Quasi‐War with France

Quasi‐War with France. In 1797, during the Anglo‐French war that had started four years earlier, France began capturing American ships and cargoes in retaliation for the failure of the United States to protect its neutral commerce with France against British searches and seizures.France was dependent on American shipping to supply its empire because the superior British navy had swept French merchant vessels from the seas. When Jay's Treaty between the United States and Great Britain was ratified and implemented in 1796 with no guarantee of American neutral rights, France announced that it would henceforth seize neutral American shipping just as the British did.

President John Adams sent a delegation to France to try to resolve the dispute. But the French foreign minister, Talleyrand, demanded a bribe and treated the delegation with contempt. This so‐called XYZ Affair led Adams and Congress to prepare for war by increasing military appropriations and permitting American ships to fire on marauding French vessels. Neither the United States nor France formally declared war, hence the term “Quasi‐War.” Hostilities were limited to a few ship‐to‐ship battles. But Talleyrand had not wished the conflict to go even that far. He informed American diplomats that France would accept another American mission. Against the wishes of many in his own Federalist party, Adams authorized William Vans Murray, Oliver Ellsworth, and William R. Davie to negotiate a settlement. In the resulting Treaty of Mortefontaine (also known as the Convention of 1800), France agreed to stop illegal seizures.

France also agreed to suspend the Franco‐American alliance that had been in effect since the Revolutionary War. The United States would avoid all further “entangling alliances” (a phrase used by Thomas Jefferson in his first inaugural address in 1801) until World War II. Meanwhile, although most Americans supported Adams's peace, the president's peacemaking divided his party and Republican Thomas Jefferson defeated him for the presidency in 1800.
See also Early Republic, Era of the; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Europe.

Bibliography

Alexander DeConde , The Quasi‐War, 1966.
Daniel G. Lang , Foreign Policy in the Early Republic, 1985.

Jerald A. Combs