Marc Liebman's Blog

If someone asked you with which country the United States has the longest-standing, still in force, treaty of friendship and cooperation, how would you answer? I’d bet money that most Americans either do not know or would answer Canada, the United Kingdom, or maybe France or the Netherlands.

The answer is the Kingdom of Morocco. If you follow this blog, in a February 14th, 2021 post – Thomas Barclay and America’s Longest Standing Treaty – how the treaty came about is covered. It is Blog #91 and tells the story of how the treaty, signed in the summer of 1786 and ratified by Congress on July 15th, 1787. The link to the post is

https://marcliebman.com/thomas-barclay-and-americas-longest-standing-treaty/.

The treaty has 25 tersely written clauses. Given that Morocco was, and is today, a monarchy and that its population is predominantly Muslim, the framers of the treaty did some interesting writing.

Clause 11 reads (FYI, the spelling and diction is what is written in the treaty)- If we shall be at War with any Christian Power & any of our Vessels sail from the Ports of the United States, no Vessel belonging to the Enemy shall follow until twenty-four hours after the departure of our Vessels, & the same Regulation shall be observed, towards the American Vessels sailing from our Ports, be their Enemies Moors or Christians.

Readers like me find it interesting that in the last line, the words Moors and Christians appears without definitions. What the Moroccans were saying was that they will not allow a enemy ship, which could be a pirate or naval vessel, owned by a Muslim based in Spain or in the North African littoral.

In Clause 12, the importance of the slave trade raises its ugly head with the words – If any ship of War belonging to the United States shall put into any of our Ports, she shall not be examined on any Pretence whatever, even though she should have fugitive Slaves on Board, nor shall the Governor or Commander of the Place, compel them to be brought on shore, under any Pretext, nor require any payment for them.

In other words, if a vessel carrying slaves stops in a Moroccan port, the government will not interfere. This clause was removed in later versions.

If a war broke out between Morocco and the U.S., Clause 16 covers that eventuality. The creators of the treaty wrote – In Case of a War between the Parties, the Prisoners are not to be made Slaves, but to be exchanged one for another, Captain for Captain, Officer for Officer and one private Man for another; & if there shall prove a difficiency on either side it shall be made up by the Payment of one hundred Mexican Dollars for each Person wanting. And it is agreed that all Prisoners shall be exchanged in twelve Months from the time of their being taken, & that this Exchange may be effected by a Merchant, or any other Person authorized by either of the Parties.

The framers of the treaty wanted to make sure that if one was taken prisoner, one would or could be exchanged based on the ratio noted in the treaty. It is important to note that both sides agreed not to make or sell prisoners into.

Reading the word Mexican dollars as the preferred currency will make most of us smile. Why Mexican dollars? Good question. The coins were in silver, not printed on paper, and therefore had an intrinsic value that could be negotiated. And, at the time, the U.S. dollar was of questionable value.

Throughout the document, there are references to “Christian Powers.” There is no delineation of who these countries are. One can only assume that they are non-Muslim. If you wish to read the whole treaty, here’s a link on from the National Archives – https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-18-02-0196

Image is the first page of the 1787 U.S. – Morocco treaty in Arabic.

The post Interesting Language in the U.S.’s Oldest In-Force Treaty appeared first on Marc Liebman.

France’s and Spain’s defeat in the Seven Years’ War led to a major shift in colonial territories both claimed and controlled all over the world. For the residents of the Thirteen Colonies, what was significant was that, via the Treaty of Paris signed February 10th, 1763, France gave up all its claims to Canada, and Spain gave up its claims to East and West Florida.

Understand that when the 1763 Treaty of Paris was signed, most of the land that is now modern Canada and part of the United States became a British colony. The land was mostly unexplored, and the boundaries were, at best, guesses based on information from trappers and traders who ventured into the interior to trade with the Native Americans.

Those in the Thirteen Colonies resided mostly on the coast with settlers pushing west into what is now Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio. The majority of Canadians lived in Nova Scotia and along the St. Lawrence River.

In the Thirteen Colonies, settlers were emigrants from all over Europe, but mostly England, Ireland, Germany, and what was known at the time as the Holy Roman Empire (modern Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary and parts of Italy). These intrepid souls were drawn to the Thirteen Colonies because there were economic opportunities for them and the chance to own land.

