PDA

View Full Version : On This Day 7 July



Coog
07-07-2012, 06:35
On July 7, 1798 Congress rescinded treaties with France and is considered the beginning of the Quasi-War. This was followed two days later with the passage of the Congressional authorization to attack French warships.

The Kingdom of France had been a critical ally of the United States in the American Revolutionary War from the spring of 1776, and had signed in 1778 a Treaty of Alliance with the United States. But in 1794, after the French Revolution toppled that country's monarchy, the American government came to an agreement with the Kingdom of Great Britain, the Jay Treaty, that resolved several points of contention between the United States and Great Britain that had lingered since the end of the Revolutionary War. It also contained economic clauses.

The fact that the United States had already declared neutrality in the conflict between Great Britain and (now revolutionary) France, and that American legislation was being passed for a trade deal with their British enemy, led to French outrage. The French government was also furious over the U.S. refusal to continue repaying its debt to France on the grounds that the debt had been owed to the French Crown, not to Republican France.

The French navy began seizing American ships trading with Britain and refused to receive the new United States minister Charles Cotesworth Pinckney when he arrived in Paris in December 1796.

Coog
07-07-2012, 06:36
The U.S. warship, Delaware, commanded by Capt. Stephen Decatur, Sr., captured a French privateer, La Croyable, off Great Egg Harbor, New Jersey, on 7 July 1798. Before her capture, the schooner had been preying upon shipping off the Delaware Capes and had taken a British brigantine and a Philadelphia merchantman, Liberty. She had also boarded and robbed coaster Alexander Hamilton.

The U.S. Navy purchased La Croyable on 30 July 1798, manned her at Philadelphia, renamed her Retaliation, and placed her under the command of Lt. William Bainbridge.

Capt P
07-08-2012, 12:18
Keep up the history updates they are very informative for me.