The American Consul: A History of the United States Consular Service 1776â1924. Revised Second Edition. Charles Stuart Kennedy
that its naval construction was to cease if there was an Algerian peace.
While negotiations were dragging on in Algiers, there was a threat that the peace made with Morocco in 1787 by Thomas Barclay would fall apart. The emperor had died, and after a fight for the succession was followed by his son Mulcy Soliman. The new emperor asked for tribute. The Secretary of State delegated James Simpson, his consul in Gibraltar, to deal with the new ruler. Simpson sailed across the Straits to Morocco with gifts for the emperor, mostly military equipment such as cannons, small arms, and gun powder, but refused to consider annual tribute.12 Good fortune was again on the side of the United States in dealing with Morocco, for the emperor was called away from his negotiations to deal with an insurrection elsewhere in his country. To settle the matter before leaving, the emperor told Simpson: “The Americans, I find, are the Christian nation my father, who is in glory, most esteemed. I am the same with them as my father was; and I trust they will be so with me.”13 He thereupon agreed to the renewal of the favorable 1787 treaty, which did not call for tribute. Simpson was then moved from Gibraltar to Morocco in order that the Americans might have a consular presence there.
Having made a new Algerian treaty and having renewed the Moroccan treaty, the United States turned next to the Barbary state of Tripoli. President Washington commissioned David Humphreys to negotiate the treaty. Humphreys passed the commission to Joseph Donaldson and Joel Barlow, who in turn commissioned O’Brien, the recently released slave of the dey of Algiers.
Richard O’Brien was born in Maine, but as a child his family took him to Ireland. When his father, died he went to sea at an early age and during the American Revolution served both on as a privateer and in the Continental navy as a lieutenant. After the war he became the master of a ship out of Philadelphia, which was captured in 1785 by the Algerians. As with Cathcart, his fellow slave, O’Brien worked his way into the esteem of his Algerian masters, becoming a supervisor in the port’s naval yard.14 During the negotiations with the United States the dey trusted O’Brien’s integrity and sent him to Europe to bring home the tribute.
In bargaining with the pasha in Tripoli, O’Brien drew upon all the skills he had acquired in his ten years of captivity in Algiers. The Tripolitan ruler was familiar with the dey’s success in extracting money from the Americans, but did not have as powerful a fleet of corsairs or nearly as many American prisoners as the Algerian. A treaty in 1796 was agreed upon at a cost to the United States of approximately $57,000.15 Although the negotiation seemed cheap, compared to the nearly one million dollars paid to the Algerians, the treaty with Tripoli soon collapsed. For years the United Slates engaged in an off-and-on war with Tripoli.
Barlow, the American consul in Algiers, took on the negotiations with the bey of Tunis, who rejected Barlow’s offer of as much as $80,000 to conclude a peace, but through an intermediary an agreement was reached at a cost to the United States of about $107,000. There were problems with parts of the treaty and in 1798 the Senate required certain modifications. The negotiators tasked with settling the American objections to the treaty were James Cathcart, now the new American consul to Tripoli, and William Eaton, a new man to the Barbary Coast, who had been appointed consul to Tunis. After much haggling, Cathcart and Eaton received the dey’s reluctant agreement to alterations in the Tunisian treaty, which the Senate approved in 1800.16
The year 1800 saw U.S. consuls established in Morocco, Tripoli, Algiers, and Tunis and the Barbary corsairs under instructions to refrain from capturing American ships. The work of the American consuls on the Barbary Coast, however, remained difficult. Joel Barlow had left Algiers, succeeded by Richard O’Brien as supervising consul general for the Barbary States. The Barbary rulers were not comfortable with Cathcart and O’Brien, who, because of their years of slavery, were far more knowledgeable about Barbary ways than their European consular counterparts. Both spoke fluent Arabic and presumably knew some embarrassing secrets, which made them formidable representatives of the United States. The two ex-slaves turned consuls detested each other. O’Brien was a rough-and-ready, self-educated seafaring man who had worked his way up in the dey’s shipyards, while Cathcart, better educated, had risen in the ruler’s administrative ranks as a clerk. Eaton and Cathcart looked down upon O’Brien; having him as their consul general did not enhance the relationship among the three, especially as both Eaton and Cathcart had hot tempers and were difficult to work with.17 The tension created by their relative social positions was not lessened when O’Brien married an Englishwoman who had been a maidservant in Cathcart’s household.18
The work of the consuls was difficult since peace treaty commitments rested lightly with the Barbary rulers. They were continually testing the Americans and the consuls of other nations to see what they could extract from them as tribute or gifts. Going to war with a nation was a purely economic decision; a pretext could always be found. As the youngest maritime nation and with almost no navy, the United States was a particular target for the whims of the various rulers, agreeing to stiff tribute payments, especially to Algiers. There were a growing number of American merchant ships ripe for the plucking in the Mediterranean and the approaching waters.