In the minds of English leaders, British North America was now secure from any external threats (France and Spain). Therefore, they decided to redraw the map, so to speak, via the Proclamation Line of 1763. Issued on October 7th, 1763, the English rationale was that the continued westward movement of settlers was a threat to the English Mercantile System in which its colonies sent raw materials to England. British firms then turned them into manufactured goods which were sold to British colonists throughout the empire.

Via a series of acts in the 17th and early 18th Century, the British Parliament codified this economic concept into a series of laws known as the Navigation Acts. These acts irritated British citizens (the same ones who became Rebels in 1775) living in the colonies because there were customers willing to buy the same stuff – rice, indigo, lumber, dried fish, etc. – for a higher price. In toto, the Navigation Acts prohibited merchants living in a British colony from trading with any country other than Great Britain.

King George III’s proclamation drew a line down the spine of the Appalachian Mountains as it was known at the time. It was an attempt to confine the Thirteen colonies to a strip of land bounded on the west by the Appalachians, the north by Canada, the east by the Atlantic and Florida in the south.

Residents of the Thirteen Colonies were forbidden to own or buy land beyond this mountain range. If you look at the map accompanying this post, you’ll notice that Quebec was given what is now Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

Unfortunately, the map drawn by King George III’s minions didn’t reflect the realities on the ground or the will of the colonists. The proclamation didn’t stop settlers from moving west and conflicted with the territorial claims of Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Their legislatures had drawn lines on a map following lines of latitude westward from their eastern border as far west as the Mississippi River.

The colonists dislike of the lines on the map from the Proclamation of 1763, so in 1768, the British Parliament moved the line westward, but it too was ignored. Any law, or tax, or enforcement action by the British was ignored.

While the Proclamation of 1763 was not THE cause of the American Revolution, it was a contributor. The bottom line is that our Founding Fathers didn’t want some ruler 3,000+ miles away telling them where they could go, what they could sell, and what they could do. As a country, it is in our DNA.

Map is Jon Piatek’s depiction (created in 2008) of the lines drawn in the Proclamation of 1763.

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From the very beginning of the United States, our Founding Fathers recognized the importance of immigrants to our country. If they were not recent immigrants like Alexander Hamilton, they were descendants of them.

They also suspected, if they did not already know, that the population of the Thirteen Colonies grew from about 2.2 million in 1770 to over 3.9 million in 1790. The growth was not organic, i.e., citizens having large families but from people who came to the new United States.

Some immigrants were deserters from the British Army and their German mercenaries, and the French Army who came to help win our independence. But the largest “group” came from war-torn Europe, either as indentured employees with contracts to work for a set number of years or as people wanting a better life.

The reasons – religious and/or political freedom, escape from poverty and wanting a better life, and freedom to choose a profession – haven’t changed in 250+ years. Despite all our faults, we were then and still are, a beacon of hope to those who are oppressed.

In 1790, Congress passed the Naturalization Act of 1790. It laid out the path to citizenship by stating that one had to be at least 21 years of age, of “good character,” a U.S. resident for at least two years, and must give formal notice via a court appearance one year in advance of the date one wanted to become a U.S. citizen. It also stipulated that once the individual swore allegiance to the U.S. in a court and became a citizen, his/her children were also U.S. citizens.

As a point of interest, the Naturalization Act of 1790 is the only piece of legislation that uses the words “natural born citizens” found in the Constitution.

Fast forward five years. Congress repeals the Naturalization Act of 1790 and replaces it with the Naturalization Act of 1795. Again, Congress tinkered with the immigration process in three ways.

First, the 1795 legislation eliminated the restriction that only “free white” persons could immigrate. Second, it increased the residency period from two to five years. Applicants had to declare their intention to become U.S. citizens three years before their formal court appearance and taking the oath of citizenship.

The third stipulation was that the application to become a citizen had to be formal and in writing. And last, it also replaced the term “natural born citizens” with words that ensures children of U.S. citizens born outside the United States shall be considered as citizens of the United States.

How and why, Congress decided to amend the Naturalization Act of 1795 with the Naturalization Act of 1798, is a matter of debate that is beyond the scope of this post. Note that the 1798 law increased the residency period to 15 years and the notice requirement to five years. It also required the Federal government to keep records on those who immigrated. Some historians contend this was done to limit immigration, but if one looks at the growth of the U.S. population at the time, it didn’t slow it down. Census data shows that U.S. population was growing at over 35% every 10 years!

Four years later, The Naturalization Law of 1802 repealed the 1798 act except for the record-keeping requirement and reset the residency requirement to five years and the notice period to three years. Only “free white persons” were allowed to immigrate. It kept the provisions of the 1795 naturalization Act in that children of U.S. citizens living abroad were U.S. citizens and added the proviso that any children of naturalized citizens became U.S. citizens when they were born.

