Commodore Robert F. Stockton, 1795–1866: Protean Man for a Protean Nation
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Commodore Robert F. Stockton, 1795–1866: Protean Man for a Protea ...

Chapter 1:  Educating Stockton
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Fighting the Barbary States

No sooner had the War of 1812 been concluded with Great Britain than Congress moved to resolve an ongoing problem posed by the Barbary States of Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers. Like most chief maritime nations, the United States had treaties with these North African states, exchanging an annual payment for the North Africans’ restraint from preying on U.S. commerce. An earlier war with the Barbary States (1801–1805) had concluded with a payment of ransom to liberate all American prisoners, but it had not completely stopped the North Africans’ predations. As soon as the War of 1812 had commenced, the Barbary States realized that America would be fully engaged with the British, and a letter from the Prince Regent assured Dey Ali of Algiers that he could count on British support for any action taken against “enemies of Great Britain.” So Dey Ali unilaterally abrogated the treaties and resumed capturing American vessels.79

England had long tolerated the Barbary powers, hoping that their predations in the Mediterranean would check the maritime growth of smaller European states, as well as that of the United States. In his Observations on the Commerce of the American States (1783), Lord John Sheffield recommended:

It is not probable that the American States will have a very free trade in the Mediterranean; it will not be the interest of any of the great maritime powers to protect them from the Barbary States. If they know their interests, they will not encourage the Americans to be carriers. That the Barbary States are advantageous to the maritime powers is certain. If they were suppressed, the little States of Italy, etc. would have much more of the carrying trade. The armed neutrality would be as hurtful to the great maritime powers as the Barbary States are useful. The Americans cannot protect themselves from the latter; they cannot pretend to a navy.80

Lord Sheffield may have been right about the state of the American navy in 1783 when he wrote, but not about Stockton's navy in 1815. On the second of March, 1815, Congress decided they could protect themselves quite well and so declared war against Algiers.