Contingency Fund for Foreign Intercourse

[1][2] Three years later, it consumed 12% of the government's budget to help pay the ransoms of American hostages held by Barbary pirates.

Within three years this amount had grown to more than a million dollars, consuming roughly twelve percent of the United States federal budget.

[1][3] In 1831 Senator John Forsyth described the purpose of the fund as one designed to finance the operation of "spies, if the gentleman pleases; for persons sent publicly and secretly to search for important information, political or commercial ... for agents to feel the pulse of foreign governments.

Whigs in the United States House of Representatives requested a full accounting of expenditures made under the fund during the just-completed administration of John Tyler, a request then-president James Polk rebuffed, declaring that "in no nation is the application of such funds made public.

[5][8][9] According to a public statement made by President John Tyler, Duff Green was paid $1,000 from the fund to finance an operation in the United Kingdom in 1841 that influenced the appointment of the Lord Ashburton as the British negotiator in the Maine-New Brunswick border dispute.