Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders (40 page)

It would be the country’s first conflict with a foreign power, the first, too, with an Islamic one, but Congress would never declare war. Having failed to reach terms for peace with Tripoli fifteen years earlier, Jefferson and his cabinet voted on May 15, 1801, to send a squadron of four vessels to the Mediterranean. They had received reports that Tripoli was demanding payment of tribute above the sums that America had been paying for peace under the treaty President Adams had signed in 1797.
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What Jefferson did not know was that the day before,
Yusuf Qaramanli, Tripoli’s ruler, had ceremoniously declared war by cutting down the U.S. flag from his citadel.
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Although some American historians have presumed that the so-called First
Barbary War was prompted by Jefferson’s desire to end piracy for good, by 1801 Tripoli had in fact seized only two American vessels, far fewer than the more powerful Algiers.
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And Pasha Yusuf Qaramanli had quickly released the American ships and their crews. It seems likelier that hostilities first arose on the other side, the first American peace treaty with Tripoli having sown the seeds of a military conflict that would stretch across Jefferson’s first term.
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American diplomats seem to have misread Tripoli’s grievances, its annoyance at being perceived as subservient to Algiers and therefore not worthy of the same tribute. Tripoli also claimed that America was in arrears on payment required by treaty.

Like Jefferson, Qaramanli had ambitions of launching a strong navy; he expanded his fleet from nineteen armed ships in 1803 to twenty-four by the end of the conflict with the United States in 1805.
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Each of Tripoli’s vessels was commanded by a
ra’is
, or captain, and manned by a crew of twenty to thirty men. Captains were of Turkish, Berber, or Arab origin. Some, including, Murad Ra’is (the former
Peter Leslie), admiral of the fleet, were European Christian renegades who had converted to Islam. Leslie had been a mutineer of Scottish origin, who avoided a British court-martial by joining Tripoli’s navy in 1794. A year later, he was appointed admiral.
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For the next four years, American naval vessels attempted to blockade and bombard Tripoli, without decisive success.
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In the first year, Jefferson was able to coordinate American naval forces with Sweden’s, in just the sort of multilateral arrangement he’d proposed as a diplomat in France. Nevertheless, despite the capture of a Tripolitan ship early
in 1801, the blockade failed, owing in part to the intervention of other North African states.
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By 1802, Jefferson could still not secure a declaration of war from Congress, but he did win more official support for the military defense of American commerce.
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In 1803, a new force of seven American vessels began to patrol the Mediterranean.
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It included the thirty-six-gun warship
Philadelphia
, which was seized with her crew of 307, having accidentally run aground on a reef in Tripoli harbor while chasing an enemy ship on October 31.
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After a year of captivity, Jonathan Cowdery, the ship’s doctor, reported that five men had died, while another few had “turned Turks”—adopted Islam to regain their freedom.
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Rather than allow the pirates to use the captured American ship, on February 16, 1804, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur and a few of his men managed to burn the
Philadelphia
, a daring feat that would garner praise from no less august a seaman than Britain’s Admiral Nelson.
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But the
Philadelphia
’s demise did nothing to end the captivity of her languishing crew, much less the war with Tripoli.

Jefferson tried a new strategy when he appointed the diplomat
William Eaton to begin negotiations with Ahmed—or as he was known then to Americans, “Hamet”—Qaramanli, Tripoli’s deposed ruler and the brother of Pasha Yusuf.
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From exile in Cairo, Hamet pledged to participate in the siege of Tripoli’s port city of Derna, from which point would be launched the conquest of Tripoli and his return to power as a ruler friendly to U.S. interests. Thus had Thomas Jefferson ordered the first American covert attempt at a coup d’état against a foreign power.

Eaton directed the five-hundred-mile trek through the Libyan Desert from Alexandria, Egypt, to Derna, Libya. His forces included ten U.S. soldiers, who never actually made it “to the shores of Tripoli,” as extolled by the Marine Corps anthem, as well as various mercenaries: three hundred Arabs, thirty-eight Greeks, and members of other nationalities.
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On April 25, 1804, Eaton’s force took Derna as it was also being bombarded by three U.S. ships.
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But in the meantime, Yusuf Qaramanli had hastily made terms with the Americans, dashing Hamet’s ambitions to rule once again and forcing Eaton to withdraw.

Jefferson was praised for prosecuting a successful war overall, but criticized vociferously by the Federalists, members of the navy, and his own envoy, Eaton, for failing to press the U.S. advantage with the capture of Tripoli, which might have put an end to tribute. By June 4, 1805, the United States would finally negotiate a $60,000 ransom for all
prisoners, far less than the $3 million the pasha had initially demanded, with the understanding that there be no further payments.
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If Jefferson did not end the practice of tribute for peace, he did at least prove that the United States would resist North African aggression militarily. The threat of piracy would not abate fully until after the U.S. Navy won a final battle with Algerian forces in June 1815, during the presidency of James Madison, but Jefferson’s policy of armed resistance certainly marked the beginning of the end.
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Historians disagree on how many Americans were actually held prisoner in North Africa from 1784 to 1815, with estimates of between four and seven hundred men.
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However, some argue that only slightly more than half of the 307 sailors captured when the American warship
Philadelphia
ran aground were native-born Americans, the rest being British.
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Our best assessment is that almost 90 percent of Americans seized by North African pirates were eventually ransomed and returned home.
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Religion had never figured previously in Jefferson’s diplomatic dealings with North African states, but the language of his treaty with Tripoli, compared with that of Adams’s previous treaty, indicates that religion had entered into his thinking. Article 14 of Jefferson’s
Tripoli treaty, for instance, omits the clause Cobbett had complained about in Adams’s earlier Article 11: “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”
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It is curious that Jefferson would have chosen to exclude mention of a principle of government that he had actively championed since 1776, but perhaps attacks upon his Christianity during the presidential election moved him toward reticence to avoid further conflict. He did, however, choose to retain and thus reaffirm Adams’s end to anti-Islamic sentiments concerning America’s official stance toward the beliefs of Muslims: “As the Government of the United States of America has in itself no character of enmity against the Laws, Religion or Tranquility of Musselmen.”
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Whatever Jefferson’s calculations, the treaty was signed on June 4, 1805, in Tripoli and ratified by the U.S. Senate on April 17, 1806, by a vote of twenty-one to eight.
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When it was published in various newspapers across the land, no outcry was heard, nor did Federalists renew
their attack on Jefferson as being an infidel Muslim. He had after all only retained language that the unimpeachably Christian Adams had approved.

