Jefferson's War

by Joseph Wheelan

  It happened sooner rather than later because of Thomas Jefferson. “I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace through the medium of war,” Jefferson wrote to John Adams when they debated the respective merits of war and tribute.

  Jefferson’s unshakable faith in the supreme revolutionary principle—freedom from tyranny wherever it might be found, and in whatever form—caused the western Mediterranean to be swept clean of the marauding corsairs.

  No longer would merchant ship captains anxiously scan the flat horizon for the long-prowed ships of plunder flying under lateen sails.

  Jefferson and his fighting sailors and Marines had freed America and Europe from The Terror.

  NOTES

  Prologue

  xvii. “Curly-haired and fair”: Naval Documents Related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers, 6 vols. (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939), vol. 1, portrait facing p. 582.

  xvii. “Canvas rustled above him”: Ibid., p. 540.

  xvii. “The Enterprise was sailing”: Ibid., p. 535.

  xviii. “Above the Enterprise‘s”: Ibid., p. 503.

  xviii. “The Enterprise was the third”: Henry B. Culver, Forty Famous Ships (New York: Garden City Publishing Co. Inc., 1938), pp. 181—4.

  xviii. “Later, after she was”: Howard I. Chapelle, The History of the American Sailing Navy (New York: Bonanza Books, 1935), p. 101.

  xviii. “By then, she”: Culver, p. 181.

  xviii. “Before the Enterprise”: Naval Documents, vol. 1, p. 534.

  xix. “The Tripoli edged closer”: Ibid., pp. 537-9 (National Intelligencer story); A. B. C. Whipple, To the Shores of Tripoli: The Birth of the U.S. Navy and Marines (New York: William Morrow and Company Inc., 1991), pp. 79-80; Glenn Tucker, Dawn Like Thunder: The Barbary Wars and the Birth of the U.S. Navy (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. 1963), pp. 141-6.

  xxi. “‘The carnage on board”’: Naval Documents, vol. 1, p. 537.

  xxi. “While the Enterprise’s doctor”: Ibid., pp. 538-9 (National Intelligencer story).

  xxi. “Sterrett did a damage”: Ibid., p. 537.

  xxv. “‘Holding out the olive Branch’”: Naval Documents, vol. 2, p. 130.

  Chapter I: The “Pacifist” President

  1. “‘Peace, commerce & honest’”: Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 10 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1892-9), vol. 8, pp. 2-5.

  1. “a soft voice”: Nathan Schachner, Thomas Jefferson: A Biography (New York: Thomas Yoseloff Ltd., 1951), p. 661; Ford, vol. 8, pp. 3-4.

  2. “the disgruntled president”: David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), p. 565.

  2. “‘a wise and frugal’”: Ford, vol. 8, pp. 3-4.

  2. “Jefferson issued the”: Naval Documents, vol. 1, p. 486.

  3. “‘The motives pleading’”: John P. Foley, ed., The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia, 2 vols. (New York: Russell & Russell, 1900), p. 83.

  4. “Two members of Jefferson‘s”: Thomas Jefferson papers at the Library of Congress. June 11, 1801, letter to Wilson Cary Nicholas.

  4. “James Madison, Jefferson‘s”: The Papers of James Madison. Secretary of State Series (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986), pp. 1-2.

  4. “The other late arrival”: Henry Adams, The Life of Albert Gallatin (New York: Peter Smith, 1879), p. 1.

  5. “‘Shall the squadron’”: Thomas Jefferson notes on Cabinet meetings, May—June 1801 (Library of Congress).

  6. “The Navy now floated”: William M. Fowler, Jr., Jack Tars and Commodores: The American Navy, 1783—1815 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984), p. 60.

  6. “the $83 million”: E. James Ferguson, ed., Selected Writings of Albert Gallatin (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc., 1967), pp. 208—9.

  8. “‘Jihad’ is derived”: Robert Wuthnow, ed., Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion (Washington: Congressional Quarterly, 1998), pp. 425—6.

  8. “As Islam exploded”: Ibid.

  8. “Jihad’s new interpretation”: Ibid.

  8. “Their refusal to pay”: McClintock and Strong, The Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (World Wide Web), vol. VI, p. 417.

  8. “The Barbary States stuck”: Muhammad Abdel Haleem, Understanding the Qur‘an: Themes and Style (London, New York: I. B. Tauris, Publishers, 1999), pp. 61—3.

  Chapter II: The Dreadful Corsairs

  9. “The Moors were”: Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, A History of the Maghrib (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 7.

  9. “the Maghrib, the ‘land of sunset’”: Ibid., p. 1.

  10. “During one expedition”: Charles-André Julien, History of North Africa (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970), p. 13.

  10. “the first Barbary corsairs”: Tucker, pp. 48-9.

