CHAPTER XIII
Prebleleft for home without having come to terms with the Pacha of Tripoli. He was not willing to rise above $500 for each of the captives, and would offer nothing for peace or for tribute. Had he remained, it is very possible that he would have forced a peace without a ransom. Peace, however, was to come under his successor largely through one of the extraordinary adventures of our history.
Yusuf Karamanli, the Pacha of Tripoli, was the youngest of three brothers. In 1790 at the age of twenty he murdered the eldest, and when his father died in 1796, and the second brother, Hamet, was absent, he proclaimed himself Pacha. Hamet, rather a weakling, took refuge in Tunis, leaving his family at Tripoli. He had taken up arms against his brother, using Derne, some 500 miles east of Tripoli, as a base, but he was unsuccessful, and in 1804 fled to Egypt. The government in Washington, influenced largely by ex-Consul Eaton, had decided to useHamet as an asset in the war against Yusuf, and thus placed at the disposition of the commodore a moderate amount of money and military supplies. Eaton was appointed a navy agent under Commodore Barron, with a recommendation from the Secretary of the Navy to use him in connection with an effort to establish Hamet at Tripoli in place of his brother Yusuf. It was a scheme in full accord with Eaton’s adventurous spirit and worthy his real ability.
TheArgus, Captain Hull, thus left Malta in September, 1804, for Alexandria, nominally to convoy thence any vessels desiring protection, but really to carry Eaton to find Hamet and convey him to whatever should be decided as the most convenient point from which to act against Tripoli. Hamet was up the Nile. Eaton explained frankly his intentions to the Viceroy and passports were obtained for himself and Hamet out of Egypt. Hamet was finally reached, but such obstacles to leaving by sea were raised through the influence of the French consul that it was decided to go by land, it being feared that the few Arabs whom Hamet had raised might otherwise disappear. TheArgussailed for Malta with a letter from Eaton to the commodore requesting “that the expedition be met at BombaBay sixty miles east of Derne, with two more small vessels, a bomb-ketch, two field pieces, a hundred muskets, a hundred marines, and ten thousand dollars.” A convention was made with Hamet, the United States promising to do all that was proper and right to reinstate him, reimbursement of expenses to come from tribute paid by other nations. Eaton was to be recognized as commander-in-chief of the land forces operating against the usurping brother.
The army was a motley array of some four hundred, though Eaton says many thousands could have been had had there been money and subsistence. There were besides Eaton nine Americans: Lieutenant O’Bannon, Midshipman Peck, and seven marines; an English volunteer; forty Greeks; some Arab horsemen, etc., and a caravan of 107 camels and a few asses. These began on March 8th a march across 500 and more miles to Derne. Bomba was reached after immense difficulties on April 15th. Signal-fires were built on a high hill which were sighted by theArgus. She brought a cheering letter from the commodore announcing aid. Two days later theHornetarrived with an abundance of provisions, and on the 23d, after a rest of a week, the march of sixty miles to Derne was resumed.This was made in two days. Derne was attacked on the 27th from land and from sea by theHornetandNautilus(which had also arrived). The town was occupied after a strong resistance and some loss. A Tripolitan force now appeared, and there were unsuccessful efforts to dislodge Eaton’s forces. After May 18th the attacks ceased. Dispatches were sent to the commodore, and only theArgusremained at Derne. On May 19th there came dispatches from the commodore announcing peace negotiations, and on June 11th came theConstellationannouncing peace and with orders to evacuate Derne. There was nothing for the Americans to do but to embark, taking with them Hamet and his suite, twenty-five foreign cannoniers with their artillery, and the small party of Greeks. It was a pitiful abandonment of men who were our allies, brought about through the influence of Consul-General Lear, who, as previously mentioned, had been invested with full authority to negotiate a peace.
Lear had spent the winter of 1804-1805 with Commodore Barron at Malta, over whom he acquired, in Barron’s weakened condition of mind and health, a great influence. He was strongly opposed to Eaton’s expedition, and was the mainfactor in causing it to collapse; the aim of the expedition, which was the capture of Tripoli and dethronement of the Pacha, was not in accord with his views. On May 26th Lear arrived off Tripoli from Malta in theEssex, which delivered to Captain Rodgers of theConstitutiona letter from Barron announcing the necessity of the relinquishment by the latter of the command. Lear had already been informed by a letter written by the Danish consul at Tripoli of the probability of the Pacha’s willingness to treat, and at once on his arrival began negotiations. The preliminaries, after parleys of more than a week, were signed on June 3d. Prisoners were to be exchanged, the United States paying a balance of $60,000. A year was allowed to settle disputes before action; prisoners were no longer to be enslaved, and were at the conclusion of peace to be restored without ransom. No tribute was to be paid in future. Hamet was to be “persuaded” to withdraw from Derne, and his family was to be restored to him. There was, however, a secret article which allowed the Pacha four years in which to make this restoration. The unwisdom of placing the negotiations wholly in the hands of Lear had resulted in an unsatisfactory peace, and attacks ensued whichmust have caused him much bitterness; for General Eaton, as he was now called, pursued him violently in the press and before Congress to the end, in 1811, of Eaton’s life. Lear was strongly criticised in Congress itself, Senator Timothy Pickering declaring his conduct inexcusable. Madison’s instructions as Secretary of State anticipated that peace would be made “without any price or pecuniary compensation whatever”; and so undoubtedly it would have been had negotiations been put in the hands of the commodore of the now powerful force before Tripoli. Nor would Eaton’s wonderful action have gone for nought, nor would Hamet, whom we had made our ally, been thrown overboard with so little consideration. Commodore Rodgers allowed him two hundred dollars monthly to support himself and some fifteen dependents at Syracuse (the winter headquarters of the fleet) until twenty-four hundred dollars was voted him by Congress in 1806. His family, through pressure of our consul, was restored to him in October, 1807, and though his brother gave him residence in Morocco and a pension, and later the governorship of Derne, he had, two years later, to flee with his family to Egypt, where he died.