A serious incident occurred in September 1800 when the American frigate George Washington, fresh from the quasi-war with France, appeared at Algiers, carrying the annual tribute. The dey needed to send an ambassador to Constantinople with gifts to maintain the sultan’s favor. Arrogantly, the dey demanded that the George Washington carry his ambassador with gifts to the Sublime Porte. Consul General O’Brien and Captain William Bainbridge of the frigate at first refused, but the situation was precarious. The George Washington had unsuspectingly moored and was vulnerable if the capricious ruler were to order an attack, which would surely bring an end to the costly peace that had taken so long for the United States to achieve.
Bowing to force majeure, Bainbridge took the Algerian ambassador to Constantinople, flying the Algerian banner instead of the American flag as he entered that port. Still, it was the first U.S. naval vessel to call at that port. When the George Washington returned with the ambassador, Bainbridge prudently anchored out of range of the dey’s batteries. The Jefferson administration, which had recently come to power, quite properly considered the commandeering of the George Washington as a major humiliation to the United States. The Secretary of the Navy warned Consul General O’Brien not to let such a thing happen again.19 American patience was running out.
In the spring of 1801, with the French naval war over, the United States sent its first naval squadron, consisting of four ships under Commodore Richard Dale, to the Mediterranean to show the flag and demonstrate that America was not an eagle without talons. The squadron of observation, as it was termed, arrived at Gibraltar only to learn that the pasha of Tripoli had declared war on the United States. The pasha had increased his demands on Consul Cathcart for more tribute and, getting nowhere, had decided that war would be more profitable. Cathcart reported to the secretary of state that the pasha “declared war against the United States and would take down our flag staff on Thursday the 14th inst. of May 1801. That if I pleased to remain in Tripoli I should be treated with respect but if I pleased I might so go away.”20 Cathcart left after the pasha’s men chopped down the consular flagpole as a symbolic gesture, meaning that a state of war existed between Tripoli and America. The pasha unleashed his corsairs, two of which were shortly trapped in the port of Gibraltar by the arrival of the American squadron of observation.
Before proceeding to Tripoli, Commodore Dale stopped in Tunis. The arrival of the small squadron was fortuitous for Consul Eaton because the dey had been demanding more military equipment and threatening war if he did not get it. The presence of the American frigates stilled the demands for a time.24 Off Tripoli Dale communicated with the pasha through the Danish consul but was unable to settle matters. A few Tripolitans were captured and exchanged for some American prisoners, but when Dale ran short of supplies, he sailed back to Gibraltar. This was to be the pattern for most of the war with Tripoli. Although the pasha did not have the ships to challenge the American fleet, the United States Navy could not keep a tight blockade on Tripoli because of frequent storms and the need to replenish supplies. There were some ship actions when American naval vessels encountered corsairs in the Mediterranean. The United States Navy always triumphed in these skirmishes, but Tripoli was not mortally wounded.
At the beginning of this war, William Eaton in Tunis, declared that Tripoli was blockaded, a declaration that for