SONS OF THE WAR OF 1812 TALK
BY
RICHARD M. BURR

PRESIDENT, NEW JERSEY CHAPTER, SONS OF THE WAR OF 1812

        This morning, I am going to talk on the span the years between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.

        Located in Woodbury, New Jersey, not far from where I live today, was the Woodbury Academy, a famous educational institution established in 1791. According to a newspaper article which I found, it was the first naval academy in the United States. Perhaps that is why James Lawrence (of "Don't give up the ship" fame) and Stephen Decatur attended. While attending the Academy, James Lawrence lived in his brother's home on Broad Street (now the Museum of the Gloucester County Historical Society) and Stephen Decatur boarded with Charles West (son of Thomas West) and his family in Westville then known as Buck Tavern. Because of Stephen Decatur's fame and his connection with that area, I have chosen to speak today about his exploits.

        I would now like to read an article from the Colonial Homes magazine, August 1991, entitled "The Barbary Pirates".

        The humbling of the Barbary pirates in 1804 signified to the world that the young United States was willing to fight for its interests abroad. This early triumph by a nascent American navy made a hero of Stephen Decatur, remembered for his toast, "Our county, right or wrong."

        The Barbary brigands plied the Mediterranean Sea. They seized the vessels of any flag, kept their cargoes, and sold their passengers and crews into slavery. They struck as much fear in travelers as international terrorists do today.

          Since 1550, they had operated under the protection of the Barbary States, which rimmed the coast of North Africa. The states were outposts of the Ottoman, or Turkish, empire administered in Constantinople. They included Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripoli. (Now part of Libya, the latter survives in the Marine Hymn, which recalls American battles "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.")

           The term "Barbary" derives from "Berber," the name of the Hamatic tribes that populated North Africa. The Barbary rulers received part of their support from their pirates. They extorted much of the rest from other countries in return for safe passage on the Mediterranean.

           By the late 1700's, the great commercial sea powers - Britain, France, and Holland -were giving regular subsidies to the Barbary States to protect shipping. Lesser nations paid only periodic tributes. Whenever a Barbary ruler needed cash, he declared war on a country by cutting down its consul's flagstaff. After losing several ships to rapacious pirates, the hapless nation usually negotiated a new peace treaty that called for an additional honorarium.

          Until the American Revolution, Britain's Royal Navy protected American ships from the Barbary pirates. After the war, U.S. vessels sailed the Mediterranean on their own.

          In 1792, the U.S. Senate approved an annual payment of $100,000 to Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, in addition to a ransom of $40,000 for enslaved American crews. When Algiers seized 11 U.S. ships the following year, President George Washington asked Congress for a naval force to deal with the marauders. Congress balked, lacking funds. In 1794, however, it finally authorized six frigates, with the proviso that their construction would stop should peace be negotiated.

          Then, incredibly, Congress agreed to another Barbary bribe, freezing the frigates on their building ways. Paid to Algiers, the bribe included a $1 million tribute and a 36-gun vessel for the pirates to use for more seizures.

          Such spinelessness simply encouraged other nations to engage in privateering. After French corsairs in the West Indies plundered 27 American ships, President John Adams dispatched three American commissioners to Paris. When the corrupt French Directory demanded 32 million Dutch florins to stop its piracy in the Caribbean, Commissioner C.C. Pinckney pounded the table and snarled, "No, and no again. Not a penny." Legend transformed his retort into "millions for defense but not a cent for
tribute."

         A public outcry against piracy swept the United States, and, in 1797, work resumed on the unfinished "Washington frigates." They became the first ships in the U.S. Navy.

          Congress spread the building of the vessels along the Atlantic coast, setting a pattern of distributing defense contracts for political reasons that exists to this day. Boston produced the 44-gun Constitution; Philadelphia, the 44-gun United States; and Baltimore, the 36-gun Constellation -all by the end of 1797. To man the ships, the navy recruited as rollicking and valorous a group as had ever taken to sea.

          In September, 1800, the 24-gun u.s. frigate George Washington arrived in Algiers with a tribute sent by the Adams administration. The ruler of Algiers ordered the ship on to Constantinople to pay an additional bribe to his sovereign, the Ottoman sultan. When the captain of the frigate refused, the ruler said, "You pay me tribute, by which you become my slaves.

      I have a right to order you as I may think proper." Under the ruler's guns, the George Washington hoisted the Algerian flag and delivered the bribe. This capitulation created a furor in the U.S. that had not diminished when President Thomas Jefferson took office the following January.

