Miracles and Massacres: True and Untold Stories of the Making of America

4

The Barbary War: A Steep Price for Peace

Chambers of Abd al-Rahman

London, England

March 28, 1785

The ambassador shifted in his seat. It had been twenty minutes and mysterious odors were beginning to waft into the waiting room from the kitchen. He impatiently glanced at the Arabic script and mosaic tiles covering the walls and heard his stomach growl. He missed his Virginia plantation and the meals his slaves cooked for him.

The ambassador was a man of contradictions. He was a revolutionary, but he’d never fired a gun in anger. He was a profligate spender and chronic debtor, but he hated government expenditures and fought ferociously against a national debt. And he was a well-known slaveholder, who was also his country’s most eloquent advocate for liberty and equality.

The only contradiction that currently mattered, however, was Thomas Jefferson’s attitude toward the ongoing hostage crisis in the Mediterranean. Hundreds of American sailors, the victims of pirates backed by petty dictators on the Barbary Coast, were languishing in North African prisons. These pirates had also confiscated thousands of dollars’ worth of ships and goods. Jefferson hated the Europeans’ policy of ransoming their hostages and buying peace by bribing the marauders, but he was equally distrusting of the strong central government that would be required to build a navy strong enough to protect American commerce with force.

At last, a figure approached, silhouetted against the arched hallway. Jefferson stood and turned his tall, thin figure toward Abd al-Rahman, the personal representative of the Pasha of Tripoli, Ali the First. Though nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, Tripoli was a quasi-independent state that, like Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco, had been harassing American ships.

Rahman wore a flowing white robe and dark turban. His scarred and pocked face reflected the brutal land he’d left behind. After some brief pleasantries, Rahman turned to the matter at hand, alternating his language between Italian, Spanish, and French, depending on which word he remembered first as he struggled to translate from his native Arabic. “The United States is our enemy,” he said, with a candor Jefferson had not been expecting. “Peace is possible, but peace has a price. One hundred eighty-three thousand guineas, to be exact. Otherwise, we will extract our fee by continuing to pillage your ships.”

Jefferson converted guineas to dollars in his head. The total owed to Tripoli and the surrounding Barbary States would approach $1 million. That was one-tenth the entire annual budget of the United States.

“Monsieur Rahman, our countries are being drawn toward a universal and horrible war,” Jefferson replied in flawless French, speaking slowly to make sure the Pasha’s envoy understood him. “We have no interest in sending soldiers across the Atlantic to fight your men.”

Rahman took a deep breath. He understood Jefferson’s words just fine but doubted that the young republic this man represented was really prepared to stand behind them. Far larger nations with far stronger militaries had chosen to pay for peace. He had no doubt that this one would as well.

“It is written in the Koran,” Rahman said, “that all nations without acknowledged Islamic authority are sinners. As Muslims, it is our right and duty to make war upon whomever we can find and to make slaves of all we can take as prisoners.”

Jefferson knew before he’d even arrived that he, as the United States Ambassador to France, was unlikely to succeed where the Ambassador to Britain, his friend John Adams, had already tried and failed. And now, as he listened to Rahman lecture him about the Koran and infidels and slaves, Jefferson knew he’d been right.

Dartmouth College

Five years later: August 1, 1790

There was no doubt that William Eaton liked the girl. He probably even loved her. But the line between love and infatuation was a bit too fine for the twenty-six-year-old recent college graduate. He had courted her, kissed her, and proposed to her. He would gladly promise to love her and honor her. But he wouldn’t obey her. Frankly, he wasn’t ready to obey anyone. So when this girl, his college sweetheart, said she’d only marry him if he promised to stay in New England and forgo his plans of returning to the army, he had no choice but to give up on her.

“My dear,” he said, kissing her cheek, “no man will hereafter love you as I do—but I prefer the field of Mars to the bower of Venus.”

A few years later, William Eaton joined the U.S. Army.

Washington, D.C.

Eleven years later: March 4, 1801

The inaugural address was eloquent. How could it not be? Even the new president’s fiercest enemies—he had many of them—had to admit that Thomas Jefferson had a way with words.

“We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists,” he told the audience gathered in the Senate chamber that day. The high-minded sentiment was quintessential Jefferson.

As Jefferson took office, a familiar problem nagged at him. His meeting with the Pasha’s representative sixteen years earlier had only led to another in a long line of expensive bribes. By 1801, the young republic was spending approximately 20 percent of its annual budget paying off the Barbary dictators. It sent ships brimming with gold, precious stones, lumber, spices, cannons, and powder in return for safe passage, but the bribes only invited even more aggression. Ships were still being captured, loot confiscated, and sailors held hostage for ransom.

The Barbary appetite for riches was apparently insatiable.

