CHAPTER 14
Tobias Lear: Peace at Any Cost
WHILE JEFFERSON’S SECRET AGENT, Eaton, starved in the desert, Jefferson’s diplomat Tobias Lear lounged in the perfumed gardens of Malta and decided that the time was ripe to reopen peace negotiations with Tripoli. Lear—eager to settle the peace himself—chose to ignore Eaton’s covert mission. If Lear’s advice had been taken, those supply ships would have never gone to Bomba. To Lear’s thinking, tough diplomatic conversations would end the four-year war and bring home the hostages, not some half-baked, dim-witted, far-fetched plot to overthrow Yussef.
The two prongs of American foreign policy—diplomacy and military force—were operating in denial of the other’s existence. Such blinders could lead only to collision or even betrayal. Though neither man expressed it so baldly, their efforts amounted to a race for results. Would Lear negotiate peace before Eaton could place Hamet on the throne? The Bashaw brothers were rivals, and so were the two Americans.
On March 28, a scant two weeks before Eaton reached Bomba, Tobias Lear took time off from the round of diplomatic balls and garden parties to dash off a half-page reply to the Spanish consul, Don Gerando Joseph de Souza, who in the name of the Bashaw had invited Lear to come to Tripoli under a white flag of truce. De Souza’s vague Christmastime message had stated: An honorable peace can now be had.
Lear sealed his answer to De Souza and handed it to the captain of a British ketch, Eliza, which had an American passport to pass through the ongoing American blockade of Tripoli. By replying to De Souza, Lear—in the circuitous way of diplomats—was cracking open the door for peace. “We should not refuse to negotiate . . . upon honourable grounds . . . compatible with the rising character of our nation.” He was hinting that negotiations could perhaps be concluded before the American Navy ships unleashed the huge bombardment that everyone knew was scheduled for the summer. Lear didn’t even deign to mention Eaton-Hamet as a threat to Yussef.
Tobias Lear, whose schedule frequently brought him to dine at the governor’s palace in Malta, sometimes with poet Samuel Coleridge, remained on the British-controlled island to await a reply. Two weeks slipped by pleasantly for Lear and his slender young wife as he awaited an answer from Tripoli.
Around the same time, Captain John Rodgers aboard the USS Constitution off Tripoli received a strange stack of letters. A man in a small boat in the vicinity of the island of Djerba—a place often used for coastal smuggling—had waved down the massive frigate. Two of the letters came from imprisoned Captain Bainbridge, dated March 16 and 22, and one was from the Danish consul, Nicholas Nissen, dated March 18. All three were addressed to Commodore Samuel Barron. For Rodgers, they posed a dilemma. The letters were a month old and might contain vital timely information. Rumors abounded about an escape plot by the American prisoners; maybe they wanted Rodgers to slip a boat shoreward on a given night.
“I hope I have not acted incorrectly in opening [them],” Rodgers later wrote. In the privacy of his captain’s cabin on the rocking vessel, Rodgers read the letter from the Danish consul to Barron. Nissen relayed an impassioned plea from the foreign minister of Tripoli, Sidi Mohammed Dghies, to restart peace negotiations. The elderly minister apologized that a long illness of the eyes had sidetracked him from public affairs; he now claimed that he wanted to help the United States solve its problems. He recommended that the commodore send a fully authorized negotiator who would be willing to come ashore under “perfect inviolability.”
The previous summer the U.S. fleet under Commodore Preble had tried to negotiate by means of the French consul ferrying verbal messages under a white flag between Preble on ship and the Bashaw onshore. The whole process had stumbled in confusion, with each side misconstruing the other’s demands. (Negotiations in Barbary were often as convoluted as a comic opera as foreign consuls vied to meddle, sometimes helping, sometimes garbling messages to suit their own agendas.)
Consul Nissen in his letter now vouched for the sincerity of Dghies’s offer to mediate. The Dane, a pacifist who had become close friends with Bainbridge, added: “A sincere & lasting peace is at any time preferable even to a successful war.”
Rodgers then opened the two missives from Bainbridge. The first appeared to be a brief polite note, asking Commodore Barron to give serious thought to Nissen’s suggestions and to consider—as a goodwill gesture—sending a navy surgeon to come treat the eyes of the “friendly” minister, Mohammed Dghies.
Bainbridge had used a standard-size sheet of heavy paper. Most of it appeared blank, but Rodgers knew better. He lit a candle and carefully held the letter high over the flame. In the heat, handwritten script—etched out by quill dipped in lime juice—began to appear.
