CHAPTER 20

Tripoli: Peace? Freedom? Honor?

ON THE MORNING OF JUNE 1, in the nervous city of Tripoli, the Bashaw refused to accept Tobias Lear’s written demand; the thirty-eight-year-old ruler did not fly the American flag that would have announced he was willing to free the American prisoners by sunset. As the sun rose in the sky, Yussef, with much anxiety, moved ever closer to flouting the deadline of the ultimatum. But Bashaw Yussef Karamanli, ever a shrewd negotiator, did not yet know the measure of Tobias Lear; he had no way of knowing whether breaking Lear’s ultimatum would result in an immediate attack, and Yussef did not want to find out. He had until sunset to work something out. Emboldened by daylight, he was playing a dangerous game to gain a better treaty and ransom.

Yussef’s first minister, Mohammed Dghies, stepped in to help. The aging, almost blind merchant-statesman was angry that the Bashaw had entrusted these critical negotiations to De Souza, consul of Spain. He claimed that the Spaniard had bungled matters by even discussing that the prisoners might be freed before a treaty was finalized. And the Bashaw instantly voiced his agreement, saying to Dghies that if he gave up the hostages without first securing peace, what would stop the Americans from immediately attacking? from never paying?

Dghies came up with a plan. He sent a messenger over to the home of Danish consul Nicholas Nissen, the longtime friend of the Americans, who had sheltered the American officers, giving them books and food, and helping in many ways. Nissen had negotiated with the outside world for them; he even wrote imploring letters to the American commodore for them.

The messenger reached the Danish consulate. He was informed that the consul had left earlier in the morning. The messenger told the servant that it was urgent to find his master. Servants fanned out to the marketplace, to the gardens. Nissen was found, the search made easier by the dearth of pants-wearing, waistcoated foreigners in Tripoli. He rushed through the narrow streets to the castle and was conducted past the scimitar-wielding guards into the presence of Dghies and the Bashaw. The turbaned minister, speaking in French, told Nissen that even though everyone was saying that peace was at hand, actually the negotiations were “embrouillees” (all jumbled up).

Dghies told Nissen that the Bashaw couldn’t possibly let the hostages go without a treaty first being in place. Nissen agreed that Lear’s demand appeared “unreasonable” and wondered whether it might be the result of a misunderstanding. With the sunset deadline looming, Dghies suggested that the single most effective negotiator, the person most likely to sway this apparently inflexible Lear, would be the prisoner Captain Bainbridge. The mere sight of him would play on Lear’s emotions. At that moment, guards ushered in Bainbridge, haggard but clearly buoyed by all the talk of ransom.

Dghies and Nissen worked hard to convince the Bashaw that his wisest move would be to voluntarily send Bainbridge, his most valuable hostage, to the American warship to reason with Lear. The American officer, with freedom within sniffing distance, instantly agreed to give his word of honor as an officer that he would return within hours. He also stated that all his officers would also give their paroles, and agree to suffer any punishment if he did not return.

The Bashaw decided to take this important decision to his divan, or governing council. (As with most advisory boards, its main function was to take the blame for any wrong decisions.) The leading men of the government—bearded, turbaned, in colored vests—assembled quickly in the nearby room. The discussion raced forward. Members of the divan, such as Murad Rais, the Scot-turned-Turk admiral of the fleet, and Salah, aga of the divan, questioned whether the word of a Christian could be trusted. They leaned toward denying the request. Nissen then jumped in to offer his personal guarantee as well. They still leaned toward rejection when Mohammed Dghies, a foresightful man, gestured to a guard, and Dghies’s son was brought into the ornate chamber. Dghies said the Bashaw could hold his son hostage and that he could cut off the boy’s head if Bainbridge did not return. The divan was swayed.

The sun now stood almost directly overhead. The minaret sundial, soon shadowless, would announce it was noon and the full-throated muezzin would call the faithful to prayer. The weather was pleasant with light winds. The brig USS Vixen, of shallower draft than the frigates, had performed its usual duty of entering the harbor, under a white flag, staying ready to bring any negotiator out to the Constitution.

