And the primary reason the US came out of that conflict as well as it did was the leadership of Benjamin Stoddert. And if you though the US was unprepared for the War of 1812, it had nothing on the Quasi-War. The real forgotten war of the Early Republic is the Quasi-War with France. Your target readership knows about it already. With the Bicentennial of the War of 1812, there's been a lot of focus on that as a 'forgotten war.' (A minor rant: forgotten by whom? Isn't American history still required in high school? Please, publishers: stop calling it forgotten. Now it's so tabbed and highlighted (multi-colored, because that's how OCD readers roll) that it looks like one of my law school casebooks. This new Classics edition is introduced by the author, chair of the maritime history department at East Carolina University and author of three other books, including Origins of Maritime Strategy.Ĭonfession: I had no intention of reading this book, except as a reference for some historical minutia.īut once I started reading, I couldn't stop.

Awarded prizes from the American Revolution Round Table of New York and other organizations, the respected work answers penetrating questions about what happened and why, and the author's judicious evaluations of participants and their policies make an important contribution to the literature. The book also examines how the Navy served the nation's commercial and diplomatic interests, a pattern of activity that would become known as gunboat diplomacy, and how the Navy's successes assured it a permanency that had eluded the Continental Navy. It takes a critical look at the command and operations of the first secretary of the Navy, Benjamin Stoddert, and how under his direction the Navy proved itself ship for ship as-if not more-effective against French privateers than the Royal Navy. First published in 1987, the book avoids the parochialism of earlier studies by placing the American war within a European context. An award-winning study of the Franco-American undeclared naval war at the turn of the nineteenth century, this history of the nearly forgotten struggle is filled with the dramatic actions of such frigates as the Constellation and her capture of l'Insurgente, as well as the sundry operations that protected American commerce from the depredations of the French corsairs in the Caribbean.

Stoddert's War by Michael A. Palmer