In this hidden message, Bainbridge implored Barron to trust Dghies, who “has great influence over the Bashaw.” Bainbridge also downplayed the effects of possible naval bombardment, since “the Houses here [are made] of stone and mud and badly furnished.”
Bainbridge also allowed himself to give an unsolicited suggestion to a superior officer. “Permit me, my dear Barron,” he began, “I suppose . . . the object of our government and your expectation is to release us from captivity without paying; [that] is in my opinion impossible” without landing an army. He also argued that the United States’ honor would remain intact if it paid for “the liberty of its unfortunate citizens” because a ransom payment wouldn’t mean this country was paying “one farthing” for peace. (This is the same distinction that Eaton rejected and Jefferson was reluctantly willing to accept.)
Rodgers opened the second Bainbridge letter, dated March 22, which was even briefer. He held the paper over the flame, and the secret information that emerged seemed far more important: a tentative price for peace. Bainbridge stated that Dghies had told Nissen that the Bashaw might accept a ransom payment as low as $150,000, about one-third of what he had demanded from Preble.
Rodgers continued reading in the lime juice and the ransom dropped further: “I have no doubt that if a Person was to come here to negotiate before an attack was made, that Peace could be effected for $120,000.” Bainbridge counseled that the fear of the attack might be more stimulus to peace than the actual attack. “I think it a most favourable moment,” he enthused.
Rodgers digested the information: Bainbridge was advocating negotiations before the U.S. Navy could crush the corsairs. Jefferson’s orders to Tobias Lear and Commodore Barron had clearly stated: “We hope [peace with Tripoli] may be effected under the operation and auspices of the force in the hands of [Barron] without any price or pecuniary concession whatever.” Rodgers knew about those orders; all navy officers did.
He rushed off a note to Commodore Barron to accompany the letters that he would send immediately by the USS Vixen. He did not allow himself to offer any suggestions to his superior officer. The following day, he penned a more candid note to his longtime friend Tobias Lear. (Rodgers had met Lear a few years earlier in the Caribbean during the bloody slave uprisings of Haiti’s independence movement, and the men had survived several battles together.)
Captain Rodgers opened by expressing his amazement that these letters from Tripoli dealt with the “subject of peace!” But he cautioned Lear that he didn’t expect the enemy would agree to what “you will consider equal terms” until the navy showed its warships and opened fire. Rodgers reported that his scouting missions into the harbor hadn’t revealed that Tripoli had bulked up its defenses or its fleet. “I feel more than ever Confident, our present force, with an addition of two Mortars & two Gun Boats will enable us to give you the opportunity of negotiating a Peace perfectly to your Wishes.”
Rodgers, who had witnessed the Barbary corsairs close up, could not resist imploring Lear to let the navy have a crack at it. “If the attack is made within Six Weeks, under proper regulations, I will pledge all that’s sacred and dear to me in this World! That we succeed in the most perfect handsome & honorable manner.” (Rodgers’s passion to fight was no idle boast; he would back up his words with a lifetime of hard-won victories at sea during a long career.) He had recently written to his fiancée, Minerva: “I am only afraid that the Tripoline dogs . . . will barely afford me an opportunity of gaining a trophy worthy of laying at the feet of my little goddess.”
This war against Yussef would most likely end in one of three scenarios: either by the U.S. Navy crushing Tripoli into submission, or by Eaton placing Hamet on the throne, or, lastly, by the diplomatic maneuvers of Tobias Lear. So now, Rodgers joined Eaton and Lear, jockeying for a share of the glory.
Rodgers sent off the USS Vixen with these important messages.
At that same moment, yet more peace-for-a-payment letters, addressed to Tobias Lear and Commodore Barron, were about to leave Tripoli on the Eliza, which had completed its errand of delivering a $4,000 tribute payment for England. Tucked among the outbound letters was a thick packet addressed from the Spanish consul De Souza to Tobias Lear; also in there were three more missives to Lear and one more to Barron from that prolific letter writer William Bainbridge. Yussef, a shrewd manipulator, was clearly using surrogates to lure the Americans back to the bargaining table.
It’s easy to see why the Bashaw was making peace overtures. One glance around Tripoli revealed empty shelves in the stores, bread shortages, trade drying up. Several diplomats noted that the Moslem populace, blaming all Christians for the American blockade, were throwing more stones than usual and had made the streets more dangerous. Yussef—vulnerable to attack from within his borders—had taken hostages from the leading Arab tribes living to the south to ensure their loyalty. In addition, hard up for cash, the Bashaw was also demanding tribute payments earlier than scheduled from Denmark and Sweden. Repeated rumors of Hamet’s attack added to the unrest.
