our the sea around the French West Indies, destroy French commerce,
and capture French ships of war.[1] One of our frigates, the
_Constellation_, Captain Thomas Truxton in command, captured the French
frigate _Insurgente_, after a gallant fight. On another occasion,
Truxton, in the _Constellation_, fought the _Vengeance_ and would have
taken her, but the Frenchman, finding he was getting much the worst of
it, spread his sails and fled. Yet another of our frigates, the
_Boston_, took the _Berceau_, whose flag is now in the Naval Institute
Building at Annapolis. In six months the little American twelve-gun
schooner _Enterprise_ took eight French privateers, and recaptured and
set free four American merchantmen. These and a hundred other actions
just as gallant made good the patriotic words of John Adams, "that we
are not a degraded people humiliated under a colonial spirit of fear and
sense of inferiority." So impressed was France with this fact that the
war had scarcely begun when the Directory meekly sent word that if
another set of ministers came they would be received. They ought to have
been told that they must send a mission to us. But Adams in this respect
was weak, and in 1800, the Chief Justice, Oliver Ellsworth, William R.
Davie, and William Vans Murray were sent to Paris. The Directory had
then fallen from power, Napoleon was ruling France as First Consul, and
with him in September, 1800, a convention was concluded.

[Footnote 2: For an account of this war, read Maclay's _History of the
United States Navy_, Vol. I., pp. 155-213.]

%239. The Stamp Tax; the Direct Tax and Fries's Rebellion,
1798.%--The heavy cost of the preparations for war made new taxes
necessary. Two of these, a stamp tax very similar to the famous one of
1765, and a direct tax, greatly excited the people. The direct tax was
the first of its kind in our history, and was laid on lands, houses, and
negro slaves. In certain counties of eastern Pennsylvania, where the
population was chiefly German, the purpose of the tax was not
understood, and the people refused to make returns of the value of their
farms and houses. When the assessors came to measure the houses and
count the windows as a means of determining the value of the property,
the people drove them off. For this some of the leaders were arrested.
But the people under John Fries rose and rescued the prisoners. At this
stage President Adams called out the militia, and marched it against th