Jefferson's War (13 page)

 

 

 

David Humphreys and Joel Barlow opened negotiations with Algiers in 1795 as the frigate navy slowly came together. Humphreys and Barlow were former Yale classmates, Revolutionary War veterans, and, strangely enough, poets. Before becoming a diplomat and minister to Portugal, Humphreys had served as George Washington's secretary during the war and commanded a Connecticut regiment that in 1786 helped suppress Shays's Rebellion, a rural uprising over Massachusetts taxes. Barlow, who fought alongside Washington at Long Island, was a well-known literary and social figure. A third negotiator, Joseph Donaldson, Jr., worked alongside Barlow under Humphreys's direction. James Leander Cathcart, a prisoner since the
Maria
was captured in 1785 and the dey's secretary, served as mediator and translator.

The dey opened the parley by announcing that a treaty and ransom would cost the United States $2,247,000 cash and two frigates worth roughly $248,000. America could well afford it, the
dey said, for hadn't a Spanish newspaper reported that U.S. exports totaled $28 million a year? Donaldson and Barlow hastened to assure the dey that was a gross exaggeration. Further meetings brought the price down. On December 22, 1794, Algiers and America struck a deal: $642,500 cash—about $10 million in today's dollars—for the captives' release; $21,600 worth of powder, shot, oak planking, and masts in annual tribute. The Americans sweetened the agreement by throwing in a 36-gun frigate, which would be called the
Crescent.
Thirty-four captives had died, but Algiers required ransom for them, too, although their bodies were not shipped home. Barlow borrowed the cash at high interest from Miciah Bacri, the dey's chief moneylender; Bacri simply drew the money from the national treasury and redeposited it. The eighty-five surviving prisoners shipped out on the unfittingly named
Fortune,
owned by Bacri.

The
Fortune
was one of the unluckiest freedom ships that ever sailed. No sooner had it left Algiers and entered the Mediterranean than plague erupted on board. It carried off Samuel Bayley, Foss's old captain on the
Polly,
leaving only four of the nine original
Polly
crewmen alive. The ship was placed in quarantine for eighty days in Marseilles, where the captives marked time until the plague had run its course and they were cleared to go ashore. Embarking again for Leghorn, Italy, the
Fortune
was stopped and boarded by the British, who robbed the captives of their clothing and money and claimed the ship for a prize. Barlow bitterly complained that the
Fortune
sailed under an American flag, and England could not simply appropriate U.S. property without cause; the British replied that the ship was Algerian, and they could do as they pleased. On top of everything else, Barlow later had to pay Bacri $40,000 for his ship.

Foss and some of the other captives transferred to another ship embarking for America that was even more ill-starred than the Fortune. A Spanish privateer captured her. After she was cleared in Barcelona, she was captured by a French privateer and released, seized by the British, and then by Spanish privateers again. Another Spanish privateer boarded her and stole all the provisions and clothing. After being captured and released once more by the British, the cursed ship finally reached America.

 

The Algerian treaty encouraged American diplomats to open negotiations with the other Barbary States. Hassan, momentarily pleased with the ransom and tribute he had gotten, helpfully supplied the American negotiators with supporting letters and cash advances. Moroccan Emperor Maulay Sulaiman, Sidi Muhammed's successor, quickly reratified the 1786 treaty after accepting a $20,000 gift. Tunis's treaty, signed in August 1797 for $107,000, contained no annual tribute, but required periodic gifts. Tripoli signed in January 1797 for $56,486 and no annual tribute. This agreement would begin to act on Bashaw Yusuf Karamanli like a sharp pebble in a shoe when he learned what Algiers and Tunis had gotten.

The diplomats shuttled back to Algiers, which was threatening war again because the promised naval stores were long overdue. Envoys placated the dey by announcing the United States would give him another 36-gun frigate. He was so happy that he placed orders for two more new American ships, promising cash on delivery. Peace might be at hand, but the United States had just spent nearly $1 million to secure it.