“We stood in under the batteries and lay to for the boat which we momentarily expected,” wrote Hezekiah Loomis, Vixen steward, in his journal. “At 12 o’clock the boat came off, and to our joy Captain Bainbridge was in it. He came on board and exhibited a spirit of joy and gladness, mixed with humiliation which I never before saw in all my life time. His first entrance on board was truly a specimen of joy to excess, but his pale meagre countenance showed how the confines of the Barbary fiends would dilate [sic] the whole system of a Christian.”

Bainbridge, his first time at sea in 576 days, sailed on this beautiful day through the tricky harbor, past the site of the grounding of the Philadelphia, out to the Constitution. John Rodgers greeted him as did near 400 American sailors and marines. No account has survived, but the men must have cheered him long and loudly and the fellow officers must have prepared a spontaneous feast for him.

Lear and Bainbridge met in private in the captain’s cabin. And Bainbridge, long-suffering, informed Lear that the Bashaw had told him that “it was more for the sake of peace than anything else that he consented to give the [prisoners] up” and that he wouldn’t do so without a treaty. “As it is our intention to conclude a treaty,” Bainbridge told Lear, “it would be cruel to let our Countrymen languish in Captivity merely on the punctilio of negotiating the treaty before or after their delivery.”

Lear wrote Fanny that he promptly consented to the changes “as it makes no difference to us in the terms of peace whether it was made before or after the people were delivered up.” (Veteran diplomats might find it fairly astounding that the order of negotiations was a trifle to Lear, but, then again, this is the same man who advised Barron to abandon Derne before the negotiations began.)

The red disk of the sun was now sinking toward the horizon and the Bashaw was waiting very anxiously onshore for an answer. Dghies’s boy sat nervously in the castle.

Bainbridge had one other request for Lear: ask for a new onshore negotiator, someone other than the Spanish consul, who, beneath his mask of politeness, seemed to be sowing confusion. Lear drafted a note in English for Bainbridge to carry to Dghies; he basically stated that he would abandon his ultimatum of the prisoners being delivered by sunset today and that he would negotiate a peace treaty first if the Bashaw would send out a new fully accredited negotiator. This was hardly a hardball request. Bainbridge was thrilled. He stayed aboard the American frigate past sunset, talking to fellow officers. The Constitution, according to its log, drifted to about four miles northwest of Tripoli. At 6:45 P.M. rail-thin Bainbridge, in a tattered captain’s uniform, climbed over the side and down into the boat, and then reboarded the Vixen. His four-mile trip probably took close to an hour.

When Bainbridge had not yet appeared at sunset, the tense Bashaw was overheard yelling at Mohammed Dghies for taking the word of a “Christian dog.” But around 8 P.M., the captain was escorted into the lamp-lit chamber, and he presented Lear’s note to Dghies. Relief spread through the room: no bombardment and no beheading. Evaluating the simplicity of Lear’s new request, Yussef now had the measure of his adversary. The minister and the Bashaw immediately decided that Nicholas Nissen would be the best choice to negotiate.

Nissen was reluctant to embroil himself in such a powder keg situation. “I did not much desire this commission,” Nissen wrote in a report to his government. “[But] the Pacha assured me that he would consider it as a token of friendship and declared that if, the occasion should arise, when I might have matters to settle concerning my own nation, he would show his appreciation.”

The following morning, Sunday, the Bashaw and Dghies briefed Nissen on the Bashaw’s positions on four key points. They handed him a tiskara, fully empowering him to represent Tripoli. Very early, the Vixen glided into the harbor, picked up the Dane, and delivered him to the towering frigate Constitution at 10 A.M. Nissen later summarized his speedy negotiations with Lear.

