The war with Tripoli is either left untold or retold as if it were short and decisive clash with a distant, maleficent foreign power. This is overlaid by an American tendency to speak of the leaders of the early republic as demigods. Legend building has toyed dangerously with the facts.

 

Lets see if the real facts provide a more interesting story.

 

As the architects of Washington City, Pierre L'Enfant and Benjamin Latrobe, sought to transform the Potomac swamp into an acropolis, the new Republic was being born into an uncertain world. Britain, under Pitt the younger at war with Revolutionary France, chuckled at the budding capitol, "a fitting summer palace" for the troublesome Prince Regent, the future George IV. Both Revolutionary France and the Ottoman Empire's North African satraps preyed upon American shipping.

 

American Independence was supposed to have bought the blessings of peace and fecundity to North America and freedom from immersion in European conflicts. Instead, cast off from the protections of the Union Jack, America found its merchantmen under attack all over the world.

 

The ink hardly dried on the Treaty of Paris (1783) when the Ottoman Sultan's North African vassals turned their corsairs against merchantmen flying the Stars and Stripes in the Mediterranean. Impoverished by civil strife throughout the Critical Period (1783-1787), the flash fires of border wars on the frontier with Indians raids and on the sea with the Revolutionary French, the United States capitulated; sending tribute to the Dey of Tripoli. The declaration of Senator Pinckey, "Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute," was empty rhetoric.

 

John Adams copied the British Sedition Act enacted by Pitt the younger as a counter-measure to extremist Republican activity and added an American spin to it. Unassimilated French immigrants were forced to choose between the American dream at hand and the pipe dream of returning to a restored Royalist France. Republican, pro French, newspapers were closed.

 

In the European conflict France invaded the Ottoman province of Egypt (Aegyptus) and defeated the Marmaluke khedives. French victory was short lived. By 1800 Napoleon's forces were routed by a British expedition. War between France and Britain in a pivotal Ottoman province weakened the Ottoman Empire emboldening the North African satrapies into new predatory actions against the Americans.

 

American involvement in a new war between France and Britain seemed inevitable. However, tensions dissolved when the Emperor Napoleon of France decided on a brief interlude of peace (1800-1805).

 

The American general election of 1800 brought the pacifist Thomas Jefferson to the newly built Executive mansion. Bitterly Adams reflected on his defeat, "crowds will cheer, philosophers swoon; only practical politicians will truly savor his shallowness." The Dey of Tripoli tested Jefferson by declaring war.

 

Contrary to Adam's dire prophecy, Jefferson accepted the challenge. What did Jefferson have

at hand to fight a war with an established naval power?

 

In the war for Independence, the regular Continental Navy's principal claim to laurels or honor was that its principled commanders had steadfastly refused handsome bribes from Admiral Howe. Most of the effective American action on the sea was fought by privateers, pirates hired to prey on merchant shipping. The regular Continental Navy's claim to having sails in the decisive battle of the Chesapeake has long been regarded skeptically.

 

In preparing for war with Tripoli, the upstart republic's navy attempted to use the fast and loose tactics of the War for Independence in formal conflict. The impressed American merchantmen the US Navy collected in the Mediterranean could not maintain a blockade of Tripoli. The first three years of war were a resounding failure. An American ditty of the time went, "May I ever be protected by foundering Gunboat Number 4."

 

While war with Tripoli dissolved into a dark farce of inaction, Jefferson, in 1803, purchased the entire Louisiana territory from Napoleon, annexing to the republic a non-saxon culture and more troublesome French. Aaron Burr, Jefferson's treacherous Vice President, did more than flirt with intrigue and rebellion in the newly acquired purchase.

 

Yet Jefferson was not distracted from the Tripolitian war for long.

 

In 1804, Jefferson refitted the American Navy with four new ships and sent them asail against the Ottoman port of Tripoli. The bold move had implicit British support; the small American fleet passed unchallenged though Gibraltar and appeared off Tripoli with an ultimatum. One can only imagine what General Charles O'Hara, whose dignity in conducting the surrender ceremony at Yorktown had one him the governorship of Gibraltar, the second most important post in the Empire, might have said in disgust at Pitt's decision to allow the Americans to pass.

 

The odds were by no means as stacked against the Americans as the wealth and potential power of the Ottoman Empire could have made them. Against the small American fleet, the Turk had many more ships, outdated xebecs and corsairs effective against merchantmen, but not against a modern navy. Both fleets were comprised of sailors from many nations. The American Navy took volunteers who accepted citizenship as part of the payment; the Turks impressed slaves from among the many subjects of the Ottoman's Empire. No nation can truly survive if it relies on its subjects to fight. An Austrian officer commented, "the Turk has learned nothing new since his days of glory."

 

The American fleet pounded the citadel of Tripoli.

 

The American Counsel in Tripoli, William Eaton, correctly gauged French complicity with the Dey of Tripoli. After publicly flogging the French Ambassador, Eaton departed for the desert where he joined Lt. O'Bannon's Marines detached from the U.S. fleet. In the impressed Navies of the time, Marines protected the Captain from the crew. The U.S. Navy saw no need; as its sailors were free men under arms, marines could be used to extract a price from the enemy.

