Marc Liebman's Blog, page 23

Benjamin Stoddert’s Difficult Task

On March 27th, 1794, the Congress granted President George Washington’s wish by passing the Navy Act thus creating the modern U.S. Navy. The last Continental Navy ship – Alliance, 36 guns – had been sold in August of 1784. From that moment, the United States of America had no navy and in the 10 years, much had changed.

France and England were again at war. French warships and privateers were seizing U.S. ships in the Caribbean to pressure the U.S. to repay its debt to France. In the Mediterranean, pirates were capturing U.S. merchant ships without fear of retribution. Each year, they upped the ante by demanding more and more tribute. (See 7/5/20 post– We paid What for Tribute – https://marcliebman.com/we-paid-what-for-tribute/)

To create a Navy, Washington appointed Benjamin Stoddert as the first Secretary of the Navy. Few have heard about Stoddert who was the son of a merchant ship captain. He was a member of the Pennsylvania cavalry when he was severely wounded at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11th, 1777. Forced to leave the service, Stoddert recovered and after the war, he was tasked with the job of buying the initial parcels of land that we know now as the District of Columbia.

Two ships were named after the first Secretary of the Navy. The first, Stoddert (DD-302) a four stack, Clemson-class destroyer commissioned in June 1920. The second was Benjamin Stoddert (DDG-22) which was an Adams class guided missile destroyer commissioned in 1964. The 22-ship class was named for Charles Adams, John Quincy Adams’ son and John Adams’ grandson.

Stoddert had a difficult task but had the advantage of starting with a clean sheet of paper. He tasked John Barry, the last captain of Alliance, to find men who could captain the new Navy’s ships. (See 7/7/19 post https://marcliebman.com/john-barry-the-g…he-american-navy/). Barry recruited Stephen Decatur, William Bainbridge, John Rogers, Isaac Hull, David Porter, and many more who became legends.

At the same time, Stoddert began a ship building program. While most have heard of the famous “Six Frigates” – Chesapeake, Congress, Constellation, Constitution, President, United States – he also established six formal Navy yards to support the new U.S. Navy. Stoddert realized that in order to have an effective navy, the country needed an infrastructure to keep the ships manned, equipped, and maintained. This became the focus of the Department of the Navy that he created. Of the three, recruiting seamen was the hardest because the wages offered by the government were significantly less than one could earn on a merchant ship. Discipline was much stricter and there was the risk of injury or death.

Stoddert convinced President Adams that the best way to defeat the French was to attack the “enemy’s strength” which was the French frigates and privateers in the Caribbean. He ordered the new U.S. frigates and smaller ships he called “cruisers” or small frigates – six raters- in Royal Navy parlance, brigs, and sloops to the Caribbean

The officers Barry recruited were skillful and soon, the French realized the folly of their actions. The Treaty of Mortefontaine signed on September 30th, 1800, cancelled the U.S. debt to France, abrogated the 1778 Franco/American Treaty of Friendship and Alliance and ended the war.

In addition to the famous six frigates, Stoddert lobbied Congress successfully to authorize 12 ships of the line, each mounting 74 guns. These ships were funded and designed by Joshua Humphreys and were the part of Stoddert’s plan to build a small, but powerful Navy capable of defending our country’s interests.

When the Jefferson took office, he cancelled the orders for the ships of the line and reduced the Navy to three operational frigates. By 1801, U.S. merchant ships outside of home waters were again vulnerable.

Image is Eliphlet Frazer Andrews portrait of Benjamin Stoddert, the First Secretary of the Navy.

 

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The First’s First 15 Words

If one asked most U.S. citizens what rights the First Amendment gives us, the most likely answer is “freedom of speech.” While that is true, it is just one “right” of five.

The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceably assemble; and to petition the government to address a grievance.”

In the first 15 words, the writers of the Constitution prevented the government from establishing a national religion AND enabled any resident of the country to practice whatever religion they preferred. This had never been done in modern history.

At the time these words were written in 1787, each major European powers had a national religion whose leaders had significant influence on its government, society, and culture. England had its Church of England. France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire were Catholic. Russia had its Orthodox Church. But here in these new United States of America, there was not going to be a “national” religion.

But it was almost not so. Many delegates to the Constitutional Convention wanted the state religion be Anglican. While the proponents of a national religion would agree to allow Catholics, Jews, “Mohamadans” and other religions to practice their religion freely, they would have to pay a tax to the government. The money collected would be turned over to the national church.