The Eliza returned to Malta on April 21, and a crewman immediately delivered the letters to Lear. The letter from De Souza relayed a firm offer from Yussef that he would accept $200,000 from the United States for peace and ransom, but the United States must hand over all Tripolitan prisoners for free. Included in the folded and sealed paper was a tiskara (a passport) guaranteeing safety for any person coming to negotiate in Tripoli. Yussef was trying once again to tempt the American diplomat.
Although the Spaniard called the proposal a starting point, Lear privately called the offer “totally inadmissible.” He then went to visit ailing Commodore Barron at his home to discuss the matter. When he arrived, a secretary asked him to read a letter sent by Captain Bainbridge. That letter opened a whole new tack in the negotiations, adding blood to what had been mere haggling over dollars. Yussef chose not to threaten the hostages through official diplomatic channels, but he instead opted to leak a report to his near-blind foreign minister, Mohammed Dghies, who, in turn, leaked it to Nissen and on to the imprisoned Captain Bainbridge.
The letter stated that the Bashaw had reacted with fury when he had received reliable report that his brother Hamet was teaming up with the American squadron. He now drew a sharp contrast between the ongoing payment squabble and this new attempt to overthrow his government. “Now, it is a war over my personal safety,” Bainbridge quoted the Bashaw as saying. “I w.d therefore act in a manner that the feelings of the U. States sh.d be hurt in the most tender part it is in my power to hurt.” Bainbridge said the Bashaw meant the American prisoners and added that aiding Hamet would endanger them and complicate any negotiations.
Yussef’s threat, however veiled, was deeply disturbing. Slaves were captured, worked awhile, then were ransomed. Rarely, if ever, in the history of Barbary did anyone threaten the mass execution of slave-prisoners. The logic was simple: Slaves, alive, had enormous value; slaves, dead, roused the enemy.
How real was this threat? The letters of Antoine Zuchet, the Dutch consul, provide a veteran Barbary observer’s viewpoint on Yussef’s threats of mass execution. On April 16, 1805, Zuchet reported home to his foreign ministry: “The American prisoners—at the moment that Bashaw Yussef is forced to leave the city—are to be sacrificed. Captain Bainbridge is very often greeted by the same threats, and the Danish consul is invited by Minister Dghies to transmit these pantomimes to Commodore Barron so that the commodore will attack in a manner that is amiable and then request peace.” Those two words in italics are dripping with sarcasm.
Zuchet was calling the threats “pantomimes,” that is, “empty gestures,” and he perceived that the purpose of the threats was that the Bashaw wanted the upcoming American attack to be waged not with full fury but rather in an “amiable” way, that is, a symbolic bombardment or two to save face, followed by a polite adjournment to the negotiating table.
Lear’s reaction to these various letters from Tripoli (of course, he wouldn’t see Zuchet’s report) would go a long way toward determining whether this war would end by sword or by word, with payment or without payment, with or without honor.
***
Tobias Lear was born in 1762 in the bustling seaport of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the fifth generation of his family in America and actually the fifth Tobias Lear. Though he passed his late teens during the patriotic fervor of Revolution, he—unlike William Eaton—didn’t run away to serve in the Continental Army. Scrawny and bookish, he attended Harvard College, graduating with the thirty-member class of 1783. He would indeed become a historical figure in the early years of the nation but one of decidedly mixed record.
Lear taught school for a while but then caught an astounding break. Lear’s uncle, Major General Benjamin Lincoln, recommended him to George Washington for the job of tutoring Washington’s grandchildren and, more important, the post of personal secretary, handling reams of correspondence. Washington’s letter welcoming Lear reveals just how intimately Lear would be living with America’s foremost family, beyond even eating at table with them. “He will have his washing done in the family,” wrote Washington, “and may have his socks darned by the maids.”
Very quickly, Lear’s post evolved beyond mere clerk. Washington treated Lear as his right-hand man, jack-of-all-trades. One day, he tutored grandchildren, the next, he visited properties, the third, he carefully filled out expense reports. Lear wrote stacks of letters in his immaculate hand, and he showed himself adept at assigned tasks.
Lear accompanied his patron to the nation’s capital, New York, when Washington began his term as first president, and often lived closer to the Founding Father than even Martha. President Washington—realizing he couldn’t open his doors all the time to would-be callers—frequently dined alone with Lear. Tobias mentioned in a letter to Martha that the presidential chef, “Black Sam,” routinely set up such “a number of fine dishes,” especially oysters and lobsters, that he and the president often held “long consultation” before making a selection.
