CHAPTER VI.
HOSTILITIES WITH FRANCE.
Just at the close of the Revolution the country found itself independent, but laboring under a heavy burden of debt, and with a government that had hardly enough authority to be called a government at all. In fact, at this period the nation was little more than a collection of separate States, with a kind of league or confederation to hold them together. Each of these States had its own government, which paid little attention to the wants of the others. After a few years, however, it became clear that the jealousies and rivalries of the States would break up the league unless they were held together by some stronger bond; and as they could attain strength and greatness only by union, they wisely laid aside all their little differences, and acting through their delegates at Philadelphia, formed that wonderful plan of a united nation called the Constitution, which went into force in 1789, and under which we still live; for so skilfully was it framed, that it has stood every shock and trial, and the time will soon arrive to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of its adoption.
It is clear that a country under such conditions could not possibly keep up a navy; and so it was that after the Revolutionary War the whole establishment gradually passed out of existence. Even when the Constitution was adopted, and Washington became the first President of the United States, there were other matters that required attention first, and the new Government rightly gave its thoughts to these. Besides, it was so short a time since the people of the Colonies had suffered from the oppressions of the Royal Army and Navy, that they had a dread and almost a hatred of any kind of standing military force. Therefore, though one of the officers of the new Government was a secretary of war, he had not much of an army to look after, and no navy at all. But soon the Government found it necessary to make a change in its naval policy, and the change came about in a very unexpected way.
There were at this time four small States on the southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea called the Barbary Powers, which had for many years derived much profit from the detestable practice of sending out piratical ships to plunder the merchant-vessels of all nations. The European States from time to time made an attempt to put the pirates down, and sometimes a great nation had even paid them money on condition that they should not molest its commerce. There is some ground for thinking that England, of whom the Barbary Powers were most afraid, rather encouraged their depredations than sought to check them, because it was for her advantage, as a trading State, that foreign merchant-fleets should suffer, in order that the field might be left clear to her. However this may be, the English had never put forth their naval strength against the corsairs; yet English merchantmen were mostly spared by them. Before the Revolution the vessels of the Colonies, bearing as they did the English flag, had all the privileges of other English ships; but when the war was over, and the merchantmen of the young American State began to reappear in the Mediterranean with a new and hitherto unknown American flag, the Barbary cruisers pounced upon them as their lawful prey.
The first piratical capture was made in 1785, and was a Boston ship, the schooner "Maria." Soon afterward the "Dolphin," of Philadelphia, was seized. These were carried into Algiers, where the ships and their cargoes were confiscated by the Dey, and the crews were held in slavery. It seems strange that there should not have been enough of public spirit in the country to fit out ships at once and send them over to set free the Americans who were enslaved by these Turkish outlaws, or at least to protect from their barbarities other Americans navigating the seas. But no such measures were taken, and the prisoners were left to languish in captivity until their buccaneering captors received a heavy ransom. Agents were indeed sent out, who did much chaffering with the Algerines, mostly through foreign officials; but for a long time this brought about no result, and several of the captives meanwhile died.
During the next few years the Portuguese were at war with Algiers, and her ships were in consequence unable to venture far from port; but in 1793 a peace was concluded, and thereupon an Algerine squadron, suddenly appearing outside the Strait of Gibraltar, fell upon and captured ten unsuspecting American merchantmen. This was too much for any State to bear, however long-suffering or impoverished it might be; and Congress resolved at once to begin the building of a new fleet. Accordingly plans were made for the construction of six frigates of a much larger size than any which the navy had possessed during the Revolution. In fact, some of them were of about the largest size that were then afloat, and led our enemies in later wars to declare that we had misled them by building ships-of-the-line under the name of frigates; which, even if it had been true, would not have been a reproach to us, as it was their business to find out what our ships were like. It was a most wise measure to build these large frigates, as the country afterward realized; and great credit is due to Joshua Humphreys, a Pennsylvania ship-builder, upon whose suggestion the plan was adopted.
Even this small provision was made only after much debate and opposition, because there were many men who thought that a navy would make the central Government too powerful, and would be used to destroy the liberties of the people: and although the building of the ships was begun, negotiations with Algiers were continued, and large sums of money were expended in presents,—or, to speak plain English, in bribes,—to influence the Dey to make a treaty. These were so far successful that in the next year the treaty was concluded, and all the prisoners were ransomed. Such violent objections were now made to keeping up the naval force, that it was decided to finish only two out of the six frigates, and the work on the others was stopped. One member of Congress even went so far as to say that he hoped "the ships would rot upon the stocks as an instructive monument of national folly." Yet it was certainly much greater folly to spend a million dollars—which was what the treaty cost—in presents and bribes to Turkish officers, and in the ransom of American citizens, rather than in building ships and fitting out a navy to punish the marauders, and to deter them from a repetition of their outrages. For, as we shall hereafter see, the money that was paid was not enough to satisfy the Barbary Powers, who, however much they got, were always wanting more; while the navy, so far from overturning liberty, has ever since been one of its greatest bulwarks, by the glory and honor which, through all its history, it has brought upon the Republic.