Unfortunately, the proponents of a state religion focused on the Thirteen Colonies’ Jewish population as an example for the need for a national religion. Our Founding Fathers came from European cultures where anti-Semitism, taxes and restrictions on what professions Jews could enter were state sponsored in every country except The Netherlands.

Anti-Semitism raised its ugly head during the debate over the words in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Those delegates pushing a national religion seemed to forget that much of the funding for the Continental Army and Navy came from the Colonies’ Jewish community.

For example, during the Yorktown campaign, Washington did not have the funds to buy food for his army pursuing Cornwallis. Desperate, he wrote, in a letter to members of the Continental Congress and couriered to Philadelphia, “to tell Hyam Salomon to raise the money.” Wealthy Jews in New York and Philadelphia bought bonds or made donations to meet Washington’s requirements and the rest is history.

Much of the opposition to prohibiting a religious test or a state religion was centered in Massachusetts and Connecticut and led by John Adams who would become our second president. Two examples from the writings of the time suffice to express the fears of what freedom of religion might bring.

One is in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in which James Madison wrote, “one of the objections in New England was that the Constitution, by prohibiting religious tests, opened a door for Jews, Turks and infidels.” The second is taken from an essay in the Worcester Magazine opposing ratification of the Constitution. In it, the writer stated, “there is a door opened for the Jews, Turks and Heathens to enter into public office and be seated at the head of the government of the United States.”

These a just of few of the comments that have survived. Yet when the Massachusetts legislature voted for ratification of the Constitution, it was on the condition that the Bill of Rights – the First Ten Amendments – as written be adopted immediately.

While writing the Constitution, Madison and Jefferson and the leaders of the Democratic-Republican party came together with the opposition – the Federalists. Led by Alexander Hamilton, the Federalists insisted that the First Amendment (and other limitations on the power of the government) be accepted as it was written.

The point of this post is that the men who wrote the Constitution were adamant in giving every citizen the right to choose their religion. The U.S. was the first country to do so in modern history. We take this right for granted, but much of the world still does not enjoy freedom of religion.

Images is that of Hyam Salomon, one of the financiers of the American Revolution.

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The Dumbest Flight I Ever Made

My mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when she was in her early forties. Back then, the treatment was a hysterectomy and removal of the tumor followed by radiation. Chemotherapy as we know it today, didn’t exist.

From that date on, every year, after my father retired from the Air Force, she went to Walter Reed for a check-up. From Northport, Long Island, NY where they were living, it was 4 – 6-hour drive, depending on the traffic.

My wife and I were living in Lock Haven, PA where I was working for Piper Aircraft Corporation. Getting to DC from Lock Haven, PA was a trek. For those who don’t know, Lock Haven is in the mountains of North Central Pennsylvania. D.C. is four-hour drive away. My wife Betty was pregnant and while she could have flown with me, we didn’t think it was appropriate to bring our three-year-old daughter.

I checked out a Piper Turbo Arrow to fly down to Bethesda and took off early on Saturday morning. My day would meet me at College Park Airport and later in the day, I’d fly the hour and a half back to Lock Haven.

My dad was grim when I met him and learned on the way to Walter Reed that that my mother’s uterine cancer had returned. In the 1970s, if it returned after five years, it was a death sentence for my then 51-year-old mother. The only question was how long did she have?

I don’t remember much about that day other than the bad news but I do remember thinking that I, Naval Aviator extraordinaire, could make the flight back to Lock Haven. Looking back I realize now that I was an emotional mess when I climbed into the Turbo Arrow. If it had been VFR, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but it was IFR. Williamsport, the nearest airport with an ILS was down to 1000 feet overcast with a mile visibility.

Lock Haven, where Piper’s headquarters was located, didn’t have an instrument approach. To get there, we would fly the ILS at Williamsport. Then, if one was below the clouds, one could scud run the 20 miles or so down Susquehanna River valley to Lock Haven. Never mind there were 2,500-foot mountains on either side of the valley and once you started down, turning around in the narrow valley was very, very dangerous. The sides of the mountains were littered with wrecks of planes whose pilots thought they could reverse course.

This is/was a classic case of “get home its.” My father, an Air Force Command Pilot, and I should have known better. But, neither of us were in a good emotional state. And, like most Naval Aviators, I thought I was the ace of the base and there wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.

The climb out of College Park Airport was a piece of cake. I broke out of the clouds at about 5,000 feet and was cruising at 9,000 on the way to Williamsport. Passing Harrisburg, I was back in the clouds and flying on instruments. Because of the mountains in north central Pennsylvania, there is no radar coverage below about 5,000 feet.

