Jefferson's War Read online

  Captain John Rodgers, commander of the John Adams, had made a name for himself as a bold officer during the Quasi-War, but his reputation as a fighting man even then was well established. It was helped along by an incident in England in 1796 involving the infamous Sir Banastre Tarleton, the ruthless cavalry commander whose raids in the Carolinas made him one of the most hated British commanders of the Revolutionary War. While dining at a Liverpool hotel, Rodgers spied a rowdy crowd swarming the streets, carrying on its shoulders Tarleton, then a major general running for re-election to Parliament. The procession was led by a man bearing a banner depicting Tarleton on horseback, dispersing a crowd of Americans, with a trampled American flag beneath the hooves of his horse. Provoked by the insult to his flag, Rodgers dashed impulsively into the street and struck the banner bearer. Then he retrieved his pistols from his room and confronted Tarleton in front of his supporters. Tarleton coolly claimed to be unaware of the banner and invited Rodgers to his campaign headquarters, where Tarleton laid the matter to rest by agreeing to destroy the offending banner. The episode ended on a high note for Rodgers, whose bold impetuosity along with Tarleton’s gracious concession made him an instant hero among Tarleton’s supporters. They hoisted Rodgers onto their shoulders and paraded him through the streets as they had Tarleton before.

  Rodgers displayed the same tigerish streak while cruising off Tripoli on May 13. Spotting a 28-gun warship racing for Tripoli harbor, he cut her off before she could reach the sanctuary and boarded her. It was the Meshuda, Murad Reis’s old flagship, now a vessel belonging to Morocco, the same ship that had compelled Morocco to declare war on the United States. As Simpson had predicted months earlier, the Meshuda was being used to aid Tripoli; she was packed with guns, cutlasses, hemp, and other contraband. Twenty crewmen were Tripolitans. As Morris later put it to Simpson, Morocco’s elaborate show of taking ownership of the Meshuda “appears to be a detestable fraud.”

  Days later, the Enterprise spotted a felucca, a small coastal vessel, hugging the Tripoli shoreline, but before Isaac Hull’s schooner could reach her, the crew brought her to shore. Hull armed a raiding party, but delayed giving the order to attack, needing the commodore’s permission as well as the New York’s supporting fire. By the time Morris arrived, Tripolitan cavalry had massed and the element of surprise was long gone. With the horse troops waiting outside the range of the New York’s guns, but positioned to repel any raid, Morris scuttled the mission. The Enterprise then attempted to shoot the felucca full of holes and sink her, but failed. The Enterprise and New York departed, and the felucca’s red flag kept flying.

  Five days after the felucca’s beaching, the blockaders spotted nine gunboats and a small ship five miles west of Tripoli. As the John Adams, New York, and Enterprise converged for attack, the enemy vessels darted into a harbor and anchored. In two years, the squadron had never operated as a single entity, either in maneuvers or actual combat. But now the opportunity suddenly was at hand for a telling blow to be struck—if only the American cruisers could operate in concert. It was late in the day, and the setting sun perfectly backlit the sails of the U.S. ships, making them easy targets for shore fire, if the Tripolitans had been inclined to open up. Fortunately for the Americans, they didn’t. Morris positioned his three ships abreast and sailed closer to shore. The wind died, and the Americans began to pay for their failure to practice maneuvers together. Drifting into one another’s path, the ships fired broadsides at the moored gunboats and the shore. Morris tried to sort out the mess by shifting the John Adams in front of the New York and Enterprise, but all that did was enable Rodgers to fire on the gunboats, while preventing Morris and Hull from bringing their cannons to bear without hitting the John Adams. The warships slewed about awkwardly in the fading light.

  The situation didn’t improve with nightfall. “The moon shining against our sails & the light from our gun deck afforded them a sure mark at the distance of one mile,” wrote Henry Wadsworth. But the Tripolitans were poor marksmen and timid defenders. Had they been Americans, “they would have rowed out & completely wrecked our three ships.”

  A few days later, the captain of a French sloop stopped by the Enterprise as it was leaving Tripoli reported that the shelling had killed three Tripolitans and wounded five others. Among the wounded was the bashaw’s brother-in-law; he had lost his right arm.