The American consul general remained immovable on the amount of $60,000 ransom, and the Bashaw accepted the figure. Both men agreed that officially “nothing has really been paid for peace.” (Lear needed to stress the Jeffersonian distinction between ransom and peace.) The Bashaw, emboldened by Lear’s easy abandonment of the ultimatum, now through Nissen demanded two gunboats as “articles of peace”; Lear refused but said the United States might possibly one day restore two captured Tripolitan vessels to him.

Now came two very important issues for the Bashaw: Hamet and Derne. The Bashaw wanted Lear to agree that the United States would withdraw support from Hamet and would leave Derne. “The Bashaw seemed very anxious about this point,” Nissen later wrote, and added the Bashaw was particularly enraged that the U.S. flag had been raised alongside Hamet’s on one of the Bashaw’s fortresses. Lear was quite willing to cede this point (especially since he figured that Barron’s orders might have already prompted Eaton to leave Derne.) However, Lear demanded that, in exchange for exiting Derne, the Bashaw should liberate Hamet’s wife and children, held hostage for almost ten years.

By noon, the efficient Dane climbed into the longboat and returned to shore to consult with the Bashaw.

Around this time, Captain Bainbridge, fresh from his triumphant voyage the day before, sent a note to Dr. Cowdery that peace was imminent. The Bashaw’s family physician had the kindness to read it to the prisoners “who were so overjoyed that many of them shed tears.” The taskmasters, however, still forced them to labor on this Sunday, and many, daring to balk, were beaten. The men, once gathered back in their prison in the late afternoon, voted to fulfill a promise they had made. They sent a letter to Captain Bainbridge asking if their wages could be docked to the amount of $300 to buy the freedom of a slave from Naples, the personal servant to the chief warden. He had been repeatedly kind to them. (The man was, in fact, freed, then enlisted immediately in the U.S. Navy; marine private Ray—perhaps relaying his own prejudices—wrote that navy discipline later caused the former slave to yearn to return to Tripoli.)

Lear waited on board for an answer and we know exactly what he was thinking because he found time to write to Fanny. He was quite optimistic about peace and optimistic they would be reunited within a week. “[Nissen] will be on board again this evening when I trust the business will be brought to a conclusion.”

About 4:30 P.M. the Vixen ferried its passenger to the frigate. Nissen reported that the Bashaw was quite pleased with the progress of negotiations but that he wanted the parts about Derne put into writing. He wanted the United States to add that it would try to persuade Hamet to leave the country. Lear acquiesced, but he demanded once again that Hamet’s family be restored to him.

Nissen relayed Lear’s stance. “This demand seemed severe to the Pacha,” wrote Nissen, “as he thought that he would in this way lose the hostages which he held as security against further hostile attempts on the part of his brother; he even distrusted the North Americans and feared that they, when they had their prisoners of war, as well as Sidi Hamet’s family, in their power, would perhaps again engage in hostile acts to the advantage of his brother.”

Nonetheless, Lear refused to budge. He handed Nissen preliminary written articles that summed up the $60,000 prisoner exchange and the Derne evacuation, but still included the restoration of Hamet’s family. After sunset around 7:15 P.M., Nissen climbed over the rail of the frigate and departed for his five-mile ride to town.

That Sunday night, everyone anticipated peace. The new commodore dashed off a “Private” note to the ailing ex-commodore. “Our business is so far finished as not to leave me a hope of receiving a Button for my services much more a Medal. . . . Nothing on the score of Peace remains to be done, farther than the discussion of some trivial matters.” (From Rodgers’s perch, Hamet’s family was “trivial.”) Rodgers was clearly nettled by not being able to attack or to force a better treaty, which he later called “quite honorable but not corresponding to my own ideas.”

The sun rose, breaking the plane of the Mediterranean. A handful of officers ate breakfast with Tobias Lear. And Rodgers, always known for his seaman’s directness, made a gallant offer—ostensibly said in jest but perhaps not. “If the Bashaw would consent to deliver up our Countrymen, without making peace, I will engage to give him $200,000 instead of $60,000 and raise the difference between the sums from the officers of the Navy.” He added: “I am perfectly assured that they will contribute with the highest satisfaction.”