After being cleared to descend at pilot’s discretion to intercept the localizer for the ILS at Williamsport, my mind was elsewhere. I couldn’t concentrate on what I was doing. What made it worse was that one of the navigation radios and the DME (distance measuring equipment) crapped out on the descent at around 6,000 and I was lost.

The airplane had two VOR receivers and by receiving two different stations, one could accurately fix one’s position. With one, it is harder because you must switch back and forth.

I leveled off at 4,000 feet and tried to get a fix on my position. What made matters worse, the primary flight instruments – the attitude and directional gyros were acting erratically. The vacuum pressure gauge was fluctuating wildly which told me that either the pump was dying or the filter was partially plugged. Either way, I was now partial panel.

Common sense would have said, climb, declare and emergency and go someplace else where it is flat and they can give you vectors to land.  Oh, no, I had to get back to Lock Haven.

In most cases, if I had been mentally in the right place, I probably would have made better decisions and wouldn’t have gotten flustered in the cockpit, but that day, I wasn’t.

After stooging around for a few minutes, I called the approach controller to tell him that I was partial panel, i.e. didn’t have all my flight instruments and asked for vectors to intercept the ILS localizer. In other words, without saying so, I was declaring an emergency.

The controller asked me to climb to 5,000 feet so he could pick me up on radar before he gave vectors to the extended localizer. Once I was tracking the localizer, I lowered the gear and flaps descended as per the localizer instrument approach “plate” and popped out of the clouds at roughly nine hundred feet.

While others at Piper thought nothing of flying down the valley with the cloud bottoms at three or four hundred feet, my minimum ceiling was a thousand. Yet, again, another back decision, rationalizing that 900 was close to 1,000 feet. So, I told the tower that rather than landing at Williamsport, I was going to land at Lock Haven.

With gear and flaps up, I kept the power back so I was only flying at 100 knots and headed down the valley at a hundred knots. Experience driving back and forth to Williamsport and flying in and out of the valley, I knew where power lines were strung across the river and where the towers that held them were. Both were below 200 feet.

Heading down the valley, the rain increased and further reduced visibility to less than half a mile. It is only 27 miles but the ceiling kept getting lower and lower. I U.S. Route 220 which ran along the river, staying just below the cloud base until I spotted the road that led up to our house. It was about two miles from the end of the eastern end of Runway 9/27 at William T. Piper Airport in Lock Haven.

A gentle left turn and there was the runway. Power back to idle, gear and flaps down, and on short final, I made the mandatory radio call for uncontrolled airports that I was making a full stop landing on Runway 27.

On the ground, I sat in the Arrow for probably a minute or two letting the engine idle and collecting my thoughts before getting out. I was very lucky and I knew it. My wife Betty was surprised when I walked in because our house, which was about 500 feet above the valley floor was in the clouds all day.

Supposedly, there was a dispatcher on duty from 0600 to 2100. When I parked the Arrow, the door was locked. The next day, when I turned the keys back in, the person on duty left at about two thinking no one in his right mind would be coming in because for most of the day, the valley was fogged in and the visibility was almost zero.

As I look back on this flight, it is gives me pause for several reasons. I should have never taken off from Bethesda. However, I’m not sure how soon I would have gotten over the news. My father and mother went back to Northport on Monday.

That day was the beginning of the nightmare that was the final 18-months of my mother’s life. Chemo and radiation merely postponed the inevitable. Every weekend, I would either drive the six hours or fly to Long Island where my parents lived. Along with my father and brother, I watched her health deteriorate.

There are two footnotes to this story. The summer before my mother died, the first Star Wars movie was released and we promised to take our daughter, now four, to see it. The day before my mother passed away, we watched Star Wars at drive in theater.

That same day, my brother was packing to go back to St. Lawrence University in upstate New York. He knew the end was near and postponed leaving knowing that he would have to come back soon for a funeral. Yet, my mother insisted he go to school, register, and check into his dorm. Once my father told her that he was safely in his dorm at St. Lawrence, she closed her eyes for the last time.

 

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Most Dangerous Evolution in Naval Aviation – the Fly Off

It is the end of a cruise, the ship – carrier, destroyer, cruiser, amphib or supply – is approaching the coast after a long cruise. Or even a short, two- or three-month work-up. Everyone in the airwing (on a carrier) or Marine Air Group on an amphib or the helo detachment on the aviation capable ships wants to go home. Those of whom fly off get to see their loved ones before those who must wait for the ship to dock.

