The Pirate Coast(13)
They had kicked Eaton back to Treasury and back to James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, who had already nixed the key expense items. Eaton was between a rock and a pair of tight-fisted Republicans. This impatient man faced more lobbying and more delays. It was hard to imagine what could save William Eaton at this point.
Then news arrived that Tripoli had captured the USS Philadelphia, and 307 Americans were now slaves on the coast of Barbary.
The news had traveled fitfully indeed. The Boston Columbian Centinel broke the story on March 10, having received it from an American merchant ship that had departed February 3 from Cadiz, Spain, carrying a weeks-old London newspaper that had run an item from Italy datelined December 25. Now the shocking report spread down the eastern seaboard of the United States. The New York Evening Post picked it up on March 14, quoting from a letter carried aboard that merchant ship. “The officers [of the Philadelphia] are said to be treated with humanity but it is said the crew were stript immediately on their landing, even to a single shirt, and that they are on short allowance.”
Americans were appalled. This military fiasco and sudden hostage crisis brought the war home; the event clearly ranked among the nation’s worst disasters since the founding of the country.
Wasting no time, President Jefferson on Tuesday, March 20, addressed Congress with a call to arms, asking them to “increase our force and enlarge our expenses in the Mediterranean.” The National Intelligencer, which everyone knew acted as the house organ for Jefferson, ran a prominent item, headlined “Millions for Defense, but not a Cent for Tribute.” The piece countered the criticism of the Federalists that Jefferson and his Republicans were weak-kneed on military matters and boasted: “It is thus the present administration evinces its patriotism, and its energy; not by vain vaunting of prowess; but by actions, which will show the world that while the wish of the American nation is peace, she will not hesitate for a moment to make that power feel the vengeance of her arms, that dares, in violation of justice, to invade her rights.”
On Monday, March 26, the Senate hopped aboard the war effort, voting to increase import duties by 2.5 percent to raise $900,000 to send another squadron to the Mediterranean.
Navy ships would come out of drydock. Captains, lingering bored on half pay, would dust off uniforms. Stockyards would start salting beef for the long voyages. Preachers would sermonize about ransoming the prisoners.
On this same Monday, William Eaton sought out Thomas Jefferson at one of the most unusual populist rallies ever held in this country, a huge open-to-the-public party in a Senate meeting room.
Festivities began when servants carried in a “Mammoth Loaf” of bread, baked from an entire barrel of flour, and delivered it along with a large sirloin of roast beef and beer, wine, and hard cider.
(The significance of the “Mammoth Loaf” was that two years earlier, the women of a small town in Massachusetts had sent the president a 1,200-pound cheese to celebrate his tolerance of religious choice. The Federalists had tried to spoof Jefferson, dubbing the gift “Mammoth Cheese” since a Jefferson-funded archaeologist had recently unearthed the bones of a woolly mammoth in New York City. The joke backfired when Americans everywhere embraced the cheese as a fitting symbol of American hard work and political ideas.)
Now, the navy baker had made a Mammoth Loaf to help finish the Mammoth Cheese, of which large chunks still remained. At the stroke of noon, “people of all classes & colors from the President of the United States to the meanest vilest Virginia slave,” as one New England senator put it, crowded into the Capitol for dinner. Jefferson, in scruffy common-man clothes, pulled out a jackknife from his pocket and cut off a hunk of roast beef and some bread to eat and even had a drink of liquor. Apparently more than one drink; he was overheard comparing “the drunken frolic to the sacrament of the Lord’s supper.” The party continued after the dinner hour, and some senators sent the sergeant at arms to demand silence. One humorless senator, a former military officer, yelled at the mob, “If ever you are again guilty of the like, you shall be punished—I will inflict it—The Navy shall be brought up & kill you outright.”
Eaton during that chaotic afternoon was able to corner Jefferson just long enough to set up a meeting for four days later at the president’s house. On Friday, March 30, with war fever still lingering in the air like cannon smoke, Eaton finally got a chance for redemption. The president and his Cabinet, having waited for meddlesome Congress to leave town, authorized Eaton to go on a secret “enterprise” to the Barbary Coast, to aid the legitimate sovereign Hamet in attacking Tripoli by land. Eaton’s ultimate goal would be to free the American captives, impose terms of peace, and secure an ally in that dangerous region. “The President and his Cabinet Council . . . formed sanguine hopes of its success,” assessed Eaton later. This mission represented a dream assignment for Eaton, a chance to prove to the doubting politicians and navy men that backing Hamet would not only solve the Tripoli problem but also send a loud message of defiance along the entire Barbary Coast. According to Eaton, the president agreed to send to Hamet “on the score of a loan,” some field artillery, one thousand pistols and muskets, and $40,000. The loan angle was very Jeffersonian in its economy; if Hamet succeeded, he would be expected to repay the debt.