Oval Office Oddities

by Bill Fawcett

  Eventually they mapped all nine hundred miles of the river, and Roosevelt, upon returning home, wrote another bestseller, Through the Brazilian Wilderness. Shortly thereafter, the Rio da Duvida (River of Doubt) officially became the river you can now find on the maps, the Rio Teodoro (River Theodore).

  He was a man in his mid-fifties, back when the average man’s life expectancy was only fifty-five. He was just recovering from being shot in the chest (and was still walking around with the bullet inside his body). Unlike East Africa, where he would be hunting the same territory that Selous had hunted before and Percival knew like the back of his hand, no one had ever mapped the River of Doubt. It was uncharted jungle, with no support network for hundreds of miles.

  So why did he agree to map it?

  His answer is so typically Rooseveltian that it will serve as the end to this chapter:

  “It was my last chance to be a boy again.”

  17

  COMMANDER IN CHIEF

  Think about having to tell your neighbor to go somewhere where there is a good chance he will be shot and killed. And then he is. Tough? But multiply that by thousands and you have what most presidents have felt was the most difficult part of the job. In a time of near-constant warfare, here is a look at the past presidents who were commander in chief while the United States was at war.

  SHIVER ME TIMBERS!

  THOMAS JEFFERSON AND THE BARBARY PIRATES (1801–1805)

  by Douglas Niles

  The Barbary States were nations of North Africa to the west of Egypt, occupying the coast of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic. Named for the Berber tribes who made up most of their population, they included lands that would become the nations of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, with their most significant ports being Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers. They reached the height of their power during the 1600s, with each of the four nations being ruled by a strongman-type dictator who usually assumed power by violent elimination of his predecessor. Nominally a part of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, the Barbary states were more or less self-governed.

  They became a steady menace to the shipping and commerce of European nations, raiding throughout the central and western Mediterranean, capturing ships and goods for their own use or trade, and holding captured crew for ransom, or selling them as slaves. The Barbary pirates relied upon galleys for their fleets until a Flemish outlaw, Simon Danzer, was able to convince them of the virtues of sail during the seventeenth-century. From then on their small, nimble vessels became the scourge of the seas. By 1650, more than 30,000 captives were held in Algiers alone!

  Although the fleets of the European powers could have overcome the Barbary pirates, none of the countries being preyed upon desired to make the effort. Beginning with England, which signed a treaty with a Barbary state in 1662, the countries of Europe universally decided to pay tribute—usually in the form of a large initial payment followed by annual supplemental bribes—to purchase safety for their ships. By making these payments, countries not only bought safety for their own fleets but they hoped to direct the pirate activities against their rivals.

  Of course, it became an ever more expensive cycle, as the pirates were prone to changing the terms of the tribute, raising the price and then resuming their raids until the new, higher price was met. Still, the Europeans paid, and the Barbary pirates lived in high style.

  Merchants in the American colonies traded extensively in the Mediterranean. Prior to the Revolutionary War, this trade was protected under the treaties between the pirates and the English. Shortly after gaining independence, however, the Americans found that their ships had become favored targets of the Barbary pirates. Obviously, this development was welcomed by the British, who believed that American trade in the Mediterranean Sea would be virtually eliminated. As one English official remarked, “The Americans cannot protect themselves—they cannot pretend to a navy!”

  Indeed, U.S. trade pretty much ceased along the coastlines of the Barbary states within a few years after independence. The Continental Congress authorized a delegation in 1784, including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams, to negotiate tribute with the Barbary states. They were authorized to spend a total of $80,000. In 1787, they concluded a reasonably successful tribute treaty with Morocco, making a one-time payment of $20,000. From this time on, the Moroccans more or less left American shipping alone.

  Algiers was the most powerful of the Barbary States, however, and it would not be so easily dissuaded. Between 1785 and 1790, more than a dozen American ships and more than one hundred crewmen, were captured by pirates based out of Algiers. The ruler of that state, called the Dey, demanded ten times more tribute than the Americans were willing to pay. Ben Franklin urged the nation to accept the Dey’s demands, while Jefferson grew more and more convinced that the matter would need to be settled by force. By 1795, Congress authorized the construction of six warships, even as it also finally agreed to a payment of more than half a million dollars (money that had to be borrowed) plus regular deliveries of naval supplies, to buy peace with Algiers.

  A few years later, less expensive treaties were reached with the pashas who ruled Tripoli and Tunis. Jefferson was convinced that all of these agreements were mere stopgaps, that the pirates would keep raising their prices and resuming their raiding until the new fees were paid. In this he was in agreement with William Eaton, the American consul at Tunis. Eaton wrote: “There is no access to the permanent friendship of these states without paving the way with gold or cannonballs; and the proper question is which method is preferable.”

  Jefferson was inaugurated as America’s third president in March 1801, and he was determined to use cannonballs as his currency. However, the Barbary pirates were only one small matter in a host of important policy issues, many of them unprecedented, facing the man who was the author of the Declaration of Independence. As a leader of the Democratic-Republican party, Jefferson had soundly defeated his rival Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist party, setting in motion the first inauguration that also represented a shift in party control. (Jefferson regarded Hamilton as an enemy of the republican style of government; Hamilton, in turn, thought Jefferson was a radical demagogue.)

