The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 38, December, 1860

Eaton presented these petitions to the President and to the public, and insisted so warmly upon the harsh treatment his ally had received from the United States, that two thousand four hundred dollars were sent to him in 1806, and again, in 1807, Davis, Consul for Tripoli, was directed to insist upon the release of the wife and children. They were delivered up by Jusuf in 1807, and taken to Syracuse in an American sloop-of-war. Here ended the relations of the United States with Hamet Caramanli.5

Throughout this whole African chapter, the darling economy of the Administration was a penny-wise policy which resulted in the usual failure. Already in 1802, Mr. Gallatin reported that two millions and a half, in round numbers, had been paid in tribute and presents. The expense of fitting out the four squadrons is estimated by Mr. Sabine at three millions and a half. The tribute extorted after 1802 and the cost of keeping the ships in the Mediterranean amount at the lowest estimate to two millions more. Most of this large sum might have been saved by giving an adequate force and full powers to Commodore Dale, who had served under Paul Jones, and knew how to manage such matters.

Unluckily for their fame, the Administration was equally parsimonious in national spirit and pluck, and did their utmost to protect themselves against the extravagance of such reckless fellows as Preble, Decatur, and Eaton. In the spring of 1803, while Preble was fitting out his squadron, Mr. Simpson, Consul at Tangier, was instructed to buy the good-will of the Emperor of Morocco. He disobeyed his instructions, and the Emperor withdrew his demands when he saw the American ships. About the same time, the Secretary of State wrote to Consul Cathcart in relation to Tripoli:–

"It is thought best that you should not be tied down to a refusal of presents, whether to be included in the peace, or to be made from time to time during its continuance,–especially as in the latter case the title to the presents will be a motive to its continuance,–to admit that the Bashaw shall receive in the first instance, including the consular present, the sum of $20,000, and at the rate afterwards of $8,000 or $10,000 a year … The presents, whatever the amount or purpose of them, (except the consular present, which, as usual, may consist of jewelry, cloth, etc.,) must be made in money and not in stores, to be biennial rather than annual; and the arrangement of the presents is to form no part of the public treaty, if a private promise and understanding can be substituted."

After notifying Cathcart of his appointment to Tunis, the Secretary directs him to evade the thirty-six-gun frigate, and to offer the Bey ten thousand dollars a year for peace, to be arranged in the same underhand way.

Tripoli refused the money; it was not enough. The Bey of Tunis rejected both the offer and the Consul. He wrote to Mr. Jefferson that he considered some of Cathcart's expressions insulting, and that he insisted upon the thirty-six-gun frigate. Mr. Jefferson answered on the 27th of January, 1804, after he knew of the insult to Morris and of the expulsion of Eaton. Beginning with watery generalities about "mutual friendships and the interests arising out of them," he regretted that there should be any misconception of his motives on the part of the Bey. "Such being our regard for you, it is with peculiar concern I learn from your letter that Mr. Cathcart, whom I had chosen from a confidence in his integrity, experience, and good dispositions, has so conducted himself as to incur your displeasure. In doing this, be assured he has gone against the letter and spirit of his instructions, which were, that his deportment should be such as to make known my esteem and respect for your character both personal and public, and to cultivate your friendship by all the attentions and services he could render.... In selecting another character to take the place of Mr. Cathcart, I shall take care to fix on one who, I hope, will better fulfil the duties of respect and esteem for you, and who, in so doing only, will be the faithful representative and organ of our earnest desire that the peace and friendship so happily subsisting between the two countries may be firm and permanent."

Most people will agree with Eaton, that "the spirit which dictated this answer betrays more the inspiration of Carter's Mountain6 than of Bunker Hill."

Lear, who was appointed Consul-General in 1803, was authorized by his instructions to pay twenty thousand dollars down and ten thousand a year for peace, and a sum not to exceed five hundred dollars a man for ransom.

When Barron's squadron anchored at Malta, Consul O'Brien came on board to say that he had offered, by authority, eight thousand dollars a year to Tunis, instead of the frigate, and one hundred and ten thousand to Tripoli for peace and the ransom of the crew of the Philadelphia, and that both propositions had been rejected.

