Undeclared Wars

Although Americans are accustomed to thinking of undeclared wars as a  twentieth and twenty-fist century phenomenon -- conflicts in Southeast Asia and the Middle East come immediately to mind -- in fact the first two wars fought by this country were not formally declared by the U.S. Congress, as stipulated in the Constitution. 

The first war, known as the Quasi-War with France, came about as a test of honor, when U.S. anvoys ordered to Paris by President John Adass to smooth relations with France were snubbed by French Foreign Minister Talleyrand. The foreign minisher had insisted, according to the custom of the day, that the United States first pay what was referred to in diplomatic circlesas un douceur, in other words a bribe, in this case a bribe of $200,000 simply to open negotiations with France. The president's reply to this perceived outrage was as follows: “The refusal on the part of France to receive our minister is, then, the denial of a right; but the refusal to receive him until we have acceded to their demands without discussion and without investigation is to treat us neither as allies nor as friends, nor as a sovereign state . . . Such attempts ought to be repelled with a decision which shall convince France and the world that we are not a degraded people, humiliated under a colonial spirit of fear and sense of inferiority, fitted to be the miserable instruments of foreign influence, and regardless of national honor, character, and interest.”


That slight of honor, coupled with the rampant seizure of American merchant ships by French privateers and pirates lurking in Atlantic and Caribbean waters, prompted President Adams in 1798 to dispatch to the Caribbean the ships of the fledgling U.S. Navy, most notably USS Constellation.  Their mission : to destroy French military and pirating capabilities in the West Indies, which they did with both honor and efficiency with notable assistance from the Royal Navy.

Similarly, in the war against Tripoli -- knowm to history as the First Barbary War -- President Jefferson responded to the declaration of war by Tripoli by dispatching, during the years 1801 to 1805, fout naval squadrons across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea to protect American interests there and to engage the enemy.  Jefferson acted strictly on his own accord, as a necessary step in responding to an immediate threat to national security.  Congress was neither consulted nor advised of the president's decision to go to war, although it was kept current of military operations there and played an active role in the war until peace was signed in June of 1805.