Label Six frigates : the epic history of the founding of the U.S.
In the words of Henry Adams, the 1812 encounter between USS Constitution and HMS Guerriere "raised the United States in one half hour to the rank of a first class power in the world." Toll tells this grand tale with the political insight of Founding Brothers and a narrative flair worthy of Patrick O'Brian. From the complicated politics of the initial decision, through the cliffhanger campaign against Tripoli, to the war that shook the world in 1812, Ian W. It was the first great appropriation of federal money and the first demonstration of the power of the new central government, calling for the creation of entirely new domestic industries, and the extraction of natural resources from the backwoods of Maine to the uninhabited coastal islands of Georgia. The unique combination of power, speed and tactical versatility - smaller than a battleship and larger than a sloop - that all navies sent on their most daring missions.
In 1794, President Washington signed legislation authorizing the construction of six heavy frigates. Would a standing army be the thin end of dictatorship? Would a navy protect American commerce from the vicious depredations of the Barbary pirates, or would it drain the treasury and provoke hostilities with the great powers? How large a navy would suffice? The founders - particularly Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and Adams - debated these questions fiercely and switched sides more than once. Interestingly, a number of precursors of future events can be found in this study - for example, the United States’ first (but far from last) conflict with an Islamic power, and the lessons the young Theodore Roosevelt drew from the War of 1812 and would later put into effect during his own presidency.Summary Before the ink was dry on the Constitution of the United States, the establishment of a permanent military had become the most divisive issue facing the young republic.
Out of the careers of these ships and their officers Ian Toll spins a fascinating and rip-roaring story of battles at sea (and no less vicious political infighting ashore) which rivals anything in Patrick O’Brian’s fiction - in fact, O’Brian made free use of these historical incidents in writing some of his own Jack Aubrey novels. In the end, George Washington’s administration decided to build six large frigates more powerful than comparable ships in other navies - one of these six being the still-surviving USS Constitution now on view here in Boston. Few people realize how close the United States came to not having a Navy at all - Jefferson, for one, insisted that the equivalent of the Coast Guard would be perfectly adequate.
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