Unlike Adams’s treaty, which contained no Arabic equivalent for this language about Islam and Muslims, Jefferson’s Arabic version reflected these ideas accurately.
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As a result of his naval action, however, Jefferson’s treaty could no longer claim that the United States had never entered “into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation.”
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Language was therefore inserted to make military intervention seem less belligerent: “and as the said States never have entered into any voluntary war or act of hostility against any Mahometan Nation, except in the defence of their just rights to freely navigate the High Seas.”
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The United States might not have declared war on Tripoli, but it justified its use of force as a principled effort to reclaim the right to “freely navigate” the Mediterranean. To emphasize this point, Jefferson’s version included, with minor variations, another clause from Adams’s: “It is declared by the contracting parties that no pretext arising from Religious Opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the Harmony existing between the two Nations.”
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With these words, Article 11 of the first Tripoli treaty concluded, but Jefferson’s Article 14 continued with new language about the freedom of religion, whose exercise was to be permitted the representatives of both nations—and their slaves: “And the Consuls and Agents of both Nations respectively, shall have liberty to exercise his Religion in his own house; all slaves of the same Religion shall not be impeded in going to said Consuls house at hours of Prayer.”
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This reciprocal guarantee was of course a constitutional, if not practical, reality in America. Nevertheless, both Jefferson and Madison, his secretary of state, believed it was important that the United States set itself apart from the European powers by espousing freedom of conscience. In the Islamic context, Christians already should have been able to practice their faith privately. In America, Jefferson’s first chance to make good on this provision would come with the visit of a Muslim ambassador to Washington even before the treaty was approved by the Senate.

The treaty language defining Islam as a significant, relevant, and unthreatening faith in 1806 in fact confirmed an important new principle of American foreign policy. Navigation of the high seas might provoke disputes between the United States and Muslim states, but religious differences never would. Yet the fact remained that
American treaties with European powers, whether Protestant or Catholic, did not even mention the Christian religion. Only Islam merited special mention in diplomatic documents, underscoring a central contradiction: Whatever the Constitution had accomplished regarding official neutrality in matters of religion, most Americans, Adams and Jefferson included, had little respect for Islam as a faith, making it necessary that these prejudices be formally overwritten, for the sake of peaceful relations with a more powerful nation. But unlike Adams, Jefferson, despite his negative views of Islam, would also demonstrate privately his diplomatic approbation of the faith and its North African practitioners.

James Madison would take a cue from Jefferson’s precedent during his presidency in his later treaty with
Algiers, the last of the pirate powers. President Madison’s military action against the dey’s dominion ended the threat of piracy once and for all in 1815. Article 15 of Madison’s treaty channeled the spirit of Jefferson’s Article 14, but without explicit mention of Islam, making instead a universalist statement: “As the Government of the United States of America has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of any nation,”
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despite its need for self-defense on the “high seas,” “no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of Harmony between the two nations.”
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Interestingly, the Turkish version of Madison’s treaty omitted this clause.
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And American diplomats, once again, would unwittingly approve a treaty with an Islamic power whose foreign translation was faulty.

In 1805, prior to the ratification of his treaty with Tripoli, President Jefferson welcomed a Tunisian envoy to his new capital, stirring great public fascination.
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The presence of the North African diplomat would pose unusual challenges, but also an opportunity for Jefferson and Secretary Madison both to observe a Muslim
ambassador up close and to demonstrate the genuineness of the American commitment to religious freedom with a show of awareness and sensitivity to Islamic ritual practice. Unfortunately, Jefferson’s direct observations of the nearly yearlong visit remain limited, with one key exception: a letter he composed, revised, and finally sent privately to Tunis with the returning envoy.

Sidi Suleyman Mellimelli arrived in Washington in November 1805
to negotiate the return of a Tunisian warship and two other vessels seized by the American navy.
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(The Tunisian vessels had been caught attempting to aid Tripoli by running the American blockade of the harbor there.)
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By now the Tunisian ruler also hoped to lift a naval blockade of his own harbor, which had come after an imprudent threat of war against the United States if his ships were not returned. In response, Commodore
John Rodgers sailed into the harbor of Tunis with a force of “five frigates, two brigs, two schooners, one sloop, and eight gunboats,” demanding that the bey decide within thirty-six hours whether he wanted war or peace.
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The time ran out without a shot being fired by the United States, and it was now the Tunisian ruler who proposed to dispatch his representative to resolve the issue and arrange for the removal of the U.S. force from his harbor.
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That end would be achieved thanks in no small part to a private correspondence that Jefferson had been conducting with the bey since a month after his inauguration in 1801.
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