Lear, not surprisingly, did not relay Rodgers’s offer.

Onshore, now even the Bashaw expected peace. That Monday morning, the five American prisoners who turned Turk were brought to the palace: Quartermaster John Wilson (whom Bainbridge wanted hanged), Peter West, Thomas Smith (who had a wife and four children in Boston), Lewis Heximer, and young Thomas Prince. These men had all been circumcised and now wore the turban. The Bashaw informed them that peace was coming and he asked them whether they would prefer to remain as Moslems in Tripoli or whether they would prefer to return to America. Four of them responded that they wished to rejoin the American fleet. Only Wilson, the most hardened of the group, thanked the Bashaw but said he chose to remain a Moslem in Tripoli in the service of the great Bashaw. Marine private Ray reported that Wilson was rewarded for his choice, while the others were marched under guard out of the gates of Tripoli and onto a road leading to the hinterlands. “We had a glance at them as they passed our prison,” wrote Ray, “and could see the horror and despair in their countenances.”

At 9 A.M., on Monday, the Danish consul boarded the Constitution. He reported to Lear that the Bashaw would agree to all conditions except for one: He would not return his brother’s family. Lear again gave his most detailed account to Fanny, painting himself in heroic colors. “[Nissen] said the Bashaw would never agree to the article. . . . I told him I would not yield it, and when he went on shore again, if it was not acceded to, the white flag would be taken down.” This was a major threat. With the flag down, Rodgers could bombard.

Light breezes blew on a fine cloudless day as Nissen returned ashore to inform the Bashaw that Lear wouldn’t agree. The Dane convinced the Bashaw that the Americans had no intention of aiding Hamet any further once their hostages and Hamet’s family were restored.

Captain Bainbridge was given the honor of attending the divan at which the preliminary articles were voted on. The eight ministers sat at a dais arranged in a crescent; the Bashaw sat in the middle, with Mohammed Dghies at his right hand. The first vote was six to two against accepting the treaty, with only Dghies and the Rais of the Marine (harbormaster) in favor. Dghies rose to speak, and with an eloquent speech the nearly blind old man swayed two more to join his side. The vote now stood at four to four, and Dghies pointed out that the decision now rested with the Bashaw. The Bashaw pulled out his signet and pressed it upon the preliminary articles. “It is peace,” he said.

At 4 P.M., Nissen once again made the harbor voyage out to the Constitution. “He came onb.d again with the article signed by the Bashaw,” Lear wrote triumphantly to Fanny. Nissen later corroborated that he had delivered the preliminary articles with the clause intact about restoring Hamet’s family.

Peace had officially arrived. The war that had begun over tribute payments and escalated when Bainbridge grounded the Philadelphia was over. All that remained was hashing out treaty language, and a few niggling details, “punctilios.”

The afternoon sun illuminated the white canvas sails. A magnificent cloudless spring day on the Mediterranean reverberated with huzzahs and mutual congratulation. Smiles broke out everywhere (except perhaps on warlike Rodgers).

Consul General Lear, resplendent in waistcoat and high collar, joined the gentlemanly Dane, Nissen, aboard the Vixen for a pleasant glide into the harbor. The two-masted brig, with a hundred men aboard its cramped 80-foot deck, meandered around the end of the reefs. A large white flag flapped at the stern. The harbor pilot helped guide the Vixen under the battery by the castle. At that moment, sailors hauled down the white flag and hoisted the American flag with fifteen stars and fifteen stripes, an immense seventeen feet by thirty-two feet. The Vixen punctuated its change of flag by firing off a celebratory gun. The castle answered with a twenty-one-gun salute, that repetitive hollowed boom of an explosion racing out of a long gun barrel. The Constitution answered with twenty-one respectful guns, each time the men placing a flannel cartridge of measured gunpowder down the barrel. No need for wadding and cannonball, no need to aim. Smoke lingered in the air of the harbor.