On a carrier, the fixed wing aircraft launch about a couple hundred miles from the beach so to speak. If the carrier is approaching San Diego, the West coast, the electronic warfare airplanes fly north to Whidbey Island, the F/A-18s go to Lemoore in the San Joaquin Valley in Central California. If the carrier is based in Norfolk, the airwing flies to NAS Oceana in Virginia Beach.

The helos usually wait until the ship is closer, anywhere from 25 – 50 miles from the shore. West coast helo squadrons are based at North Island and the East coast ones at Norfolk Naval Air Station.

On board the ship, for the past few days, the maintenance crews have been getting the airplanes and helicopters ready. If the detachment or squadron had more than one airplane, it probably had a hangar queen which for much of the cruise had been used as a parts bin.

Cannibalizing parts to keep other airplanes flying is against Naval Aviation rules and regs. However, every squadron commander or detachment officer-in-charge, is faced with an ugly choice – cannibalization and meet one’s commitments or don’t cannibalize and don’t and face a bad fitness report. The fly-off is just another one of those situations where the rules and sometimes common sense are, shall we say, ignored.

Why does cannibalization happen? There are several causes, the details of which are well beyond the scope of this piece. Suffice it to say, there are two primary reasons. One, the parts may not be on the carrier or ship and must be flown out from a shore warehouse. This process could take days or weeks depending on where the broken airplane/helicopter is located. Two, the Navy has a history of saving money by underfunding the parts needed to keep its fleet of airplanes in the air, so there may not be any parts available.

Because no CO or detachment officer-in-charge wants to have one of his airplanes or helicopters craned off the ship, the hangar queen along with the other aircraft must be made flyable. Even with today’s consolidated bases, no squadron wants to assign sailors to a det at another air station to fix a broken airplane.

So the question is, what’s flyable? Any Naval Aviator has been there. It is a decision every time one signs for an aircraft to go fly. But for a flyoff, the criteria of what is an “up” airplane or helicopter changes.

Ego tells the pilot assigned to fly the hangar queen – usually the maintenance officer – he can fly it and handle any emergency. Desire to see his family or significant other hours or even a day before the rest of his squadron helps with the rationalization. So does the desire not to have to assign a det stay with the airplane until it can be “safely” flown home. The operative word here is “safely.”

So when the time comes to man up, if it is a fixed wing airplane, if the engines start, the wings unfold, and the airplane isn’t leaking fuel or hydraulic fluid, it is going off the front end of the boat.

Radios? Don’t need them they’re going to fly on the wing of his flight leader.

Autopilot? Hell, that’s what they make trim tabs for.

Instruments for flying in crappy weather. No problem, it’s forecast to be visual flight rules. Even if it isn’t, I’m an outstanding Naval Aviator and I can tuck onto the wing of my flight leader who can lead me right down to the runway. Or I can make a partial panel instrument approach to a runway even though I haven’t done it in six months.

Us helo drivers are superhuman. Every time we lift off the deck, we wrestle a machine around the sky that is essentially 30,000+ parts flying in close formation. If we’re lucky, none of them have a mid-air collision.

Naval Aviation’s rotorheads violate the rules of common aviation sense because almost every day, we’re forced to make down-wind approaches, or pick-up survivors from a mountain ledge at 7,000 feet above sea level, or, or, or. The list is an article unto itself. For those of you who don’t know, helicopters designed to operate off ships don’t fly well at high altitudes and in mountains.

Land on a deck that is rolling 10 -15 degrees and going up and down 20 – 30 feet, with three to four feet of clearance between the tips of the rotors and the superstructure of the ship, no problem. We go to places where the charts – remember them – are not accurate. GPS? It may not work.

So, for the rotorhead Naval Aviator, if the engines start, the rotors and the tail rotor is controllable, one of the two generators to keep the electrics – the helo’s stabilization system – working, no fuel or hydraulic leaks and we are good to go!

Radios? Don’t need them. Who are we going to talk to? We’re going to fly VFR.

Instruments to make an approach in in bad? Nah, not necessary. We’ll fly low to see the ground and sneak in under the clouds.

Navaids? Why turn them on. We’ll fly to the beach and then follow the roads to where we need to go.

So, if you’re asking was I one of those who flew a helicopter on a fly off that was at best marginal and flew into crappy weather in my hurry to get home, my lips are sealed. Until of course, you read it here.