Finally, after fitting out this fourth squadron, at an expense of one million five hundred and seventy thousand dollars, and with Eaton in possession of Derne, the Administration paid sixty thousand dollars for peace and ransom, when Preble, ten months previously, could have obtained both for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Thus they spent two millions to save ninety thousand, and left the principle of tribute precisely where it was before.

What makes this business still more remarkable is, that the Administration knew from the reports of our consuls and from the experience of our captains that the force of the pirates was insignificant, and that they were wretched sailors and poor shots. Sterret took a Tripolitan cruiser of fourteen guns after an engagement of thirty minutes; he killed or wounded fifty of her crew, and did not lose a man, nor suffer any material damage in his hull or rigging. There was no one killed on the American side when Decatur burned the Philadelphia. The Constitution was under the fire of the Tripolitan batteries for two hours without losing a man, and was equally fortunate when she ran in a second time and lay within musket-shot of the mole, exposed to the fire of the enemy for three-quarters of an hour. These Tripolitan batteries mounted one hundred and fifteen guns. Three years later, Captain Ichabod Sheffield, of the schooner Mary Ann, furnished in person an example of the superiority of the Yankee over the Turk. Consul Lear had just given forty-eight thousand dollars to the Dey of Algiers, in full payment of tribute "up to date." Nevertheless, the Mary Ann, of and from New York to Leghorn, was seized in the Straits of Gibraltar by an Algerine corsair. A prize-crew of nine Turks was sent on board; the captain, two men, and a boy left in her to do the work; she was ordered to Algiers; and the pirate sailed away. Having no instructions from Washington, Sheffield and his men determined to strike a blow for liberty, and fixed upon their plan. Algiers was in sight, when Sheffield hurled the "grains" overboard, and cried that he had struck a fish. Four Turks, who were on deck, ran to the side to look over. Instantly the Americans threw three of them into the sea. The others, hearing the noise, hurried upon deck. In a hand-to-hand fight which followed two more were killed with handspikes, and the remaining four were overpowered and sent adrift in a small boat. Sheffield made his way, rejoicing, to Naples. When the Dey heard how his subjects had been handled, he threatened to put Lear in irons and to declare war. It cost the United States sixteen thousand dollars to appease his wrath.

The cruise of the Americans against Tripoli differed little, except in the inferiority of their force, from numerous attacks made by European nations upon the Regencies. Venice, England, France, had repeatedly chastised the pirates in times past. In 1799, the Portuguese, with one seventy-four-gun ship, took two Tripolitan cruisers, and forced the Pacha to pay them eleven thousand dollars. In 1801, not long before our expedition, the French Admiral Gaunthomme over-hauled two Tunisian corsairs in chase of some Neapolitan vessels. He threw all their guns overboard, and bade them beware how they provoked the wrath of the First Consul by plundering his allies. But all of them left, as we did, the principle of piracy or payments as they found it. At last this evil was treated in a manner more creditable to civilization. In 1812, the Algerines captured an American vessel, and made slaves of the crew. After the peace with England, in 1815, Decatur, in the Guerrière, sailed into the Mediterranean, and captured off Cape de Gat, in twenty-five minutes, an Algerine frigate of forty-six guns and four hundred men. On board the Guerrière, four were wounded, and no one killed. Two days later, off Cape Palos, he took a brig of twenty-two guns and one hundred and eighty men. He then sailed into the harbor of Algiers with his prizes, and offered peace, which was accepted. The Dey released the American prisoners, relinquished all claims to tribute in future, and promised never again to enslave an American. Decatur, on our part, surrendered his prizes, and agreed to consular presents,–a mitigated form of tribute, similar in principle, but, at least, with another name. From Algiers he went to Tunis, and demanded satisfaction of that Regency for having permitted a British man-of-war to retake in their port two prizes to Americans in the late war with England. The Bey submitted, and paid forty-six thousand dollars. He next appeared before Tripoli, where he compelled the Pacha to pay twenty-six thousand dollars, and to surrender ten captives, as an indemnity for some breaches of international law. In fifty-four days he brought all Barbary to submission. It is true, that, the next spring, the Dey of Algiers declared this treaty null, and fell back upon the time-honored system of annual tribute. But it was too late. Before it became necessary for Decatur to pay him another visit, Lord Exmouth avenged the massacre of the Neapolitan fishermen at Bona by completely destroying the fleet and forts of Algiers, in a bombardment of seven hours. Christian prisoners of every nation were liberated in all the Regencies, and the slave-system, as applied to white men, finally abolished.