Eaton was received on his return with honor. Massachusetts granted him ten thousand acres in Maine (then a part of Massachusetts) and Congress met his disbursements. The expedition to Derne had cost forty thousand dollars but Eaton declined everything for himself but his personal expenses. He died in 1811 at the age of fifty-seven, ending, too early, a life of picturesque adventure, patriotic effort, and undaunted courage. He is worthy of memory.
Commodore Rodgers now turned his attention to Tunis, where threatening conditions had arisen from the capture of two Tunis vessels which had attempted to run the blockade of Tripoli. He appeared on August 1st with nearly his whole force. A fortnight later, on an appearance of delay, Rodgers informed Lear officially that the Dey “must do one of three things by simple request or must do all three by force. He must give [a guarantee for the maintenance of peace to be witnessed by the English and French consuls], or he must give sufficient security for peace and send a minister to the United States, or he must make such alterations in the [existing] treaty as you may require and as may satisfy you that there is confidence to be placed in whathe does. I have only to repeat that if he does not do all that is necessary and proper, at the risk of my conduct being disapproved by my country, he shall feel the vengeance of the squadron now in this bay.”
Rodgers now in a letter to the Secretary of the Navy of August 21, 1805, laid down the honorable dictum which has ever been a rule of conduct with the navy that: “Peace on honorable terms is always preferable to war.” If chastisement were to be inflicted he begged the honor of being the instrument, pledging that if he should be instructed by March, 1806, that he would obtain an honorable peace before September, making the Dey to pay all the expenses of the war, and that, too, without any increase of force. The Dey had, however, already accepted the proposal of sending a minister to the United States, and had agreed to keep the peace until the result of the mission should be known.
Our Barbary difficulties were, with occasional troubles of a moderate nature, ended for nearly ten years. We continued, under the treaty with Algiers, to send an annual tribute of marine stores to the value of twenty-one thousand dollars. This, however, was but a remnant of ourearly weakness and an honorable carrying out of a treaty. The spectacle of the treatment of our commerce by France and England roused the envy of the Dey of Algiers, and finally the War of 1812 overcame any good resolutions the then Dey had, and spoliation began anew. Thus, immediately after the peace, a powerful fleet was sent into the Mediterranean under Decatur, followed by another under Bainbridge, whose flagship, theIndependence, 74, was the first American ship-of-the-line in foreign waters. Farragut, who had already seen three years of most stirring service and was then but fourteen, was a midshipman aboard. But before Bainbridge had arrived Decatur had appeared before Algiers and “at the mouths of our cannon,” as Decatur expressed in his dispatch to the Navy Department, dictated a peace which abolished tribute in any form forever, released all Americans, and forced compensation for, and restoration of, all American property seized or in the Dey’s hands. This was within six weeks of the sailing of the fleet from home. Decatur then visited Tunis and Tripoli, and forced the instant payment at each place of indemnities for British prizes which, taken into port by an American privateer, had been seized later by the British.Of course the British consul protested, but without avail. He also caused the release of two Danes in remembrance of the unceasing kindness to Americans, through many years, of the Danish consul, Nissen, and of a Sicilian family of eight, in consideration of aid given to Preble by the king of the two Sicilies. It was a fine instance of gratitude acknowledged.
Thus, practically, ended our troubles with Barbary. “It was not to be endured,” said the English naval historian, Brenton, “that England should tolerate what America had resented and punished,” and thus after one abortive threat, when he paid heavy ransom for 1,200 Neapolitans and Sicilians, during the negotiations for which he was grossly insulted, and the British consul and his family treated “in a manner the most scandalous and insulting,”[24]Lord Exmouth was sent in August, 1816, with a powerful fleet, which, combined with a Dutch force, bombarded Algiers to subjection, and Christian slavery was at an end. The Dey shortly before this having shown signs of regretting having made the American treaty, another powerful American fleet appeared shortly after Lord Exmouth’sbombardment, which removed the intention of renewal of hostile acts.
Thus ended, practically, the extraordinary career of piracy and slavery which through so many generations had been submitted to by Europe. It was not, however, until 1824, when the demand for continuance of tribute from Holland was successfully resisted, that Algiers finally dismissed the idea of return to her ancient ways.
It should be a proud memory to Americans that it was the American navy which first resisted and brought to terms the barbarous corsairs, so long the scourge of commerce and enslavers of white men. The Frenchman Dupuy, at the end of his admirable history of our Barbary wars, pays us a fine tribute, saying: “The statesmen [of America], breaking loose from the unworthy yielding of Europe to the Barbary States, had in hardly thirty years broken the abominable traditions which the Christian powers had shamefully respected for ages.”[25]