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Continental Army Mutinies At Jockey Hollow and Pompton

January 2nd is an anniversary of an event that most U.S. military historians would like to forget. Two hundred and forty-two years ago from the day this post is (or was) published, half of the 2,400-man Pennsylvania Line Infantry mutinied against their officers. They were spending the second consecutive winter at a place called Jockey Hollow, NJ. (See 12/26/21 post – The Hard Winter – https://marcliebman.com/the-hard-winter/ ).

Section II, Articles 3 and 4 of the Articles of War adopted on September 20th, 1776, states that the punishment for any soldier convicted of mutiny shall be death. Make no bones about it, mutinies are rare and they can be ugly.

So what happened? General Washington led his army of about 12,000 soldiers to Jockey Hollow in the beginning of November 1780 to spend the winter in the camp they built two years before. The valley is southwest of Morristown, NJ and put the Continental Army in position to quickly move against any British Army move from New York against Philadelphia.

Throughout the war, the Continental Army (and Navy) was beset by shortages of food, clothing, ammunition, and arms. The root of the problem was that under the Articles of Confederation, the Continental Congress could not levy taxes to raise money from each the Thirteen Colonies. Throughout the American Revolution, the Army (and Navy) was dependent on donations from its citizens and loans from the Dutch, French and Spanish to survive.

By January, the men were cold, starving and wanted to be paid. Part of Washington’s supply problems were made worse by the snowstorms that made roads impassable. Farmers were reluctant to part with food because they were hoarding what they had to get through the winter.

On the morning of January 2nd, 1781, the men of the Pennsylvania Line Infantry refused to follow the orders of the day. Unless they were fed and paid, they were going to Philadelphia to directly address their grievances to the Continental Congress.

Several officers tried to stop the mutineers and were killed. The commander of the troops, General Anthony Wayne tried to negotiate with them, but they refused and marched toward Philadelphia. Along the way, they way they were met by two officers sent by the British Army commander, General Sir Henry Clinton who offered the food, pay and clothing if they would lay down their arms. They refused.

In Princeton, the mutineers were met by the President of Pennsylvania who convinced the soldiers to march to Trenton where negotiations continued. A commission was formed to sort out the disputes on enlistments and promised some pay and clothing. In the spring, many rejoined the Continental Army taking the $25 enlistment bonus.

Washington’s troubles were not over. On January 20th, 300 soldiers of the New Jersey line based near modern Bloomingdale, NJ decided to follow the example of the Pennsylvanians and ask for more pay. Washington was not going to allow another mutiny to succeed. He sent a detachment from West Point who surrounded the soldiers from New Jersey who surrendered. As punishment, on January 23rd, 1781. Washington ordered two of the leaders of the mutiny executed by a firing squad made up of 12 other mutineers.

What is interesting to note is that the mutineers were not refusing to fight the British, but instead wanted the basics – food, clothing and pay. At the time of both mutinies, no one in the Continental Army knew that the victory at Yorktown was less than a year away. Unfortunately, a signed peace treaty would not be signed until September, 1783, 33 long months away.

Image portrays the conflict between Continental Army officers and the mutineers.

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The Hard Winter

In November 1779, the war was at a stalemate and both sides had moved into winter quarters to wait for spring. The bulk of the British Army in the Thirteen Colonies was holed up in New York City and in a small enclave around Savannah.

Washington led the 10,000 men of the Continental Army into Jockey Hollow, a few miles southwest of Morristown, N.J. When the Continentals arrived, there was already a foot of snow on the ground. The encampment was picked because it was close to New York and easily defensible.

No one in the Continental Army, or the Continental Congress could have predicted the weather during the Winter of 1779 – 1780. History tells us that the area where the Continental Army was encamped endured 26 snowstorms. Six of the 26 were classified as blizzards that dropped over four feet of snow. Wind created drifts six feet deep.

Temperatures stayed well below freezing. Every salt-water inlet from North Carolina to Canada froze solid. Rarely did the temperature rise above freezing. New York Harbor froze and the ice was so thick that British soldiers could march from Manhattan to Staten Island.

In a classic understatement, Washington called it “the hard winter.” The bitterly cold weather was not the only problem faced by the Continental Army.

When the army arrived, there was no housing. Huts had to be built. Washington specified that they all be built to the same specification – 12 feet wide and 15 – 16 feet long with a chimney and a door. The forests around Jockey Hollow provided the wood. Shelter from the snow and cold was only one problem.

The Continental Army was desperately short of food and warm clothing. Snow covered roads made it difficult to move what supplies they could acquire.

Washington didn’t have money to buy food or pay his army. He wrote to the Continental Congress saying that “five or six days together without bread, at other times as many days without meat and once or twice two or three days without either.”

