Ottoman Algeria in Western Diplomatic History with ... - Bibliothèque

known as the Naval Act of 1794, which launched a large shipbuilding program
partly because of the captures of October-November 1793 and partly because
of French and British threats. 95 The preamble to the act clearly stated that
Algerian actions, present and future, were the motivations for the building a
navy: “Whereas, the depredation committed by the Algerine corsairs on the
commerce of the United States, render it necessary that a naval force should be
provided for its protection….” 96 Relations with Algiers then were so decisive
an issue in American foreign relations that section 9 provided for the
suspension of the Act upon successful negotiations of peace with Algiers: “that
if a peace shall take place between the United States and the Regency of
Algiers, that no further proceedings be had under this act.” 97 The necessity for
that condition could be understood especially if one knows that over the
creation of a navy Congress split between two factions: navalists who favored
it and anti-navalists who opposed them and the warlike debate ended in section
9 as a compromise for the passage of the act. Consequently, merely less than
seven years after Algiers the scapegoat gave the United States its Constitution
in a climate of calculated psychoses, it was used again as a solid argument for
arming it with a navy at a time America’s real enemies were elsewhere and
certainly not a friendly and ignorant Dey who unconsciously opened the gates
for incalculable American privileges and subsequently gunboats.
95 For the circumstances and provisions of the Naval act, 1794, see Marshall Smelser, “The Passage of
the Naval Act of 1794,” Military Affairs, 22: 1 (Spring 1958), pp. 1-12.
96 Adam Seybert, Statistical Annals, 1789-1818 (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson & Son, 1818), p. 635;
for the use of ‘Algerine piracy’ as argument for the creation of a navy see Smelser, “Passage of the
Naval Act,” pp. 8-12.
97 CMPP, 1:193, George Washington: Special Messages, March 15, 1796.
322