  11. “King Roderick”: Stanley Lane-Poole, The Barbary Corsairs (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1901), p. 14.

  11. “The Moors, as the”: Stanley Lane-Poole, The Moors in Spain (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911), pp. vii-ix.

  11. “In 1800, U.S. libraries”: Henry Adams, History of the United States during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (New York: A&CBoni, 1930), vol. 1, p. 61.

  12. “In 1491, at”: Lane-Poole, The Moors in Spain, pp. 270-1.

  12. “Most Granadan Moors preferred”: Ibid., p. 272.

  12. “While a few refugees”: John B. Wolf, The Barbary Coast: Algiers Under the Turks, 1500—1830 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1979), pp. 5—6; Will and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization, 11 vols. (New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1935-75), vol. 6, pp. 217-8, 696.

  13. “The ‘little war”’: Ellen G. Friedman, Spanish Captives in North Africa in the Early Modern Age (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), p. xiv.

  13. “The escalating raids”: Wolf, pp. 4—5; Julien, p. 242; Lane-Poole, Barbary Corsairs, pp. 8—10.

  13. “Spanish Christians believed”: Lane-Poole, Moors in Spain, pp. 273-80.

  14. “Charles signed the edict”: Ibid.

  14. “Given command of”: Ibid.

  14. “Between 1492 and 1610”: Ibid.

  15. “In 1580, the Holy”: Friedman, p. xxii.

  16. “The shipyards of Tunis”: Wolf, p. 143; Lane-Poole, Barbary Corsairs, pp. 219—21.

  16. “Hundreds of English”: Samuel C. Chew, The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England during the Renaissance (New York: Octagon Books Inc., 1965), p. 350.

  16. “they brought with them”: Wolf, p. 145.

  17. “Coming upon a”: Lane-Poole, Barbary Corsairs, p. 225.

  17. “It was usually over”: Ibid., p. 193.

  17. “Murad Reis, a legendary”: Ibid., pp. 226—33.

  17. “800 raiders”: Ibid.

  17. “Corsairs appeared off”: Ibid.

  17. “Between 1613 and 1622”: Wolf, p. 190.

  17. “Four hundred English ships”: Lane-Poole, Barbary Corsairs, p. 266.

  18. “During six months”: Chew, p. 358.

  18. “Between 1628 and 1634”: Lane-Poole, Barbary Corsairs, p. 233; Louis B. Wright and Julia H. Macleod, The First Americans in North Africa: William Eaton’s Struggle for a Vigorous Policy Against the Barbary Pirates, 1799—1805 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press), p. 11.

  18. “The Spanish abetted”: Friedman, pp. 10—11.

  18. “Gibraltar’s nine watchtowers”: Ibid., p. xvii.

  18. “Even when privateers”: Ibid., p. 34.

  18. “Long stretches of”: Ibid., pp. 48—9.

  18. “Spain and Italy”: Ibid., p. 165; Colin McEvedy The Penguin Atlas of Ancient, Medieval and Modern History, 3 vols. (Baltimore: Penguin Books Inc., 1967), vol. 3, p. 37; 1999 Europe population figures.

  19. “the habitual ‘climate of fear”’: Friedman, p. xxv.

  19. “In 1616 alone”: Julien, p. 306.

  19. “Wrote Diego de Haedo”: Lane-Poole, Barbar
y Corsairs, p. 205.

  19. “Algiers’s lavish public”: Julien, pp. 106—7.

  20. “The Algiers skyline sprouted”: Wolf, pp. 94—7.

  20. “The hazards of”: Ibid., p. 148.

  20. “expensive, ornamented fountains”: Ibid., p. 97.

  21. “The youngest, handsomest”: Friedman, pp. 68—9.

  21. “Algiers’s ‘zoco’”: Ibid., pp. 56-7.

  21. “Father Dan happened”: Lane-Poole, Barbary Corsairs, p. 133.

  21. “True, some corsair captains”: Friedman, pp. 72—4.

  22. “Christians usually were”: Ibid., pp. 55—6.

  22. “‘Our beds were nothing’”: Chew, p. 381.

  22. “Ships docking in”: Lane-Poole, Barbary Corsairs, p. 252.

  22. “Surgeons were another”: Friedman, pp. 69-70.

  23. “Chained naked to”: Lane-Poole, Barbary Corsairs, pp. 214—5.

  23. “One was Germaine”: Friedman, pp. 68—9.

  23. “Two thousand slaves”: Ibid., pp. 66—7.

  24. “Slaves were bastinadoed”: Gardner W. Allen, Our Navy and the Barbary Corsairs (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1905), p. 21.

  24. “Jean de Matha”: Friedman, pp. 91—101.

  24. “The sight of the”: Ibid., p. xxv.

