Free Jefferson's War by Joseph Wheelan Page A

discouraged me....” It was too bad there was no support for a war, because it would be “heroical and glorious” at a time when “the policy of Christendom has made cowards of all their sailors before the standard of Mahomet.” Realistically, though, there was neither money nor public support for a war, Adams said, concluding that the immediate goal should be to restore the Mediterranean trade and nothing more; its absence was simply too costly. “At present we are sacrificing a million annually, to save one gift of 200,000 pounds. This is not good economy. We might, at this hour, have two hundred ships in the Mediterranean, whose freights alone would be worth 200,000 pounds, besides the influence upon the price of our produce.”

    Jefferson replied with one of the most eloquent letters that he ever wrote. “I acknowledge, I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace through the medium of war,” he began. “Though it is a question with which we have nothing to do, yet as you propose some discussion of it, I shall trouble you with my reasons.” He agreed with Adams’s first three propositions. “As to the fourth, that the longer the negotiation is delayed, the larger will be the demand; this will depend on the intermediate captures: if they are many and rich, the price may be raised; if few and poor, it will be lessened.”
    A better policy would be to dictate peace through the expedient of war, through the agency of a navy. Jefferson gave six reasons, the first three reflecting his idealized vision of America:
    1. Justice is in favor of this opinion.
    2. Honor favors it.
    3. It will procure us respect in Europe; and respect is a safeguard to interest.
    4. It will arm the Federal head with the safest of all the instruments of coercion over its delinquent members, and prevent it from using what would be less safe. I think that so far, you go with me. But in the next steps, we shall differ.
    5. I think it least expensive.
    Jefferson then performed some dubious math. Building the 150-gun naval fleet he envisioned would cost 450,000 pounds sterling, and maintaining it, he claimed, 45,000 pounds annually—little more than what annual tribute might cost. America should build a small navy, war or no, to protect trade, he reasoned, and keeping it idle would still entail cost—fully half the price of having it patrol the western Mediterranean. Therefore, “we have a right to
say that only twenty-two thousand and five hundred pounds sterling, per annum, should be charged to the Algerine war.”
    His sixth reason, “It will be as effectual,” was predicated on his recollection that France once was able to dictate treaty terms to Algiers after a three-month blockade. The United States also could establish a blockade, aided by Naples and Portugal, and perhaps other nations as well.
    Adams conceded there were excellent reasons for going to war with the Barbary States. “The resolution to fight them would raise the spirits and courage of our countrymen immediately, and we might obtain the glory of finally breaking up these nests of banditti.” But while glory and fighting spirit were admirable ideals, they were too insubstantial to justify a war that would end only in a purchased peace, and that would harm America more than Barbary. “If We take a Vessell of theirs We get nothing but a bad Vessell fit only to burn, a few Guns and a few Barbarians, whom We may hang or enslave if We will, and the Unfeeling Tyrants whose Subjects they are will think no more of it, than if We had killed so many CatterPillars upon an Apple tree. When they take a Vessell of ours, they not only get a rich Prize, but they enslave the Men and if there is among them a Man of any Rank or Note they demand most exorbitant ransoms for them.” Moreover, “congress will never, or at least not for years, take any such resolution, and in the mean time our trade and