 

Lt. O'Bannon and Eaton raised a small army of Greeks and Arabs to march on the fortress city of Derna, guarding the land approach to Tripoli.

 

Lt. Stephen Decatur, American born of Greek extraction, set out to recover the Philadelphia. An explosion of the Philadelphia's magazine ended the sortee in a technical failure, but the resulting firestorm burnt a part of the Turkish fleet to the water line. British Admiral Lord Nelson lauded the raid as the "most daring of its time."

 

 

In a second raid, the USS Intrepid on a night sortee in the Tripolitan harbor was exploded by a Turkish counterattack. The explosion however finished off the Turks. In a sense, American success in the harbor was the triumph of incompetence.

 

In March of 1805, the motley army recruited by William Eaton and Lt. O'Bannon took the fortress city of Derna. As the Stars and Stripes floated aloft over a foreign city for the first time, the land approach to the Tripolitian harbour lay in American hands. Tripoli lay at their feet. The entire empire of the Ottomans' quaked.

 

The Dey of Tripoli offered peace on status quo ante: resumption of the tribute. To the consternation of the victorious U.S. Navy and their ebullient Greek allies, President Jefferson accepted. William Eaton resigning in protest upbraided Jefferson, "Send a slave in my place."

 

The military was less wrathful to the President. Lt. Stephen Decatur offered a conciliatory toast to the reversal of fortune, "In matters of foreign affairs, my country may she ever be right, but right or wrong, my country, my country." This toast remains the watchword of the Armed Forces as recognition of paramount civilian authority, not as a prayer for war, but an assent to a political resolution, a decision for peace. It reechoes as a voice of reason even today whenever military leaders disagree with the President.

 

Officially, despite the justifiable disconcertment of Mr. Eaton, Decatur and O'Bannon came home recognized heroes to a small country anxious to invent a boastful mythology of a lightening raid against a treacherous enemy and to down play the more comical aspects of the adventure. That certain important British figures like Lord Nelson, on his way to fatality and immortality at Trafalgar later in 1805, chose to applaud the American effort with much undeserved praise rather than publicly chuckle at it, gave fuel to the legend. The comments of British leaders were more the kind words of a proud parent than recognition of a military feat. Despite the individual heroism of Decatur and the other men of the Intrepid, the Americans, from an objective military view, the Americans had blundered their way to success. What Briton "Daddy" thought was still important to his rambunctious teenagers.

 

What little American commentary on Jefferson's decision to recall the fleet simply notes that Jefferson tired of European politics. This is an understatement.

 

Shifting sands of Napoleonic age European rivalry between France and Britain could not have been trusted. In 1805, the little Corporal (Napoleon) was prepared to renew his war against Britain and her allies. The small American skirmish in the desert hardly deserves a footnote by comparison to Napoleon's exploits.

 

To continue the war with the North African satrapies, Americans needed British approval. British Prime Minister Pitt the younger long was a friend to and admired by both American Federalists and Republicans.

 

Americans knew to expect no sympathy from any of Pitt's potential successors nor from the guardian of the gate to the Mediterranean, General Charles O'Hara, to whom the governorship of Gibraltar along with ceremonial colonolship of the Cheshire Guards had been granted by the crown for his loyal service against Americans in the war for Independence.

 

An opportunity to attack Tripoli came only when the British needed a counter stroke to prevent a French alliance with the Turk. How much American success would Britain tolerate?

 

America walked a tight line between a success inviting Britain's wrath and one ensnaring the small American fleet now down to two modern ships in Britain's expansionistic dreams. A secretary of state later explained "we cannot afford to be the rowboat in the wake of the Britannia."

 

The census of 1800 proved disappointing to Republican politicians, who had throughout the war for Independence as all nationalists do, argued that the population would bloom in freedom. Border wars and epidemics had taken a toll. The country declined from an estimated 3 million on British withdrawal to 2 ? million, 17 years later.

 

Two and a half million people could not fight a war so far away. Avoiding involvement in distant wars had been the reason Republican politicians offered for an Independent America and the secession from the British Empire. Jefferson in breaking off the attack fulfilled the Republican promise.

 

Continued war presented more than philosophical problems over involvement in the continuing rivalry between Britain and France. A cabal was brewing in newly acquired Louisiana. The military governor of Louisiana had expressed more than a passing interest in Burr's bid for an Independent Western Republic. Jefferson's immediate problems at home took priority over a conflict with distant Tripoli.

 

Jefferson's investment in Louisiana proved sound. The British victory at Trafalgar later in 1805 broke the French naval power forever, ending the threat of a French resurgence in North America. Burr's quisling Independent Western Republic dissolved into mists of the swampy Louisiana bayoux.

 

The story of the war with the Ottoman Empire is rarely retold accurately in this country. A misreading of Decatur's famous toast may have dulled Decatur's image in the American pantheon during the restive years of the Vietnam War (1964-1974). However, a tidal wave of Greek immigrants have renewed interest in the famous officer who humbled the mighty Turks. To these new Americans who have adopted Decatur's country, Decatur was one of the many Greeks who never turned his back on the enemy, but always preferred peace to war.