Jefferson distrusted the Barbary dictators and disliked appeasing them. He believed that war was, in the long run, more economical and more honorable than bribery. He knew there was no end to the demand for money, nor any security in their promises. Blackmail, he believed, would have to be replaced by gunpowder and cannonball.

But Jefferson’s actions were not always as resolute as his words. As George Washington’s secretary of state, he had personally overseen a policy of ransom and tribute to the Barbary states. As the champion of rural farmers, he had long opposed the creation of a navy and, in fact, was planning to decommission warships built to patrol the Barbary Coast. The budget, after all, had to be balanced.

Tunis

May 15, 1801

The short, muscular consul to Tunis was, after all these years, still looking for another fight. As a boy, the excitable lad had run away from home to fight the British. As a young man, he had chosen the U.S. Army over his would-be fiancée. And now, after service in the Indian war, a court-martial for disobedience, and a dishonorable discharge from the army, William Eaton had a new war in mind. This would be a war to accomplish a task America had never before tried: regime change.

Eaton’s mood today was even more bellicose than usual. The blue-eyed, bulldog-faced consul had just heard news of an attack on the American consulate in Tripoli. Without a Tripolitan Congress to pass an official declaration of war, the Pasha’s soldiers had followed their traditional process of chopping down the flagpole at the U.S. consulate.

For the first time in its history, America found itself at war in a foreign land.

William Eaton could not have been happier.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Two years later: June 13, 1803

William Ray was having a bad run of luck. Over the past few years, he had lost a string of jobs as a newspaper editor, schoolteacher, and general-store owner. Then, to top it all off, he’d found his girlfriend in the arms of a stranger—a Frenchman who, unbeknownst to Ray, was her husband.

After heavy drinking at a succession of pubs, the morose, frail thirty-four-year-old stumbled down to the banks of the Delaware River. His life a mess, he was ready to drown himself in the river’s muddy waters but something made him pause. It was a noise, distant but steady: the beating of a drum.

His curiosity piqued, Ray looked down the river in the direction of the sound. Through the fog he saw the hulking outline of the largest warship he had ever seen. Perhaps because he could think of nothing better to do, or perhaps because he wasn’t yet ready to meet his maker, Ray staggered along the riverbank toward the ship.

When he neared his destination—a thirty-eight-gun frigate with U.S.S. PHILADELPHIA stenciled in large letters on its side—he discovered a man in a blue and red uniform standing on the dock looking for recruits. “See the world!” shouted the Marine over the banging of the recruiting drum. “Serve your country and see the world!”

At the time, there were fewer than five hundred United States Marines, and it was not difficult to see why. Their pay was the lowest in the American military; their duties—mainly policing sailors and preventing mutiny—were the least glamorous; and their nickname was curious: leathernecks. The term had come from their dress uniforms, which included tall, stiff leather collars that made it difficult for a Marine to turn his head, or, more important, to lose it to the blade of a Barbary pirate’s saber.

At that moment, however, none of those things really mattered to William Ray. Guaranteed meals, shelter, and a distraction from his duplicitous girlfriend were all the compensation he needed.

What do I have to lose? he thought as he shook hands with the Marine and boarded the ship for a personal tour.

Washington, D.C.

July 1, 1803

Thomas Jefferson rubbed his temples. The candles didn’t shed enough light to prevent his aging eyes from straining, and it was starting to give him a headache. Everyone else in the executive mansion had already gone to bed.

Jefferson had spent the day wrangling with the domestic problems of state, but by evening he had turned his attention to international troubles. Chief in his mind was the situation on the Barbary Coast. It had been more than two years since the Pasha attacked the U.S. consulate in Tripoli and declared war on them, and, so far, the American war effort was going nowhere.

The first squadron Jefferson sent to blockade the enemy port had returned before its timid leader even put up much of a fight. The second squadron’s leader, a dilettante named Commodore Richard Morris, had spent more time at parties than at sea. All the while, gold and hostages kept disappearing into the black hole that was Tripoli.

Now what? Jefferson heard the advice of his bitterly divided cabinet members in his head. Robert Smith, his hawkish Secretary of the Navy: “Nothing but a formidable force will effect an honorable peace with Tripoli.” Albert Gallatin, his dovish Secretary of the Treasury, had the opposite view: “I sincerely wish you could empower our negotiators to give, if necessary for peace, an annuity to Tripoli.”

Jefferson rubbed his temples again. Damned pirates, he thought. We have enough problems to worry about here. From debates over the size of the national debt and tensions with some American Indian tribes, to congressional ratification of the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson already had his hands full domestically.

After a few more torturous minutes Jefferson made a decision: He’d send one more squadron. He had heard good things about a frigate christened the USS Philadelphia. The name was a good sign: Philadelphia was where the colonies had voted to take a stand against tyranny; perhaps the Philadelphia would finally take a stand against piracy. In either case, Jefferson was determined to not go down in history as the first American president to lose a war.

