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Millions for Defense: The Subscription Warships of 1798. By Frederick C. Leiner. (Annapolis: United States Naval Institute Press, 1999. Pp. viii, 262. Illustrations, appendix. $38.95.) Frederick C. Leiner has done American naval history a service by looking at an obscure but not insignificant aspect of our earliest history, the 1798 quasi-war with France. Never rising to the level of an open, declared war between sovereign nations, this event dominated international affairs during the last years of the John Adams administration. It indicated how the new United States would handle most military crises of that time, essentially reacting to rather than anticipating problems, and illustrated how important it was for public opinion, diplomacy, and military measures to move in tandem. Disgusted with the actions of their erstwhile ally, the leaders of Revolutionary France unleashed a legion of privateers on American shipping. While most active in the Caribbean-where American ships were plentiful and vulnerable because French predators had nearby bases-these privateers operated throughout the world against the carrying trade of the new republic. Short of having the British do their former colonies a favor by clearing the sea of these dangerous ships, the Americans would either have to take their chances and suffer the loss of merchant vessels or organize protection of some sort. There was, of course, a third choice: cease trading with the rest of the world. For American merchants of the 1790s, the last option was not attractive, although Adams's successor would find it so for a while. Since naval power was expensive and demanded a bureaucratic infrastructure not feasible for the fledgling republic of the 1790s, Adams's government had no ready instrument to protect the republic's foreign commerce. Leiner's monograph relates the story of how concerned citizens, almost always led by wealthy merchants, raised money through subscriptions to build an instantaneous navy. This was a maritime echo of the traditional militia system, with historical links to the state navies of the Revolutionary Period. Donation campaigns such as these were common elsewhere in the New World, especially in the Spanish colonies where several massive men-of-war built in Havana were funded by similar donations. Led first by modest-sized Newburyport in Massachusetts, major coastal cities such as Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, New York, and Charleston pledged the necessary capital and put warships to sea during the years 17981799. Spontaneous yet imitative of one another, these patriotic spurts of energy to protect American shipping generated significant problems of coordination between citizens and their government. …
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