There is also a hangover from the American Revolution in the 1802 law. Any member of the British Army, and Loyalists who fought for the British, were required to gain formal approval from their state legislatures before they could apply for U.S. citizenship.

1857 engraving of emigrants arriving in Boston, Ballou’s Pictorial, October 31st, 1857

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Given that this post will appear two days before the official Veterans’ Day holiday, it is legitimate to ask when we, as a nation, began celebrating the contributions of those who have served before or after we became a country.

The holiday and date we are about to celebrate was picked because World War I (the War to End All Wars until World War II began) ended at the end of the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. In calendar terms, November 11th, 1918, is the official end of World War I.

In the beginning, it was called Armistice Day and became an official holiday on June 4th, 1926, when President Calvin Coolidge declared it a day to honor those who served in World War I. In 1956, in the aftermath of World War II, President Eisenhower ordered that Armistice Day be changed to Veterans’ Day to honor the contributions of American soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen throughout our history.

Looking back in time, did we celebrate the contribution of veterans before 1926 or 1954? The answer is yes. So, when did it start?

The concept of national holidays and days off is a relatively recent one. Back in the early days of the Thirteen Colonies life in the 1600 and 1700s was very hard compared to 2025. There was no electricity, or running water, or sanitation, or interstate highways, or supermarkets much less cars and airplanes. If you wanted chicken for dinner, you went out to the coup in the back, caught a chicken, killed it, plucked it, and cooked what you wanted. Any meat not eaten was either smoked or salted because refrigerators and freezers hadn’t yet been invented.

Oh, if you wanted to communicate with someone in Philadelphia and you lived in New York, you wrote a letter because telephones, telegraphs, or email hadn’t been invented. And you chose your words carefully because paper was not only expensive but taxed by the sheet.

The first known monument to men who defended their fellow citizens is Nine Men’s Misery, located in Cumberland, RI. It commemorates the nine soldiers who were captured and tortured to death by Narragansett Indians on March 26th, 1676. The stone monument was erected that year and still exists.

In 1777, a statute was created to commemorate General Richard Montgomery’s service and placed in St. Paul’s Chapel, 209 Broad Street in Manhattan. Montgomery was killed while leading the invasion of Quebec during the American Revolution.

The Navy claims that the oldest military monument in the U.S. is the Tripoli Monument now at the Naval Academy. Giovanni Micali completed it in Livorno, Italy in 1806 and it was brought back to the U.S. on U.S.S. Constitution. The edifice commemorates those who served and sacrificed their lives in the Barbary Pirates War. After a sojourn in the Capitol Building and the Washington Navy Yard, the statute was moved to the grounds of the Naval Academy in 1860 where it sits today.

In the National Cemetery in St. Augustine, FL, there are the Dade Pyramids. These are where the remains of 1,486 soldiers killed by the Seminole Indians in the Second Seminole War reside. The monuments were named after Major Francis Dade who was killed, along with 107 of his men, on December 28th, 1835.

The point of this post is that we should honor and celebrate those who are willing to risk their lives for our country and preserve our freedoms. Their sacrifices should never be forgotten.

Vidor photo of Jean-Jacques Caffieri’s monument to General Richard Montgomery.

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Between the time the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783 and President Monroe made his 1823 speech promulgating what became the Monroe Doctrine, the world had changed. From 1792 to 1815, Europe was at war. In that period, the U.S. fought the French in the Quasi-War (1798 – 1800), the Barbary Pirates (1801 – 1805 and again in 1815), and the British (1812 – 1815).

During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the U.S. managed to stay neutral. A string of presidents – Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison – successfully kept us out of the wars that raged in Europe.

Diplomatically, remaining neutral was a painful exercise because exercising those rights to trade freely with countries on both sides of the fighting led to the War of 1812. In many ways, our neutrality started a tradition in which U.S. businessmen made lots of money from European wars, e.g. The Crimean War, World War I, and II.

However, it was just not Europe that was at war. The success of the American Revolution inspired people in colonies in the Caribbean, Central, and South America. Much of South America was also in turmoil as French, Portuguese, and Spanish colonies threw off the colonial yoke. Revolutions created what is now Bolivia, Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, Haiti, and Peru. As we know in 2025, more were to come.