Mediterranean Sea

Off the North African Coast

Aboard the USS Philadelphia

October 31, 1803

The wooden decks were bleached white from the hot Mediterranean sun. The sails on the three masts strained against the riggings in the stiff breeze off the Sahara. The yellow sands of North Africa that stretched endlessly south were now just a mile or two away.

These were the shores of Tripoli.

William Ray had heard all the stories about the desolation, the punishing climate, and the inhospitable people—many of whom were Muslim holy warriors who made no secret of their hostility to infidels.

Three months at sea had taken a toll on the crew of the Philadelphia. Morale was dragging and brotherly love was in short supply. The salt tack was mealy and the grog perilously low. The holds emanated a pungent stench of old seawater, rotten fish, and body odor, all tinged with excrement. The smell generated by 307 men crammed into three decks on a 157-foot vessel made many sailors retch and heave. They grumbled in hushed tones about making it back home before Christmas and before the winter gales off Greenland made the long voyage even more hellish.

Making matters worse, the men felt useless. Like all the troops fighting in the war against Tripoli, they had done little to assert American power, free American hostages, or protect American ships. The men of the Philadelphia were fighting in a war stuck in the mud.

Ray, lost in thought as he stared off at the distant shore, heard a shout from the crow’s nest. “Enemy ship ahead, port side!” He looked to the left, and saw, a mile or so in the distance, the Philadelphia’s prey: a small ship flying the colors of Tripoli. This, no doubt, was one of the marauders guilty of harassing merchant vessels in the area. There had been little fighting during the Philadelphia’s three months at sea. Now, William Ray thought, adrenaline coursing through his veins, perhaps that was about to change.

The eighteen cannons along the leeward side were locked into position as the Philadelphia quickly closed the distance to the enemy ship. “Full speed ahead!” ordered the captain.

They were close enough for Ray to now make out the panicked faces aboard the Tripolitan vessel ahead. These pirates knew what was about to happen next: the Philadelphia would pull alongside and unleash a fierce volley of cannonballs that would tear into them and likely send their ship to the bottom of the Mediterranean.

A smile formed on William Ray’s face as he thought of all the terror these pirates had inflicted on his countrymen. This would be payb—CRACK! His thoughts were interrupted by the piercing sound of splintering wood. The Philadelphia lurched to a stop, Ray and the sailors around him spilling forward from the sudden reversal of momentum, some falling over onto the deck and into the ocean below.

Ray looked over the side of the warship and saw a vast reef in the shallow water. They were stuck—dead in the water.

The Tripolitan pirates in their smaller, lighter ship had known the reef was there and had baited the Philadelphia right into it.

Ray looked back at the pirates and realized instantly that he’d been wrong: It wasn’t panic he had seen on their faces.

It was anticipation.

Tripoli

Two months later: December 25, 1803

After the Philadelphia had beached itself on the reef, Tripolitan ships had surrounded it, leaving the captain no option except surrender. Relieved of their uniforms, the sailors and Marines were brought, naked and shivering, into port and jailed. The Pasha of Tripoli renamed the ship The Gift of Allah.

William Ray and hundreds of other U.S. sailors and Marines were his prisoners.

Now, almost two months into their captivity, Ray stood with an empty stomach in the bitterly cold ocean, shoveling sand from the seafloor. The Pasha’s cruel slave masters seemed to take joy in the prisoners’ suffering. Each day, from sunrise through midafternoon, the Americans were kept in the ocean without so much as a morsel of bread. When men fainted from exhaustion, the guards beat them until they somehow found the strength to rise again.

In the afternoon, the sailors and leathernecks were usually given some water and black bread. As they ate, Ray and the others tried everything possible to get warm, from clapping their hands to running in place. They were then returned to the freezing water to work until sunset. Bed was a stone floor covered in tiny rocks. They slept in the same cold, wet clothes they worked in.

William Ray had not always been a praying man, but on this night his plea was solemn and sincere. “Dear God,” he whispered, “I pray that I might never experience the horrors of another morning.” Ray thought back to that night on the bank of the Delaware River and wished that instead of turning his head toward the sound of the drum, he’d stuck it under the rushing water.

Mediterranean Sea

Off the North African Coast

Aboard the USS Essex

February 16, 1804

Stephen Decatur paced from starboard to port and back, unable to hide his anxiety. His commodore had asked him to undertake a suicide mission. Always the loyal officer, Decatur hadn’t hesitated to accept. When he asked his crew for volunteers, none of them had hesitated, either.

“We are now about to embark on an expedition which may terminate in our sudden deaths, our perpetual slavery, or our immortal glory,” he said to the sixty-seven men gathered on the deck of the USS Essex.