  24. “The pashas allowed”: Ibid., pp. 91—101.

  25. “During eighty-two redemption”: Ibid., pp. 145—6.

  25. “between 1520 and 1830”: Wolf, pp. 151—2.

  26. “Admiral Lambert appeared”: Ibid., pp. 90—1.

  26. “English Admiral Robert Blake”: Wolf, pp. 220—1.

  27. “Dutch Admiral Michiel De Ruyter”: Tucker, p. 56.

  27. “British Admiral Edward Spragg”: Wolf, p. 215.

  27. “The four janissary”: Abun-Nasr, p. 175.

  28. “In 1682, Admiral Abraham Duquesne”: Wolf, pp. 259—60.

  29. “the French king Louis XIV sent”: Ibid.

  30. “In 1712 Holland sent”: Lane-Poole, Barbary Corsairs, pp. 258—69.

  31. “Algiers’s population, thinned”: Julien, p. 320.

  Chapter III: The New Nation and Barbary

  32. “An ambassador from America!”‘: McCullough, p. 337.

  33. “In October 1784”: Mary A. Giunta, ed., The Emerging Nation: A Documentary History of the Foreign Relations of the United States under the Articles of Confederation: 1780—1789, 3 vols. (Washington: National Historical Publications and Record Commission, 1996), vol. 2, p. 503.

  33. “‘Our sufferings are beyond’”: Ibid., p. 767.

  33. “Jay already had instructed”: Ibid., p. 553.

  34. “the Dutch, Danes”: Ibid., pp. 564—5.

  34. “The men warmed”: The Works of John Adams, 10 vols. (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1969), vol. 8, pp. 372-3.

  35. “In 1698, during another”: Whipple, pp. 292-3.

  36. “an average of 100”: Julian P. Boyd et al., ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 25 vols. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950—), vol. 18, p. 371.

  36. “Mediterranean markets consumed”: Curtis P. Nettles, The Emergence of a National Economy, 1775—1815 (New York, Evanston, London: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1962), p. 57.

  36. “Richard Harrison”: Emerging Nation, vol. 2, p. 115.

  36. “‘It is not [in] their Interest’”: Ibid.

  36. “In 1782 Livingston”: Ibid., p. 58.

  37. “He warned that”: Works of John Adams, vol. 8, pp. 374—6.

  37. “The shipyards had”: Nettles, p. 50.

  38. “France and Britain”: Gordon C. Bjork, Stagnation and Growth in the American Economy 1784—1792 (New York, London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1985), p. 167.

  38. “More than 50,000 slaves”: Schachner, p. 217.

  38. “Rice exports told”: Nettles, pp. 46—50.

  38. “Adams ambitiously proposed”: Ibid., p. 66.

  38. “Jefferson estimated British”: Ibid., p. 63.

  38. “The French, however, lacked”: Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People, 3 vols. (New York: New American Library, 1972), vol. 1, p. 369.

  39. “American tobacco, flour”: Ibid., p. 370.

  39. “The Empress of China”: Gorton Carruth, What Happened When: A Chronology of Life & Events in America (New York: Signet, 1991), p. 151.

  40. “The novelty wore off”: Boyd, vol. 9, p. 358.

  41. “the 47th Surah”: T. B. Irving, trans., The Qur‘an (Brattleboro, Vt.: Amana Books, 1986), pp. 288-9.

  41. “By first extending”: Haleem, pp. 61—3.

  41. “Jefferson gloomily estimated”: Boyd, vol. 9, p. 500.

  41. “which meant going”: Ibid., pp. 357-9.

  42. “Adams observed that”: Works of John Adams, vol. 8, pp. 406—7.

  43. “Adams was certain”: Ibid.

  43. “Jefferson replied with”: Boyd, vol. 10, pp. 123-5.

  45. “Adams conceded there”: Works of John Adams, vol. 8, pp. 410—2.

  46. “The Confederation Congress‘s”: Morison, vol. 1, p. 363.

  46. “‘It seems almost Nugatory’”: Dorothy Twohig, ed., The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series, 6 vols. (Charlottesville, Va., and London: University Press of Virginia, 1997), vol. 5, pp. 106—7.

  46. “‘I should not be angry’”: Emerging Nation, vol. 2, pp. 967—8.

  47. “‘If we act properly’”: Ibid., p. 863.

  47. “‘We ought to begin’”: Boyd, vol. 7, p. 511.

  47. “‘These pyrates are contemptibly’”: Boyd, vol. 2, pp. 542—3.

  48. “Morocco’s seizure of”: Whipple, p. 25.

  48. “‘It is not surprising’”: Emerging Nation, vol. 2, p. 520.

  49. “he impulsively displayed”: Ibid., p. 503.