Politically and emotionally, our Founding Fathers supported these revolutions. But that was about it. Militarily, the U.S. was a pigmy even though its small navy had proven itself against the Royal Navy on the Great Lakes as well as in the Atlantic and Pacific. Foreign aid was, well, a foreign concept.

Nonetheless, our Founding Fathers wanted to fire a warning shot across the bow of the Europeans by telling them to stay out of our backyard. None of our Founding Fathers wanted the European powers to regain or maintain control of their colonies in the Western Hemisphere. To them, this was “our” turf.

When Madison made his speech to Congress on December 2nd, 1823, U.S. leaders were afraid European monarchies would, now that Napoleon was defeated, try to suppress independence movements in Central and South America. Oddly enough, the inspiration and background for Monroe’s speech came from Alexander Hamilton’s writings in the Federalist Papers. Hamilton espoused the idea that the U.S. would become a dominant power in what was known as the New World and would act as an intermediary between the new South American countries and the major European powers.

At first, all but one European country rejected what became known as the Monroe Doctrine. The British, seeing the benefits of what was becoming the Industrial Revolution, saw an opportunity to expand its influence through trade. This U.S. policy of non-interference fit right in with the concept of Pax Britannica in which the Royal Navy protected the sea lanes so that every nation could trade with another.

In a way, the Monroe Doctrine also set in motion a policy of isolationism that was followed by a succession of U.S. presidents until 1898 and Spanish American War. This war against Spain was the first time that U.S. troops were deployed outside North America in our history.

1896 cartoon by Gilliam titled Keep off the Monroe Doctrine.

The post Genesis of the Monroe Doctrine appeared first on Marc Liebman.

When our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, the Revolutionary War had ended only four years before. All had grown up living under a monarch who could accuse any British citizen of treason. If there were a trial and a guilty verdict, the punishment was draconian – death for the accused individual and possibly innocent members of his family via the legal concept of corruption of blood, and through the right of attainder, forfeiture of all the guilty individual’s property and titles.

Corruption of blood was part of English law and enables the court to punish not only the individual who committed the crime, but his/her family as well. In the case of treason, it meant that the extended family could be executed. The right of attainder gave the English Crown to seize the convicted person’s title and property.

English kings and queens used both the corruption of blood and the right of attainder for many purposes. For example, Edward IV used the right of attainder to execute his brother George Plantagenet, the Duke of Clarence for treason. Henry VIII used it to strip Anne Boleyn of her title, wealth so that he could marry another woman. The list is long and was not lost on our Founding Fathers.

One of their fears about a strong central government was that a president could accuse citizens of treason at will, as has happened in England, within their lifetimes. This is why the word “treason” occurs three times in the Constitution. First, in Article III (Judicial) , Section 3, Clause 1 defines the crime of treason and the minimum level of proof by stating Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Clause 2 of the same section states The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted. Back when the Constitution was written attainder meant one was convicted of a crime. C

The language of the Constitution creates a high bar for evidence needed to convict a citizen for treason and limits the punishment the government can impose only to those individuals found guilty.

In the Constitution, the word “felony” appears twice. Once in Article I (Legislative), Section 6, Clause 1 which specifically bars members of Congress from receiving compensation after they have been convicted of a felony.

The word also appears in Article IV (States Relations), Section 2, Clause 2 which establishes the concept of extradition. In other words, if you commit a crime in one state and are captured in another state, the state in which the crime has been committed can ask to have the criminal returned for trial.

Two other crimes are mentioned in the Constitution. One is counterfeiting. In Article III (Legislative), Section 8, Clause 6, the Founding Fathers made their intent clear, To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States…

A few clauses later, in Clause 6 of Article III, Section 8, the Legislative branch of our government is given the power to deal with piracy. The clause states the Congress as the power To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations.

Given the times that most of the Founding Fathers lived, the Age of Piracy officially ended in the 1740s, but in 1787 when the Constitution was written, there were still pirates in the Caribbean and elsewhere in the world, just as there are today.

Image is from the Talbot Shrewsbury Book that details how Margaret of Anjou seized Richard of York’s property after he was executed for treason.

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Marc talks about the novels Forgotten and The Red Star of Death as well as a potpourri of other topics.

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A little over a year after President Jefferson signed The Insurrection Act on March 3rd, 1807, he invoked it on April 19th, 1808, so he could have the militia arrest smugglers on Lake Champlain violating the Embargo Act of 1807. While Jefferson was the first president to use The Insurrection Act to put down lawlessness, he was not the last.