Local farmers were not much help. Thanks to the weather, they were hording their supplies. The low prices the Continental Army was willing to pay for food, meant that few merchants would part with what food, clothing and blankets they had.

Washington nearly lost control of the Army. In January, 2,400 soldiers from Pennsylvania staged a mutiny. They demanded their back pay as well as better food and warm clothing.

When he learned of the mutiny, General Clinton sent an emissary to Princeton, NJ to meet with the mutineers as well as a delegation of the Continental Congress. The British general offered to take into the British Army any Continental Army soldier who wanted to defect and give them their back pay. None took Clinton’s offer.

Ultimately, about half the Pennsylvanians were discharged and allowed to leave Jockey Hollow. None joined the British Army and many returned to their units in the spring.

By late March, the weather the snow melted and Washington and the Continental Army, less the 2,000 men who died at Jockey Hollow was ready to fight. In May, Lafayette arrived at Jockey Hollow with the news that the French were sending an army that would arrive early in the summer.

The Continental Army that entered Jockey Hollow emerged in the spring a much better force. Its will to survive and win was again tested, not by musket and cannonballs, but by the weather, deprivation, disease, and hunger, just as it was the winter before at Valley Forge.

The force that survived Jockey Hollow was more determined than ever to defeat the British. Although no one could forecast the future, independence was on the horizon.

In October 1781, Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown 16 months after the Continental Army left Jockey Hollow. Twenty-six months after Jockey Hollow, the British evacuate Savannah in July 1782 and 31 months later, the British pull out of Charleston in December 1782. Officially, we became independent on September 3rd, 1783, when the Treaty of Paris was signed.

Image is Al Frazza’s photo of two recreations of the huts that were built in Jockey Hollow.

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Origins of the Monroe Doctrine

The U.S. War for Independence left the Thirteen Colonies devastated. Wounds and disease killed over nine percent of the population and the economy was in shambles.

The Founding Fathers knew their history. Many had fought in the Seven Years War and the Revolutionary War wanted no part of another. They also knew that the kings and queens of Europe were constantly quarrelling and their spats often turned into wars.

The leaders of the new United States of America were split. There were the Francophiles led by Jefferson who wanted closer a relationship with France as a way of saying thank you for their support during our war with England. Before he became president, Jefferson helped the Marquis de Lafayette and others who wanted a constitutional monarchy or to depose King Louis XVI and create a republic.

The Anglophiles led by Washington and Adams believed closer relations with England were in the best interest of the U.S. They saw expanding trade England, America’s traditional trading partner, as the fastest way to rebuild the U.S. economy. During negotiations with the British to end the war, the English signaled a similar desire during discussions as well as with several clauses in the 1783 Treaty of Paris.

The Jay Treaty of 1796 helped clarify issues left unresolved or poorly defined in the Treaty of Paris and was vehemently opposed by Jefferson and his Democratic Republicans. They believed the treaty would strengthen the Federalists led by Alexander Hamilton who were their political opponents.

In 1804, President Jefferson sent James Monroe and William Pickney to England to negotiate an end to Britain’s harassment of U.S. shipping not headed to England and the Royal Navy’s impressment of American seamen. They Monroe-Pickney Treaty was signed by the English but Jefferson refused because it did not guarantee that the Royal Navy would end impressment.

The British refused to end impressment because the Royal Navy was desperate for men to man its ships. England was locked in a titanic struggle with France that began with the first of French Revolutionary wars in 1792 and would last for 23 years.

U.S. merchant ships were easy targets and the Royal Navy would take as much as 25% of the crew who had little chance of being repatriated unit Napoleon was defeated.

Officially, the Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812 in January 1815 and stopped the impressment of U.S. seamen and roughly coincided with the final defeat of Napoleon in June 1815. Europe, for the first time since 1792, was at peace.

Still, U.S. leaders were distrustful of European royalty’s motives and were afraid that the European powers would try to regain control of the colonies that they lost to either independence movements or to another country by force. Most of this turf was in the Caribbean, Central, South and even North America. Florida had just changed declared its independence. (See blog post – Battle of Florida Part 2 – June 7th, 2020 – https://marcliebman.com/battle-for-florida-part-2/).

President Madison was the first to state the concept that the United States would remain continue to remain neutral in any European conflict and oppose any attempt to suppress independence movements in Central and South America. When he made this statement in his last State of the Union address, Madison was clearly sending a message to European rulers and again laid out our neutrality.