Lear also learned bookkeeping. He kept Washington’s infamous expense account—the president had shrewdly turned down a hefty $25,000-a-year salary, offering instead to work for expenses (which wound up totaling much more). During a swing through New England, Lear enjoyed the prestige of bringing the president to his mother’s house in Portsmouth.
Despite all these experiences and advantages, Lear, apparently full of ambition, chafed at remaining in the shadow of the great man. At the start of Washington’s second administration in 1793, Lear decided to venture out on his own, with a little help from his patron. He founded T. Lear & Company and focused on two initiatives: working with Washington’s Potomack Company to develop river traffic to the nation’s future capital and joining the speculators in the Federal City/District of Columbia land rush.
Lear—armed with glowing recommendations from Washington and others—traveled to Europe to try to broker tracts of land in the District but failed to close any deals. Lear’s Potomac project also ran into difficulties, specifically, the nightmare of undertaking engineering projects to allow navigation past two waterfalls on the river.
Lear—despite partnering with wealthy investors—lost money. Meantime, his personal life was also troubled. He married Mary Long in 1790, but she died in 1793; then in 1795 he married Frances Basset Washington, a Washington niece, known as Fanny, the widow of Augustine Washington, but she died the following year.
In the late 1790s, Lear’s financial woes continued to mount. He still moved in highly respectable circles but with a little less panache. Then Lear did the unthinkable: He stole from George Washington, or he at least diverted some rent money into his own pocket. (Lear still sometimes ran unpaid errands for Washington.) George Washington, no longer president, found out when he approached a tenant about nonpayment of rent, only to be informed that the man had already paid it to Lear. “I must therefore request in explicit terms,” Washington wrote to Lear, “that you will receive no more monies due to me. I have not the slightest doubt of my being credited for every farthing you receive on my A/c; but that does not remedy the evil.” Washington, still furious the next day, added: “I have not approved, nor cannot approve, of having my money received and applied to uses not my own, without my consent.”
Lear apparently apologized profusely, and Washington quickly forgave him. The following year when Congress, fearing attack from France, appointed the former president once again to command the troops, he tapped Tobias Lear to be his chief aide, with the rank of colonel. Although the French never attacked by land and the army never garrisoned, Lear for the rest of his life retained the title and preferred to be addressed as Colonel Lear.
Lear, still deeply in debt, was caught again in financial shenanigans, this time by his business partner. He had pocketed the ample proceeds from the other man’s land sale. Lear ducked meeting the partner for months, pleading illness, but then finally tearfully apologized and agreed to repay him.
George Washington suddenly died at the age of sixty-seven, after a two-day illness that started as a mere sore throat and cold. Lear happened to be visiting Mount Vernon at the time; it was his heartfelt and detail-filled diary entry that captured the bedside scene for posterity. “About ten o’clock [Saturday, December 14, 1799], [Washington] made several attempts to speak to me before he could effect it—at length he said, ‘I am just going. Have me decently buried, and do not let my body be put into the Vault in less than two days after I am dead.’ I bowed assent. He looked at me again and said, ‘Do you understand me?’ I replied Yes Sir. ‘Tis well,’ said he.”
Lear helped oversee funeral arrangements, even measuring the corpse the next day (an astounding 6'31/2", with 1 foot 9 inches across the shoulders); Washington bequeathed to Lear a lifetime interest in Walnut Tree farm. Eventually nephew Bushrod Washington approached Lear about organizing Washington’s papers, and the two talked about collaborating on a biography.
Now came Lear’s least finest hour: the missing Washington papers. The case plays out like a whodunit. Instead of nephew Bushrod, Supreme Court Justice John Marshall wound up volunteering to write a biography of George Washington. He received the papers from Lear, who had kept them for a year. Marshall, who didn’t examine the whole trunk of papers right away, was quite upset when he discovered swaths of Washington’s diary were missing, especially sections during the war and presidency, and that a handful of key letters had also vanished. Lear, in a long rambling letter to Marshall, denied destroying any of Washington’s papers, but Lear’s own correspondence would later surface to refute his own denial.
A letter has survived that Lear had written Alexander Hamilton to offer to suppress Washington documents.
“There are, as you well know,” Lear had written, “among the several letters and papers, many which every public and private consideration should withhold from further inspection.” He specifically asked in the letter if Hamilton wanted any military papers removed. (Interestingly, while almost all the presidential diary is gone, Washington’s entries for his New England trip to Lear’s family home have survived.)
