Yet the Senate acquitted the judge, who sat on the United States’ highest court until his death in 1811. “The Senate’s votes,” as one historian put it, “ranged from unanimous acquittal on one count to 19-to-15 for conviction on the Maryland address.”15 Dumas Malone pointed out that although Federalists of the day considered President Jefferson the éminence grise of the Chase impeachment, with Hamilton’s New-York Evening Post among other Federalist newspapers saying so,16 “there seems to be no evidence that the President himself sought to bring any influence to bear on his wavering partisans.”17 Perhaps the reason for this was to be found in the administration’s new attitude toward Randolph, whom it may have been maneuvering to hang out to dry, as he repeatedly took positions hostile to it in the early days of the Eighth Congress’s second session.18 On the other hand the reason may have been that, as Plumer jotted down in the trial’s aftermath, Jefferson seemed to have “a great and primary object … never to pursue a measure if it becomes unpopular.” Plumer gave Jefferson’s hands-off posture toward the Chase impeachment as an example.19

  As John Quincy Adams described the affair’s climax,

  At half-past twelve o’clock [on March 1, 1805], the Court met.… Mr. Burr ordered the civil officers in the upper galleries to turn their faces toward the spectators, and to seize and commit to prison the first person who should make the smallest noise or disturbance. He then directed the Secretary to read the first article of impeachment, which being done, he called upon each Senator by name, and put the question as agreed upon. The same course was pursued with all the succeeding articles.… After a short pause, the Vice-President said … “there not being a constitutional majority who answer ‘Guilty’ to any one charge, it becomes my duty to declare that Samuel Chase is acquitted upon all the articles of impeachment.…” The Court then immediately adjourned; and thus terminated this great and important trial.20

  John Randolph returned to the House straightway and “pronounced … a violent phillippic against Judge Chase & against the Senate—& he concluded with offering a resolution proposing an Amendment to the Constitution of the United States” requiring the president to remove any federal judge at the request of both houses of Congress. “Mr Randoph & Nicholson were very warm & passionate in the debate.…”21

  Adams in his diary described a conversation later that day with a Republican senator, William Cocke of Tennessee. Cocke

  … spoke with much severity of Mr. John Randolph and his conduct upon this impeachment, and various other subjects; charged him with excessive vanity, ambition, insolence, and even dishonesty, which he exemplified by the misrecital of the Virginia law referred to in the fifth article of the impeachment, which he said must have been intentional. He told me that he had always been very sorry that this impeachment was brought forward, and though, when compelled to vote, his judgment had been as unfavorable to Mr. Chase as that of any member of the Court, he was heartily glad of the acquittal, which it appeared to him would have a tendency to mitigate the irritation of party spirit. He said that Mr. Randolph had boasted with great exultation that this was his impeachment—that every article was drawn by his hand, and that he was to have the whole merit of it; though, if the facts were so, it was not a very glorious feat for a young man to plume himself upon; for the undertaking to ruin the reputation and fortune of an old public servant, who had long possessed the confidence of his country, might be excusable, but was no subject to boast of.

  Senator Adams also found Secretary Madison in a conversation soon after the event “much diverted [that is, amused] at the petulance of the managers on their disappointment.”22 In light of Randolph’s course thereafter, Madison perhaps had occasion to regret his initial reaction to the Chase outcome. Anyway he and the other Cabinet members always maintained a studied silence in public when it came to the Chase impeachment. As Madison explained it, “they did not I believe intermeddle during the trial with a subject exclusively belonging to another Dept., and now that the Constl. decision has taken place, it would be evidently improper for themselves to pronounce for public use their opinion of the issue.…”23

  Two days later, looking back on the congressional session just ended, Adams described the Chase impeachment as its “most remarkable transaction.” He said it was “a party prosecution” and reveled in his appraisal that it had “issued in the unexpected and total disappointment of those by whom it was brought forward.”24 Even if it had been true that the entire Republican Party acted in this matter on the basis of the same motives as did Senator Giles (which, as we have seen, President Jefferson certainly did not), it would be impossible to accept Adams’s conclusion that “a sense of justice” accounted for Chase’s acquittal. The hanging judge of Messrs. Fries, Callender, and Cooper deserved to be removed from office.

  In Federalist #79 and #81 Alexander Hamilton had explained that while judges would, under the U.S. Constitution, have no set terms of office, impeachment would be a remedy for gross judicial misbehavior. Ratifiers in several states took the same position. The Chase acquittal forever wrote that option out of American politics. As Jefferson described the post-Chase impeachment situation, “Impeachment is a farce which will not be tried again.”25 He later said that “experience has … shewn that the impeachment [our constitution] has provided is not even a scare-crow,” so that the supposed checks and balances among the three branches of the Federal Government were reduced to a system in which “to one of them alone the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others” had been given.26 In the twenty years remaining to the Virginia Dynasty, this problem would take on pressing urgency.