What is officially known as the Monroe Doctrine came later when, in Monroe’s seventh State of the Union address in 1823. When he spoke, he, like Madison before him, was addressing European leaders. What is not well known is that the Monroe Doctrine again states that the U.S. will remain neutral in any European conflict.

A succession of U.S. presidents kept to this policy and it was not until World War I that U.S. forces were deployed in Europe.

James Gillray’s 1805 cartoon called “Plumb Pudding in Danger” shows Napoleon and King George III carving up Europe.

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The Origin of the U.S. Census

When the American Revolution began in 1775, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated the population of the Thirteen Colonies at 2.148 million. During the eight years of war 6,800 soldiers and sailors died in battle and 17,000 died of disease. Another 175,000 Colonists died of smallpox. The total death from all causes about 198,800 or roughly 9.26% of the population.

These losses do not include the 40,000 Loyalists and freed slaves evacuated by the British or the 40,000 who fled to Canada right after the war ended. One would think that between the years of 1775 and 1780, the U.S. population would have dropped significantly, but it didn’t.

In 1780 – five years into the war – U.S. Census Bureau shows our population had grown to 2.780 million, a 29.44% increase. By 1790, seven years into our history as a nation, the U.S. population jumped 41.32% to 3.929 million! By 1800, just 1o years later, the U.S. population boomed to 5.308 million, a 35.10% increase.

The U.S. Census Bureau chart accompanying this post shows the asymptotic growth of the U.S. population to 1950. After 1800, the chart almost goes straight up!

History suggests the growth came from two sources. One was the birth rate. Large families were the order of the day. In a primarily agrarian economy, families with have six or seven or more children were not unusual. The kids were needed to work the family farm in an era when diseases such as yellow fever, smallpox, typhus, and others took their toll.

However, the biggest source was immigration. The word spread quickly in Europe that in the new United States, there was no king (or queen), or ruling nobility. Land was available. Every man (and woman) was considered equal under the law.

Yes, slavery was the norm in the southern states as it was in Europe as well as the colonies of European nations. Yes, women couldn’t vote, but the point here is that the United States was the first country in modern history to espouse this principle and put it into law, i.e. the Constitution.

Most of the immigrants in the 1780s came from England and Ireland. Once the French Revolutionary Wars began in 1792, people fleeing the fighting from all over Europe began arriving on our shores.

Our Founding Fathers felt that a nationwide “headcount” was important. Knowing how many citizens were in each state would, under the new Constitution, determine the number of representatives each state was allocated in the House. The census would also help in assessing taxes.

Hence in the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 states “The actual enumeration shall be made within three years of the meeting of the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years …”

So now you know the origin of the U.S. Census.

However the rapid growth of the U.S. population via immigration presented another problem. How does one become a citizen?

The stream of immigrants led to legislation that attempted to answer the “what’s the process of becoming a citizen” question. The first was the Naturalization Bill passed on March 4th, 1790. It established federal procedures and criteria for foreign-born individuals to become U.S. citizens. For more on the late 18th Century immigration legislation, see Blog Post – https://marcliebman.com/immigration-first-became-a-political-football-in-1798/.

If one looks at the U.S. population growth from the first days we began fighting for our freedom, the words of Emma Lazarus’s poem written in 1883 that contains the words “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” had been occurring for over a century. Immigrants and their contributions are what made this country great.

Graph of U.S. population growth is courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau.

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Calculus and Slide Rules in the 18th Century

When was the last time you added a column of numbers on a sheet of paper without a calculator? Or did long division? For most of us, it has been a long time because today, we use a computer. Many of us take the applications for granted.

So, try to imagine you’re back in the late 18th Century where there is no electricity much less computers or internet. Math – all of it – is done by hand, so to speak. What you have as tools is paper, a quill pen, a bottle of ink and a blotter to pat the ink dry.

Let’s take this analogy further and assume you are a ballistician in England in the late 1790s. The War of the First Coalition is raging in Europe and in 1796 the French Revolutionary Army under an unknown general by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte has invaded Northern Italy and taken Milan.

Your task is to update the gunnery tables used by the Royal Navy and British Army’s artillery units to determine range of different types of ammunition from each type of cannon. The tables you produce will be used by gunners in the field or officers on the pitching and rolling deck of a ship. The data given to you – weight of the shot, muzzle velocity, air resistance (drag), effect of gravity on the cannonball on the way to the target, amount of powder used, temperature, humidity, etc. – make the formula complex.

You don’t have to invent formulas the science of ballistics used to calculate the flight of an object in the air were developed for you by Sir Isaac Newton. All you must do is the math.

