Home : Armed Forces : The Navy :

An American Navy

The need for an American navy had become more apparent than ever to Washington. The time had come for the United States to begin the long process of building a respectable fleet. But a large body of opinion, led by Jefferson and Madison, still opposed the president, making his task exceptionally difficult.

While Washington was having trouble maintaining neutrality toward France, he was having an even more difficult time with Britain. War with France had led to the seizure of American ships by the Royal Navy and the impressment of America seamen. Despite London's manifest interest in keeping the United States neutral, Pitt was pushing Washington so hard that, regardless of Genet's bungling, America was being forced into the war on France's side. Pitt felt that the war would be over in a few months, and he could put up with the displeasure of the United States until then. Americans were outraged, not only by Britain's reckless tactics on the high seas but by her activities in the Northwest Territory as well. Talk of a second war of independence was widespread.

By the order in council of June 8, 1793, British captains had been instructed to stop all cargoes of corn, flour, and meal from reaching France, thus declaring food contraband. The American ambassador in London, Thomas Pinckney, protested immediately to Lord Grenville, the foreign minister, telling him that starving France into submission was impossible. Grenville responded by saying that starving France could bring peace. Washington insisted on the rights of neutral commerce, and Secretary Jefferson instructed Pinckney to keep protesting that free ships make free goods.

Pitt ignored Washington; British warships continued to stop American merchantmen, capturing them and impressing men as they pleased. Charles James Fox, the opposition leader in Parliament, thought it was folly for Pitt to pick a quarrel with the United States at this moment. Had it not been for Washington's preoccupation with Genet's intrigues, the reaction of the United States might have been far stronger. Meanwhile, the Committee of Public Safety had ordered French men-of-war to seize neutral ships carrying British goods, but the state of the French navy was such that the order was merely an irritant.

The order in council of November 6, 1793, was worse than any that had preceded it. Under this decree British captains were allowed to seize any American vessel sailing to any French port or carrying any French goods. The order was kept secret for three months while dozens and then hundreds of unsuspecting American ships fell into British hands. Traders flying the flag of the United States were everywhere in the Caribbean, and British men-of-war captured them under any pretext, claiming they were carrying French goods or goods bound for French ports, whether they were or not. Royal Navy captains put the burden of proof on the American ship's captain to prove the goods in his hold were not going to France or her colonies. Since that was impossible, the merchantman would then be taken into a British port and confiscated, the crew given the choice of a British prison hulk or impressment. More than three hundred vessels were captured in the West Indies before the Americans realized what was happening.

While Pitt was pressing Washington hard on the high seas, he was also refusing to give up the forts in the northwest or cease encouraging the Indians against the Americans. Settlers in the Northwest Territory attributed the continuing hostility of the Indian nations north of the Ohio to British machinations. Lord Dorchester, the royal governor of Canada, upset by Genet's attempts to foment insurrection in Canada, thought war with the United States was imminent and on February 10, 1794, delivered a bellicose speech to the six Iroquois nations. He told them they would soon be at war with the Americans and promised British support to drive the "long knives" south of the Ohio once and for all. In response, Washington ordered intelligence collected to learn just how many troops Britain had in Canada.

Adding to the resentment against England was an agreement between Portugal and Algeria. Since 1786 the Portuguese navy had kept the Algerine corsairs confined to the Mediterranean. Portugal was the only European country that used force instead of bribery to contain the pirate states. In October 1793, Colonel David Humphreys, the American minister resident in Lisbon, wrote to Secretary Jefferson that Portugal had concluded a year's truce with Algeria and Algerian ships were now free to roam the Atlantic. On October 8, immediately after the truce had been signed, Algerian pirates seized the American merchantmen Dispatch, Hope, and Thomas, enslaving their crews and giving every indication of capturing more. Within two months Algeria had taken thirteen American vessels. In a separate letter to Washington, Humphreys insisted that this was the work of the British.

The U.S. consul in Lisbon, Edward Church, reinforced Humphreys's opinion. On October 12 he wrote to Jefferson, "The conduct of the British in this business leaves no room to doubt or mistake their object which was evidently aimed at us, and proves that their envy, jealousy, and hatred, will never be appeased, and that they will leave nothing unstamped to effect our ruin."

News of the Algerian attacks reached Philadelphia on December 12, 1793, throwing the country into an uproar. Americans saw Algeria as a British surrogate. On December 16 Washington laid Church's communications before Congress. Foreign Secretary Grenville denied that Britain was using Portugal's truce with Algeria as a weapon against the United States. He told Ambassador Pinckney that the truce was designed to free the Portuguese fleet for duty against France, not to unleash Algeria for attacks on American shipping. Few in the United States believed him.

At the opening of Congress in December 1793, the frustrated Washington gave vent to sentiments he had long held. "There is a rank due to the United States among nations," he said, "which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost by a reputation for weakness. If we desire to avoid insult we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace - one of the most powerful instruments of our prosperity — it must be known that we are, at all times, ready for war."

