clared throughout the rest of Europe, and nearly unanimously acknowledged in the United States, that struggle developed and enhanced not only the military power of the country, but its general welfare in every way. To be just, war must be indispensable. Causeless wars, made by ambitious monarchs, ministers, or mistresses, should not be confounded with those deliberately and reluctantly undertaken by a people. Less than fifteen hundred Americans slain during that war were not too dearly sacrificed to the vindication of a nation from foreign wrong by a hostile nation, which confessed more than that number of Americans impressed; whose war-charges were less than prior losses by British marine-depredations; less also than the cost of a restrictive system, by which it was attempted to avoid war.

362

ALGIERS.

CHAPTER VIII.

WAR WITH THE BARBARY POWERS.

Algiers Barlow's Treaty-Tribute Frigate George Washington sent to Constantinople-Lear, the Consul, sent away-Consuls Noah and Jones - Prizes of the Abællino at Algiers - President's Message-War declared-Decatur's Squadron-Treaties of Peace, renouncing Tribute, dictated to Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli - Consul Jones's Journal - Bainbridge's Squadron.

A DECLARATION of war, recommended by President Madison, was one of the last acts of the thirteenth Congress; for which a bill passed both houses, and was approved by him in the last hour of that session, on the 3d of March, 1815. Hostilities, and triumphs, which distinguished the American flag in the Mediterranean betokened lingering recollections of the contest just closed with England; and proud feelings, less of resentment than power, by corollary to the great naval problem, solved in spite of Great Britain, to display American independence of all maritime dominion.

Algiers, the principal of several of those regencies, for centuries established and triumphing, if not flourishing, in ancient Mauritania, or Numidia, on the northern coasts of Africa, stretching towards Gibraltar and Morocco on the Atlantic, Alexandria in Egypt, Cairo and Suez at the Red Sea, and in the interior of Africa to the great desert of Sahara, was a military democracy, by rude despotic institutions, resembling American government, as extremes meet. In perfect equality, and by universal suffrage, certain classes of a mongrel populace, Turkish, Moorish, and European, chose a chief magistrate, called the Dey, from the whole body of the inhabitants, Algerine suffragans, without even the prior condition of naturalization. Bearing arms seemed to be the chief, if not the

The

only, qualification for a voice in the election, by tumultuous inauguration, informally proclaimed, much as the succession of legitimate monarchs to inherited thrones is done. Dey, thus chosen by all those bearing arms, was sworn into office, not by a priest, or religious rite, according to the ordinary coronation, but by the chief Cadi, or chief justice, just as the American President is; and a Senate, called a Divan, were his appointed counsellors.

This military, despotic, and piratical democracy, to which, after the example of all the maritime nations of Europe, the American republic paid annual tribute, governed, attached to the considerable city of Algiers, a territory less extensive or populous, and much less powerful, than any one of several of the States of this Union. The Algerine army did not exceed 5000 undisciplined and ill-paid militia. The government had only one vessel of war, a half-armed frigate, not a third of the size or force of an American frigate. The rest of the Algerine navy was made up of private armed corsairs, in whose plunder the Dey shared, as the pay for their authority to depredate. Genoese, Venetians, Sicilians, Portuguese, Spaniards, Dutch, Danes, Swedes, and French, were subjected to the arbitrary captures of Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis, the three neighboring regencies, confederated by no bond of union, but each State sending forth eruisers, as it were, to fish for supplies, whenever wanted. The Algerine public revenues, from taxation, did not exceed $300,000 a-year. All the rest of the budget was provided by sea-plunder. Overthrow of such inveterate, contemptible, yet formidable freebooting, by easy and unresisted abatement of the nuisance, was reserved, after ages of its endurance, for the work of a trans-Atlantic navy. Soon after it crossed the Atlantic, penetrated the Mediterranean, and showed how easy it was to put down the piratical despotism, the English navy reduced the pirates, by still greater discomfitures, to well-nigh annihilation; and then the French, with navy and army, followed, conquered the territory, colonized, and hold it as a school of tactics for young soldiers, and, perhaps, a highway to Egypt and British East India.

