Foreign Policy and Military Spending: The First Term

Jefferson believed that the happiness of his countrymen would be promoted best by a policy of “peace, commerce, and friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” He envisioned his country as a peaceful, agrarian-commercial federal republic of self-sufficient farmers and mechanics slowly spreading across space to fill in the beautiful and bountiful land vouchsafed them by Providence. Possessing “a wide and fruitful land,” “with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation,” and “kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe.”[13] America, Jefferson believed, had the blessed opportunity to keep itself free from the incessant rivalries, jealousies, and conflicts of the Old World. For Jefferson, the wise and patriotic statesman would take advantage of his country’s fortunate geography and situation by defending a policy of national independence, neutrality, and noninvolvement in European affairs.

Jefferson’s defense policy was to maintain a peacetime military establishment composed of a small standing army (about 3,000 men) to defend the frontier against hostile Indians and possible Spanish incursions from the Floridas and a small naval squadron to protect American commerce from the depredations of third-rate powers, such as the Barbary states of North Africa. Jefferson possessed a classical republican aversion to large military and naval establishments both for their expense (which required either taxes or debt to maintain) and their potential threat to the liberties of the people.

Far from being idealistic or utopian, Jefferson’s vision and policies were based on a realistic understanding of America’s geopolitical situation in the Atlantic world. He believed that it would be pure folly and extravagance to build a large oceangoing fleet, composed of hundreds of frigates and ships-of-the-line. He rightly surmised that building such a fleet would alarm the British and encourage a preemptive strike by their navy in the event of hostilities. Thus, building a fleet could actually increase the possibility of war with England. Jefferson did not believe that his country could be seriously threatened by the armies of either England, France, or Spain, the three great world powers. Although both England and Spain possessed territory contiguous to the borders of the young republic, both would have to transport large forces across the Atlantic and would be forced to fight on hostile territory far from their base of supplies. On the other hand, the Americans could mobilize hundreds of thousands of able-bodied militia to fight for their homeland. Not one of the great powers had the resources to send sufficient troops to conquer the American states. Jefferson rejected the Federalist axiom that in order to have peace one must prepare for war—the theory being that the more powerful a country was in armaments the less likely it was to be attacked. Jefferson doubted both the wisdom of this theory and Federalist sincerity in invoking it. He believed that history demonstrated that the more a country prepared for war, the more likely it was to go to war. First, having a powerful military force offered a temptation to rulers to engage in wars for conquest and glory.[14] And second, far from deterring aggression, a powerful navy and army often frightened other nations into building up their own forces and forming hostile alliances, tempting them to instigate hostilities for the purpose of gaining a strategic advantage or weakening their rival.

Jefferson believed that the Federalists, far from wishing to avoid war, actually welcomed war. In 1798 and 1799, the Federalists were eager to convert an undeclared naval confrontation with France into a full-scale war in order to obtain a formal military alliance with Great Britain. In the end, the only thing that kept the country out of a large war was President Adams’s last-minute decision to reach an agreement with France. Jefferson was convinced that the Federalist leaders favored a war with France or Spain as a means to strengthen the federal government, increase the national debt, raise taxes, and place themselves in power.[15]

Early in his first term, Jefferson was faced with the question of whether he should use the naval force inherited from the Federalists to protect American trade in the Mediterranean. The pasha of Tripoli, the leader of one of the four Barbary powers on the northern coast of Africa (the others being Morocco, Algiers, and Tunis), demanded additional tribute from the United States as the price for allowing American shipping to trade in the Mediterranean free of piratical raids by his navy. The Barbary powers had been long extorting payments from the European states for the “privilege” of trading with them and for the freedom to navigate the sea without attack. Rather than combining to suppress these piratical powers, the Europeans decided to pay them off, either in cash or in the form of ships, arms, or military supplies. The Washington and Adams administrations had followed the established custom and made treaties with Algeria in 1795, Tripoli in 1796, and Tunis in 1797; in ten years, the Federalists had paid these powers more than $2 million in tribute. When Jefferson assumed the presidency and was faced with the demand for more money from the pasha of Tripoli, he refused.