Reacting to the brazen behavior of Ambassador Genet, Prime Minister Pitt, and the dey of Algiers, and frustrated with American impotence in general, Congress secretly debated whether or not the time had finally come to start a navy. On January 2, 1794, the House of Representatives voted narrowly, 46 to 44, to create a fleet adequate to protect American commerce from the Barbary corsairs and appointed a committee to determine its size. The select committee had estimates drawn up by Secretary Henry Knox in 1790, and by Samuel Hodgdon of Philadelphia in 1793. Hodgdon had been quartermaster general of the army and was now superintendent of military stores.

On January 20 the House select committee recommended building four 44-gun frigates and two of 20 guns at an estimated cost of $600,000, to be raised by additional customs duties. On February 6 the full House debated this proposal. While they did, Secretary Knox invited naval architect Joshua Humphreys to his office. (At the time, the navy was part of the War Department.) Knox intended to get right to work on the frigates as soon as Congress passed a bill. Captain Richard Dale, the first lieutenant under John Paul Jones on the Bonhomme Richard, John Barry, and Thomas Truxtun had all written to Knox about the urgency of confronting the Barbary pirates. Knox wanted to push ahead with construction of a fleet while the political will existed in Congress to do it.

Madison led the opposition. Six warships, he thought, were only a beginning; supporters of a navy would want far more (as indeed they did). He decided to stop the momentum before it got started. He wrote to Jefferson, "You will understand the game behind the curtain too well not to perceive the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the Government."

Madison's allies maintained that bribing the Barbary pirates would be cheaper than building an expensive navy, which would expand the public debt. They pointed out that since the United States had no bases in the Mediterranean, a larger fleet would be required. And they contended that sending warships into a European war zone would provoke further hostilities. Britain, they argued, would aid the pirates, and the captives in Algeria would suffer rather than be saved. Abraham Clark of New Jersey warned that once construction of a fleet commenced "there would be no end of it. We must then have a secretary of the Navy and a swarm of other people in office, at a monstrous expense." In a similar vein, Senator William Maclay of Pennsylvania said, "It is the design of the Court party to have a fleet and an army. This is but the entering wedge of a new monarchy in America, after all the bloodshed and sufferings of a seven years' war to establish a republic. . . . eleven unfortunate men now in slavery in Algeria is the pretext for fitting out a fleet."

Madison assumed a building program would take a long time and, once completed, the warships, as had been the case with the Continental Navy, would be pitifully inadequate in any contest with Britain. A navy would necessitate high taxes that would grow as it embroiled the country in wars she could not win. A better way to deal with Britain, he argued, was through economic warfare, where America had substantial weapons and the British were vulnerable. He felt that England, with its heavy dependence on American business, would be forced to relent. He did not believe that economic sanctions would cause London to retaliate or declare war.

To Madison, Britain was at the root of America's problems. When the disputes with her were resolved, those with Algiers would be resolved as well. "It is all French that is spoken in favor [of Madison's measures]," Fisher Ames wrote. "I like the Yankee dialect better."

Led by Hamilton, the Federalists predicted that Madison's economic reprisals would provoke war at a time when the country was wholly unprepared. If the United States wanted to avoid both war and humiliation, they argued, she needed a respectable navy. They manifestly did not want war with Britain, but they did want a navy that could minimally protect the nation's rights and grow in the future. They insisted that six warships would be enough to handle Algeria.

The tide of anti-British feeling in the country was strong enough to give the Federalists the upper hand, and they pushed hard for approval of the proposed fleet. On March 7, 1794, news reached Philadelphia of the notorious British orders in council of November 6 and the unrestrained seizing of American vessels in the Caribbean. Even Hamilton was outraged. The feeling against England grew white hot. On March 25 the House enacted a thirty-day embargo against Britain, which the Senate approved the following day and Washington signed immediately. The law went into effect on March 28.

The Naval Act of 1794, having passed the House on March 10 by a vote of 50 to 39 and the Senate nine days later with no recorded vote, was signed by Washington on March 27. It authorized building four 44-gun frigates and two 36s, increasing the size of the latter. The bill also detailed the number, grades, and ratings of officers and men, even their pay and rations. The preamble stated that the law was meant to protect American commerce from the Barbary States. Left unsaid was the lawmakers' intention to make an impression on Britain and France as well. But the only impression they made was one of continued weakness, for the country was obviously divided, uncertain whether it wanted a navy or not. Six frigates, by any measure, was a pathetically small force. Weakening it further was the final section of the act, which read, "if a peace shall take place between the United States and the Regency of Algiers, that no farther proceeding be had under this act." In other words, when peace was secured with the dey, construction on an American fleet would cease. The Federalists in the House, led by South Carolinian William Loughton Smith, had included this provision to appease their opponents, but a more nonsensical compromise would be hard to imagine.

Pitt had maintained his tough policy toward the United States through 1793, expecting the war with France to be brief; in that case he could avoid altering his posture toward America. He had not anticipated the conflicting interests and gross incompetence.

top of page

back a page