  No one knew it at the time, but the Senate vote in the Chase impeachment was the high-water mark of the Jefferson presidency. “It was here,” as Henry Adams said, “that the Jeffersonian republicans fought their last aggressive battle, and, wavering under the shock of defeat, broke into factions which slowly abandoned the field and forgot their discipline.” What their defeat meant was that not the people through their constitution and representatives would have their way, but for three decades to come, “[t]he people were at the mercy of their creatures,” as “Chief Justice John Marshall and his associates would disregard their will, and would impose upon them his own.”27

  The day after the Senate concluded the impeachment trial, Vice President Burr resigned his office. He first cleared the Senate chamber’s galleries, then delivered a farewell address explaining his behavior as presiding officer. Although he had intended to stay on until this congressional session’s conclusion the following day, an incipient illness seemed to require his resignation.28 “For each individual senator he entertained & felt a spirit of friendship, & he trusted that the regret on parting was mutual.” “Several,” according to Senator Plumer, “shed tears very plentifully.”29 Senators may have thought that American public affairs had seen the last of Aaron Burr. If so, they were mistaken.

  23

  Soon after the conclusion of the Eighth Congress, and thus of his first term as president, Jefferson received welcome news from the Mediterranean Sea. He had in the first days of his presidency dispatched a substantial flotilla thither with the purpose of protecting American shipping. The mission had at last been a complete success.

  Since his time as minister to France (1784–89), the president had been concerned to bring an end to Barbary States’ practice of essentially requiring ransom in exchange for allowing minor European powers’ ships to ply the Mediterranean trade safely. In the absence of regular payments, they seized those small powers’ ships and enslaved the sailors.1 As Jefferson and John Adams reported from England to Confederation Secretary for Foreign Affairs John Jay:

  We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the Grounds of their pretentions to make war upon Nations who had done them no Injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The Ambassador [of Tripoli to France] answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman [that is, Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise. That it was a law that the first who boarded an Enemy’s Vessell should have one slave, more than his share with the rest, which operated as an incentive to the most desperate Valour and Enterprise.…2

  The system logically consequent to this belief had undergirded the North African states, by Jefferson’s time only nominally provinces of the Ottoman Empire, for three hundred years.3

  Ultimately, Minister Jefferson found himself at odds with his friend the minister to the Court of St. James’s, John Adams. If Adams had his way, Congress would fork over reasonable annual payments to the four North African Muslim powers. As far as Jefferson was concerned, this humiliation had to stop. He therefore tried to organize a league of minor naval powers to enforce their freedom of the seas, casting his eye toward Stockholm, Lisbon, Copenhagen, Berlin, and some Italian city-states. In the end, with the notable exception of a treaty with Morocco, his effort came to naught.4

  But now he was president, and as historian Norman K. Risjord put it, while Federalist administrations had been nationalist in the sense of working to augment the domestic power of the Federal Government, Republicans would be nationalist when it came to foreign policy.5 This distinction was manifest in Republicans’ policies of extending the country’s boundaries and standing up to foreign aggression.

  So, early in his first year as president, Jefferson wrote Madison, “I am an enemy to all these douceurs, tributes & humiliations.… I know that nothing will stop the eternal increase of demand from those pirates but the presence of an armed force, and it will be more economical & more honorable to use the same means at once for suppressing their insolences.”6 As early as November 1801, Jefferson had publicized the feats of Navy Lieutenant Andrew Sterrett. Two days after Secretary Gallatin arrived in Washington on May 13th to assume his new post at the Treasury Department, Jefferson held a Cabinet meeting in which all agreed to send three frigates to the Mediterranean “to superintend the safety of our commerce, and to exercise our seamen in nautical duties.” The Federalists’ new Peace Establishment Act authorized the president to take these steps.7 The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps were about to write a glorious chapter of their history on “the shores of Tripoli.” The Algerine and Tripolitan pirate states would receive their comeuppance at American hands.

  In its early stages the Jeffersonian naval policy in the Mediterranean was a bit of a debacle. When, nearly two years after the 1801 Cabinet vote to dispatch substantial naval forces, the president polled his Cabinet on Gallatin’s proposal to pay Tripoli tribute rather than persevere in the naval policy—the treasury secretary insisted it was a “mere matter of calculation whether the purchase of peace is not cheaper than the expense of a war”—all voted “aye.” Nevertheless Jefferson determined that yes, he would be willing to bribe Tripoli’s ruler, but absent a reasonable accommodation, war there would continue to be.8

  By the middle of 1803, the American commodore Edward Preble had called what would in time be an irresolvable problem to Washington’s attention. The British Royal Navy considered itself at liberty to interrogate American sailors, even those who were U.S. Navy personnel, about their citizenship and to impress them—that is, force them into the Royal Navy—on the spot. Not only did British officers facilitate desertion from American ships, but one described the British policy as being to “afford protection to every man who has an opportunity to claim it, and will say he is an Englishman.”9 Though he resented this treatment, Preble realized that the picayune American navy could not dispute the matter with the British, and so he transferred his base of operations from Gibraltar to Syracuse—which was not a British possession.

