The American Consul: A History of the United States Consular Service 1776â1924. Revised Second Edition. Charles Stuart Kennedy
with France also began to wind down after Napoleon became first consul in France and was in all but name the new French monarch. The new first consul saw no point in needlessly antagonizing a major neutral, at least at that time.
4. The Barbary Consuls (1794–1815)
Several years prior to the deterioration of relations with France that led to outright naval hostilities, the United States had made settlements of sorts with the Barbary States. The pressure on the President and Congress to remedy the intolerable condition was severe and getting worse, when in 1794 the United States entered into a second round of negotiations with Algiers, then the most powerful state on the Barbary Coast. The diplomatic process was slow, difficult, and painful, since it required the payment of tribute. Without this annual “payoff” no American shipping could be safe, no captives released, and no consuls installed. American ships were being taken in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Not only were ships and cargoes lost, but Americans were captured and used as slaves in the Barbary ports.
Responding to the concerns of shipping interests and the pleas of the families of those Americans held as slaves, President Washington authorized David Humphreys, his minister to Portugal, to see what he could do to bring about peace with Algiers and have the American captives released. At the same time Washington asked Congress to authorize the building of a navy, comprising six frigates, in case military force became necessary.
An approach to the Algerians had been made two years earlier in 1792, when Secretary of State Jefferson appointed the Revolutionary War naval hero John Paul Jones, then residing in Paris, to be the consul in Algiers.1 He was authorized to go as high as $25,000 to negotiate a peace agreement with that state, a laughable sum when compared to what it actually cost the United States several years later. But by the time his commission arrived in France, Jones was dead. The commission was then transferred to Consul General Thomas Barclay in Paris, who had previously served as the successful negotiator with Morocco, but he too died before he could set sail for Algiers. The ill-fated commission then devolved upon David Humphreys, minister to Portugal. Humphreys’ attempt to negotiate with the dey of Algiers was a complete failure. According to the Swedish consul acting as intermediary, the dey would not receive Humphreys because of pending peace treaties with the Dutch and Portuguese. That ruler could not afford to be at peace with the United States at the same time.2 The dey needed employment for his corsairs, because if there was no prospect of booty and slaves, they might turn on him. Humphreys conceded at this point.
Two years later Humphreys was to try again, this time with permission to expend up to $800,000 for a treaty and ransom of the American captives, a more realistic sum than the $25,000 allocated before.3 Humphreys recruited Joseph Donaldson to carry on the negotiations in Algiers and Joel Barlow in Paris to help Humphreys get French support. Acting as an intermediary between Donaldson and the dey was a captive slave, James Cathcart, one of the first Americans to fall into the hands of the Algerians. He had been captured in 1785. In fact, Cathcart had been captured twice, once as a young midshipman on an American naval vessel taken by the British in the Revolutionary War. He escaped from the British, but not from the Algerians. He had worked his way up in the slave hierarchy, starting as a keeper in the dey’s zoo, then moving through the clerical ranks. He was manager of the prison tavern until he became chief Christian secretary to the dey.4 Cathcart was fluent in Arabic and privy to the dey’s confidence, which made him a useful ally. He also had a personal stake in the negotiations; he would be one of the first freed if things went well for the American side.
The treaty and ransom for the captives were not cheap; the United States paid a total of $642,500 and an annual tribute of $21,600 in naval stores.5 The treaty, sent back to America, was ratified by the Senate in March 1796 but could not go into effect until the dey had his tribute in hand, to be paid in gold and silver coins. To obtain the money as soon as possible, the dey sent another American slave, Richard O’Brien, to collect it from the Barings, British bankers, who had the note of the United States. Unfortunately, because of the unsettled conditions in Europe at the time, the Barings did not have the necessary specie on hand. O’Brien then went to Humphreys for instructions and was sent scouting for specie among Italian bankers.
The dey threatened to renew hostilities if he did not get his money at once. Joel Barlow, who had been working with Humphreys in Paris, hurried down to Algiers with gifts he had bought on behalf of the United States to present to the dey as part of the treaty; Barbary rulers insisted on their douceurs, lavish “sweeteners” before they would sign any agreement.
Barlow was one of a series of remarkable Americans who were to serve as consular officers on the Barbary Coast during the early days of the Republic. A graduate of Yale College and a classmate and lifelong friend of Noah Webster, the lexicographer, Barlow was a leading intellectual and a poet well known as a political and social critic of his time. He went to France in 1788 primarily to sell land in Ohio to Frenchmen. He was popular in intellectual circles, both in England and France, but he had little success as a land salesman. Excited by the ferment in France after the Revolution, he wrote several political tracts that led to his being made a French citizen. He even ran, unsuccessfully, for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies.6
David Humphreys, also a Yale graduate and mentor of Barlow’s, sought to draw Barlow back into the orbit of his native country by recruiting his help with the Algerian negotiations. In Algiers Barlow quickly put the treaty process in its proper framework as he reported to the Secretary of State on the dey and his principal officers. He noted that the Algerians’ pattern in making a treaty was to allow the nation to enjoy free navigation for a time, and then make a frivolous or unjust excuse for abrogating the treaty. Thereupon the cycle would recommence with the “offending” nation paying enormous tribute to the dey in order to restore peace and free use of the seas. Even England and France, whose naval strength exempted them from this cycle, deemed it expedient to spend great amounts of money on “occasional presents.”7 It was Barlow’s opinion that no peace with Algiers would last more than seven years.
Despite his justified pessimism about the duration of any peace, Barlow had to deal with the immediate problem. There were about a hundred American captives to be redeemed. If the treaty were rejected due to the lack of specie to pay for it, the cost, Barlow believed, would be greater the next time the Americans came to deal with the dey, and by that time more Americans would have been captured.8 In desperation and responding to hints emanating from the ruler’s court, Barlow offered the dey a thirty-six-gun frigate to be built in America to be “presented to his daughter” if the dey would delay for six months more before abrogating the treaty, with the expectation that the tribute would arrive before that time.9 Barlow made other commitments, including increasing the traditional “consular present” given to the rulers when a new consul arrived from $17,000 to $27,500.10 He won the extension of time and the treaty. The dey got his gold and silver coins, and eventually his daughter became the owner of a brand-new frigate, the Crescent. The American prisoners were released, including Cathcart and O’Brien, and, for the time being, the Algerian corsairs preyed on ships of other nations.
Getting the money to the dey, even when it had been collected from Italian bankers, was not without difficulty. O’Brien, who was still technically a slave of the dey, was finally able to put together the agreed sum and set sail for Algiers, but his ship was captured by a Tripolitan corsair and released only after some delay on the part of the pasha of Tripoli, who must have lusted after his brother ruler’s gold and silver but did not dare to cross him.”11
Barlow’s achievements in signing a treaty with Algiers, obtaining the release of the captive Americans, and gaining permission to have an American consul in residence in Algiers, were significant, but the cost was immense. Ransoms, presents, and other forms of tribute came to almost a million dollars. Even more, a dangerous precedent was set in equipping the dey’s fleet with a powerful frigate. The other rulers of the Barbary States, the emperor, pasha, bey, and dey all had daughters who might want their own frigates. Frigates would figure in future negotiations with other rulers and their successors. A thirty-six-gun frigate was a powerful warship for a small country. The 1794 naval bill Washington had sponsored to give the United States a navy (if the Algerian negotiations broke down) called for four forty-four-gun and two thirty-six-gun frigates, and that was the total navy. What Barlow had done was to arm Algiers