Return of Bainbridge’s Squadron from the Mediterranean in 1815.

From an engraving by Leney of a drawing by M. Corné.

Tripoli was reached on August 5th, and the Bashaw, after some grumbling, paid $25,000 and released two Danes and eight Neapolitans to square the account for having delivered two of the Abellino’s prizes to the British, after which “the Guerrière’s band was landed and treated the natives to a purely American rendering of ‘Hail Columbia.’”

In October Decatur took his squadron back to Gibraltar, where it joined the squadron under Bainbridge. The gathering of such a powerful fleet of Yankee war-ships—especially of war-ships with such significant names as most of the Yankee ships carried—had an exceedingly disquieting effect upon the British officials, and for a time they found themselves unable to treat the American officers with common civility. After a number of the British had been killed in duels, however, the Americans found themselves able to go ashore without suffering insult.

Later, the Dey of Algiers succeeded in negotiating a treaty with the British, represented by Lord Exmouth, under which the British, in spite of an immense fleet to back them, agreed to pay $400,000 for the release of certain captives. His success in this made the Dey feel very badly about his treaty with Decatur. Consul Shaler was compelled to haul down his flag and leave, but the timely arrival and prompt action of an American squadron once more inclined the Dey to peace. The appearance of the same squadron off Tunis and Tripoli soothed the rulers there, also, after they had been made restive by European consuls, and from that time to this there has been no war between the United States and the Barbary pirates.

CHAPTER XVII
LED A HARD LIFE AND GOT FEW THANKS

WORK THAT NAVAL MEN HAVE HAD TO DO IN OUT-OF-THE-WAY PARTS OF THE WORLD IN TIMES OF PEACE—CHASING SLAVERS ON THE AFRICAN COAST WHEN SLAVE-OWNERS RULED THE YANKEE NATION—THE AMERICAN FLAG A SHIELD FOR AN INFAMOUS TRAFFIC—CAPTURE OF THE MARTHA AND THE CHATSWORTH—TEACHING MALAYANS TO FEAR THE FLAG—STORIES OF PIRATICAL ASSAULTS ON YANKEE TRADERS, AND THE NAVY’S PART IN THE MATTER—A CHINESE ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN FLAG—“BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER”—A MEDAL WELL-EARNED BY A WARLIKE DISPLAY IN TIME OF PEACE.

Of the work done by the Navy between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, there was no part that was more disagreeable or quite so thankless as that of watching the slavers on the coast of Africa. It is becoming in an American, whatever his personal beliefs may have been in the old days, to speak of the slave-trade with humility. And this is true not alone because human beings were kept in slavery in the United States until a frightful civil war well-nigh destroyed the country, but because Northern capitalists, men who lived where the self-righteous gave thanks because their hands did not hold the slave in bondage—these Northern capitalists were the most ingenious and persistent dealers in slaves, and the most devilish in the treatment of the unfortunates, known to the transatlantic slave-trade.

In the treaty with England that ended the War of 1812 it was agreed that the United States would assist the mother country in putting down the trade in slaves then carried on between the African and the American coasts. There is, perhaps, nothing more humiliating in the history of the American Republic than the true story of what followed in carrying out the American agreement. How could it be otherwise? For the American nation was ruled by men who believed that slavery was “a Divine institution.” However shocking such a belief must appear to the younger generations of Americans, there are old heads at the South who still hold it. The writer hereof has heard a bishop speak with enthusiasm of the influence of the old time “patriarchal” slave-owners in “turning the hearts of the slaves to Christ”—an influence “alas!” that is now gone! If this be possible in 1897, one may believe that in 1827—even in 1847 and 1857—the American slave-owner was not sincere when he professed a desire to stop the exportation of slaves from Africa.

Because slave-owners ruled the nation, it is certain that if there was ever a duty to which the American naval seaman was assigned that was weighed down with difficulties and thankless when performed, it was that of chasing slavers on the African coast.