Jefferson’s moral nature was no doubt offended by the prospect of paying for the privilege of not being robbed, but even more he must have seen this system of sordid bribery and intrigue as an impediment to his hopes for establishing free trade between the American republic and all the world, as well as an affront to the code of republican honor.

The pasha responded by taking down the American flag—a tacit declaration of war—and dispatching his warships to attack and capture American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean. In the spring of 1801, Jefferson dispatched three frigates and an armed schooner to the Mediterranean to protect American commerce and to intimidate Tripoli into honoring the 1796 treaty. Upon reaching Gibraltar in the late summer, the naval squadron found two Tripolitan cruisers on blockade duty awaiting American vessels. The American squadron chased off the two cruisers; the schooner Enterprise engaged one of them in battle and captured it; and the squadron proceeded to Tripoli where it blockaded the harbor. Thus, for the second time in only four years, the United States found itself in an undeclared naval war.

Jefferson sent additional forces to the Mediterranean each year until, by the summer of 1805, almost the entire American navy was deployed off the shores of Tripoli. In addition to escorting American merchant vessels and blockading Tripoli (in 1801 and 1803–1805), the American fleet bombarded Tripoli five times in August and September of 1804. By the early summer of 1805, facing a renewed and even more destructive series of bombardments from the American navy, and hearing of the fall of the town of Derbe to a land force composed of Americans, Greeks, and Tripolitan exiles commanded by William Eaton (the former American consul at Tunis), the pasha sued for peace and signed a treaty ending the war. The June 1805 treaty abolished annual payments from the United States to Tripoli and provided for the payment of a $60,000 ransom for more than two hundred American captives, mostly sailors from the U.S. frigate Philadelphia that had been captured after running aground off Tripoli in 1803.

Was this war for free trade and national honor consistent with Jefferson’s stated policy of strict construction, peace, and economy in the public expenditure? Two things are clear. The pasha of Tripoli was the aggressor in this conflict, and Jefferson was committing armed forces to protect American lives and property from aggression. Yet because he failed to obtain a declaration of war from Congress, Jefferson was soon waging an undeclared war in violation of the Constitution. He thus set a dangerous precedent for future, more militaristic, presidents.

The Tripolitan war naturally resulted in greater naval expenditures and higher annual federal spending than Gallatin had planned. Not only did Jefferson shelve his plans to lay up all the American frigates in dry dock, but he even constructed five new brigs. Jefferson continued to pay tribute to the other Barbary States through the end of his second term. (Madison would continue making payments until 1816.)

When he assumed office Jefferson’s major foreign policy objective was to purchase the city of New Orleans from France and the two provinces of Florida from Spain. The commercial importance of New Orleans was immense, for it was the major port through which Americans who lived west of the Appalachians sold their agricultural products abroad. Because it could at any time close the port to American commerce, the power that controlled New Orleans possessed tremendous leverage against the United States.

West Florida was important for similar reasons. It contained the port of Mobile, and it controlled the outlet for the rivers which drained the fertile Mississippi territory. The Floridas were strategically important, for they provided Spain, one of the three great world powers, with a foothold contiguous to the southern border of the United States. By acquiring them, Jefferson not only hoped to provide more territory for American settlement but to secure the southeastern border against Spain without having to build forts and deploy regiments of regulars in Georgia and Mississippi. It would also lessen the potential of conflict between Spain and the U.S. Such an acquisition, provided it could be accomplished without war, would be fully consistent with his policy of economy, peace, strategic isolation, and a small military establishment. In 1806, after Napoleon’s conquests reduced Spain to the status of a French vassal state, Jefferson had his Secretary of State, James Madison, instruct the American ambassador to France to offer Napoleon $5 million for the Floridas and Texas.