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

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 our early 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, the Independence, 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’s bombardment, 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]

CHAPTER XIV

While we were fighting the Algerines, we were suffering from depredations on our commerce by France and England a hundredfold more serious than all we had undergone from the African corsairs. The story is as shameful to the statesmanship of the period as our stand with regard to Barbary was honorable.