Maritime Law Quotes
At the time being a seaman was a very dangerous job with a high rate of injury and disease from foreign ports. Congress passed and President John Adams signed this law which provided some marine health services for seaman. However, the reason it is politically most interesting is that it is the first Federal mandate on private citizens. Further it actually required that sailors who were privately employed purchase health insurance. The Federal government was the single payer in what many conservatives would call “socialized medicine.” What is fascinating is that in the huge political debate of the Obama administration over the mandate to buy health insurance this precedent virtually never appeared in the arguments, court cases, news media and political debates. Forbes Magazine ran an article about it in 2011 (http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2011/01/17/congress-passes-socialized-medicine-and-mandates-health-insurance-in-1798/2/ ) As passionate as everyone else was, they just didn’t know the political history of our own country enough to use the example in the debate. This was also the first example of Federal “withholding” where the employer collects the money from the individual by withholding it from his pay and turns it over to the federal government.
While many use the invention and development of the Steamboat as an example of breakthrough technology by private enterprise, the reality was that Fulton and Livingston could not raise the private capital to develop the vessels and start operating them until the State government stepped in and granted them a monopoly for 20 years in the waters of the entire state of New York including the Hudson River and New York Harbor. This was one of the first examples of “corporate welfare” and subsidies for development of new technology. Fulton’s company used the courts to enjoin anyone else from operating a steamboat, and Fulton could charge very high rates as he had no competition thanks to New York State. Other boat operators then went to New Jersey which passed its own allowing anyone stopped by NY courts to sue Fulton & Livingston for triple damages. The lower Hudson River and New York Harbor was on the shores of BOTH states and each had an equal claim to jurisdiction. The Supreme Court settled the dispute in one of the major legal cases in American history. See {624485}
While many use the invention and development of the Steamboat as an example of breakthrough technology by private enterprise, the reality was that Fulton and Livingston could not raise the private capital to develop the vessels and start operating them until the State government stepped in and granted them a monopoly for 20 years in the waters of the entire state of New York including the Hudson River and New York Harbor. This was one of the first examples of “corporate welfare” and subsidies for development of new technology. Fulton’s company used the courts to enjoin anyone else from operating a steamboat, and Fulton could charge very high rates as he had no competition thanks to New York State. Other boat operators then went to New Jersey which passed its own allowing anyone stopped by NY courts to sue Fulton & Livingston for triple damages. The lower Hudson River and New York Harbor was on the shores of BOTH states and each had an equal claim to jurisdiction. The Supreme Court settled the dispute in one of the major legal cases in American history. See {624486}
This quotation illustrates Jefferson’s isolationist streak. He would have abandoned all American oceangoing ships and thereby avoid war. When he became President, however, he rethought his earlier position and was aggressive in developing the American Navy, using it at the risk of war.
Estonia had moved a Russian Soviet era monument to WWII dead Soviet Soldiers from a prime location in the center of their capital to a location outside of town. Russian-speaking Estonians were outraged and fomented violent demonstrations and riots that almost paralyzed the city. At the same time 85,000 Estonian computers were hijacked and used to implement a denial of service attack on some of the major government sites including the main bank, blocking all those webservers from serving normal customers on the Internet. The Prime Minister and other Estonian officials accused the Russians of the cyber-attack and likened it to a blockade which is an act of war under international law. What complicates cyberattacks is that there might have been some Russian nationalists who, with no knowledge of the government could have implemented a denial of service attack where so many accesses to servers are engineered that the servers crash. The perpetrators may have been instigated by the Russian government or not. They could have been any place in the world when they did it.
A local pilot who knew the local waters was necessary to help a large ship to dock in a port. Most of the pilots were patriots and those who weren’t were intimidated by the Continental Congress and the patriots in the community. At this point there was no formal battles yet of the Revolution. The British authorities were really angered that they could not safely land a British ship in the ports of their own colonies. This is another example of the American Revolution starting before the battles of 1776.
The problem of fictitious blockades vexed the world until 1856. See {613802}.
The treaty was ratified by the Senate on March 7, 1796. Much of the text was actually drafted by Joseph Donaldson, a junior diplomat appointed by Humphreys.
Original is at the Rhode Island Historical Society. This is one of the earliest, if not the earliest examples of private enterprise taking a moral stand against slavery and backing it up with a type of boycott. This company is still selling insurance. Later in that year, a law was passed making it illegal to insure slave ships. See {612698}.
This historical quotation is the “pitch” President Adams made to the Congress to establish the U. S. Naval Academy. It would be 18 more years before the Academy opened. Congress was not very rapid in its decision making even then.
Two of the major issues of the War of 1812 were the right of American ships to trade in Europe. The British were at war with France and boycotted all ports controlled by the French. They would seize American ships bound for or having traded with French areas. In addition, many American merchant seamen had formerly served in the British Navy and British warships would stop American merchant ships and remove “suspected” deserters and force them into British military naval service. Captain Lawrence was mortally wounded in this battle. See {625136}.