In the history of our country, 45 different men have been President. Two – Cleveland and Trump – were elected twice and had split terms. Fifteen of these presidents, exactly one-third of them, have used The Insurrection Act to restore law and order.

There is some consistency in their actions. For example, Grant used it five times to quell activities by white supremacists, and once to preserve the peace after a contested election.

Kennedy and LBJ each invoked the act three times. Kennedy used it to enforce desegregation, and LBJ once to enforce desegregation and twice to suppress riots, one in Detroit in 1967 and the other in the aftermath of Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968.

Bush I used the legislation to restore order and stop looting in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1982 after Hurricane Hugo devastated the islands. He used it again to put down the riots in 1992 in LA in the aftermath of the acquittal of the police officer who beat up Rodney King.

FDR used the act to provide the legal basis of using the National Guard to quell a race riot in Detroit in 1943. Rutherford B. Hayes used The Insurrection Act as the basis of putting down a railroad strike and ending a feud between rival gangs that had gotten way out of hand.

Going farther back in history, Lincoln used the powers of The Insurrection Act in 1861 to fight the Confederacy, and he also used its legal power to use Federal troops to end the 1863 Draft Riots in New York City.

Andrew Jackson used The Insurrection Act in 1831 to send troops to end a border dispute on what was then the Arkansas/Mexico border because Texas had not yet become a country, much less a state. He also put down a slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831 and threatened to send in the U.S. Army to Maryland to end a labor dispute in 1834.

Gang violence was a problem in 1882 in the Arizona Territory which caused Chester Arthur to use The Insurrection Act to deploy the Army to put an end to the gang activities.

This is just a sample of how Presidents have used The Insurrection Act to restore law and order, just as our Founding Fathers intended. There is, however, one exception.

In 1932, veterans who were promised financial bonuses in the form of cash and bonds had not been paid. 43,000 of them set up camp in Washington, demanding payment which had been delayed by Presidents Wilson, Harding, and Coolidge. Now Herbert Hoover was in the White House, and he told the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army to “Surround the area and clear it without delay.”

MacArthur followed his orders from the Commander-in-Chief claiming he was acting under the powers given to the President under The Insurrection Act. However, to employ the power in The Insurrection Act, the President is required to publicly state and report to Congress that he intends to do so. Hoover never made such a statement, nor is there any record of him telling Congress.

U.S. Army photo of the Bonus Army shacks burning in 1932.

The post 30 Times the Insurrection Act Has Been Used appeared first on Marc Liebman.

The first sentence of Article II (Executive), Section 2, Clause 1, states “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States …”

Herein lies the source of the power to call up state militias, which are now called the National Guard. In the wake of the Whiskey Rebellion, our Founding Fathers went a step further when the 2nd U.S. Congress passed the Militia Act of 1792.

In Article I, Section 2 of the Militia Act of 1792, it states “Whenever the laws of the United States shall be opposed or the execution thereof obstructed, in any state, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by this act”. The term “marshals” referred to any law enforcement officer.

At the time the Militia Act of 1792 was passed, Washington was President, and the Federalists had control of both the House and Senate. Congress wanted to make sure that the President of the United States could deploy the state militias at any time to protect U.S. citizens who were, at the time, being attacked by Native Americans in the Northwest Territories when the United States did not have a standing Army or Navy. The legislation to create a standing U.S. Army and Navy would not come until 1794.

Fast forward to 1807, when our Founding Fathers took a significant step further to give the president to step in when states fail or are unable to enforce U.S. and state laws. Jefferson was in the White House, and his Democratic-Republicans had majorities in both the House and the Senate. The law, now codified in Title 10, Sections 251, 252, and 253 of the U.S. Code enables the President to mobilize the National Guard for law enforcement purposes under any one of three conditions:

If requested by a state’s legislature or governor to address an insurrection against the state;To suppress an insurrection in any state that makes it impossible to enforce the law; andTo put down an insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy in any state or states which results in the deprivation of any individual’s constitutional rights where the state is unable, fails, or refuses to protect said rights.

To use Sections 2 and 3, the President doesn’t need the acquiescence of the state’s governor or legislature. Once he activates, the term is Federalize, the National Guard, the units report to him as the commander-in-chief of the U.S. military.

The Insurrection Act of 1807 has been modified twice. In 1871, clauses were added to U.S. law to protect African Americans from the actions of the Ku Klux Klan, and then in 2016 to add coverage to the U.S.’s Trust Territories of Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

For the record, the Insurrection Act of 1807 has been upheld by the Supreme Court on numerous occasions. It was used by President Lincoln in 1863 to use the U.S. Army to quell anti-draft riots. In 1932 when President Hoover employed it to disband the Bonus Army.