  Thirty-five miles northwest of Tripoli, the Enterprise spotted ten small ships in one of the many small bays that dimpled the Tripolitan coastline, and signaled the New York and John Adams. By 5:00 P.M. on June 1, the three warships were anchored a mile from the craft. They were feluccas, full of grain. Morris contacted their captains, and four of them met with him on the New York. They claimed they were Tunisians. More than a little skeptical, Morris gave them until midnight to bring their craft alongside the New York, or he would burn them.

  With nightfall, more than 1,000 Tripolitan soldiers and cavalry massed on shore, racing their Arabian horses up and down the beach, waving muskets over their heads and showing off their equestrian skills. Lieutenant David Porter proposed a night attack on the grain ships. Morris rejected the plan, intending to abide by the midnight deadline he had set for the felucca captains to surrender their vessels. But he gave Porter permission to lead a reconnaissance sortie.

  At 8:00 P.M., Porter, Wadsworth, and eight other volunteers climbed into two boats and in the moonlight quietly rowed to within pistol range of the feluccas. They could hear the crewmen talking. Before long, a Tripolitan sentry spotted the scouting party, and gunfire blazed from the beach. Returning fire, the Americans rowed hastily to a rock rising from the water, beyond musket range from shore. The excitement from the brief firefight and their freedom from the supervision of higher-ups put the young officers and men in a lighthearted mood. Wadsworth clowned for them on the rock. “I stood on its summit & with my right hand extended towards heav’n took possession in the name of the United States,” he wrote. At midnight, they rowed back to the New York. The feluccas hadn’t budged from shore. The Americans would have to burn them.

  Morris ordered an attack early the next morning. Fifty officers, sailors, and Marines boarded seven boats commanded by Porter as the bright morning sun winked off the turquoise water and the sandy beach in the distance. The landing force neared the shore under the ships’ covering fire. Porter split his force, sending two manned boats loaded with combustibles to burn the feluccas and continuing to the beach with the other five.

  The enemy had spent the night building defenses; the Tripolitans crouched behind makeshift barricades made of boat sails and yards, and behind rocks and hillocks bordering the beach. Cavalrymen milled on the sand.

  The hour for battle had struck. The raiders waded ashore amid crackling small arms fire. Sailors and Marines had landed on Tripoli, the first U.S. amphibious landing on a hostile foreign shore.

  A cavalryman on a superb black steed cut showy circles on the beach, flourishing his rifle, as the Americans and Tripolitans exchanged gunfire. The high-spirited horseman galloped close to the Americans—too close, presenting an inviting target. “Several took aim at him: he plunged forward fell & bit the dust,” wrote Wadsworth, who was with the landing party. Cannon fire from the ships tore through the massing cavalry and foot soldiers.

  The defenders, who numbered at least 1,000, now concentrated their rifle fire on the shore party, whose main purpose was to divert the Tripolitans’ attention from the crews torching the feluccas. Fourteen Americans went down with wounds. Shot in both thighs, Porter continued to give orders. Before long, flames were shooting from the feluccas. The sailors and Marines on the beach scrambled back into their boats and pulled out. But they were too quick: The Tripolitans rushed in and were able to put out the fires before all the grain was alight. Despite his wounds, Porter begged Morris to allow him to return to finish the job. The commodore forbade him; it was too risky. The American squadron sailed away. The Tripolitans ran onto the beach, throwing handfuls of sand in the air defia
ntly.

  Unimpressed by Morris’ desultory skirmishes, Yusuf boasted to Nissen that if this was America’s idea of war, he would demand $500,000 for peace. In the bashaw’s mind, things could scarcely get any better. Tripoli had completed a rich harvest, the bashaw was loaded with cash from Sweden’s treaty, and European goods arrived almost daily. “What a glorious blockade,” Nissen remarked drily to Cathcart.

