel lost to enemy action. However one
source contends that by the war's end in 1800, the French had
seized over two thousand American merchant vessels.
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. In addition, the two navies shared a system of signals
by which each could recognize the other’s warships at sea and
allowed merchantmen of their respective nations to join their
convoys.
Conclusion of hostilities
By the autumn of 1800, the United States Navy and the Royal Navy,
combined with a more conciliatory diplomatic stance by the
government of
First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, produced a reduction
in the activity of the French privateers and warships. The
Convention of 1800, signed on September
30, 1800, ended the Franco-American War but news of this did not
arrive in time to help John Adams get re-elected in the
United States
presidential election, 1800.
See also
References
Further reading
External links