  The next significant naval news to reach Washington concerned loss of the frigate U.S.S. Philadelphia, commanded by Captain William Bainbridge. On October 31, 1803, en route to participate in a blockade of Tripoli, it ran aground off that Barbary capital and, though seriously damaged by Bainbridge’s crew in anticipation of its capture, ended up in the possession of the Tripolitan pasha. Bainbridge and his men would remain captive for nineteen months. Their capture set the scene for the most daring naval exploit of the age.10

  Commodore Preble recognized the severely awkward position in which the Philadelphia’s misfortune left him. What was intended as an American show of force to open up commercial possibilities for the New World republic had gone from failure to fiasco. Though his letters to Bainbridge via the Danish consul at Tripoli expressed sympathy for the captain, Preble told Secretary of the Navy Smith, “Would to God that the Officers and crew of the Philadelphia had one and all determined to prefer death to slavery; it is possible such a determination might have saved them from either!”11

  He wrote to Secretary Smith in December that the Philadelphia would be destroyed—a particularly difficult job for his force of a frigate, a brig, and three schooners, “comprising in all,” as historian Ian W. Toll put it, “about 100 guns and seven hundred men.” Although “it will undoubtedly cost us many lives,… it must be done.” Bainbridge wrote that a force of several small boats with combustibles should be sent into Tripoli Harbor under cover of darkness, and that once the force reached its position the task “could be easily effected.” Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, commander of one of Preble’s three schooners, volunteered to lead the mission.12

  Preble would have preferred to recoup his lost ship, but he adjudged that task impossible. Therefore he would send Decatur and his group upon a captured Tripoline ketch to sail into the harbor and destroy Philadelphia. The ketch he renamed Intrepid.13

  Preble’s orders for Decatur said, in part, “Board the Frigate Philadelphia, burn her, and make your retreat good.” His men were to start fires in various rooms of the ship and, “After the Ship is well on fire, point two of the 18-pounders shotted down the Main Hatch and blow her bottom out. The destruction of the Philadelphia is an object of great importance. I rely with confidence on your Intrepidity & Enterprize to effect it.”14

  The eighty-man crew’s performance in the Bay of Tripoli was superb. They sailed in the night directly into the city’s harbor, the huge majority of the men crammed belowdecks. When at last they had sailed to within vocal range, their Maltese pilot shouted for permission to compensate for loss of the ketch’s anchors by tying to the frigate. Yes, came the reply. When the Intrepid had approached so close that men aboard Philadelphia could see Intrepid’s decks, they noticed an anchor there and saw some of the Americans lying prone on the deck. An Arab voice shouted “Americanos!”

  The Maltese pilot urged Decatur to order boarding, but the steely American barked, “No order to be obeyed but that of the commanding officer.” Finally within range, Decatur yelled, “Board!” The combat lasted ten minutes. The attackers relied on swords, pikes, and knives alone, lest the noise of gunfire draw Tripoline reinforcements. About a score of the enemy dared to stand their ground. Only one survived the fight, and his prognosis was grim. American casualties were one man wounded.

  Then the Americans went from room to room, dispersing the combustibles and setting them afire. The conflagration spread so quickly that they had to scramble down to the Intrepid, Decatur of course last among them. It took a while for Intrepid to work her way clear of Philadelphia, a time during which the locals had at last been roused to cannon fire. Characteristically, their cannonade missed the mark. “Once out of range of the enemy guns,” concludes the best account, “they laughed, joked, sang, and paused to watch the spectacle of the still-blazing Philadelphia.”

  At last the flame found the Philadelphia’s rigging, the tar of which conducted the fire quickly up the mastheads. The masts fell into the bay at 11:00 PM. Seven hours later the inferno could still be seen forty miles out to sea.15 When word of the Americans’ feat reached British ears, Admiral Horatio, Lord Nelson, the greatest of admirals, pronounced what Decatur had done “the most bold and daring act of the age.”16 In six months Decatur would be a captain, having been given a two-rank promotion. He also had become a national celebrity.17

  Back home in Washington, President Jefferson learned of the Philadelphia’s capture a month after Decatur’s mission.18 The U.S. Navy’s gallant accomplishment of destroying an American frigate drove home an ironic lesson: that ships of the line like the Philadelphia were not cost-efficient. Why not rely on small gunboats deployed up and down the American coast instead of spending serious money on a small number of big seagoing ships? Jefferson and Gallatin eventually yielded to this siren’s song, which “cost the navy millions in appropriations.”19 Commodore Preble would return to Washington to be fêted by the highest officials of the government,20 but his service would for years be deprived of the funding it required.

  In the meantime Jefferson requested and Congress provided authority for “equipping, officering, manning, and employing such of the armed vessels of the United States, as may be deemed requisite” for reprisal. He ordered four more frigates to sea.21 The First Barbary War had not ended yet. That would require a second spectacular American military feat. This involved a bit of American meddling in Tripolitan politics.