At sunset that evening, Decatur and his men—all dressed as Maltese sailors—left their frigate and boarded an aptly named ketch called the Intrepid. The Intrepid would attract less notice than the Essex both because of its smaller size and because, as a ketch that had been previously captured from the enemy, it would not look to the Tripolitans like a threat.

The course was set for the port of Tripoli, only a few miles in the distance. At nine thirty the silhouette of the city’s ramparts, dimly lit by lanterns, appeared on the horizon. A few minutes after that, the three masts of the captured USS Philadelphia, now The Gift of Allah, came into view. They glided silently forward, knowing that if Tripoli’s sentries were alerted they didn’t stand a chance.

“Man hua?” a voice cried out. Who goes there?

Decatur didn’t speak any Arabic, but his helmsman did. He yelled back that they were Maltese traders seeking port for the night.

“Tayyib.” Very well.

With the wind dying down in port, the sixty-foot ketch coasted on its own momentum toward the docks. Its destination was not, however, any slip.

It was the Philadelphia.

Silent, except for the heavy breathing of the crew and the lapping of water against the hull, the ketch maneuvered alongside the great warship. It’s a shame it has come to this, Decatur thought.

His men grabbed the cannon nozzles of the Philadelphia and affixed ropes to the hull.

“Board now,” Decatur whispered. The sailors clambered over the gunnels.

“Amreeki!” Shouts rang out from ship—Americans! Twenty Tripolitan guards on board the Philadelphia had seen Decatur’s men. They were swiftly silenced with muskets, but the secret was out.

Decatur’s men turned the Philadelphia’s great cannons toward the city, launching volley after volley and making quick work of the clay and brick buildings in port. Then they lit a fuse to the ship’s store of gunpowder and jumped back aboard the ketch.

Whether it was called the Philadelphia or The Gift of Allah, the once-mighty warship, now burning from bow to stern, would soon be of no further use to anyone.

U.S. Capitol

Washington, D.C.

March 26, 1804

The president appeared to be enjoying himself at this most unusual party. Two years ago, supporters had sent Thomas Jefferson a twelve-hundred-pound block of cheese. Today, starting at noon, Jefferson—with the help of an equally massive loaf of bread and an open invitation to the public—expected to finally finish it off.

Guests at the Capitol ranged from farmers to fishermen, politicians to proletarians, and slaveholders to, according to one senator, their slaves. Some came for the cheese, which had become famous, others came for the alcohol, which was in great supply, but William Eaton was there for something else.

“Mr. President,” said the former consul to Tunis, several hours into the festivities, “if I could just have a moment of your time.”

Jefferson, Eaton knew from watching closely, had already enjoyed a few drinks. Maybe a few too many. But perhaps, he thought, the president’s temporary reduction in inhibitions might work to Eaton’s advantage. Perhaps he had caught Jefferson at just the right time.

“Of course,” said the self-styled president of the common man. Hearing from his people was, along with the consumption of the large block of cheese, the purpose of today’s party. If he was looking down on Eaton, it was only because his excitable guest was six inches shorter.

After a brief introduction, Eaton jumped right into the matter on his mind. “Sir, the capture of the Philadelphia is the latest outrage in a war we are losing.” If Jefferson was taken aback by Eaton’s abruptness, he didn’t show it. He had, after all, read equally blunt appraisals of the war effort.

“Our navy doesn’t have enough ships to win this war,” Eaton continued. “And our commodores don’t have enough boldness. The last commodore spent seventeen months in the Mediterranean but only nineteen days before the enemy’s port! A fleet of Quaker meetinghouses would have done just as well!”

The president tried to interrupt Eaton, but he was just getting warmed up. Interspersing his passionate plea with lines he had delivered to congressmen a month earlier, Eaton told Jefferson, “There is no limit to the avarice of the Barbary princes. Today Tripoli demands three million dollars. Next year the Pasha will want ten million. Like the insatiable grave, they can never have enough. The solution is not to be found in blockades and bribes but in a change of regime!”

Jefferson, even in his state of mild inebriation, appeared skeptical. Eaton pushed. “The project is feasible! I have met a man named Hamet Qaramanli, who is the rightful Pasha.” Nine years earlier, Hamet’s younger brother, Yussef, locked Hamet out of his own palace in Tripoli. In one day, he had lost his throne, his country, the loyalty of his brother, and the company of his wife and children, who had become Yussef’s first hostages.

“He is an enemy of piracy,” Eaton continued. “He is a friend of America. He belongs on the Tripolitan throne. And with your support, I can put him there.”

“Is that so?” asked a still-doubtful president.

“I can march with Hamet Qaramanli from Cairo to Tripoli. His people will rally to his flag. With an Arab army, we can attack by land and put a true friend on the throne. He will release the men of the Philadelphia and swear to never kidnap Americans. Nor will he demand a dollar of tribute from the United States. I need only some money and Marines.”