Preble, Eaton, and Decatur are our three distinguished African officers. As Barron's squadron did not fire a shot into Tripoli, indeed never showed itself before that port, to Eaton alone belongs the credit of bringing the Pacha to terms which the American Commissioner was willing to accept. The attack upon Derne was the feat of arms of the fourth year, and finished the war.

Ours is not a new reading of the earlier relations of the United States with the Barbary powers. The story can be found in the Collection of State Papers, and more easily in the excellent little books of Messrs. Sabine and Felton. But a "popular version" despises documents. Under the pressure of melodrama, history will drift into Napoleon's "fable agreed upon"; and if it be true, as Emerson says, that "no anchor, no cable, no fence, avail to keep a fact a fact," it is not at all likely that a paper in a monthly magazine will do it.

SUNSHINE

I have always worked in the carpet-factories. My father and mother worked there before me and my sisters, as long as they lived. My sisters died first;–the one, I think, out of deep sorrow; the other from too much joy.

My older sister worked hard, knew nothing else but work, never thought of anything else, nor found any joy in work, scarcely in the earnings that came from it. Perhaps she pined for want of more air, shut up in the rooms all day, not caring to find it in walking or in the fields, or even in books. Household-work awaited her daily after the factory-work, and a dark, strange religion oppressed and did not sustain her, Sundays. So we scarcely wondered when she died. It seemed, indeed, as if she had died long ago,–as if the life had silently passed away from her, leaving behind a working body that was glad at last to find a rest it had never known before.

My other sister was far different. Very much younger, not even a shadow of the death that had gone before weighed heavily upon her. Everybody loved her, and her warm, flashing spirit that came out in her sunny smile. She died in a season of joy, in the first flush of summer. She died, as the June flowers died, after their happy summer-day of life.

At last I was left alone, to plod the same way, every night and morning,–out with the sunrise from the skirts of the town, over the bridge across the stream that fell into our great river which has worked for us so long, to the tall, grim factory-building where my work awaited me, and home again at night. I lived on in the house we all of us had lived in. At first it was alone in the wood. But the town crept out to meet it, and soon but little woodland was left around it. "Gloomy Robert" they called me, as I walked back and forth upon the same track, seldom lifting my head to greet friend or stranger. Though I walked over well-known ground, my thoughts were wandering in strange romances. My evening-readings furnished the land I lived in,–seldom this Western home, but the East, from Homer's time to the days of Haroun Alraschid. I was so faithful at my work that my responsibilities were each year increased; and though my brain lived in dreams, I had sufficient use of it for my little needs each day. I never forgot to answer the wants of the greedy machines while I was within sound of them; but away from them I forgot all external sight and sound. I can remember in my boyhood once I was waked from my reveries. I was walking beneath a high stone-wall, with my eyes and head bent down as usual, when I was roused by a shower of rose-buds that fell over my shoulders and folded arms. I heard laughter, and looked up to see a childish face with sunny, golden curls tumbling over it; and a surprised voice cried out, "Gloomy Robert is looking up!" The picture of the face hung in my memory long after, with the sound of the happy voice, as though it came out of another world. But it remained only a picture, and I never asked myself whether that sunny face ever made any home happy, nor did I ever listen for that voice again from behind the high stone-wall.

Many years of my life passed away. There were changes in the factories. The machines grew more like human beings, and we men could act more like machines. There were fewer of us needed; but I still held my place, and my steadiness gave me a position.

