Free Jefferson's War by Joseph Wheelan Page B

honor suffers beyond calculation. We ought not to fight them at all unless we determine to fight them forever. This thought, I fear, is too rugged for our people to bear.” Adams saw all too well that their debate, stimulating as it might be, was of no consequence. “... I perceive that neither force nor money will be applied. Our States are so backward, that they will do nothing for some years.”
    Adams’s words tellingly described the United States under the weak Articles of Confederation, which emphasized the sovereignty of individuals and states at the expense of the federal government. The Confederation government first had to obtain the approval of nine of the thirteen states before taking any important action. Nine states seldom agreed on anything, even foreign trade, which to a large extent was left up to the individual states, and with chaotic results: states vying with and undercutting one another to snatch foreign markets. The treasury was heavily in debt from the Revolutionary War. In 1785, the government sold the last Continental Navy warship, the Alliance, to pay off some of the debt. The Confederation Congress’s sole tax, the postage stamp, paid for mail delivery only.
    A navy couldn’t very well be built with postage stamps.
    America’s dilemma in the Mediterranean was painfully clear in Philadelphia. George Washington voiced the leaders’ frustration. “It seems almost Nugatory to dispute about the best mode of dealing with the Algarines when we have neither money to buy their friendship nor the means of punishing them for their depredations upon our people & trade,” he wrote the Marquis de Lafayette in 1787. “If we could command the latter I should be clearly in sentiments with you and Mr. Jefferson, that chastisement would be more honorouble, and much to be preferred to the purchased friendship of these Barbarians—By me, who perhaps do not understand the policy by which the Maritime powers are actuated, it has ever been considered as reflecting the highest disgrace on them to become tributary to such a banditti, who might for half the sum that is paid them be exterminated from the Earth.”
    John Jay, too, longed to wage war on Algiers. “‘I should not be
angry,’” the French ambassador said the foreign secretary told him, “‘if the Algerines came to burn some of our maritime Towns, in order to restore to the United States their former energy, which peace and Commerce have almost destroyed. War alone can bring together the various States, and give a new importance to Congress....’” Jay also confided to Jefferson, “If we act properly, I shall not be very sorry for it. In my Opinion it may lay the Foundation for a Navy, and tend to draw us more closely into a foederal System.”
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    Years before the Abdrahaman meeting, before the capture of the three American merchantmen by Morocco and Algiers, Jefferson had advocated building a navy to stand up to the Barbary States. As was to be his lifelong habit, Jefferson shared his ideas with his fellow Virginians, confidants and proteges, James Madison and James Monroe. “We ought to begin a naval power, if we mean to carry on our own commerce,” he wrote to Madison in November 1784. “Can we begin it on a more honourable occasion or with a weaker foe? I am of opinion [John] Paul Jones with half a dozen frigates would totally destroy their commerce; not by attempting bombardments as the Mediterranean states do ... but by constant cruising and cutting them to peices by peicemeal.” He confided his private assay of the Barbary States’ naval strength to Monroe. “These pyrates are contemptibly weak,” he concluded. Morocco, he said, had four or five frigates of 18 or 20 guns. Tripoli floated a single frigate, and Tunis, three or four, every one of them “small & worthless.” Algiers was more formidable with 16 ships carrying 22 to 52