          Jefferson wanted to cut back the navy. He delayed doing so, however, when U.S. consuls in North Africa told him that the payment of extra tribute to Algiers had heightened the greed of other Barbary states. Yusef Karamanli, pasha of Tripoli, confirmed their warning when he declared war on the United States in 1801 and demanded $250,000.

          Vowing that further bribes would be "money thrown away," Jefferson ordered a four-vessel flotilla commanded by Richard Dale to sail for Tripoli. {Dale had been John Paul Jones's first lieutenant on the Bonhomme Richard, famed for whipping the British Serapis in 1779.) James Barron, a skilled but hot- tempered officer, was the flotilla's flag captain. Stephen Decatur served under Barron as first lieutenant.

          Jefferson instructed Dale to "chastise" the Barbary pirates for "their insolence by sinking, burning, or destroying their ships...wherever you shall find them." The first victim was a 14-gun corsair sent back to Tripoli with only one spar left intact. Historian Fletcher Pratt writes that "the commander of the corsair, one Mohammed Sous, was ridden through the streets backwards on a jackass and then thrashed to show what the Tripolitans thought of anyone who gave up to an American."

          The appearance of Dale's ships evoked expressions of friendship from the alarmed rulers in Algiers and Tunis. But the forces of the U.S. flotilla were incapable of sustained ground action, and Yusef continued his war.

          Jefferson then made a major mistake by appointing Richard v. Morris to lead a larger force against the Tripolitans. Morris lacked professionalism and brought his pregnant wife along. "She was by no means the only woman to accompany the squadron," Pratt says, "and some of her sisters on the lower decks were not so particular where they were confined." When Morris could not even control his brawling young officers, the president removed him from command.

          Edward Preble, a frosty-faced sea wolf from Maine, headed the next American force against the Barbary pirates, in 1803. Because of enlistment problems, he sailed with foreigners in his crews. Out of 165 men on the Constitution, his flagship, he said, "I do not believe I have 20 native Americans aboard." The 42-year-old Preble also complained that his officers were half his age: "They have given me nothing but a pack of boys."

          But the "boys" included many stalwarts. Among them was 25-year-old Stephen Decatur, commander of one of Preble's ships. Fearless, athletic, and handsome, he loved a scrap. Born in Sinnepuxent, Maryland, he had grown up in Philadelphia. At 14, he had defended his mother against a drunken ruffian, and the incident prefaced the bravado that was to mark his career.

          An indifferent student, Decatur attended the University of Pennsylvania for a year before joining the navy as a midshipman
 in 1798. He demonstrated a freewheeling style early on, when a Spanish ship fired on his gig. After rowing to the ship and finding that its captain had fled, Decatur left word that he would cut the cowardly scoundrel's ears off the next time they met.

         Decatur's daring would benefit Preble. Assembling his ships at Gibraltar, Preble sent the Philadelphia and Vixen to Tripoli. He then boldly led the others into the harbor of Tangier, the capital of Morocco. The Moroccan sultan wryly expressed gratitude for the visit of so fine a fleet and promised to honor all treaties with the United States.

          Then Preble received terrible news: The Philadelphia had struck an uncharted reef outside the harbor of Tripoli. While an outgoing tide rolled the frigate so that its cannons could not fire, Pasha Yusef's gunboats had seized the ship and towed her triumphantly into the harbor.

          This presented a challenge that Preble could not ignore. Making maximum use of his remaining fleet, he established a blockade that cut off shipments of corn from Europe to Tripoli. That winter of 1804, writes Pratt, the storms in the Mediterranean were so violent "that on many days the American flag was the only one at sea, but at sea it stayed."

          Preble could not allow the captured Philadelphia to remain intact, and Decatur came to his aid. On the night of February 16, 1804, Decatur led 70 young volunteers on a commando raid into Tripoli harbor. They used a captured ketch renamed the Intrepid and sailed to the Philadelphia, which the Tripolitans had manned in expectation of an attack. The pilot of the Intrepid called out in Arabic that his ketch had lost an anchor and asked to moor next to the warship for the night. "Yes," came the answer, and the Intrepid moved under the captured frigate's guns. As lines passed between the vessels, a lookout on the Philadelphia cried, "Americanos! Americanos!"

          Decatur's men swarmed aboard the frigate and used cutlasses to kill more than 20 Tripolitans as quietly as possible. Then the Americans set fire to the Philadelphia and escaped on the Intrepid. They slipped safely out of the harbor as the frigate exploded and the guns ashore opened up on them. Onlyone American suffered injuries. Decatur's exploit not only made him a hero but earned him a captain's commission. It moved Britain's Admiral Lord Nelson to praise "the most bold and daring act of the age."    