  Having failed to awe the bashaw with American arms, Morris decided to try diplomacy. Sailing into Tripoli harbor with his squadron, Morris went ashore June 7 to open a parley with the bashaw’s minister. The bashaw’s terms weren’t as stiff as Yusuf had told Nissen they would be, but they were plenty high: $200,000 for peace, $20,000 annual tribute, compensation for Tripoli’s war expenses, and annual shipments of military and naval stores. Wadsworth, who accompanied Morris, reported that the commodore replied huffily to the proposed terms that “Were the Combined World to make the demand it would be treated with contempt....” The bey’s secretary took offense, “asking whether the com‘r came on shore to laugh at him....” The talks veered into shoal waters. With Morris still ashore, the bashaw lowered the white flag of truce, a signal for hostilities to resume. The commodore was perilously close to becoming the bashaw’s prisoner—and might have, if the French consul hadn’t interceded. He informed the bashaw’s minister that he would guarantee Morris’s honor, and that behind him stood Bonaparte and the might of France. Sobered by the invocation of the dreaded Napoleon, the bashaw and his officers reconsidered. The next morning, the white flag was run up the flagpole again, and Morris returned unmolested to the New York.

  Morris left Tripoli, never to return. He had pressing business in Malta—a new son. Mrs. Morris had given birth on June 9. Later in the month, still enjoying his family’s company in Valletta, the commodore lifted the blockade altogether. Consul Davis had passed along an unsubstantiated report that Tunis and Algiers were merging their corsair fleets for possible war. Morris assumed that U.S. shipping would be their target, and he wanted all of his warships on hand in case he had to fight a new enemy. The John Adams, Adams, and Enterprise abandoned the Tripoli blockade and assembled at Malta with the rest of the squadron.

  But Davis’s report proved false.

  Before quitting Tripoli, the squadron spotted a 22-gun Tripolitan polacre at anchor in a deep, narrow bay east of Tripoli. The Enterprise and John Adams moved in, lofting shells at it. The enemy crew abandoned ship. Rodgers was readying a boarding party when a boat was seen returning to the polacre with the captain and some crewmen. Rodgers resumed the shelling, and the polacre crewmen again prepared to abandon ship, firing broadsides to clear their cannons and striking their flag.

  And then, without warning, the polacre exploded with an earsplitting roar, shattering into thousands of pieces. Enemy troops on the beach collapsed with shrapnel wounds. Debris rained down on the harbor. The dazzled Americans watched as the polacre’s main and mizzen masts rocketed 150 feet straight into the air—yards, shrouds, and stays fluttering. Rodgers’s amazement jumps off the pages of his report to Morris: “The destruction of the before mentioned vessel, altho‘ awful, was one of the Grandest Spectacles I ever beheld.—After a Tremendous Explosion there appeared a Huge Column of smoke, with a pyramid of Fire darting Vertically through its Centre interspersed with Masts, Yards, Sails Rigging, different parts of the Hull & etc. and the vessel in an instant dashed to Attoms.”

  After assembling in Malta, the squadron cruised leisurely along the southern European coast. Morris’ men were spoiling for a fight even if their commander wasn’t. The New York pulled over a 6-gun galley, thinking she was Tripolitan. To the crew’s disappointment, she was Tunisian. They let her go. Noted Wadsworth: “Had she been a Tripoline she would have been a prize for the Men were all hot for Battle, friends or foes.—The sight of a Turban soon enrages them.” But there were few turbans at Messina, Naples, and Leghorn.

  Elba, the island where Bonaparte would be exiled in eleven years, furnished unwelcome excitement. The trigger-happy French garrison fired on the Adams. Captain Hugh Campbell unwisely sent Lieutenant John Dent ashore to request an explanation, and the young officer was detained. The French commander arrogantly demanded compensation for each shot he had fired at the Adams before he would release Dent. Unlike the Tunisians, who had only wanted free gunpowder when they demanded a barrel for every cannon salute, the French wanted to slap the Americans in the face. With no other options but leaving Dent or recovering him by force and starting a war with France, Morris paid the bill angrily: 4 crowns, 6 francs. Wrote Wadsworth in his journal, “thro‘ his [Campbell’s] damned foolishness our country is insulted & we pay for it too.”

  The John Adams convoyed merchantmen to Gibraltar, and the Enterprise went on a mail run to Malta. The Adams transported Cathcart from Leghorn to Tunis to become the new U.S. consul, succeeding Davis, and then joined the John Adams at Gibraltar.