And it was just the beginning.

V

“WILL NOTHING ROUSE MY COUNTRY?”

—William Eaton, U.S. consul to Tunis

 

 

 

 

 

T
he Senate ratified the Algerian treaty on March 2, 1796, and on March 15 President Washington unhappily pointed out to Congress that the Naval Establishment Act obliged him to stop work on the frigates. The prospect of a work stoppage concerned him, he confessed, for “the loss which the public would incur might be considerable, from the dissipation of workmen, from certain works or operations being suddenly dropped or left unfinished and from the derangement in the whole system.” By that, he meant the ironworks, shipyards, lumberyards, and foundries employed in frigate building. Its loss might not “comport with the public interest.” Another reason for Washington's discomfiture was that every penny of the budgeted $688,888 already had been sunk into the frigates, plus another $400,000 in overruns. If the frigate building were aborted with no issue, it would be $1 million wasted. Seeing the point, the Senate overrode the act's work-stoppage stipulation, authorizing completion of
two 44-gun frigates and one 36-gun frigate—the
United States,
the
Constitution,
and the
Constellation.

 

 

A new threat arose—France, upset over the Jay Treaty negotiated with England in 1794. It angered France for what it did, and Republicans in America for what it didn't do.

Former Foreign Secretary John Jay had attempted to persuade the British to reopen the West Indies to unrestricted American trade—reprising Adams's 1780s mission. Many American commodities still were barred from West Indies ports, and no American ships were permitted to dock. The Jay Treaty's major achievement was obtaining most-favored-nation status for American ships trading in Britain, but it failed to loosen up West Indies trade and amazingly conceded to the British the right to seize U.S. goods bound for France. This wasn't a case of a bumpkin getting fleeced by slick London operators, but a shrewd bet by Washington and his advisers that when the half century of intermittent warfare between England and France ended—whenever that might be—England would be left standing, and not France. Also factored into their thinking was the feeling that America would have to fight England again one day, but that America's chances of surviving the British onslaught would improve with time; the Jay Treaty pushed back the inevitable war two decades. Knowing that the Republicans would be furious over Jay's yielding to the English over France, the Washington administration withheld the treaty's details from Congress. It wasn't until February 29, 1796, that the administration held its breath and grudgingly released the full treaty. Republicans exploded, accusing Federalists of appeasing America's old enemy.

France denounced the treaty, claiming it violated the
Franco—American alliance forged in 1778 at the height of the Revolutionary War. The French retaliated by adopting the same stance toward American goods bound for Britain that the Jay Treaty granted Britain in regard to France. French privateers began seizing U.S. merchantmen in the West Indies. In just one year, France captured more than 300 U.S. vessels.

 

Taking office in March 1797 as the second president, John Adams had never disputed the wisdom of creating a U.S. Navy in his exchange of views with Jefferson the decade before. He had agreed with Jefferson that standing up to the Barbary States “would be a good occasion to begin a navy.” But with the Treasury empty and full of misgivings about the American will to wage a distant foreign war, he had advised paying tribute. Now that the United States had money and the beginnings of a navy, he aimed to use both in the nation's defense against France. “A naval power, next to the militia, is the natural defense of the United States,” he told Congress on May 16, 1797, but “the establishment of a permanent system of naval defense ... can not be formed so speedily and extensively as the present crisis demands.” He asked Congress to give him authority to arm merchantmen, to ready the three new super frigates for sea duty, and to allocate funds to build more warships.

Congress promptly granted him the authority to expand the Navy and disbursed $392,512 for this purpose in March 1798, as the ignominious details of the “XYZ Affair” began leaking out, fanning animosity toward France to fever pitch. Elbridge Gerry, John Marshall, and Charles C. Pinckney, sent to Paris on a peace mission, had met three minor French officials—identified by Adams in subsequent reports only as agents X, Y, and Z. The
French envoys haughtily announced negotiations were possible only if their foreign minister, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, received a $250,000 gift and the United States loaned France $10 million. Pinckney's forceful reply, “No, no, not a sixpence,” was inflated in the retelling into the ringing “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute,” which became the national rallying cry of the day. Not long afterward, a French privateer sank a British ship in Charleston harbor, a flagrant violation of neutrality.

