Books › Blue Book v072 n04 [1941-02], 1941 › scan 6
Scan 6
Blue Book v072 n04 [1941-02], 1941
16 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1This prompted him in a letter to his good friend Lafayette to ask how "in such an enlightened… liberal age… is it possible that the great maritime powers of Europe should pay an annual tribute to the little piratical states of Barbary?"
3There was present at Mt. Vernon at the time Tobias Lear, formerly Washington's private secretary, but later his private military secretary, who had been given the rank of colonel. Lear became Consul-General to Algiers in 1804, and Commissioner to Tripoli in 1805, when his actions had a deciding effect on one of the most dramatic episodes of our military history in the Mediterranean.
5But Washington was soon to discover something which American merchantmen knew all too well, that this situation was in accord with European policy, and that France, and England in particular, privately encouraged those Islamic rovers to attack and discourage American commerce in the Mediterranean, to prevent our competing with their carrying trade.
7Franklin, while Minister to France in 1783, said: "I have in London heard it is a maxim among the merchants that if there were no Algiers, it would be worth England's while to build one." Then he continued: "I wonder, however, that the rest of Europe do not combine to destroy those nests and secure commerce from their future piracies."
9This was father to the thought which Washington expressed four years later to the Congress of the United States, when he said: "To secure respect to a neutral flag requires a naval force, organized and ready to vindicate it from insult or aggression… It would seem as if our trade in the Mediterranean, without a protecting force, will always be insecure, and our citizens exposed to the calumnies from which numbers of them have just been relieved… If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war."
11So a recommendation in Congress, "that a naval force adequate to the protection of the commerce of the United States against the Algerine corsairs ought to be provided," took form in January, 1794, and a month later that body authorized the construction of six frigates to uphold our flag and insure our merchantmen the freedom of the seas in the Mediterranean. But these vessels were only "on order," and when, in 1796, a treaty of peace with Algiers was signed, work was discontinued on three of the frigates.
13In 1792 our Senate had "favored paying one hundred thousand dollars annually for peace to Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis, and forty thousand dollars ransom for the captives. It also passed resolutions stating its readiness to ratify treaties with Algiers, providing for peace, at a cost of forty thousand dollars at the outset and annual tribute of twenty-five thousand dollars."
15Through the most remarkable vicissitudes of fate our envoy was unable to consummate this treaty until nearly four years later, and then, instead of the amount originally favored by the Senate that body ratified the cost and payment of nearly one million dollars, including
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