The title of this book comes from a toast popular with Americans in the late 1790s--"millions for defense, not a cent for tribute." Americans were incensed by demands for bribes from French diplomats and by France's galling seizures of U.S. merchant ships, and as they teetered toward open war, were disturbed by their country's lack of warships. Provoked to action, private U.S. citizens decided to help build a navy. Merchants from Newburyport, Massachusetts, took the lead by opening a subscription to fund a 20-gun warship to be built in ninety days, and they persuaded Congress to pass a statute that gave them government "stock" bearing 6 percent interest in exchange for their money.

Their example set off a chain reaction down the coast. More than a thousand subscribers in the port towns pledged money and began to build nine warships with little government oversight. Among the subscription ships were the "Philadelphia," later lost on the rocks at Tripoli; "Essex," the first American warship to round the Cape of Good Hope; and Boston, which captured the French corvette "Le Berceau."

This book is the first to explore in depth the subject of subscribing for warships. Frederick Leiner explains how the idea materialized, who the subscribers and shipbuilders were, how the ships were built, and what contributions these ships made to the Quasi-War against France. Along the way, he also offers significant insights into the politics of what is arguably the most critical period in American history.

When Barbary pirates captured an obscure Yankee sailing brig off the coast of North Africa in 1812, enslaving eleven American sailors, President James Madison sent the largest American naval force ever gathered to that time, led by the heroic Commodore Stephen Decatur, to end Barbary terror once and for all. Drawing upon numerous ship logs, journals, love letters, and government documents, Frederick C. Leiner paints a vivid picture of the world of naval officers and diplomats in the early nineteenth century, as he recreates a remarkable and little known episode from the early American republic. Leiner first describes Madison's initial efforts at diplomacy, sending Mordecai Noah to negotiate. But when the ruler refused to ransom the Americans-"not for two millions of dollars"-Madison declared war and sent a fleet to North Africa. Decatur's squadron dealt quick blows to the Barbary navy, dramatically fighting and capturing two ships. Decatur then sailed to Algiers. He refused to go ashore to negotiate-indeed, he refused to negotiate on any essential point. The ruler of Algiers signed the treaty-in Decatur's words, "dictated at the mouths of our cannon"-in twenty-four hours. The United States would never pay tribute to the Barbary world again, and the captive Americans were set free. Here then is a real-life naval adventure that will thrill fans of Patrick O'Brian, a story of Islamic terrorism, white slavery, poison gas, diplomatic intrigue, and battles with pirates on the high seas.