        On August 3, 1804, Decatur led a division of gunboats into Tripoli harbor and seized a Barbary warship. While towing his prize out to sea, he learned that his younger brother James had died from a shot that an enemy gunboat had fired after it had surrendered. Decatur pursued the craft, boarded her, and killed her captain in a hand-to-hand fight.

          Commodore Preble ordered another daring evening raid in Tripoli harbor on September 4, Lieutenant Richard Somers and 12 volunteers sailed on the Intrepid. loaded this time with 100 barrels of powder and 150 mortar shells. Somers and his men were to light the fuses for the explosives and escape in a small boat they had in tow. Shortly before 10 p.m., a great flash of light and a roar of thunder filled the harbor, transforming night into day. Somers and his crew never returned. Either the Intrepid blew up prematurely or Somers detonated the powder, killing all hands, rather than risk capture.

          The blast sent Yusef fleeing to the safety of a dungeon. Eager to end the war he had started, the pasha dropped his demand for an American tribute and accepted a $60,000 ransom for the enslaved crew of the Philadelphia. U.S. warships withdrew from North Africa waters, but the Barbary tale had not ended.

          Decatur returned home in 1805 and soon married Susan Wheeler, daughter of a prosperous merchant in Norfolk, Virginia. He then served in high navy posts.

          In 1807, the British frigate Leopold challenged the Chesapeake, a U.S. Navy vessel commanded by Decatur's former master, James Barron. When Barron would not relinquish Chesapeake crewmen whom the British said were deserters from the Royal Navy, the Leopold fired its guns, killing three Americans and wounding 18.

          Barron surrendered the Chesapeake under extreme duress but nevertheless faced a courtmartial. Asked to sit on the panel of judges, Decatur voted with the court to suspend Barron from the navy for five years without pay. He and the defendant had clashed before and despised each other. Their animosity eventually doomed Decatur.

          In the War of 1812, Decatur again proved to be a courageous and skillful naval fighter. He captured the British frigate Macedonia in 1812 and endured a brief period as a prisoner of war after a Royal Navy squadron overran his ship, the President, in 1815.

          In the meantime, the ruler of Algiers had seized another American ship and enslaved its crew. When the War of 1812 ended, President James Madison sent Decatur to Algiers with a ten-vessel armada.

          The American force destroyed the enemy's flagship, the 46-gun frigate Mashuda, in 20 minutes and then blew up a pirate sloop-of-war. Decatur went ashore personally and proposed curtly that the ruler sign a new treaty unprecedented in Barbary history. The pact stipulated that the United States would abolish all tributes and that the ruler would have to pay an indemnity for enslaving Americans. Aghast at this turnaround, the ruler dithered until Decatur threatened to sink every Algerian ship in the Mediterranean. As he spoke, the sails of several probable victims appeared at the mouth of the harbor.

        As Decatur's flagship, the Constitution, bared its guns, the unhappy ruler broke down and signed.

        The American squadron next visited Tunis and Tripoli, which also agreed to pay indemnities. Then Decatur sailed for home, leaving a fleet behind to ensure that the Barbary powers would not renege on agreements that he had dictated, as he said, "at the mouth of our cannon."

          Historian Pratt writes that "this was the real end of the North African piracies, for if a small power like the United States could thus (defy) them... they were no further use in restraining neutral commerce. The English and Dutch sent down a powerful combined fleet which nearly blew Algiers apart."

          Stephen Decatur became an even more popular hero. He and Susan lived in a house in Washington, D.C. and he used his
acclaim to lobby Congress effectively for a stronger navy. He often appeared at balls and dinners. During one state banquet, he raised his glass in a toast. "To our country," he said. "In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong." That felicitous phrase vastly increased his fame.

          After being appointed Navy commissioner, Decatur strenuously opposed James Barron's efforts to secure reinstatement to the service. Embittered, Barron challenged Decatur to a duel in 1820. Decatur, deferring to his opponent's bad eyesight, chose a distance of only eight paces and said that he would aim low to avoid a mortal injury. Both fired only once. Barron fell with a wound in his thigh. Decatur died from a shot in the chest.

          Decatur's funeral, on March 24, 1820, sent all official Washington into mourning. He had lived and fought bravely, not least in the brilliant naval campaigns against the Barbary powers.