France, meanwhile, sought retaliation upon England at the expense of the Americans.  The United States, said the French government, is a sovereign nation.  If it does not protect its vessels against unwarrantable British aggressions it is because the Americans are secretly in league with the British.  France recognizes no difference between its foes.  So it is ordered that any American vessel which submitted to visitation and search from an English vessel, or paid dues in a British port, ceased to be neutral, and became subject to capture by the French.  The effect of these orders and decrees was simply that any American ship which fell in with an English or French man-of-war or privateer, or was forced by stress of weather to seek shelter in an English or French port, was lost to her owners.  The times were rude, evidence was easy to manufacture, captains were rapacious, admiralty judges were complaisant, and American commerce was rich prey.  The French West Indies fell an easy spoil to the British, and at Martinique and Basseterre American merchantmen were caught in the harbor.  Their crews were impressed, their cargoes, not yet discharged, seized, the vessels themselves wantonly destroyed or libelled as prizes.  Nor were passengers exempt from the rigors of search and plunder.  The records of the State Department and the rude newspapers of the time are full of the complaints of shipowners, passengers, and shipping merchants.  The robbery was prodigious in its amount, the indignity put upon the nation unspeakable.  And yet the least complaint came from those who suffered most.  The New England seaport towns were filled with idle seamen, their harbors with pinks, schooners, and brigs, lying lazily at anchor.  The sailors, with the philosophy of men long accustomed to submit themselves to nature’s moods and the vagaries of breezes, cursed British and French impartially, and joined in the general depression and idleness of the towns and counties dependent on their activity.

It was about this period (1794) that the American navy was begun; though, curiously enough, its foundation was not the outcome of either British or French depredations, but of the piracies of the Algerians.  That fierce and predatory people had for long years held the Mediterranean as a sort of a private lake into which no nation might send its ships without paying tribute.  With singular cowardice, all the European peoples had acquiesced in this conception save England alone.  The English were feared by the Algerians, and an English pass—­which tradition says the illiterate Corsairs identified by measuring its enscrolled border, instead of by reading—­protected any vessel carrying it.  American ships, however, were peculiarly the prey of the Algerians, and many an American sailor was sold by them into slavery until Decatur and Rodgers in 1805 thrashed the piratical states of North Africa into recognition of American power.  In 1794, however, the Americans were not eager for war, and diplomats strove to arrange a treaty which would protect American shipping, while Congress prudently ordered the beginning of six frigates, work to be stopped if peace should be made with the Dey.  The treaty—­not one very honorable to us—­was indeed made some months later, and the frigates long remained unfinished.