It is difficult to conceive that there ever was a time when the United States paid a money tribute to anybody. It is even more difficult to imagine the United States paying blackmail to a set of small piratical tribes on the coast of Africa. Yet this is precisely what we once did with the Barbary powers, as they were called the States of Morocco, Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers, lying along the northern coast of Africa. The only excuse to be made for such action was that we merely followed the example of Christendom. The civilized people of the world were then in the habit of paying sums of money to these miserable pirates, in order to secure immunity for their merchant vessels in the Mediterranean. For this purpose Congress appropriated money, and treaties were made by the President and ratified by the Senate.
On one occasion, at least, Congress actually revoked the authorization of some new ships for the navy, and appropriated more money than was required to build the men-of-war in order to buy off the Barbary powers. The fund for this disgraceful purpose was known as the "Mediterranean fund," and was intrusted to the Secretary of State to be disbursed by him in his discretion.
After we had our brush with France, however, in 1798, and after Truxtun's brilliant victory over the French frigate L'Insurgente in the following year, it occurred to our government that perhaps there was a more direct as well as a more manly way of dealing with the Barbary pirates than by feebly paying them tribute, and in 1801 a small squadron, under Commodore Dale, proceeded to the Mediterranean.
At the same time events occurred which showed strikingly the absurdity as well as the weakness of this policy of paying blackmail to pirates. The Bashaw of Tripoli, complaining that we had given more money to some of the Algerian ministers than we had to him, and also that we had presented Algiers with a frigate, declared war upon us, and cut down the flag-staff in front of the residence of the American consul. At the same time, and for the same reason, Morocco and Tunis began to grumble at the treatment which they had received. The fact was that, with nations as with individuals, when the payment of blackmail is once begun there is no end to it. The appearance, however, of our little squadron in the Mediterranean showed at once the superiority of a policy of force over one of cowardly submission.
Morocco and Tunis immediately stopped their grumbling and came to terms with the United States, and this left us free to deal with Tripoli.
Commodore Dale had sailed before the declaration of war by Tripoli was known, and he was therefore hampered by his orders, which permitted him only to protect our commerce, and which forbade actual hostilities. Nevertheless, even under these limited orders, the Enterprise, of twelve guns, commanded by Lieutenant Sterrett, fought an action with the Tripolitan ship Tripoli, of fourteen guns. The engagement lasted three hours, when the Tripoli struck, having lost her mizzenmast, and with twenty of her crew killed and thirty wounded. Sterrett, having no orders to make captures, threw all the guns and ammunition of the Tripoli overboard, cut away her remaining masts, and left her with only one spar and a single sail to drift back to Tripoli, as a hint to the Bashaw of the new American policy.
In 1803 the command of our fleet in the Mediterranean was taken by Commodore Preble, who had just succeeded in forcing satisfaction from Morocco for an attack made upon our merchantmen by a vessel from Tangier. He also proclaimed a blockade of Tripoli and was preparing to enforce it when the news reached him that the frigate Philadelphia, forty-four guns, commanded by Captain Bainbridge, and one of the best ships in our navy, had gone upon a reef in the harbor of Tripoli, while pursuing a vessel there, and had been surrounded and captured, with all her crew, by the Tripolitan gunboats, when she was entirely helpless either to fight or sail. This was a very serious blow to our navy and to our operations against Tripoli. It not only weakened our forces, but it was also a great help to the enemy. The Tripolitans got the Philadelphia off the rocks, towed her into the harbor, and anchored her close under the guns of their forts.
They also replaced her batteries, and prepared to make her ready for sea, where she would have been a most formidable danger to our shipping.