One day, in the end of May, I was walking early in the morning towards the factories, as usual, when suddenly there fell across my path a glowing beam of sunshine that lighted up the grass before me. I stopped to see how the green blades danced in its light, how the sunshine fell down the sloping, bank across the stream below. Whirring insects seemed to be suddenly born in its beam. The stream flowed more gayly, the flowers on its brim were richer in color. A voice startled me. It was only that of one of my fellow-workmen, as he shouted, "Look at Gloomy Robert!–there's a sunbeam in his way, and he stumbles over it!" It was really so. I had stumbled over a beam of sunlight. I had never observed the sunshine before. Now, what life it gave, as it gleamed under the trees! I kept on my way, but the thought of it followed me all up the weary stairs into the high room where the great machines were standing silently. Suddenly, after my work began, through a high narrow window poured a strip of sunshine. It fell across the colored threads which were weaving diligently their work. This day the work was of an unusually artistic nature. We have our own artists in the mills, artists who must work under severe limitations. Within a certain space their fancy revels, and then its lines are suddenly cut short. Nature scatters her flowers as she pleases over the field, does not measure her groups to see that they stand symmetrically, nor count her several daisies that they may be sure to repeat themselves in regular order. But our artist must fit his stems to certain angles so that their lines may be continuous, constantly repeating themselves, the same group recurring, yet in a hidden monotony.

My pattern of to-day had always pleased me, for we had woven many yards of it before,–the machines and I. There were rich green leaves and flowers, gay flowers that shone in light and hid themselves in shade, and I had always admired their grace and coloring. To-day they had seemed to me cold and dusky. All my ideas that I had gained from conventional carpet-flowers, which, woven almost beneath my hand, had seemed to rival Nature's, all these ideas had been suddenly swept away. My eyes had opened upon real flowers waving in real sunshine; and my head grew heavy at the sound of the clanking machine weaving out yards of unsunned flowers. If only that sunshine, I thought, would light up these green leaves, put a glow on these brilliant flowers, instead of this poor coloring which tries to look like sunshine, we might rival Nature. But the moment I was so thinking, the rays of sunlight I have spoken of fell on the gay threads. They seemed, before my eyes, to seize upon the poor yellow fibres which were trying to imitate their own glow, and, winding themselves round them, I saw the shuttle gather these rays of sunlight into the meshes of its work. I was to stand there till noon. So, long before I left, the gleam of sunshine had left the narrow window and was hidden from the rest of the long room by the gray stone-walls of another building which rose up outside. But as long as they lingered over the machine that I was watching, I saw, as though human fingers were placing them there, rays of sunlight woven in among the green leaves and brilliant flowers.

After that gleam had gone, my work grew dark and dreary, and, for the first time, my walls seemed to me like prison-walls. I longed for the end of my day's work, and rejoiced that the sun had not yet set when I was free again. I was free to go out across the meadows, up the hills, to catch the last rays of sunset. Then coming home, I stooped to pick the flowers which grew by the wayside in the waning light.

All that June which followed, I passed my leisure hours and leisure days in the open air, in the woods. I chased the sunshine from the fields in under the deep trees, where it only flickered through the leaves. I hunted for flowers, too, beginning with the gay ones which shone with color. I wondered how it was they could drink in so much of the sun's glow. Then I fell to studying all the science of color and all the theories which are woven about it. I plunged into books of chemistry, to try to find out how it was that certain flowers should choose certain colors out from the full beam of light. After the long days, I sat late into the night, studying all that books could tell me. I collected prisms, and tried, in scattering the rays, to learn the properties of each several pencil of light. I grew very wise and learned, but never came nearer the secret I was searching for,–why it was that the Violet, lying so near the Dandelion, should choose and find such a different dress to wear. It was not the rarer flowers that I brought home, at first. My hands were filled with Dandelions and Buttercups. The Saint-John's-Wort delighted me, and even the gaudy Sunflower. I trained the vines which had been drooping round our old house,–the gray time-worn house; the "natural-colored house," the neighbors called it. I thought of the blind boy who fancied the sound of the trumpet must be scarlet, as I trained up the brilliant scarlet trumpet-flower which my sister had planted long ago.

