CAUTION PRECAUCION ATTENTION
VORSICHT ПРЕДУПРЕЖДЕНИЕ
주의 ATTENZIONE 注意
The Paulbearer Moonbattery Factor for this Thread HAS BEEN ELEVATED to
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Posted on 09/06/2007 8:54:32 AM PDT by Brainhose
Ruthless, unconventional foes are not new to the United States of America. More than two hundred years ago the newly established United States made its first attempt to fight an overseas battle to protect its private citizens by building an international coalition against an unconventional enemy. Then the enemies were pirates and piracy. The focus of the United States and a proposed international coalition was the Barbary Pirates of North Africa.
Pirate ships and crews from the North African states of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers (the Barbary Coast) were the scourge of the Mediterranean. Capturing merchant ships and holding their crews for ransom provided the rulers of these nations with wealth and naval power. In fact, the Roman Catholic Religious Order of Mathurins had operated from France for centuries with the special mission of collecting and disbursing funds for the relief and ransom of prisoners of Mediterranean pirates.
Before the United States obtained its independence in the American Revolution, 1775-83, American merchant ships and sailors had been protected from the ravages of the North African pirates by the naval and diplomatic power of Great Britain. British naval power and the tribute or subsidies Britain paid to the piratical states protected American vessels and crews. During the Revolution, the ships of the United States were protected by the 1778 alliance with France, which required the French nation to protect "American vessels and effects against all violence, insults, attacks, or depredations, on the part of the said Princes and States of Barbary or their subjects."
After the United States won its independence in the treaty of 1783, it had to protect its own commerce against dangers such as the Barbary pirates. As early as 1784 Congress followed the tradition of the European shipping powers and appropriated $80,000 as tribute to the Barbary states, directing its ministers in Europe, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, to begin negotiations with them. Trouble began the next year, in July 1785, when Algerians captured two American ships and the dey of Algiers held their crews of twenty-one people for a ransom of nearly $60,000.
Thomas Jefferson, United States minister to France, opposed the payment of tribute, as he later testified in words that have a particular resonance today. In his autobiography Jefferson wrote that in 1785 and 1786 he unsuccessfully "endeavored to form an association of the powers subject to habitual depredation from them. I accordingly prepared, and proposed to their ministers at Paris, for consultation with their governments, articles of a special confederation." Jefferson argued that "The object of the convention shall be to compel the piratical States to perpetual peace." Jefferson prepared a detailed plan for the interested states. "Portugal, Naples, the two Sicilies, Venice, Malta, Denmark and Sweden were favorably disposed to such an association," Jefferson remembered, but there were "apprehensions" that England and France would follow their own paths, "and so it fell through."
Paying the ransom would only lead to further demands, Jefferson argued in letters to future presidents John Adams, then America's minister to Great Britain, and James Monroe, then a member of Congress. As Jefferson wrote to Adams in a July 11, 1786, letter, "I acknolege [sic] I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace thro' the medium of war." Paying tribute will merely invite more demands, and even if a coalition proves workable, the only solution is a strong navy that can reach the pirates, Jefferson argued in an August 18, 1786, letter to James Monroe: "The states must see the rod; perhaps it must be felt by some one of them. . . . Every national citizen must wish to see an effective instrument of coercion, and should fear to see it on any other element than the water. A naval force can never endanger our liberties, nor occasion bloodshed; a land force would do both." "From what I learn from the temper of my countrymen and their tenaciousness of their money," Jefferson added in a December 26, 1786, letter to the president of Yale College, Ezra Stiles, "it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them."
Jefferson's plan for an international coalition foundered on the shoals of indifference and a belief that it was cheaper to pay the tribute than fight a war. The United States's relations with the Barbary states continued to revolve around negotiations for ransom of American ships and sailors and the payment of annual tributes or gifts. Even though Secretary of State Jefferson declared to Thomas Barclay, American consul to Morocco, in a May 13, 1791, letter of instructions for a new treaty with Morocco that it is "lastly our determination to prefer war in all cases to tribute under any form, and to any people whatever," the United States continued to negotiate for cash settlements. In 1795 alone the United States was forced to pay nearly a million dollars in cash, naval stores, and a frigate to ransom 115 sailors from the dey of Algiers. Annual gifts were settled by treaty on Algiers, Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli.
When Jefferson became president in 1801 he refused to accede to Tripoli's demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. The pasha of Tripoli then declared war on the United States. Although as secretary of state and vice president he had opposed developing an American navy capable of anything more than coastal defense, President Jefferson dispatched a squadron of naval vessels to the Mediterranean. As he declared in his first annual message to Congress: "To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war, on our failure to comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one answer. I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean. . . ."
The American show of force quickly awed Tunis and Algiers into breaking their alliance with Tripoli. The humiliating loss of the frigate Philadelphia and the capture of her captain and crew in Tripoli in 1803, criticism from his political opponents, and even opposition within his own cabinet did not deter Jefferson from his chosen course during four years of war. The aggressive action of Commodore Edward Preble (1803-4) forced Morocco out of the fight and his five bombardments of Tripoli restored some order to the Mediterranean. However, it was not until 1805, when an American fleet under Commodore John Rogers and a land force raised by an American naval agent to the Barbary powers, Captain William Eaton, threatened to capture Tripoli and install the brother of Tripoli's pasha on the throne, that a treaty brought an end to the hostilities. Negotiated by Tobias Lear, former secretary to President Washington and now consul general in Algiers, the treaty of 1805 still required the United States to pay a ransom of $60,000 for each of the sailors held by the dey of Algiers, and so it went without Senatorial consent until April 1806. Nevertheless, Jefferson was able to report in his sixth annual message to Congress in December 1806 that in addition to the successful completion of the Lewis and Clark expedition, "The states on the coast of Barbary seem generally disposed at present to respect our peace and friendship."
