Attempts had been made on the part of the United States, to obtain the liberation of the crew of the Edwin and of some other Americans who were held captive in Algiers; but Hadji Ali refused to part with them for any sum that would probably be offered, his object being to increase the number of his captives, in order to compel a renewal of the treaty on terms still more favorable to himself than those of the convention of 1796. Omar, who was a much more rational being than Hadji Ali, would probably have acceded to these offers, but they were not again proposed; no sooner were the difficulties between the United States and Great Britain arranged by the Treaty of Ghent, than the former power made preparations to rescue its citizens from slavery by force, and to punish the Algerines for the outrages committed in 1812.
A squadron consisting of three frigates, a sloop, a brig and three schooners, was fitted out and sent under Commodore Stephen Decatur to the Mediterranean, which sea it entered on the 14th of June, 1815. The Dey had already been notified of its approach by a British frigate, which appears to have been despatched for this purpose to Algiers; but the warning was disregarded, for his ships were all sent out, and no measures were taken by him to put the city in a state of defence.
On arriving at Gibraltar, the American Commodore received information that several Algerine ships were in the vicinity, and he immediately sailed in pursuit of them. On the 17th, the frigate Guerriere Decatur's flag ship overtook near Cape de Gatte the Algerine frigate Mazouda, commanded by the famous Rais Hamida; after a short action the Mazouda was taken, Hamida and thirty of his crew being killed. On the 19th an Algerine brig of twenty-two guns was also captured and sent into the port of Carthagena, in Spain; on the 28th the American squadron appeared before Algiers, and proposed to the astounded Dey the terms on which he might obtain peace with the United States.
Confounded at the loss of his ships and the death of his daring Admiral, and dreading that the rest of his cruisers which were out, might fall into the hands of the Americans, Omar at once assented to the terms proposed, and a treaty was signed on the 30th of June, 1815. By its terms all the American prisoners were instantly to be surrendered without ransom, indemnification being made for their injuries and losses, and for all the seizures of American property in 1812; the Americans on their part, surrendering without ransom all their prisoners. No demands for tribute, under any name or form, were ever after to be made by Algiers on the United States; all American citizens taken on board the vessels of any other country, were to be set at liberty and their property to be restored as soon as their citizenship should be proved; vessels of either party were to be protected in the ports, or within cannon shot of the forts of the other, and no enemy's vessel was to be allowed to leave a port of one country in pursuit of a vessel of the other, until twenty-four hours after the sailing of the latter; with many other provisions highly favorable to the United States. The American commander promised to restore to the Dey, the frigate and brig which he had taken, and the frigate was in consequence immediately given up; the brig was for some time detained by the authorities at Carthagena, on the pretence that it had been captured within the jurisdiction of Spain.
The peace being thus made, and the stipulations of the treaty complied with as far as possible, Mr. William Shaler was installed as Consul General of the United States for the Barbary Regencies, and the squadron sailed on the eighth of July for Tunis, where its presence was required by circumstances which it will be necessary to detail.
During the great European war, the armed ships of France and England were in the habit of conducting their prizes into the Barbary ports and there selling them; a number of American vessels were indeed thus disposed of by the French, under the infamous Decrees of Berlin and Milan. The British Government, not content with this species of neutrality, sent Admiral Freemantle with a squadron to Tunis and Tripoli, and thus obtained from each of these powers, an engagement not to suffer any of the belligerents on the other side, to bring British vessels as prizes into its ports. After the declaration of war by the United States against Great Britain, no American armed vessel had ventured to pass the Streights of Gibraltar, until December 1814, when the privateer brig Abællino, from Boston, commanded by W. F. Wyer, entered the Mediterranean and took a number of prizes, some of which were sent into Tunis and Tripoli.
On the arrival of the first of these prizes at Tunis, Mr. Noah, the American Consul, at the request of the master, applied to the Bey for permission to sell her and her cargo. Mahmoud in reply showed him the engagement with Great Britain, which forbade his granting such a license; and the British Consul threatened, in case it were allowed, to send to Sicily for a squadron, in order to avenge this infraction of the treaty with his country. License to sell the vessel was however obtained by Mr. Noah, and she was accordingly disposed of with her cargo, Prince Mustapha the Bey's youngest son, contriving by fraud and by force, to become the purchaser of the greater part of the cargo, at very reduced prices.
Information of this having been conveyed to Admiral Penrose, who commanded the British naval forces on the Sicily Station, he sent a ship of the line and two brigs of war to Tunis, with a letter to the Bey, enjoining him to arrest the sale of the prize, and to forbid admission to others in future. With the latter requisition Mahmoud declared his readiness to comply; and two other prizes having soon after been sent in by Captain Wyer, he permitted the British to take possession of them, although they were at the time actually at anchor under the guns of the Goletta fortress. The vessels were immediately carried to Malta, where they were restored to their original owners, the prize crews being retained as prisoners.2
2 It may be proper here to observe, that although the treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain, had been signed at Ghent on the 24th December 1814, and ratified at Washington on the 17th of February 1815, yet a space of forty days after the ratification was allowed by the terms of that treaty, during which all prizes taken by either party in the Mediterranean, were to be retained; and hostilities were in fact continued in that sea until the 29th of March.