Millions for Defense

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 towards open war, were disturbed by their country’s lack of warships. Provoked to action, private U.S. citizens decided to ...