With peace proclaimed, Colonel Lear now ventured to go ashore. Lear and Nissen climbed into the Constitution’s large boat, with an American flag flapping on a short pole; they were rowed ashore into a loud happy celebration. “I was met by thousands of people on the landing and amongst them our American officers who had been liberated from their prison the day before,” Lear wrote to young Fanny. “The sight of them so near their freedom was grateful to my soul and you must form an idea of their feelings for I cannot describe them.”

The people of Tripoli, from the barracan-covered women to turbaned men and boys, filled the streets in a joyful mob. More than any other man that day, Tobias Lear was the liberator.

Nissen shepherded Lear to the Danish consulate; from there he paid a visit to aged Mohammed Dghies and was very impressed. “I found [him] a sensible, liberal and well-informed man.” That Monday night, a handful of prisoners were allowed to spend the night in the officers’ quarters, but most returned to their large arched barracks and were locked in for the night, apparently with copious amounts of liquor smuggled in.

Dawn broke on Tuesday, June 4, the 579^th day of their enslavement. The taskmasters now usually arrived to roust the prisoners for work . . . Abdallah, nicknamed Captain Blackbeard, and Soliman, whom they called “Scamping Jack,” and the bandy-legged Greek, and the arrogant French rinigado, and the meanest one, Red-Jacket of Tripoli. None of those rod-wielding overseers showed up for work, rightly fearing a beating from the newly freed Americans. Instead, the slaves remained locked in until 10 A.M. As soon as the gates opened, the men poured into the local shops to buy more liquor, from date-palm to wine, to toast their freedom. The men drank and sang and danced around. Many of them tore at the filthy prison rags they had been forced to wear.

Lear dashed off a note to Rodgers warning him about the high spirits of the 280 freed crewmen and advising Rodgers not to send boats until the afternoon. “The intoxication of Liberty & Liquor has deranged the faculties of as well as dress of many of the Sailors and Capt.n B. wishes them all on board quite clean and in Order.”

The shore boat or barge of the Constitution had also carried in a new flagpole to install at the United States consulate. (Lear had been forewarned about the timber scarcity.) At 10:15 A.M. Rodgers through the spyglass observed the large American flag raised on the consulate; the castle pounded out another twenty-one-gun salute and the Constitution responded.

Lear in his finest clothes, along with two naval officers, was conducted by ornate armed guard to the castle. A nine-gun salute heralded his arrival in the courtyard. The Constitution again answered. While Jefferson had walked to his own inauguration, eschewing all trappings of monarchy, Lear enjoyed the pomp. In fact, he later agreed to reimburse the Tripolitans for all the gunpowder used in marking the peace.

Lear was also quite impressed with Bashaw Yussef Karamanli. (His note to Fanny has an awed schoolgirl tone.) The American diplomat showed no outrage at this ruler who had enslaved Americans. “He paid me many compliments and expressed himself on the peace with much manliness,” Lear wrote. “He is a man of very good presence, manly & dignified and has not in his appearance so much of the tyrant as he has been represented to be. His court was much more superb than that of Algiers—We spoke but little on the subject of the treaty etc. He observed that he had given stronger evidences of his confidence in us than he had ever before given to any nation. He had delivered our people before he had received his own, and as to the money he was to receive, it was merely nominal—the sum was nothing, but it was impossible to deliver them without something.”

Gracious Lear showed none of the hotheadedness of Eaton when consul in Tunis, nor the hard bargaining of Cathcart, which helped start the war. His polite amicable meeting lasted a half an hour. By this point, Lear had set preliminary articles (favored nation status, $60,000, prisoner exchange, Derne abandonment, Hamet family return) and the Bashaw had agreed. Many issues remained, from annual tribute and consular presents to procedures regarding prisoners in the event of another war.

The Bashaw gave every sign of allowing Lear much latitude, saying he was convinced that Lear “would not insert anything that was not just.” Lear, who had achieved his own goals for price and timing of prisoner delivery, would now be challenged over the fine print.