  Jefferson had barely assumed the mantle of office when he dispatched a squadron of four warships to the Mediterranean. Even before these ships arrived, the pasha of Tripoli had decided that the United States was not paying its bounty in a timely fashion, and he declared war on America (or American shipping, at least). Though the ships of the fledgling United States Navy did succeed in blockading Tripoli for a short time, over the first two years of the conflict they were not effective in bringing an end to the piracy.

  At the same time, William Eaton, who was less than impressed by the lack of initiative and rather inept capabilities displayed by the navy commanders, began working on his own plot: he would attempt to overthrow the pasha and replace him with his exiled brother, who would presumably be more friendly toward American interests.

  In 1803, a more aggressive U.S. Navy officer, Commodore Edward Preble, arrived on the scene with a fresh squadron of warships. He restored the blockade on Tripoli’s harbor. Unfortunately, during this process, one of his frigates—the thirty-six-gun USS Philadelphia—ran aground. More than three hundred officers and crew were captured, and the pasha demanded $3 million for their release. Unwilling to leave the stranded frigate in the hands of the pirates, Preble authorized a daring raid: Lieutenant Stephen Decatur and seventy men sailed up to the stranded Philadelphia in a captured pirate vessel, boarded the frigate, overwhelmed the pirates on guard, and set her on fire. Decatur’s party escaped with no casualties, escorted out of the harbor by the spectacular sight of the frigate exploding behind them.

  Preble then concentrated all of his warships into a moderate-sized fleet and proceeded to firmly blockade Tripoli, and also to bombard its fortifications from the sea. In the meantime, William Eaton organized a force in Egypt, including mercenaries, Arab horsemen, and assorted crimin
al types. They marched hundreds of miles across the desert to attack one of the Tripoli pasha’s lesser ports, Derna. Aided by gunnery support from several of Preble’s frigates—as well as a contingent of United States Marines—Eaton’s ad hoc force captured Derna and held it against the pasha’s counterattack. (This event is memorialized in the famous “to the shores of Tripoli” line in the Hymn of the Marine Corps.)

  Much to Eaton’s disappointment, the United States finally agreed to a treaty with the pasha. Even with the military successes of Preble’s and Eaton’s operations, the Americans paid $60,000 to secure the release of all American prisoners. At least this brought the war with Tripoli to a close and another stretch of the Barbary coast was rendered safe for American merchant ships. Jefferson then summoned the warships home from the Mediterranean, as conflict with England was growing sharper. (These tensions would soon result in the War of 1812.)

  The last engagement between the United States and the Barbary pirates would not occur until the war with England was resolved. In 1814, the new Dey of Algiers renewed hostilities against American shipping, charging overdue tribute payments. President James Madison gained the authorization of Congress for a punitive expedition that was commanded by none other than the hero of Tripoli, Stephen Decatur (now a commodore). Commanding a squadron of nine ships, Decatur brazenly sailed into Algiers harbor, threatening the city with his guns. The Dey agreed to free all American prisoners, and actually paid a fee of $10,000 to get the Americans to go away! Decatur went on to leverage similar arrangements from Tunis and Tripoli before returning home to report that the Barbary pirates were no longer a threat to American commerce.

  WHITE HOUSE BURNING

  JAMES MADISON AND THE BRITISH RAID ON WASHINGTON (1814)

  by Douglas Niles

  The War of 1812 was a little sideshow of a conflict to England, which was deeply engaged in the effort to contain and eventually defeat Napoleonic France. To the Americans, however, it was a struggle for survival that resulted in displays of military ineptness and political bickering that could have torn the fledgling nation asunder. Not for the last time, it was a conflict in which part of the American population (deemed the “War Hawks”) adamantly endorsed the war, while others (primarily of the Federalist Party) vehemently opposed it.

  Elected to the presidency in 1808, after two terms as Thomas Jefferson’s secretary of state, James Madison inherited a growing crisis between the United States and England. While it was not the sole cause of the war, the interruption of American commerce by the British Navy, and especially the capture of American sailors who were forced to serve aboard English warships (“impressment”), aroused fierce resentment in the young nation. Britain was involved in more or less constant war with France over the period from 1793 to 1815, and—as always—she relied upon her peerless navy to control the seas.

  Furthermore, American merchants traded with both England and Europe, and the British were adamant about blockading the French-controlled European ports, which seriously curtailed U.S. business interests. In 1807, Britain issued orders requiring that any ships intending to sail for French ports first stop at an English port and pay duties. (In one of several ironic coincidences of timing in this war, the order was repealed by England the day before the United States declared war.)

  Another source of conflict between the two countries involved Canadian support for Native American tribes on the frontier. On November 11, 1811, the Shawnee under Tecumseh were defeated at the Battle of Tippecanoe (in what would become the state of Indiana). The War Hawks included a number of aggressive congressmen from frontier districts, and they used this battle as an argument for carrying the war into Indian Territory, and against Canada (a British colony) itself. Some of these firebrands even began advocating the invasion and conquest of Canada. While this goal was never a realistic American objective, it became a rallying cry for those who favored war.

