On May 26, 1804, President Jefferson met with his Cabinet (secretary of war, secretary of the navy, secretary of treasury, secretary of state, and attorney general). Very little evidence has survived of that meeting except for a scrap of paper of the president’s notes that Jefferson, in his seventies, saved while organizing his papers for posterity.
The snippet is a sort of Rosetta stone to decipher the meeting and Jefferson’s policy. The first part of the four-sentence note states: “What terms of peace with Tripoli shall be agreed to? If successful, insist on their deliverg. up men without ransom, and reestablishing old treaty without paying anything.”
Jefferson was evidently hoping that the United States would defeat Tripoli, and thereby not pay any ransom or tribute. From his other writings, it’s clear he also aspired to the higher purpose of teaching the Barbary pirates and all of Europe a lesson by defying extortion. (The phrase “state-sponsored terrorism” didn’t exist yet.) The president might have had another, subtler motive for wanting a military victory. The Federalist press had been needling him for years over what his critics called a moment of personal cowardice.
During the Revolutionary War, when he was governor of Virginia, Jefferson learned that an entire troop of British cavalry was headed for Monticello. With no American forces nearby, he retreated with his family via horse and carriage. “Would it be believed . . . ,” Jefferson acidly wrote years later, “it has been sung in verse and said in humble prose, that forgetting the noble example of the hero of La Mancha and his windmills, I declined a combat singly against a troop, in which victory would have been so glorious?” Maybe he did crave a military victory to erase the slander.
The next part of Jefferson’s cryptic little note deals with what to do in the event of defeat.
“If unsuccessful, rather than have to continue the war, agree to give 500 D[ollars] a man (having first deducted for the prisoners we have taken) and the sum in gross and tribute before agreed on.”
That meant that the Cabinet was setting $500 a man as the maximum ransom—in the event of military loss—and the United States would also pay a one-time sum and an annual tribute agreed to at an earlier Cabinet meeting. Back on April 8 of 1803, reeling from ineffective efforts by the U.S. Navy, the Cabinet had set a secret price for buying peace. They had agreed that Madison should write a letter giving the then U.S. consul James Leander Cathcart the go-ahead to offer Tripoli $20,000 for peace and $8,000 to $10,000 a year after that. Madison, however, also emphasized: “The arrangement of the presents is to form NO PART of the PUBLIC TREATY, if a private promise and understanding can be substituted.” In addition, Madison’s letter to Cathcart was to be kept secret.
The administration was trumpeting its war effort while secretly being willing to pay off Tripoli. Clearly, if the United States ever paid tribute, the Jefferson administration preferred that no one know anything about it. That dreaded word tribute hit some raw nerve with the nation and with Jefferson. The wildly popular slogan “Millions for Defense, Not a Cent for Tribute” had originated a half decade earlier when the United States had refused to pay bribes to government officials in France; the very origin of the United States was inextricably bound to the colonists’ fight against paying excessive taxes to England. Yet Jefferson—determined to avoid open-ended war expenses—was willing to pay a small amount of tribute, preferably in secret. In Jefferson’s internal tug-of-war, “Economy” might yet win out over the desire to crush “lawless pirates.”
The last snippet of Jefferson’s note on the meeting dealt with Hamet.
“Shall anything be furnished to the Ex-Bashaw to engage cooperation? Unanimously 20,000 D[ollars].”
The Cabinet was voting—somewhat stingily—to earmark $20,000 for aid to brother Hamet. This represented a steep drop from a month earlier. To further tighten the purse strings, the navy’s new commodore, Samuel Barron, would have total discretion to decide whether Hamet would receive any money or aid. And it still wasn’t confirmed that Eaton would even be sent. The Cabinet passed along that decision to the navy.
Eaton’s last hope to go on the mission rested with his new friend, Secretary of the Navy Robert Smith. Despite apparent pressure from within his own party against Eaton, Smith decided to allow him to go. Later that same day of May 26, 1804, Eaton officially received his nebulous title as “Navy Agent for the Several Barbary Regencies.” He was told he would report to and receive orders from Commodore Samuel Barron, and that his salary would be $1,200 a year, with rations of a lieutenant. Despite being on the verge of financial ruin if the government ruled against his Tunis expense account, Eaton turned down his salary. With typical bravado, he stated it would be his privilege to fulfill this mission. (Mrs. Eaton’s reaction to all this is unfortunately lost.)