So the summer passed away. My companions and neighbors did not wonder much, that, after studying so many books, I should begin to study flowers and botany. And November came. My occupation was not yet taken away, for Golden-Rod and the Asters gleamed along the dusty roadside, and still underneath the Maples there lay a sunny glow from the yellow leaves not yet withered beneath them.

One day I received a summons from our overseer, Mr. Clarkson, to visit him in the evening. I went, a little disturbed, lest he might have some complaint to make of the engrossing nature of my present occupations. This I was almost led to believe, from the way in which he began to speak to me. His perorations, to be sure, were apt to be far wide of his subject; and this time, as usual, I could allow him two or three minutes' talk before it became necessary for me to give him my attention.

At last it came out. I was wanted to go up to Boston about a marvellous piece of carpet which had appeared from our mills. It had lain in the warehouse some time, had at last been taken to Boston, and a large portion of it had been sold, the pattern being a favorite one. But suddenly there had been a change. In opening one of the rolls and spreading it broadly in the show-room of Messrs. Gobelin's warehouse, it had appeared the most wonderful carpet that ever was known. A real sunlight gleamed over the leaves and flowers, seeming to flicker and dance among them as on a broad meadow. It shed a radiance which paled the light that struggled down between the brick walls through the high windows. It had been subject of such wonder that Messrs. Gobelin had been obliged to ask a high price of admission for the many that flocked to see it. They had eagerly examined the other rolls of carpeting, in the hope of finding a repetition of the wonder, and were inclined at one time to believe that this magical effect was owing to a new method of lighting their apartments. But it was only in this beautiful pattern and through a certain portion of it that this wonderful appearance was shown. Some weeks ago they had sent to our agent to ask if he knew the origin of this wonderful tapestry. He had consulted with the designer of the pattern, who had first claimed the discovery of the combination of colors by which such an effect was produced, but he could not account for its not appearing throughout the whole work. My master had then examined some of the workmen, and learned, in the midst of his inquiries, what had been my late occupations and studies.

"If," he continued, "I had been inclined to apply any of my discoveries to the work which I superintended, he was willing, and his partners were willing, to forgive any interference of that sort, of mine, in affairs which were strictly their own, as long as the discoveries seemed of so astonishing a nature."

I am not able to give all our conversation. I could only say to my employer, that this was no act of mine, though I felt very sure that the sunshine which astonished them in Messrs. Gobelin's carpet-store was the very sunbeam that shone through the window of the factory on the 27th of May, that summer. When he asked me what chemical preparation could insure a repetition of the same wonderful effect, I could only say, that, if sunlight were let in upon all the machines, through all the windows of the establishment, a similar effect might be produced. He stared at me. Our large and substantial mill was overshadowed by the high stone-walls of the rival company. It had taken a large amount of capital to raise our own walls; it would take a still larger to induce our neighbors to remove theirs. So we parted,–my employer evidently thinking that I was keeping something behind, waiting to make my profit on a discovery so interesting to him. He called me back to tell me, that, after working so long under his employ, he hoped I should never be induced by higher wages or other proffers to leave for any rival establishment.

I was not left long in quiet. I received a summons to Boston. Mr. Stuart, the millionnaire, had bought the wonderful carpet at an immense price. He had visited our agent himself, had invited the designer to dinner, and now would not be satisfied until I had made him a visit in Boston.

I went to his house. I passed up through broad stairways, and over carpets such as I had never trod nor woven. I should have liked to linger and satisfy my eyes with looking at the walls decorated with paintings, and at the statuary, which seemed to beckon to me like moving figures. But I passed on to the room where Mr. Stuart and his friends awaited me. Here the first thing that struck me was the glowing carpet across which I must tread. It was lying in an oval saloon, which had been built, they told me, for the carpet itself. The light was admitted only from the ceiling, which was so decorated that no clear sunlight could penetrate it; but down below the sunbeams lay flickering in the meadow of leaves, and shed a warm glow over the whole room.