"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."--BOOK JACKET. "Their example set off a chain reaction down the coast. More than a thousand subscribers in ten port towns pledged money and began to build nine warships with little government oversight."--BOOK JACKET.

"This book is the first to explore in depth the subject of subscribing for warships. Frederick Leiner explains how the idea materialized, who the people were who subscribed and built the ships, how the ships were built, and what contributions these ships made to the quasi-war against France."--BOOK JACKET.