CHAPTER 17

Fair Winds and Following Seas

Peace has been made on honorable terms.

—National Intelligencer, November 6, 1805

The new Barbary peace truly was a victory, though an incomplete one. For President Jefferson, who got wind of Lear’s treaty on September 6, 1805, the end of the conflict with Tripoli was a great relief. The war that had dogged his administration for more than four years was finally at an end—and it had ended Jefferson’s way.

The National Intelligencer proclaimed victory. “Our captive countrymen have been restored to the bosom of their country. . . . We have got what we wanted.”¹ Indeed, the terms of the treaty stipulated that in the future, captives would not be made slaves but would, in effect, be given the status of prisoners of war. American shipping could flow freely again. The two most essential goals in declaring war had been accomplished.

The country cheered the heroes as they returned to the United States. In mid-September William Bainbridge arrived, already cleared of blame for the loss of the USS Philadelphia. He stepped off the ship along with 117 of his officers and crewmen and they were feted with awards, honors, and a warm welcome. Other returning captains and captives were paraded down main streets and toasted as heroes, too. The Virginia General Assembly honored U.S. Marine Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon, presenting him with a curved sword modeled after the Mameluke scimitar.

A complete victory over the Barbary pirates would come under another president, but for now America had much to be grateful for. The murky ending of the Barbary War didn’t take away from the fact that America had stood up to the pirates, something that most of the more established European nations hadn’t been willing to do. America had held firm and fought, and now the young nation’s navy had the experience it would need to take on Britain in the War of 1812. Like the Barbary War, that war would begin with devastating losses but end with a huge leap in respect from the world.

In prevailing off the Barbary Coast, the United States proved that it would not only go to war for its own interests but would do what it could for oppressed citizens of other nations. Despite Lear’s betrayal of Hamet, the American government did not let him down completely. Bringing a little pressure to bear, the Americans were able to free his wife and four children and reunite the family. Granted a $200-a-month payment by Congress, Hamet would end his life in exile in Egypt, dying in 1811. His brother, Yusuf Qaramanli, ruled as bashaw until 1832, when he stepped down to make way for his son Ali II; Yusuf died in 1838.

Tobias Lear kept his job. He would remain consul general to the Barbary states despite the disapproval of his treaty by many back in Washington. Yet he was not a happy man. He left no note when he took his own life with a pistol shot in 1816.

Richard O’Brien and his wife Elizabeth lived a quiet life after returning to the United States. The O’Briens had five children, including a son named George Africanus, in honor of the continent where Richard had spent ten years in captivity and almost as many again in service to his country. O’Brien died in Washington, D.C., in 1824.

James Leander Cathcart would be appointed to diplomatic posts in Madeira, an island chain off the western coast of Portugal, and in Cádiz, Spain, before returning to the United States. He died in Washington, D.C., in 1843, but his journals and other writings were later collected in The Captives: Eleven Years a Prisoner in Algiers (1899).

William Eaton returned to America a national war hero for his role in winning America’s first battle on foreign soil. In recognition of his service, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts awarded him ten thousand acres of land in the Maine Territory. In 1807, claims he put before Congress for expenses incurred in the Barbary campaign eventually brought him a windfall of $12,636, but by then his body had begun to betray him. He suffered from gout, and too many tankards bought by admirers took a toll. As his health declined, he penned his life story and collected his journals, knowing they would be published posthumously. By the time the volume appeared as The Life of the Late Gen. William Eaton, in 1813, the forty-seven-year-old Eaton had been dead two years.

The names Philadelphia, Intrepid, and Constitution had become well known to readers of American newspapers during the Barbary War. The commodore most closely associated with their Barbary exploits, Edward Preble, lived until just 1807, succumbing, at age forty-six, to consumption. But his reputation would survive him. Pope Pius VII reportedly said Decatur had done more for the cause of Christianity in an hour than the nations of Christendom ever had. And his name gained further luster in the next decade when several of the officers who fought for him—“Preble’s Boys,” as they would later come to be known—served with distinction in the War of 1812.

William Bainbridge won a measure of redemption for his twin failures with the George Washington and the Philadelphia off the Barbary Coast. Though later wounded in both legs in a battle with a British ship, Bainbridge managed to remain upright, commanding the USS Constitution to victory in a memorable sea battle with the HMS Java. Surviving his injuries, he would live to age fifty-nine, dying peacefully in his bed in 1833.

President Thomas Jefferson spent his retirement at his beloved home in Monticello, where both his wife and daughter Polly were buried. With his health declining, he was bedridden in the late spring and early summer of 1826. Seized by a severe fever on July 3, Jefferson realized that his death was imminent but was determined to hold on until the following day—the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. With his family gathered around, he prepared for the end. Later that night, Jefferson awoke and asked his doctor, “Is it the fourth yet?” They were among his final words.

The following day, Jefferson died in his sleep at 1:10 p.m. Five hours later and nearly six hundred miles away, at 6:20 p.m. at Braintree Farm, Massachusetts, President John Adams also breathed his last. Adams, noting the significance of the date, remarked, “It is a great day. It is a goodday.” Unaware of Jefferson’s passing, Adams’s final words were “Jefferson still lives.” The two men, longtime friends and rivals, passed from life within hours of each other on the 50th birthday of the country to whose service they had dedicated their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Not only did they see America through her tumultuous infancy, but also nurtured her growth into a respected global presence to carry her into the future.

• • •

When it unfolded, the Barbary War was no more than a ripple in the much larger waters of world politics. Bashaw Yusuf had declared war on America by the absurd act of chopping down an American flagstaff. Thomas Jefferson, as president of the first democracy of the modern era, responded in a manner that he, as one of the great political philosophers of his or any time, thought right. Today, the war’s military legacy cannot be ignored. It saw the emergence of the U.S. Navy as a force to be reckoned with in foreign seas. It saw the American flag planted for the first time in victory on terrain outside the Western Hemisphere. It saw the first fight in which U.S. Navy gunfire worked in concert with United States land forces. So great was the war’s significance for the Marines that their hymn refers to “the shores of Tripoli,” and the Corps adopted the Mameluke sword as part of its officers’ uniforms in 1825. Most important, here in the twenty-first century, the broader story—the great confrontation between the United States and militant Islamic states—has a new significance.

To Jefferson’s way of thinking, the captivity of American seamen and the interference with American commerce demanded a strong military response. The subject was one he had been considering for many years. It had been the subject of many discussions between him and his friend John Adams, back in their ministerial days, in 1780s Europe. In fact, they had set the terms of the debate very clearly.

Adams had told his solemn friend he thought it possible to buy a peace.

Jefferson had countered, “I should prefer the obtaining of it by war.”

In response to events on the Barbary Coast, Jefferson, in 1801, had dispatched a small U.S. Navy squadron to the Mediterranean. For the next four years, he responded to circumstances, expanding the fleet to a much larger naval presence. In the end, thanks to the bold leadership of men like Preble and Decatur and Eaton and O’Bannon, military force had helped regain national honor. Even the Federalists, who liked little that Jefferson did, came to accept that the United States needed to play a military role in overseas affairs.

In the end, it was Mr. Jefferson, not Mr. Adams, who won the argument.