Beyond the missing diary, six key letters—that might have added a chapter to American history—were gone. Many sources claimed that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington had suffered a huge falling-out over a letter that Jefferson sent to a friend in Italy. In it, Jefferson had characterized Washington’s administration as being “Anglican monarchial & aristocratical,” and stated that Washington had appointed officers, “all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty.”
The Jefferson letter, sent to one Philip Mazzei, was eventually published abroad and then translated by Noah Webster back into English and republished in America. Its appearance in print allegedly sparked a nasty private fight, a three-round exchange of letters between Washington and Jefferson. Lear, in a conversation with friends over bottles of wine, had once admitted the existence of the letters but then later denied that he had ever said that.
A fellow named Albin Rawlins, an overseer at Mount Vernon, informed one of Washington’s nephews that he personally had seen the letters and that the second exchange of replies was so harsh that it made the “hair rise on his head” and “that he felt that it must produce a duel.” Those letters, which would have been extraordinary weapons in the hands of Jefferson’s enemies, disappeared sometime during the year that Tobias Lear safeguarded Washington’s papers and have never been seen since. (Lear’s only biographer, Ray Brighton, is convinced—despite no smoking-gun evidence—that Lear destroyed the letters at Jefferson’s request and that Jefferson rewarded him for the rest of his life.)
Thomas Jefferson, when he became president, gave debt-ridden Lear the potentially lucrative job of American commercial agent in Saint Domingue (future Haiti). Lear, in turn, hired Albin Rawlins to be an overseer at Walnut Tree farm during his absence.
Tobias Lear departed for the Caribbean, pleased that his post included the right to conduct private commerce. Unfortunately for Lear, he arrived just as France was secretly preparing to crack down on the slave rebellion there.
On January 17, 1802, in a grateful twelve-page letter to Jefferson, Lear predicted the long-rumored French invading force wouldn’t arrive for at least six months. A week later, a French armada with 20,000 troops appeared off Cape Francois. General LeClerc attacked and captured the main port from Toussaint L’Ouverture, but only after a horrific night of pillage and arson by the fleeing former slaves. Lear spent his time along with merchant captain John Rodgers trying hard to help the American citizens and merchants stranded inside this now embargoed port.
Unfortunately for Lear, this wasn’t the stance that the American government wanted at the time. The Jefferson administration, salivating over the prospect of the Louisiana Purchase, quickly informed him not to irritate the French commanders. Secretary of State Madison wrote to Lear that if his presence might “hazard the goodwill of the French,” he should leave.
Lear had definitely been an irritant, so he made plans to leave.
This was when he became especially close to Captain John Rodgers, who had been thrown in prison by General LeClerc for disrespecting a French officer and other petty crimes. Rodgers was first incarcerated in a large oven, then cast into an almost pitch-black dungeon “full of lizards, spiders and many noxious insects.” He used a toothpick and his own blood to write a note to smuggle out to Lear. Rodgers was moved to more tolerable quarters. That week, Lear departed for the United States. (Rodgers held no grudge for the departure, since he himself was freed about ten days later.)
Lear returned home, his mission a disaster. American cargoes had been confiscated, ships held, and the French had refused to recognize him as “Commercial Agent.” Lear had the gall to file a claim for personal losses of $6,586. Considering that he was in debt at the time of his appointment and he had no receipts for new borrowing or new expenditures, his expenses seemed suspect. Congress ruled there was no precedent for reimbursing a “Commercial Agent” but they did offer cold comfort by praising his conduct as “highly patriotic.”
Jefferson once again took care of Tobias Lear; he appointed Lear as consul general to the Barbary States, another potentially lucrative post. In addition to the ample $4,000-a-year salary, he was again granted the right to conduct private trade. It was common knowledge that the rulers in Barbary offered get-rich opportunities to sympathetic consuls. Zealot Eaton, after Tunis, had recommended that consulate officials be prohibited from engaging in trade.
Before departing, Lear married yet again, and once again to a Washington niece, this time a much younger one, twenty-three-year-old pouty-lipped Frances Henley; Lear was then forty-one. From lines in his letters, it’s clear Lear doted on his “Fanny,” as he called her. “I will fly on wings of love to your arms,” he wrote in one typical passage during a brief separation. He and his bride honeymooned on the USS Constitution, gliding to the Mediterranean with Preble. Lear was personally in charge of doling out $43,000 in consular presents for Algiers and Tunis, stowed for safekeeping in Preble’s cabin.
Tobias Lear, who had embezzled from George Washington, who had burned the president’s letters, who had bollixed every business opportunity, was heading to the Mediterranean to handle the extremely delicate peace negotiations with Tripoli.