In regard to commercial questions, Lord Harrowby offered to consider the treaty of 1794 as in force until some new arrangement could be formed. Until the decision of the President should be known, it was “intended to propose to Parliament to lodge the power of regulating the commerce with America in the King in Council, in the same manner as before the treaty of 1794.” The offer of considering the treaty as in force “must be regarded as a boon to America; and it was made merely under the persuasion that if accepted it would be accepted with a view to maintain a friendly relation between the two countries, and to avoid in the interval everything which could lead to interrupt it. If this system is followed in America, it will be followed here in every respect with an anxious desire for the continuance of harmony and cordiality.”
The same conditional and semi-threatening disposition toward good-will ran through the rest of these instructions. In regard to the boundary convention, his Majesty’s government would at all times be ready to reopen the whole subject; “but they can never acquiesce in the precedent which in this as well as in a former instance the American government has endeavored to establish, of agreeing to ratify such parts of a convention as they may select, and of rejecting other stipulations of it, formally agreed upon by a minister invested with full powers for the purpose.”
Finally, Merry was to “avoid, as far as possible, any language which might be conceived to be of a menacing or hostile tendency, or which might be construed into an indication of a desire on the part of his Majesty’s government to decline any discussion of the several points now pending between the two countries.” Lord Harrowby clearly wished to encourage discussion to the utmost. He left the “canons of etiquette” unnoticed, and offered not even a hint at any change of policy meditated by his Government.
So matters remained in England during the last months of President Jefferson’s first term. On both sides new movements were intended; but while those of the United States government were foreseen and announced in advance by Merry, those of the British ministry were hidden under a veil of secrecy, which might perhaps have been no more penetrable to Monroe had he remained in London to watch them than they were to him in his retreat at Aranjuez.
To the world at large nothing in the relations of the United States with England, France, or Spain seemed alarming. The world knew little of what was taking place. Only men who stood between these forces could understand their movements and predict the moment of collision; but if these men, like Merry, Turreau, and Yrujo, had been asked March 3, 1805, to point out the brightest part of Jefferson’s political horizon, they would probably have agreed with one voice that everything in Europe threatened disaster, and that the only glimpse of blue sky was to be seen on the shores of Africa. The greatest triumph to be then hoped from Jefferson’s peace policy was the brilliant close of his only war.
During the year 1804 the little American fleet in the Mediterranean made famous some names which within ten years were to become more famous still. With the “Constitution,” the only heavy frigate on the station after the loss of the “Philadelphia,” and with half-a-dozen small brigs and schooners, Preble worked manfully at his task of annoying the Pacha of Tripoli. Three years’ experience showed that a mere blockade answered no other purpose than to protect in part American commerce. It had not shaken the Pacha in the demand of black-mail as his condition of peace. Bainbridge, still held a prisoner in the town, believed that Jefferson must choose between paying what the Pacha asked, or sending eight or ten thousand men to attack him in his castle. Black-mail was the life of the small pirate rulers, and they could not abandon it without making a precedent fatal to themselves, and inviting insurrection from their subjects. Preble could only strike the coast with fear; and during the summer of 1804 he began a series of dashing assaults with the “Constitution,” helped by four new craft,—the “Argus” and “Syren,” fine sixteen-gun brigs; the “Nautilus” and “Vixen,” fourteen-gun schooners; the “Enterprise,” of twelve guns, and a captured Tripolitan brig of sixteen guns, re-named the “Scourge,”—all supported by eight small gunboats borrowed from the King of Naples who was also at war with Tripoli. Thus commanding a force of about one hundred and fifty guns, and more than a thousand men, August 3, carrying his flag-ship into the harbor, Preble engaged the Tripolitan batteries at very short range for two hours. Fortunately, the Mussulmans could not or did not depress their guns enough to injure the frigate, and after throwing many broadsides into the batteries and town, Preble retired without losing a man. His gunboat flotilla was equally daring, but not so lucky. One division was commanded by Lieutenant Somers, the other by Stephen Decatur. They attacked the Tripolitan gunboats and captured three, besides sinking more; but James Decatur was killed. A few days afterward, August 7, the attack was repeated, and some five hundred 24-lb. shot were thrown into the batteries and town. August 24 a third bombardment took place within the month; and although Preble knew that Barron was near at hand with a strong reinforcement, August 29 he carried his flotilla a fourth time into the harbor, and again threw several hundred solid shot into the town. A fifth bombardment, the heaviest of all, took place early in September. In these affairs, so poor was the Tripolitan gunnery or courage that the Americans suffered almost no loss beyond that of a few spars. The only serious disaster, besides the death of James Decatur, was never explained. Preble, wishing to try the effect of a fireship, on the night of September 4 sent one of his best officers, Lieutenant Somers, into the harbor with the ketch “Intrepid” filled with powder, bombs, and shell. The “Argus,” “Vixen,” and “Nautilus” escorted Somers to shoal water, and waited for him to rejoin them in his boats. They saw the batteries fire upon him; then they heard a sudden and premature explosion. All night the three cruisers waited anxiously outside, but Somers never returned. He and his men vanished; no vestige or tidings of them could ever be found.
