Quasi-War in the context of "XYZ Affair"

John Adams served as the second president of the United States from March 4, 1797, to March 4, 1801. Adams, who had served as vice president under George Washington, took office as president after winning the 1796 presidential election. The only member of the Federalist Party to ever serve as president, his presidency ended after a single term following his defeat in the 1800 presidential election. He was succeeded by Thomas Jefferson of the opposition Democratic-Republican Party.

When Adams entered office, the ongoing major European war between France and Great Britain was causing great difficulties for American merchants on the high seas and arousing intense partisanship among contending political parties nationwide. Attempts to negotiate with the French led to the XYZ Affair, in which French officials demanded bribes before they would assent to the beginning of negotiations. The XYZ Affair outraged the American public, and the United States and France engaged in an undeclared naval conflict known as the Quasi-War, which dominated the remainder of Adams's presidency. Adams presided over an expansion of the army and the navy, and the navy won several successes in the Quasi-War.

Captain John Shaw (1773 – 17 September 1823) was a United States Navy officer who served in the Quasi-War and War of 1812.

USS Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides, is a three-masted wooden-hulled heavy frigate of the United States Navy. She is the world's oldest commissioned warship still afloat. She was launched in 1797, one of six original frigates authorized for construction by the Naval Act of 1794 and the third constructed. The name "Constitution" was among ten names submitted to President George Washington by Secretary of War Timothy Pickering in March or May for the frigates that were to be constructed. Joshua Humphreys designed the frigates to be the young Navy's capital ships, and so Constitution and her sister ships were larger and more heavily armed and built than standard frigates of the period. She was built at Edmund Hartt's shipyard in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts. Her first duties were to provide protection for American merchant shipping during the Quasi-War with France and to defeat the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War.

Constitution is most noted for her actions during the War of 1812 with the United Kingdom, when she captured numerous British merchantmen and five warships: HMS Guerriere, Java, Pictou, Cyane, and Levant. The capture of Guerriere earned her the nickname "Old Ironsides", adding on the public adoration that had repeatedly saved her from scrapping. She continued to serve as flagship in the Mediterranean and African squadrons, and she circled the world in the 1840s. During the American Civil War, she served as a training ship for the United States Naval Academy. She carried American artwork and industrial displays to the Paris Exposition of 1878.

The Franco-American alliance was the 1778 military pact between the Kingdom of France and the United States during the American War of Independence. Formalized in the 1778 Treaty of Alliance, it was a military pact in which the French provided many supplies for the Americans in their conflict with France's rival Great Britain. The Dutch Republic and Spain later joined as allies of France, while Britain had no major European allies during the conflict. The French alliance after the American forces captured a British army at Saratoga in October 1777, demonstrating the viability of the American cause.

Although France had played a significant role in the Americans' achievement of independence, the U.S. backed away from the alliance after 1793, when Revolutionary France declared war on Great Britain. The U.S. declared itself neutral. Relations between France and the United States worsened when the U.S. became closer to Britain, signing the Jay Treaty of 1795, leading to an undeclared Quasi-War. The alliance was entirely defunct by 1794 and formally ended in 1800.