President Eisenhower used the National Guard to enforce desegregation in 1954. Thirteen years later, in 1967 President Johnson called out the National Guard to put down race riots in Detroit and Newark, and then in 1968, riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King. Then, in 1992, the National Guard was called out by President George H.W. Bush to quell the L.A. riots.

For those politicians who rail against any President using the National Guard to help Federal Authorities enforce Federal law, it would behoove them, as well as judges who rule on their filings, to read the Constitution, the Insurrection Act of 1807 as well as the appropriate sections of the U.S. Code, specifically Title 10, Sections 251, 252 and 253. If they did, then they wouldn’t make stupid statements that assume that We the People don’t know the law.

Photo titled LA Riot Aftermath by Mick Taylor.

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Our Founding Fathers faced a combined international commerce/foreign policy/military conundrum. From the very beginning of their history, the Thirteen Colonies were involved in what we would call international trade or commerce today.

Initially, the colonies were a source of food, lumber, indigo, and other natural resources that were sent initially to England. In return, American traders bought manufactured goods to sell to their domestic customers.

When the American Revolution began, U.S. merchants were trading with England, France, The Netherlands, The Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, along with most of the other Italian duchies, The Holy Roman Empire, Norway/Denmark, Spain, and Sweden. The goods and materials traveled by ship. Before April 19th, 1775, they were under the protection of the Royal Navy, the largest and most powerful maritime force in the world.

The American Revolution ended that protection. Naively, U.S. leaders believed that by staying neutral, their merchant ships would be safe. That worked to a degree until the French Revolution began. Suddenly, both the French and British were pressuring the new United States to take sides. We refused.

Between 1783 and 1794, the United States didn’t have a standing Army or Navy. Except for detachments kept to guard Fort Pitt (near modern Pittsburgh) and West Point, the Continental Army was dissolved and its weapons given to state militias. All the ships of the small Continental Navy were either sold or scrapped.

Some in Congress, mostly Federalists led by Washington and Adams, wanted to create a small, frigate-based, standing Navy. Those in the Democratic-Republican Party, led by Jefferson and Madison, opposed this idea.

Pressure from merchants whose ships and cargoes were at risk, and a raging war in Europe, led the Congress to pass the Navy Act of 1794. Through it, despite the efforts of the Democratic-Republicans in Congress to hinder the construction and manning of the ships, the bill authorized six heavy frigates – Chesapeake, Constellation, Constitution, Congress, President, and United States – plus sloops and brigs.

They arrived none too soon because in 1798, the French Revolutionary Government ordered its Navy and privateers to seize U.S. merchant ships in the Caribbean in what is known as the Quasi-War. The fight ended in 1800, and now President Jefferson proposed to mothball the frigates and create a small, coastal defense force that would be cheaper to man and maintain.

Greedy Barbary Pirates caused Jefferson to change directions. He sent ships to the Mediterranean to change their behavior. Once peace broke out in 1805, except for a few ships, the squadron was recalled, put in ordinary, and again, Jefferson forced his idea of a coastal defense force composed of small gunboats on the U.S. Navy.

We again learned the folly of this approach in 1812 when the Royal Navy swept the gunboats and small sloops (and the U.S. Army) aside and landed the British Army on U.S. soil, burned Washington, and attempted to take Baltimore.

With the Treaty of Ghent signed, we were again at peace with Great Britain, but the Barbary Pirates raised their ugly head again. Two squadrons were sent to the Mediterranean to show the Barbary pirates the error of their ways.

This was the second time that the United States Navy and Marine Corps were ordered to conduct expeditionary warfare far from the U.S. The Navy had to figure out how to support ships and Marines more than 4,000 miles from home using bases in foreign lands.

At the end of his presidency, Madison, having learned the lessons from Jefferson’s (and his failed naval policies between 1800 and 1815), gave in to the faction in Congress that urged him to maintain a small standing navy based on heavy frigates. He also authorized the U.S. Navy to maintain a squadron in the Mediterranean to protect U.S. shipping.

Since then, the United States Navy has maintained a presence in the Mediterranean that continues to this day. By the 1820s, the U.S. Navy had ships stationed in the Caribbean and off Africa. By the 1840s, the U.S. Navy had a squadron in the Western Pacific.

1813 Thomas Birch Painting of United States defeating H.M.S. Macedonian.

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