Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/183

The Battle of Tripoli
From a painting in the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis

ident Madison recommended a declaration of war against Algiers. The response of Congress was at once made, in an act, approved on the 3d of March, "for the protection of the commerce of the United States against the Algerine cruisers." Two squadrons were ordered to the Mediterranean, under Bainbridge and Decatur. Decatur, arriving first on the scene, compelled the Dey on the 30th of June to agree to a treaty by which it was declared that no tribute, under any name or form whatsoever, should again be required from the United States. No other nation had ever obtained such terms. Tripoli and Tunis were also duly admonished; and the passage of the Straits of Gibraltar was relieved of its burdens and its terrors.

With the suppression of the Barbary exactions tolerated piracy disappeared; but the depredations of lawless freebooters in various parts of the world long continued to furnish occasion for naval and to some extent for diplomatic activity. As late as 1870 the naval forces of the United States were directed, upon the invitation of Prussia, to cooperate with those of the other powers for the suppression of piracy in Chinese waters. Such incidents, however, possess no special significance. No one undertakes to defend confessed lawlessness. Attempts to abridge the freedom of the seas assume a dangerous form and become important when they are made or sanctioned by governments on pleas of pretended right or interest. Within this category fell the claim long. strenuously asserted that the cruisers of one nation might lawfully visit and search the merchant vessels of another nation on the high seas in peace as well as in war. To the people of the United States this claim was rendered especially hateful by the practice of impressment, with which it came to be peculiarly identified. From time immemorial the commanders of men-of-war had been in the habit, when searching neutral vessels for contraband or enemy's property, of taking out and pressing into service any seamen whom they conceived to be their fellow subjects. The practice was essentially irregular, arbitrary, and oppressive, but its most mischievous possibilities were yet to be developed in the conditions resulting from American independence. After Great Britain in 1793 became involved in the wars growing out of the French Revolution, the nature and extent of those possibilities were soon disclosed. Not only were the native sailors of England and America generally indistinguishable by the obvious test of language, but the crews of American vessels often contained a large proportion of men