Jefferson knew the naval war was producing no results and he understood the public’s anger over the capture of the Philadelphia. He was angry, too.

It might be the alcohol, he thought to himself, but this Eaton fellow is making a lot of sense.

Tripoli

May 1, 1804

William Ray awoke as he had every day for the last seven months: in hell. Damp clothes, a grumbling stomach, and a full day of backbreaking work were ahead. Ray had no way of knowing that this day was different. Help was finally on the way.

Four days after the cheese party at the Capitol, President Jefferson had given William Eaton the title of “Agent of the United States Navy” and the promise of forty thousand dollars. His mission was to put Hamet Qaramanli on the Tripolitan throne.

William Ray had never heard of William Eaton or Hamet Qaramanli. The only “Qaramanli” he knew was his captor and torturer: Yussef, the Pasha of Tripoli. Unaware that a rescue plan was in place, Ray and his fellow prisoners remained careful never to offend their guards.

So far, they’d managed to escape the most extreme forms of torture. Simple beatings, however, were another matter. Today, for their captors’ amusement, one American slave had received the traditional Tripolitan beating: bastinados.

Ray watched with resignation as the Marine was thrown onto his back, his feet tied and raised above his head so that he was hanging upside down. Then a slave master slammed a wooden rod into the soles of his feet as hard as he could. Then he did it again, and again and again.

The slave cried out, but his pain only seemed to encourage them.

Another blow came.

And then another.

And then two hundred more.

How long, William Ray thought, will my country let us languish in this hell?

Five hundred miles east of Derna

Ten months later: March 12, 1805

Five days earlier, William Eaton, Hamet Qaramanli, and their army of approximately four hundred Arabs, European mercenaries, and United States Marines had left Alexandria, Egypt. Their first mission was to march across the desert to the city of Derna, a coastal jewel in the Pasha’s crown located about four hundred miles to the east of the capital, Tripoli City. If they could capture Derna, they knew they would demonstrate their ability to capture the city of Tripoli itself. For that reason, and because Eaton had promised many of the Arabs in his army that they could make money by looting Derna, it was essential to take this city first.

Derna was still five hundred miles away, but Eaton and his army were already in trouble. “Stop!” he yelled, “I will cut off the head of any man who dares to fire a shot!” Waving his scimitar above his head, Eaton found himself squarely in the middle of a closely packed mass of screaming, angry Christians and Muslims.

Earlier that week, Eaton—who had started to call himself “General” Eaton even though no one in his chain of command had approved the promotion—had lost an entire day trying to persuade his camel drivers, who continually asked for more money, to stay with the expedition. Without them there would be no way to bring along the food and supplies necessary to make the rest of the trip.

Money, however, was becoming an issue. The self-proclaimed general had already pledged $100,000 to the ninety Tripolitans, sixty-three European soldiers of fortune, 250 Bedouin accompanying Hamet, eight leathernecks, and a lone navy midshipman on the journey. These promises more than doubled the budget President Jefferson had authorized, but Eaton was sure he could pay his bills once Derna and Tripoli were captured and looted.

Today’s crisis began with a rumor that the citizens of Derna had rebelled against the Pasha and were waiting for Hamet to arrive and seize power. Excited by the news, Hamet’s Tripolitans fired their guns into the air in celebration. The Bedouin camel drivers, who lagged behind the rest of the group, heard the gunfire and assumed the makeshift army was under attack by other Bedouin. Rather than coming to their defense, the camel drivers rushed ahead, intending to grab a share of the loot. Eaton’s European soldiers of fortune, unsure why they were being attacked, formed a defensive line to fend off the charging camel drivers.

In the midst of the confusion and chaos, Eaton ran out between his camel drivers and soldiers, waving his scimitar and demanding they hold their fire. As he explained the situation—a false rumor and a misguided celebration—silence fell over his army. The Bedouin drivers backed away and catastrophe was temporarily averted. This dysfunctional group of Marines and mercenaries had survived to march another day.

Three hundred miles east of Derna

March 18, 1805

William Eaton’s army had now been marching for eleven days. Their supply of food was ample, and the water wells in this region were plentiful, but so, unfortunately, was his men’s distrust of each other.

This night, it was about to get even worse.

A pilgrim traveling from Morocco to Mecca brought news that the Pasha was sending an eight-hundred-man army to defend Derna. The garrison at Derna was already more than twice the size of Eaton’s army. If the Pasha’s reinforcements beat them to the city, its fort and barricades would be virtually impregnable. If Eaton’s army couldn’t get in, it wouldn’t be able to loot the city, and his Arab soldiers would likely quit.