The Emperor Charles V., when Spain was the most warlike and powerful empire of Europe, with all the treasures of America at command, and Louis XIV., in all the pride of his French majesty, tried in vain to root out these nests of African pirates. By treaties, in 1662, Charles II. made peace with them for England, which lasted ever after, by some unpublished understanding, preserving English commerce from their depredations, while, acknowledging no law of nations, and subsisting by sea-pillage, those barbarians defied and plundered all other nations. During the negotiations for the Treaty of Amiens, in 1802, Joseph Bonaparte proposed a plan of concert, between France, England, Spain, and Holland, for the suppression of that system of rapine and piracy, whereby, to the disgrace of the great powers of Christendom, the smaller States were annoyed by the corsairs of Barbary, to which the British negotiator, Cornwallis, acceded; but his government rejected the suggestion. To Joseph's confidential letters to the First Consul, his brother's answer was, "Moderate your joy. Cornwallis is a man of feeling, and so are you; but the Sylla party never had any. ceed, and Cornwallis will be censured. of your plan." By the Sylla party, English aristocracy. He and Joseph often designated the Roman patricians and plebeians as the parties of Sylla and Marius, by Roman illustration, much more usual in French than in English or American argument. At St. Helena, Napoleon told O'Meara, when speaking of Pellew's expedition to Algiers, "I proposed to your government to unite with me, either to destroy entirely those nests of pirates, or, at least, to destroy their ships and fortresses, and make them cultivate their country, and abandon piracy. But your ministers would not consent to it, owing to a mean jealousy of the Americans, with whom the barbarians were at war. I wanted to annihilate them, though it did not concern me much, as they generally respected my flag, and carried on a large trade with Marseilles." In 1802, when that French suggestion was rejected by England, the first hostilities prevailed between the United States and those barbarians. If, as Napoleon averred,

You will not sucHere we all approve Napoleon meant the

the English ministry preserved the pirates from destruction, in order to take advantage of them against the Americans, seldom has selfish jealousy proved more short-sighted, for it was contests with those enemies which prepared the American navy for its triumphant resistance to that of Great Britain, some years after Preble and his pupils undoubtedly laid the foundation. Most of the officers distinguished in the war with England had been to school in that with Tripoli.

As American commerce spread throughout the Mediterranean, endangered by the Barbary powers, early attention of government to the subject, urged by the navigation interest, and by party opponents reproaching Washington's administration with neglect of it, was afforded by an ignominous treaty with Algiers, in 1795, stipulating payment of annual tribute; disadvantageous terms, but the best that could be obtained, says Washington's confidential historian, Chief Justice Marshall. Next year, under John Adams's administration, a still more discreditable treaty, with Tripoli, was effected by Joel Barlow, commissioned for that purpose by President Washington, the settlement with Tripoli being guarantied by the Dey of Algiers. The French Revolution was then consummate; by whose disrupture from old abuses many considerate men, English and American, as well as French, breaking loose from what they deemed priestcraft as odious as kingcraft, vibrated from servility to licentiousness, and substituted infidelity for Christianity. Accordingly, Joel Barlow, aggravating a grant of tribute by treaty, incorporated with it, by way of conciliating Moslem favor, that "the government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian religion;" terms, however true, liable to offensive misconception, but unanimously ratified, together with tribute, by the Senate, to whom President Adams submitted the treaty. A practical commentary on that offensive phrase was given by Monroe, Secretary of State's, letter, of the 25th of April, 1815 (the day Decatur's squadron sailed from New York, to punish the Algerine breach of faith), revoking the consular commission of Mordecai Manasses Noah, and ordering him to leave Algiers, because he was not of the Christian religion; it not