Again, you have no computer, no applications into which one enters the data. Do you have any tools that can help you with these logarithmic equations?

What else might be on your desk? One item may be a book of logarithmic functions for sines, cosines, tangents that may also contain tables of differential equations and integrals. And, if you are lucky, the book other useful tables that go out to two or three decimal points.

Off to one side, there is a new-fangled tool called a logarithmic slide rule. The first ones were invented in the 1620 by William Oughtred, an English mathematician. Over time, they were improved. By the late 1700s, yours would have been made from wood. There were several iterations and the first modern slide rule as we know it was invented in 1859 by a French artillery officer by the name of Amédée Mannheim.

Those of us who studied math and engineering in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s before the advent of the calculator in the computer learned how to use a slide rule that was an improved version of Mannheim’s. Really good Aristo or Deitzgen multi-log slide rules were an expensive necessity. So was the book C.R.C. Mathematical Tables. My Aristo Multilog slide rule is in my desk drawer and my C.R.C book is the 1964 edition and has all kinds of useful tables that I occasionally use.

The slide rule, either circular or linear, may be obsolete, but when the network is down, and your laptop is out of juice, it will still work. Calculations will take longer and if you are good you can get to three decimal points. So the question is, how many of you can use a slide rule?

Image is the drawing for a slide rule from 1743.

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L’Affaire Genêt and the Washington’s 1793 Neutrality Proclamation

Its 1793 and the French Revolution is in full swing. Louis XVI tried to flee his country and not only has been arrested, but on January 21st, 1793, he was executed. Afraid that Austria and Prussia would invade France, the revolutionaries declared war on almost every major European power. Thus began the War of the First Coalition.

The men leading the French Revolution shared many of the ideals with our Founding Fathers. The U.S. government’s leading Francophile, Thomas Jefferson helped the Marquis de Lafayette craft several documents on which the new French Republic was to be governed.

Given the support that France provided to our Founding Fathers during the American Revolution, the leaders of the French Revolution assumed that we would support France against its enemies. The French sent, Citizen Edmund-Charles Genêt to be its minister to the United States.

Immediately after his arrival in Charleston, Genêt began soliciting South Carolina businessmen to create consortiums to fund privateers to prey on British shipping. Four ships – Republicaine, Anti-George, Sans-Culotte, and Citizen Ganêt – ultimately put to sea.

Genêt did not stop with encouraging privateers. He also funded a group of volunteers to go fight the Spanish in Florida with the goal of taking the territory for France. As he traveled north to Philadelphia, then the U.S. capital, Genêt tried to form a unit that would fight in Europe for France.

His actions infuriated President Washington, Vice President John Adams, and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. When Genêt arrived in Philadelphia, he found the reception much colder than he anticipated. Washington and Thomas Jefferson informed Genêt that under no circumstances would the United States join the war on either side.

To reinforce his words with actions, President Washington issued the Neutrality Proclamation on April 22, 1793, which was published in papers throughout the United States. The proclamation emphatically stated that the United States would adopt a “friendly and impartial” attitude to the powers at war. Any U.S. citizens who violated this proclamation may face criminal action by the new Federal government.

Genêt was undeterred. Despite verbal and written warnings from both Jefferson and Washington, he continued to attempt to find Americans with money and desire to fund privateers. A long, 8,000-word letter was hand delivered to Genêt telling him that if he persisted in his actions, he would be arrested.

Genêt’s mission had failed and created an international incident. Furious that his warnings were being ignored, Washington sent Genêt a strongly worded letter also signed by both Thomas Jefferson to the French government demanding Genêt be immediately recalled.

The Frenchman government response suggested that upon Genêt’s return to Paris, he would be arrested. Given that the Reign of Terror was now in full swing, Genêt asked Washington to grant him asylum. Alexander Hamilton, who despised Genêt, and Jefferson convinced Washington to grant the Frenchman U.S. citizenship. Both were sure that if Genêt returned to France, he would be guillotined. This is one of the few times their political careers that Jefferson and Hamilton agreed.

Relieved of his diplomatic duties, Genêt moved to New York where he married the daughter of its governor, George Clinton. Through his father-in-law, Genêt acquired a substantial piece of land overlooking the Hudson River land and lived as a gentleman farmer until he died in 1834.

Image is William L. Breton lithograph (Published in John Fanning Watson’s 1830 book Annals of Philadelphia) of the President’s House where George Washington confronted Charles-Edmund Genêt.

 

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