Eaton’s instinct was to march faster, but his Arab allies refused. They’d been promised that the U.S. Navy would support the attack on Derna with a bombardment. Now they demanded that Eaton send an advance scout ahead to see if the American ships had arrived. When Eaton refused, the Bedouin camel drivers left.

Eaton was livid. We have marched a distance of two hundred miles, he lamented in his journal, through an inhospitable waste of a world. Over burning sands and rocky mountains, Eaton had held together his band of misfits by begging, borrowing, and bribing. Earlier that day, he had met the Bedouin’s latest demand for more money by borrowing $673 from the Marines and European mercenaries, promising to repay them when they rendezvoused with the U.S. Navy. Now, despite having been paid, they were gone.

Once again, Eaton had no choice but to comply with their demands. Reluctantly, he sent a scout ahead to look for American ships. The next day, enough of the camel drivers returned to allow the ragtag army to continue its march toward Derna.

Tripoli

March 29, 1805

William Ray was in his seventeenth month of captivity. His living conditions remained foul. His daily labor remained backbreaking. His captors remained merciless.

As Ray walked by the gates of Tripoli, daydreaming of a rescue that seemed to grow more unlikely by the day, he spotted two African slaves, straw rope wrapped around their necks, still alive, swinging from the city gates.

“What was their crime?” he asked a fellow captive.

“Accused of murder and robbery. But they probably didn’t do anything worse than anger the Pasha.”

Ray didn’t doubt this. The Pasha seemed to be in control over everything except his own erratic and violent whims. “How long have they been hanging there?”

“About two hours,” said the sailor. “Two hours in the sun wearing nothing but a shirt. They’ll die in another hour or two, but the birds and bugs will get to feast on them first.”

130 miles east of Derna

April 10, 1805

The meat was gone, as was the bread. After thirty-four days of marching, all that was left was rice. And distrust.

“I have heard a rumor that you aim only to use me for the purpose of obtaining a peace with my brother,” Hamet told Eaton.

“That’s absurd,” Eaton replied. He wanted to free the prisoners from the Philadelphia, but he wouldn’t trade Hamet for them. Nor would he trade Hamet for a peace treaty. Any peace that ended with the Pasha still on the throne would be a short-lived and worthless one.

Besides, today was not a day for pessimism. The scout who’d been sent ahead to search for American ships had just returned with great news: they were just a week’s march ahead. Reinforcements were close—if only Eaton could keep his army together that long.

65 miles east of Derna

April 16, 1805

Eaton’s army, which had grown to more than six hundred men, was too weak to march. The new soldiers, most of them Bedouins who’d been attracted by the promise of payment and the prospect of looting Derna, had put a heavy strain on their supplies.

A few days earlier they’d finished their last ration of rice. The next day they had killed a camel for food.

The hunger exacerbated the distrust. Eaton was worried that the foreign soldiers might soon rebel against him for leading them into this debacle. And he still wasn’t sure if Hamet believed that he wouldn’t be used as a bargaining chip. The whole expedition seemed to be hanging by a thread.

That evening, a foreign soldier ran into camp, pointing frantically toward the ocean. Eaton ran to the shore and understood immediately. Out where the horizon met the sea, a ship had appeared.

A United States warship.

It would, Eaton knew, have guns, gold coins, and, most important, enough food to feed an army ten times the size of the one he currently had.

For the first time that month, Eaton and his men knew they would not go to sleep on empty stomachs.

At the gates of Derna

April 26, 1805

After five hundred miles, six weeks, and several near mutinies, William Eaton and his army had made it to the gates of the great port city of Derna. His rabble had not only survived intact, they had also beaten the Pasha’s reinforcements in the race to the city.

After issuing a “Proclamation to Inhabitants of Tripoli,” which described in detail the founding of the United States and informed the city’s Tripolitans that Hamet was their rightful ruler, Eaton wrote a short letter to Governor Mustafa, cousin of the Pasha and commander of the Pasha’s troops in Derna.

“Sir, I want no territory,” Eaton began. “With me is advancing the legitimate Sovereign of your country. Give us passage through your city and the supplies we need and you shall receive fair compensation.”

For once, Eaton’s promise of compensation was not wholly unrealistic. Navy ships were nearby—one of them being the ship that had come to Eaton’s rescue ten days earlier. If the governor opened the city to Eaton, the ships would bring him a healthy reward for his cooperation. If he fought, the ships would shell the city.

“Let no difference of religion induce us to shed the blood of harmless men who think little and know nothing,” Eaton told him. “If you are a man of liberal mind you will not have to think long about my propositions. Hamet pledges himself to me that you shall be established in your government. I shall see you tomorrow in a way of your choice.”

The governor’s terse reply did not take long to arrive, and it did not require much interpretation.

“My head or yours.”