  On the other side were the members of the Federalist Party, centered in New England and very pro-British. They were so much so, in fact, that when Britain blockaded American ports during the war, the ports in New England were allowed to function more or less unimpeded. Nevertheless, in light of the growing pro-war sentiment, and deeply insulted by arrogant British behavior on the high seas, President Madison and the Congress declared war on England—albeit by the smallest “yes” vote on a war declaration in American history.

  However, it was soon revealed that the Americans were woefully unprepared for war. At first, President Madison put much faith in aging heroes of the Revolution, but these commanders proved almost universally inept. The British quickly captured forts on the sites of current day Detroit and Chicago. Not one but two American invasions of Canada were thwarted when mixed armies of regulars and militia reached the border; the regulars crossed over while the militiamen refused to leave American soil. The divided armies were easily dispatched by the British, while sulking commanders put their troops into barren winter quarters where the troops suffered severe hardships.

  On the high seas, the Americans met with some individual successes (the USS Constitution earned her sobriquet, “Old Ironsides,” early on) but British numbers put grave pressure on American shipping. In the Great Lakes, it became a matter of which side could build ships faster, and here the U.S. forces were able to gain control of Lake Erie long enough to land a force at York (now Toronto), where the Americans proceeded to loot and burn the place.

  By 1814, the British controlled the waters off the American coast, and a fleet—with many soldiers aboard—sailed into Chesapeake during the summer of that year. President Madison’s incompetent secretary of war, John Armstrong, refused to take his boss’s counsel when Madison warned him about a potential threat to Washington, D.C. As a result, when the British sailed up the Patuxent River and put some five thousand men ashore in August, the Americans had only a force of some seven thousand untrained militia, commanded by the politically appointed General Winder, to oppose them.

  The Battle of Bladensburg was fought on August 24, 1814. Some fifteen hundred British regulars, the advance force, completely and shamefully routed the militia in a short engagement, leaving the road to Washington undefended. The triumphant British troops quickly marched to Capitol Hill, taking fire only from some angry citizens in a house at the corner of Maryland and Constitution Avenues. The house was quickly destroyed, and the British troops encountered no more resistance.

  But they were angry about the casualties they had taken, and also wished to avenge the sacking of York. Very quickly they set fire to the buildings of the Senate and House of Representatives (the classic rotunda of the modern Capitol building had not yet been built). The Library of Congress also went up in flames.

  The next day the British commander, Admiral Cockburn, arrived on the scene with a personal grudge. A newspaper, the National Intelligencer, had aroused his ire with a series of articles branding him “the Ruffian.” He intended to burn the paper’s building, but was dissuaded by local residents who feared the fire would spread to their homes. Cockburn contented himself by having the newspaper building knocked down, and made sure that his troops got rid of every “C” for the typesetting presses—ostensibly so that the paper would not be able to write about him anymore.

  Meanwhile, the victorious British troops started down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the executive mansion. Congress had already fled the city, the president himself seeking refuge in Virginia. Famously, his wife, Dolley Madison, stayed in the presidential mansion even after her personal bodyguards had fled. She saved a number of important documents and was able to remove the Lansdowne Portrait, a full-length image of George Washington. She fled the house out the back just before British troops charged in through the front.

  These soldiers must have been delighted to find the table set with a feast for forty people. They obligingly consumed the food before they started burning the building, throwing extra tinder on the blaze to make sure everything was incinerated. At the same time, the Treasury Buildi
ng was burned, and the Americans themselves burned the Washington Navy Yard to keep several nearly-completed warships from falling into enemy hands. People as far away as Baltimore could see the flames from the massive conflagrations—although the British were persuaded to spare the United States Patent Office, convinced that those important records should be preserved.

  The raid completed, the British withdrew to their ships and went on to raid Baltimore, where their bombardment of Fort McHenry would cause Francis Scott Key to observe that “our flag was still there” as he scribed the verses that would become the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

  The raid on Washington was not a strategic success, because the British held the city for only a matter of days, but it was a devastating blow to American pride. Even as the U.S. Army was beginning to show success on other fronts, the cost of the war was brought home with devastating symbolism. Even so, under President Madison the army improved dramatically as he replaced incompetent aged commanders with younger, more vigorous leaders. (The average age of generals dropped from sixty in 1812 to thirty in 1814.)

  Ever resentful of the war, and deeply tied to Britain, the New England states began to talk seriously of secession, meeting at the Hartford Convention (December 1814–January 1815) to draw up specific plans to break away from the United States. The convention never finished its business as, in the end, the Americans won just enough crucial victories, and both nations were consumed with such war weariness, that the Treaty of Ghent was signed on Christmas Eve 1814, ending hostilities. Because of policies viewed as seditious by most Americans, the Federalist Party was more or less destroyed by the war. Ironically, the greatest American land victory, a rout of British regulars by militia under Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, occurred after the peace treaty had been signed but before word of the agreement could reach the troops.