Up to that time seventy-four French vessels had been taken and more than eighty had been retaken from the French. This was regarded as ample proof of the value of a Navy and made its advocates so jubilant that "What think ye of the Navy now?" was tauntingly asked of its former opponents.
So again Captain Barry's services as Head of the Navy were conspicuous and useful. But the Federalists, the party of Washington, of Adams and of Barry, were defeated by the election by the House of Representatives of Thomas Jefferson.
Reform and Retrenchment were the chief policies of his administration. With the measures against France, Jefferson's Republicans had had no sympathy. Their antipathy to Great Britain and their fury against Jay's Treaty were terrific. The new Congress of Jefferson ordered the cessation of work on the 74-gun ships, for which timber had already been collected. Only a quarter of a million of dollars was appropriated for naval expenditures. All but thirteen of the ships were sold. The new Navy established by the Act of 1794 was, within seven years, almost non-existent and would have been wholly so if the policy of the Jefferson Republicans had been fully carried out. Though that practically came to pass by the "laying up" of all vessels.
Jefferson was inaugurated March 4, 1801. On the 23d of that month Captain Barry was notified to "call home all the ships in the West Indies. You are to make the best of your way to Philadelphia."
At the end of April the frigate "United States" was in the Delaware River and, on May 1st, the new Secretary of the Navy, General Dearborn, instructed Barry to bring the "United States" to Washington, "where it is intended she shall be laid up." There were now Navy yards at Portsmouth, N.H.; Charlestown, Philadelphia, Norfolk and Washington, in accordance with the advice Captain Barry had given in 1798 that such should be established and a Navy Department created.
Captain Barry sailed the frigate to Washington and on May 23d reported his arrival in the Potomac, "though his friends had declared that the President was not aware of the difficulties that would be met in getting the frigate there," as Mrs. Barry wrote the Captain the day he had arrived near Washington.