  Sailing on alone in the New York, Morris unexpectedly met the Adams again at Malaga. Campbell handed him a letter dated June 21 from the Navy secretary. “You will upon receipt of this consider yourself Suspended in the command of the Squadron on the Mediterranean Station and of the Frigate The New York.”

  Rodgers was given temporary command of the squadron until Preble’s arrival.

  Jefferson had decided to recall Morris. Two years of inaction following Sterett’s bloody defeat of the Tripoli had caused the president’s initial enthusiasm for the war to congeal into icy frustration. Since 1784, he had longed to show Europe and Barbary that America was different, that it wouldn’t bow to the haughty deys, beys, bashaws, and emperors, or tremble before their ragtag corsairs. For twenty years, he had wanted to chastise their insolence. After two years of war, he was no nearer that goal than when Commodore Dale had left the Virginia Capes in June 1801. The Mediterranean squadron convoyed; it did not fight. Jefferson was hearing that the blockade was little more than a fiction. If anything, the caution displayed by his two commodores had reassured the Barbary rulers that they had nothing to fear from America. And Morris’s long silence from the Mediterranean had only confirmed the president’s suspicions that his commodore was nothing more than a timeserver.

  Dissatisfaction with Morris had first spiked in March, when Eaton and Murray returned to Washington. Jefferson and his Cabinet listened to their complaints about the conduct of the war. Eaton had observed sourly to the U.S. House speaker that Morris “never burned an ounce of powder; except at a royal salute at Gibraltar in celebration of the birthday of his British Majesty.” The Cabinet met on April 8 to discuss Mediterranean affairs, but made no decision regarding Morris. Then, in May, Morris’s so-called action plan had reached Washington. Its vagueness convinced Jefferson and his officers that Morris had to go. On June 16, the president asked Navy Secretary Robert Smith to bring the commodore home.

  Morris was court-martialed. The panel of three fellow officers—Captains Samuel Barron and Hugh Campbell and Lieutenant John Cassin, superintendent of the Washington Navy Yard—and Judge Advocate Walter Jones, Jr. found Morris guilty of “inactive and dilatory conduct” in April 1804. Morris was faulted for leaving Tripoli unblockaded for months, for not appearing off Tripoli for an entire year, and for botching the few actions that he did direct. Morris’s conduct, the panel concluded, had failed to enhance America’s reputation. “This is to be ascribed, not to any deficiency in personal courage on the part of the commodore, but to his indolence and want of capacity.” In his defense, Morris said he was proud that no U.S. property or citizens were captured on his watch. The court martial resulted in his dismissal from the Navy.

  During Morris’s last days in the Mediterranean, Algerian corsairs attacked a Royal Navy frigate off Malta. The British ship managed to escape into Valletta Harbor, where two British men-of-war and a frigate immediately put to sea, chased down the corsairs, and sank several of them.

  Bobba Mustapha retaliated by ordering every English subject in Algiers imprisoned. When Lord Horatio
Nelson, admiral of the Mediterranean fleet, learned of this, he sailed to Algiers harbor with seven frigates. Without preamble, the British warships opened fire on the city with shells and “hot shot” that ignited fires everywhere. With flames blossoming throughout his city and buildings crashing down, Bobba offered to negotiate. Nelson ignored the offer. The heavy bombardment continued, and damage began to mount exponentially. The panicked dey sent a second embassy urging a parley. Nelson responded this time—with demands of his own. The dey must free all the British prisoners, pay a fine, promise never to insult British honor again, and compensate British citizens for any losses. Bobba agreed to everything.

  For anyone paying attention, it was a textbook demonstration of how to deal with a belligerent Barbary regency.

  Eaton, for one, certainly would have appreciated Nelson’s forceful action. In February 1803, he had written that it was “absolutely necessary that the United States should once, and at once, show themselves on the Barbary, and not European coast; and in a manner to make themselves known.”

  Heading the third U.S. squadron that would soon arrive in the western Mediterranean, Commodore Edward Preble likewise would have applauded Nelson’s swift reprisal, as well as Eaton’s prophetic words.