  49. “‘to show them’”: Tucker, p. 65.

  49. “The envoy and”: Emerging Nation, vol. 2, p. 841.

  49. “John Lamb, a Norwich”: Ibid.

  49. “Lamb passed along”: Boyd, vol. 18, pp. 374—5.

  49. “Richard O‘Brien, master”: Naval Documents, vol. 1, p. 6.

  50. “‘If there were”’: Emerging Nation, vol. 2, p. 178.

  50. “Lord Sheffield expanded”: Boyd, vol. 18, pp. 373—4.

  50. “Jefferson appealed to”: Ibid., p. 431.

  51. “Jefferson raised the sum”: Whipple, pp. 26—7.

  51. “But Hamilton’s actions so”: Schachner, pp. 182—4.

  52. “In his secret idealistic”: Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Capricorn Books, 1959), pp. 77-9; Boyd, vol. 10, pp. 560—2.

  53. “Jefferson was subtler”: Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson, p. 78.

  53. “Lafayette first presented”: Boyd, vol. 10, pp. 562-3.

  54. “‘There is betwen’”: Gottschalk, ed., Letters of Lafayette to Washington, 1777—1799 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1976), p. 315.

  54. “In 1787 Virginia”: Boyd, vol. 10, pp. 564—5.

  54. “Congress ‘declined an engagement’”: Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson, p. 79.

  Chapter IV: “A Good Occasion to Build a Navy”

  55. “Nearly four million”: Nettles, p. 77.

  56. “Revolutionary War debt”: Ibid.

  56. “Trade continued to lag”: Ibid., p. 396.

  57. “The occasion was”: Boyd, vol. 18, pp. 423—4.

  57. “Besides being at war”: Ibid., p. 428.

  58. “Spain’s peace had cost”: Ibid., p. 426.

  58. “they boiled down to”: Ibid., p. 431.

  58. “‘For this, we”’: Foley, p. 83.

  58. “‘to repel force’”: Boyd, vol. 18, pp. 410—3.

  58. “a Senate resolution”: Ibid.

  59. “His ‘Proposal to Use Force”’: Ibid., p. 416.

  60. “Logie, the London”: Ibid., pp. 374—5; Tucker, p. 72.

  61. “‘Money is the God’”: Naval Documents, vol. 1, p. 3.

  61. “When the Americans c
omplained”: John Foss, Journal of the Captivity and Sufferings of John Foss, Several Years a Prisoner of Algiers (Newburyport, Maine: A. March, Middle-Street, 1798), pp. 1—12.

  62. “‘All my hopes’”: Ibid., p. 57.

  63. “Yellow fever had cut”: McCullough, p. 446.

  63. “‘Everyone is getting’”: Ford, vol. 9, pp. 236—7.

  63. “Philadelphia’s sultry summers”: McCullough, p. 446.

  64. “‘As we passed”’: Foss, p. 14.

  64. “The prisoners used gunpowder”: Ibid., p. 20.

  65. “‘every article that’”: Ibid., p. 29.

  65. “Sherief was the worst”: Ibid., pp. 20—1.

  66. “The captives were required”: Ibid., pp. 31—3.

  66. “The Algerians’ ‘tenderest mercies’”: Ibid., Frontispiece.

  66. “Fourteen slaves caught”: Ibid., p. 25.

  67. “Turks who committed”: Ibid.

  67. “the Merchant Marine Act”: Tucker, p. 79.

  67. “While U.S. ports”: Carruth, p. 169.

  68. “The navy debate began”: Annals of Congress, Third Congress, 1st Session (Library of Congress), pp. 438—9.

  69. “Benjamin Goodhue”: Ibid., p. 441.

  69. “Fisher Ames”: Kenneth J. Hagan, This People’s Navy: The Making of American Sea Power (New York: The Free Press, 1991), p. 30.

  69. “Britain, said John Nicholas”: Annals of Congress, Third Congress, 1st Session, p. 439.

  70. “Madison asserted that”: Hagan, p. 31.

  70. “British interference was not”: Annals of Congress, Third Congress, 1st Session, pp. 440—1.

  70. “The House passed”: Fowler, p. 20.

  71. “The ships, Knox concluded”: Tucker, pp. 79—81.

  71. “Given the job”: Allen, p. 50.

  71. “Since the United States”: Allen, p. 51; Fowler, p. 18; Tucker, pp. 81-2; Whipple, p. 44.

  71. “Humphreys rhapsodized to”: Tucker, p. 87.

  72. “the Continental Navy had”: Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute (New York: 1988), pp. 47—8.

  72. “The cobbled-together fleet”: Whipple, p. 293.

  72. “The last Continental warship”: Fowler, p. 8.

  72. “Knox parceled out”: Hagan, p. 34.