By the time Adams finally laid all the details of the XYZ Affair before the Federalist-controlled Congress, legislators were ready to act. Congress's pent-up hostility toward France over the 300 ship captures and the XYZ Affair burst forth in a torrent of legislation to stem the Jacobin threat. It changed the U.S. military and began America's transformation into a naval power. Congress created a Navy Department; authorized construction of twelve 22-gun ships, ten small vessels, and cannon foundries; approved twelve more ships of 20—24 guns each; suspended commerce with France and authorized seizure of French privateers “hovering” off the U.S. coast; sanctioned completion of the last of the original six frigates, the
President, Congress,
and
Chesapeake;
and authorized Adams to accept up to twenty-four warships built with money raised from the public during subscription drives. The drives were enormously successful, tapping into the rabid anti-French sentiment predominant in most areas. The Navy acquired the frigates
Essex
from Essex County, Massachusetts, the
John Adams
from Charleston, and the
Philadelphia
and the
New York
from the cities for which they were named. As an exclamation point to this flood of martial legislation, Congress created the U.S. Marine Corps on July 11, 1798. It was a second act for America's “soldiers of the sea,” whose training and hierarchy mirrored the British Marines, crack
shipboard and assault troops first organized in 1664. During the Revolutionary War, Continental Marines—perhaps 50 officers and 2,000 enlisted men altogether—had served on American warships through 1784, but they disbanded along with the rest of the Continental military establishment. Today, the Marine Corps observes as its birthday the date of the Continental Marine Corps' establishment: November 10, 1775.

Having acted decisively to defend the homeland's waters against the enemy without, Congress turned somewhat hysterically to quelling threats from within, a perilous business indeed, as latter-day defenders of the republic have found out in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Congress amended the Naturalization Act to extend the residency requirement for citizenship to fourteen years from five years. The new Alien Act empowered the president for two years to deport aliens he deemed dangerous, and the Alien Enemies Act permitted the arrest and deportation of male aliens from enemy nations. The Logan Act made it a high misdemeanor for U.S. citizens to parley with foreign powers without government sanction, a slap at Dr. George Logan's quixotic one-man mission to France. Then came the Sedition Act, the most dangerous of all: Any written or verbal criticism of the government, its policies, or officers could be prosecuted in federal court as a criminal libel. Outraged free-speech advocates poured into the streets of Philadelphia. Troops had to be called out to break up fights between Republicans and Federalists. The successful Federalist blitz proved to be a Pyrrhic victory; the backlash splintered the party and in 1800 cost the party the White House and control of Congress. It would never regain either.

 

The Lesser Antilles parenthetically close off the eastern Caribbean
against the Atlantic in a sweeping curve from Puerto Rico to Venezuela. These tiny islands were the West's trading crossroad, where the raw goods of the Americas found their way into ships from Spain, France, England, Holland, and Portugal. It was where America and France fought their naval war, beginning in November 1798.

The 20-gun
Montezuma,
18-gun
Norfolk,
and 14-gun
Retaliation
were cruising off Guadeloupe when they spotted two ships sailing west. The
Montezuma
and
Norfolk
took off in pursuit. The
Retaliation,
commanded by Lieutenant William Bainbridge, stayed behind to watch some unidentified ships off to the east that Bainbridge was sure were British. He was wrong; they were large French frigates—the 40-gun
L‘Insurgente,
and the 44-gun
Voluntaire.
The French pounced, and Bainbridge struck his flag, surrendering—the first of the bad luck that would dog his naval career. When he was questioned by the French about the two ships they had seen with the
Retaliation,
Bainbridge exaggerated their size, and the French decided it would be unwise to pursue them.