In fact, it was not until the second war with Algiers, in 1815, that naval victories by Commodores William Bainbridge and Stephen Decatur led to treaties ending all tribute payments by the United States. European nations continued annual payments until the 1830s. However, international piracy in Atlantic and Mediterranean waters declined during this time under pressure from the Euro-American nations, who no longer viewed pirate states as mere annoyances during peacetime and potential allies during war.
Haven’t read the article yet.... I just wanted to say that “Brainhose” would be a great name for a rock band.
Bump for a good read and to watch the gnats come out for Fraud Paul.
RuPaul would have been the Sindy Shehag of WW2 if he were around then.
I’m convinced of it.
The Paulbearer Moonbattery Factor for this Thread HAS BEEN ELEVATED to
WATERMELON
I'm not sure what the heck a "combat flight surgeon" is - what I do know is that the closest Ron Paul ever got to Vietnam or to combat was giving fitness exams to pilots stationed in South Korea in 1965.
I won’t get into trashing his military career.. there are to many things to discuss regarding his current votes and standpoints on issues.
There's no need to trash it - he served honorably in the Air Force and Air National Guard for five years.
What I'm talking about are the Ron Paul supporters who insinuate that he served in combat in Vietnam - and who suggest that Ron Paul is somehow superior in terms of military experience to the President, who also served honorably in the ANG during the Vietnam era, but also not in combat.
Lately, I live for Ron Paul threads.
My experience has been that history lessons, no matter how appropriate or well documented, are utterly lost on ideologues. It matters not whether you are trying to influence a committed Leftist like Hillary Clinton, or an isolationist Libertarian like Dr. Paul. You might as well try explaining the Sicilian Defense to your Schnauzer. Which isn’t quite fair to the dog, I suppose. For people, it’s not often a matter of intellectual capacity, but of cognitive dissonance. Nonetheless, the effect is the same for both: a blank stare of incomprehension followed by a demand for more treats (from the dog) or dismissive anger (from the human ideologue).
LOL! I have made several negative comments about Paul to some of his most fervent supporters on FR and I have yet to get a response from them. Could it be that they think my opinion of Paul is correct?
Then how come we didn’t declare war? At least Paul actually wants to follow that dusty old piece of paper known as the Constitution.
Wow, at least we agree on that issue!!!
Ron Paul is “spanking” the monkey with his canidacy.
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http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/global.php?id=848208
Should The Islamic World Apologize For Slavery? – Part One (excerpt)
On March 24, 1620, Owen Phippen (also called Owen Fitzpen) was captured by corsairs and held as a slave for seven years until his escape. A memorial stands in St Mary’s Church in Truro, Cornwall, erected by the rector, Owen’s brother.
By the time Owen Phippen was captured, the population of white slaves in Algiers alone numbered more than 20,000, according to Paul Baepler of the University of Minnesota. A decade later, the figure had risen to 30,000 men and 2,000 women. Sailors were not the only victims of the Barbary slave raiders.
In July 1625, a raiding party of corsairs landed at Mount’s Bay in Cornwall, and swept into the parish church where the locals were worshipping. Sixty men, women and children were abducted and carried onto the corsairs’ boats. Looe, a small Cornish port, was also attacked, though its inhabitants had tried to hide or flee. Eighty men were taken and the village was burned. The mayor of Plymouth reported that “27 ships and 200 persons (were) taken”. A second fleet of corsairs arrived soon after the first. The mayor of Plymouth would later record that 1,000 vessels had been destroyed in that summer’s raids, and the same number of villagers had been abducted into slavery.
On a moonlit June night in 1631, the inhabitants of the coastal village of Baltimore in County Cork, southwestern Ireland, were asleep, unaware that by daybreak their lives would be changed forever. A small flotilla of boats had sailed into the bay unnoticed. These boats, called xebec by their crews, had sailed from Sale in Morocco. They bore 230 musketeers, Muslims to a man, and they had come looking for slaves to sell in Algiers. They had no mercy for any of the town’s inhabitants as they burst into homes, setting the crofts alight. When one villager, Thomas Curlew tried to resist, he was hacked to death, and his wife was carried off. All of the elderly villagers were murdered, and by morning, the Barbary corsairs sailed off, carrying with them 130 men, women and children.
The leader of the abductors at Baltimore was himself a former slave. He went under the name of Murad Reis, but originally he came from Harlem in the Netherlands, where he had been known as Jan Jansen or Jan Jansz. After being captured at Lanzarotte in 1618 he became a convert to Islam, and married a Moroccan woman, even though he had left a wife and daughter behind in Harlem. His raids took him far from the Barbary coast; he even raided Iceland in 1627, taking 400 captives into slavery. He became governor of Oualidia in 1640. Many of those who became slaves opted to convert to Islam, though this was no guarantee of freedom from servitude.
According to Robert C. Davis of Ohio State University, author of Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters (2004), in 1544, 7,000 captives were seized by Algerian corsairs in the Bay of Naples. In 1554, Vieste in Calabria, Italy, was raided and 6,000 people were carried off. In Granada, Spain, 4,000 men, women and children were taken into slavery in 1566...
(Some estimates are that over one million europeans were taken into slavery.)
Question, did Thomas Jefferson issue a letter of marquee against the Barbary Pirates????
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