Washington was summoned from his retirement to take command of the American army, a Secretary of the Navy was added to the President's Cabinet--Benjamin Stoddart, of Georgetown, D. C., being the first--and the new American navy was authorized to retaliate upon France for outrages committed upon American shipping. A vigorous naval warfare followed, in which the new American frigates proved more than a match for the French. The American Constellation, forty-eight guns, after a sharp engagement, captured the French frigate Insurgent, forty guns. It is really amusing to note the tone of injured innocence in which Captain Barreaut, of the Insurgent, who had himself captured the American cruiser Retaliation but a short time before, reports to his government his "surprise on finding himself fought by an American frigate after all the friendship and protection accorded to the United States!" "My indignation," he adds, "was at its height." It soon cooled off, however, under the pressure of broadsides from the Constellation, and Captain Barreaut was glad to surrender. The second frigate action of the war was between the Constellation and the Vengeance, the former fifty guns, the latter fifty-two. The Frenchman, badly beaten, succeeded in making his escape. The battle between the American frigate Boston and the French corvette Berceau was one of the most gallant of the struggle, the Berceau fighting until resistance was hopeless. American merchantmen also showed the French that they could defend themselves, and one of Moses Brown's ships, the Anne and Hope, sailed into Providence from a voyage to the West Indies, bearing in her rigging the marks of conflict with a French privateer, whom the merchantman had bravely repulsed. During the two years and a half of naval war with France eighty-four armed French vessels, nearly all of them privateers, were captured, and no vessel of our navy was taken by the enemy, except the Retaliation. This was not the kind of tribute the French government had expected, and a treaty of peace, which entirely sustained the position of the United States, was ratified in February, 1801. * * * The illustrious Washington, who fortunately had not been required to take the field against America's ancient allies, died December 14, 1799, at Mount Vernon, deeply mourned by all his countrymen, and honored even by the former enemies of American independence. I will only repeat, with Washington Irving, that "with us his memory remains a national property, where all sympathies throughout our widely extended and diversified empire meet in unison. Under all dissensions and amid all the storms of party, his precepts and example speak to us from the grave with a paternal appeal; and his name--by all revered--forms a universal tie of brotherhood--a watchword of our Union." * * *