Considering Preble’s narrow means, the economy of the Department, and the condition of his small vessels, nothing in American naval history was more creditable than the vigor of his blockade in the summer of 1804; but he could not confidently assert that any number of such attacks would force the Pacha to make peace. A week after the loss of Somers in the “Intrepid” Commodore Samuel Barron arrived, bringing with him nearly the whole available navy of the United States, and relieved Preble from the command. Preble returned home, and was rewarded for his services by a gold medal from Congress. Two years afterward he died of consumption.
Barron had with him such a force as the United States never before or since sent in hostile array across the ocean,—two forty-fours, the “Constitution” and the “President;” two thirty-eight gun frigates, the “Constellation” and the “Congress;” the “Essex,” of thirty-two guns; the new brigs, “Hornet” of eighteen, and the “Syren” and “Argus” of sixteen; the twelve-gun schooners “Vixen,” “Nautilus,” and “Enterprise;” ten new, well-built American gunboats; and two bomb-vessels. With the exception of the frigates “Chesapeake” and “United States,” hardly a sea-going vessel was left at home. Commanded by young officers like John Rodgers and Stephen Decatur, Chauncey, Stewart, and Isaac Hull, such a squadron reflected credit on Robert Smith’s administration of the navy.
Nevertheless the Pacha did not yield, and Barron was obliged by the season to abandon hope of making his strength immediately felt. Six months later the commodore, owing to ill-health, yielded the command to John Rodgers, while the Pacha was still uninjured by the squadron. As the summer of 1805 approached, fear of Rodgers’s impending attack possibly helped to turn the Pacha’s mind toward concession; but his pacific temper was also much affected by events on land, in which appeared so striking a combination of qualities,—enterprise and daring so romantic and even Quixotic that for at least half a century every boy in America listened to the story with the same delight with which he read the Arabian Nights.
A Connecticut Yankee, William Eaton, was the hero of the adventure. Born in 1764, Eaton had led a checkered career. At nineteen he was a sergeant in the Revolutionary army. After the peace he persisted, against harassing difficulties, in obtaining what was then thought a classical education; in his twenty-seventh year he took a degree at Dartmouth. He next opened a school in Windsor, Vermont, and was chosen clerk to the Vermont legislature. Senator Bradley, in 1792, procured for him a captain’s commission in the United States army. His career in the service was varied by insubordination, disobedience to orders, charges, counter-charges, a court-martial, and a sentence of suspension not confirmed by the Secretary of War. In 1797 he was sent as consul to Tunis, where he remained until the outbreak of the war with Tripoli in 1801. Tunis was the nearest neighbor to Tripoli, about four hundred miles away; and the consul held a position of much delicacy and importance. In the year 1801 an elder brother of the reigning Pacha of Tripoli resided in Tunis, and to him Eaton turned in the hope of using his services. This man, Hamet Caramelli, the rightful Pacha of Tripoli, had been driven into exile some eight or nine years before by a rebellion which placed his younger brother Yusuf on the throne. Eaton conceived the idea of restoring Hamet, and by this act of strength impressing all the Mahometan Powers with terror of the United States. In pursuit of this plan he spent more than twenty thousand dollars, embroiled himself with the Bey of Tunis, quarrelled with the naval commanders, and in 1803 returned to America to lay his case before the President and Congress.