Derna

April 27, 1805

The battle with Governor Mustafa’s forces was just over an hour old, but it was already turning into a catastrophe. Eaton’s army was pinned down at the southeastern edge of Derna by an enemy twice its size. As bullets flew past them from the barricades defending the city, Eaton’s men were approaching a state of panic. His European mercenaries were faltering and his Arab allies were ready to retreat.

Eaton, however, remained calm. He had waited his whole life for a battle like this. Decked out in the white, homemade officer’s uniform he’d designed himself and worn since leaving Alexandria, Eaton surveyed the scene. He tried to imagine what the great military minds of his favorite history books would do in this situation.

Ahead of him was a well-entrenched, superior enemy. To advance into Mustafa’s seemingly impregnable line was to invite death, but to remain pinned down and panicked was unacceptable. And to retreat . . . No. He caught himself. He would never entertain the thought. William Eaton had not crossed a desert and defied hunger, desertions, and near mutiny only to run from the first sight of bullets.

“Fix bayonets!” he yelled over the crash of the cannonballs launched from the naval ships on Eaton’s flank.

The word was passed down the line, disordered as it was. It was hard to hear over all the noise, and for a moment, it looked like the orders had been lost. Then, a few of the Marines, the ones closest to Eaton, attached the sharp blades to the ends of their muskets, and the rest of his misfit army followed suit. The next order was the one Eaton believed he was born to give.

“Charge!”

Racing ahead of his men, his eyes flashing with excitement, he sprinted for the barricades. He knew the eight blue-and-red-clad leathernecks would follow him, but he wasn’t sure about the others. The hired guns had barely followed him out of Alexandria; would they really charge with him into a hailstorm of musket fire?

The answer, Eaton quickly saw, was yes. Whether it was out of a selfish desire to loot Derna, a dream of putting Hamet in the Tripolitan throne, a fear of retreating and starving in the barren desert, or something else entirely, did not really matter. What did matter was that they were now following Eaton and the Marines, rushing headlong into a wave of heavy fire.

Their shouts came in at least half a dozen different languages, but they were all the same. “To Derna!” “To Tripoli!” And, in Arabic, “Hamet Qaramanli!” from those with their scimitars held high.

As bullets whizzed by Eaton’s head, he leapt over the barricade and into the enemy line, his army at his heels. An enemy soldier lunged at him with a bloody sword, but Eaton ducked, dropped to the ground, and rolled past his attacker. His foe spun around but was too slow. Eaton plunged his bayonet into the Arab’s stomach.

The leathernecks fired their muskets into the chests of the enemy at point-blank range. Through the cloud of noise and dirt, one unlikely reality was quickly becoming clear: Mustafa’s soldiers were panicking. They hadn’t expected the audacious bayonet charge and now they were in a mad rush to retreat.

The bravest enemy soldiers, Eaton saw through the chaos, were firing through the swirling dust, then running for cover, reloading and firing again. It was one of those soldiers who took direct aim at him. Eaton heard a “thwack!” and felt a piercing pain. The bullet had been aimed at his heart.

It had only missed by inches.

Eaton fell to the ground as his triumphant leathernecks, mercenaries, and Arabs—their swords and bayonets colored red with blood—rushed past him in pursuit of the retreating enemy. He clenched his teeth and wrapped his wound. His limp arm, which had taken the brunt of the enemy bullet, was not able to hold a musket any longer. Eaton drew his pistol and charged ahead, firing into any enemy soldier brave or foolish enough to still resist.

Finally, after four hours of fighting, Derna fell silent. Atop Derna’s highest flagpole, the Stars and Stripes flapped in the wind.

The city now belonged to the United States.

Eaton took a deep breath. He was pleased, but he wasn’t finished. He would not be satisfied until the same flag flew over the Pasha’s palace in Tripoli.

Derna

May 31, 1805

In the month after Derna fell, the enemy continued to fight. The Pasha’s late-arriving reinforcements surrounded the city and outnumbered Eaton’s force. But Eaton had something the Pasha’s troops did not: a navy. With warships supplying Eaton with food, weapons, and money, the Pasha’s troops soon began to realize that the American army could hold out for as long as it took. Many of the Pasha’s men deserted and one enemy commander even approached Eaton about defecting.

On this late spring morning, Eaton was pleased to see a new frigate, the USS Constellation, pulling up at the dock. An hour later, a messenger from the warship approached Eaton as he sat down for lunch.

After briefly exchanging greetings the messenger got right to the point. “Sir, I am here to advise you that President Jefferson has revised his orders.”

Eaton had expected news about additional weapons or troops. He was confused.

“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t quite know what you are talking about.”

The messenger continued: “When you took Derna, the Pasha quickly realized that he could lose the throne. So he sued for peace. He told President Jefferson that he would stop all attacks on American ships and release the Philadelphia prisoners in exchange for sixty thousand dollars. It is my duty to inform you that the United States government has decided to accept his offer.”

Questions raced through Eaton’s mind. Why would the United States allow a tyrant to remain on the throne when his defeat was imminent? Did they really expect him to live up to his word? What would happen to Eaton’s Arab allies? To Hamet?

The messenger, sensing Eaton’s apprehension, continued. “I am here under orders from the president to escort Hamet Qaramanli and all American troops to Sicily. I can also transport your European soldiers and a few of the Arabs. The rest must fend for themselves.”

Tripoli

June 4, 1805

William Ray had lived as a slave for nineteen months. He ate when the Pasha’s men said he could eat. He worked when the Pasha’s men ordered him to work, which was from sunrise to sunset, seven days a week. He slept when the Pasha’s men allowed him to sleep.

But today was different. When he’d woken up this morning, no one was there to drag him out to the sea.

The captain of the Philadelphia called together his former crew and told him what he’d learned: reports of a treaty. Details were still sketchy, but the Pasha had granted their release.

“We are free,” the captain told them. “And tomorrow, we’re going home!”

For the second time, William Ray’s life was saved from suicide—which he had contemplated many times in the last nineteen months—by the words of a sailor in the United States Navy.

At sea; Washington, D.C.; Sicily

June 20, 1805

William Ray and the men of the Philadelphia were emaciated and exhausted, but they were also elated. They were sailing home to the United States, where a hero’s welcome awaited them.

In Washington, Thomas Jefferson was triumphant. He was being heralded as the commander in chief that freed three hundred American hostages. Now he could use that success to reduce the size of the American navy and get the budget in order.

On the island of Sicily, Hamet Qaramanli was dejected, but grateful to William Eaton and his troops. As a token of his appreciation, Hamet presented Presley O’Bannon, the officer in charge of the departing Marines, with Hamet’s most prized possession: a weapon he had carried from Alexandria to Derna. Its slim blade was slightly curved. Its ornate handle was shaped like the letter J, and running the length of the sword—a scimitar, to be precise—were engraved Arabic words.

William Eaton, on the other hand, was not so grateful. In fact, he was bitter. He was willing to concede that the treaty with the Pasha was “more favorable and—separately considered—more honorable than any peace obtained by any Christian nation with a Barbary regency at any period within a hundred years.” But he raged at the opportunity that had been lost. “I firmly believe,” he later told a friend, “we would have entered Tripoli with as little trouble as we did Derna.”

EPILOGUE

Monticello; Washington, D.C.; Tripoli

June 1815

At seventy-two years old, Thomas Jefferson looked back on a life full of historic accomplishments. With the Declaration of Independence he had given his new nation its creed. With the Louisiana Purchase he had doubled its size. His ideas about religious freedom would inform the nation’s First Amendment, and his belief in small government would inspire generations of Americans to remain skeptical of centralized power.

The Barbary War was not, however, one of Jefferson’s finest moments. By allowing Pasha Qaramanli to remain on the throne, he had chosen compromise over victory. He had shown weakness, and that weakness had provoked more aggression. It was a great irony that, after a daring, five-hundred-mile march to Derna, the Pasha of Tripoli would keep his job, while many officers of the American navy would lose theirs.

In the ten years after the release of the Philadelphia prisoners, the Pasha had broken almost every term of the treaty. Tripoli and the other Barbary states had resumed their attacks on American ships. Now another U.S. president was again forced to deal with the situation.

At just five foot four and barely one hundred pounds, James Madison could appear, upon first impression, weak and frail. But his looks were deceiving. Madison built America’s first great navy. He led the United States to victory over Great Britain in the War of 1812. And he was determined to do what his country had failed to do ever since Thomas Jefferson met Abd al-Rahman in London: He would achieve peace through strength, not appeasement. Madison made it the “settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute.”

While Jefferson rested at Monticello, an armada was parked in the port of Tripoli with enough firepower to turn the city into rubble. One ship brought a personal message for the Pasha from James Madison himself. “The United States,” the president had written, “while they wish for war with no nation, will buy peace with none.”

The American captain who delivered the president’s message was Stephen Decatur, the same man who’d led the daring mission to destroy the USS Philadelphia. Decatur, at Madison’s behest, had also delivered the same ultimatum to the Barbary states of Algiers and Tunis.

After the capture of thirty-five American ships and seven hundred American hostages, the United States’ thirty-year war with the Barbary pirates was finally over. It had not ended with a bribe, or a treaty, but with a demand for peace, backed by a credible threat of overwhelming force.

Today, a scimitar modeled after the one given by Hamet to Presley O’Bannon hangs at the side of every United States Marine officer in dress uniform. The “Marines’ Hymn,” which is the oldest official song in the military, contains a reference to the war where American leathernecks first proved their incredible resilience:

To the shores of Tripoli.