After his meeting, Lear scribbled another note to Rodgers, alerting him that the Bashaw would be sending a gift of bullocks, sheep, vegetables, and fruit. (Lear would later wind up agreeing to pay for this so-called gift.) The Rhode Islander, so long in the service of George Washington, was a stickler for protocol, however arcane. He informed Rodgers that he should fire off a three-gun salute on receiving the present, give the Tripolitan officer four cartridges of gunpowder, and not forget to offer them the customary cup of coffee. The consul knew that American sailors would now be rowing boat after boat to and from the shore to ferry prisoners away from Tripoli. He added a postscript: “The sailors who go off sh.d not be permitted to come on shore in the boats, as they have bad places.” These “bad places” must have been bordellos, packed with Christian slave girls, as well as dozens of liquor houses.

Over the course of the spring afternoon, the freed Americans changed into newly issued clothes and walked (or staggered) to the harbor to catch a boat to the various American vessels: the Constitution, Constellation, Vixen, and Essex. The Essex brig had room to welcome only thirty sailors and marines, a midshipman, and Lieutenant David Porter. Marine private William Ray, for one, boarded the Essex. Lear witnessed the joyous transit of the former slaves. He was especially pleased that the Americans were departing prior to the formal signing of a complete treaty. “The manner in which [peace] has been made,” he wrote to his wife, “and the terms exceed the calculations of every one, but I must not boast.”

One matter, though, required immediate attention: Derne. In that era of slow communication via sail or camelback, the Bashaw’s latest report, three weeks old, still had the American flag flying over the country’s second largest city and Hamet firmly entrenched at the governor’s palace.

Commodore Rodgers, experienced in war, realized that battles could be occurring at Derne at the very moment that American sailors in Tripoli were reveling over peace. (Treaties in that era often included clauses pardoning acts committed during the lag time needed for word to reach a particular region.)

Rodgers wanted to dispatch a ship for Derne immediately. He knew that Barron had withdrawn supplies, but Rodgers had heard an offhand remark over dinner that had disturbed him. Lieutenant Dent, whose Nautilus had departed Derne on May 18, mentioned that Eaton had vowed: “I will not evacuate Derne until I receive an answer from Commodore Barron to my last communications.”

Amid all the festivities on the June 4 liberation day, Rodgers found time to write a quick note to Lear on the subject. “To be sure, after [Eaton] has received Commodore Barron’s directions to evacuate Derne, a non compliance will make the responsibility his own: nevertheless the consequence will be his Country’s.”

Rodgers counseled Lear to ready dispatches for Derne so that a ship “shall proceed without delay—her early arrival there may prevent impending mischief.”

The American ships were now severely overcrowded, and Rodgers wanted to send them out of Tripoli as soon as possible. He also needed to deliver from Syracuse $60,000 in ransom money and the one hundred Tripolitan prisoners.

Lear politely requested that Rodgers keep one of the two large frigates in port—the Constitution or Constellation—as befitting the honor of a diplomat, but Rodgers ultimately deemed it unfeasible because of disease aboard the Essex and damage aboard the Vixen. He decided on June 5 to rush the Constellation to Derne with news of the formal peace. (He left Lear the brig Vixen.)

Lear had been working to draft the formal twenty-point treaty in English so it could be delivered to a translator for rendering into Arabic. Lear asked Rodgers if the Constellation could wait until the following day (June 6) to leave for Derne, and Lear also mentioned that the Bashaw had asked a favor. Could he send a choux (an officer) to Derne merely to observe and perhaps to send a few letters ashore, now that the United States and Tripoli were on friendly terms?

Lear said that he had seen no harm in the request and had already agreed. (Lear apparently did not consider the possibility that the choux could be delivering a death sentence to all residents who had aided Hamet and had trusted the United States.)

As Tobias Lear drafted his letter to William Eaton, he apparently worried that the hardheaded patriot might ignore his words. So Lear requested Commodore Rodgers also send a strong letter to Eaton. Rodgers bristled at the thought of Eaton disobeying Barron’s directive. He abruptly opened his note to Eaton by saying that he didn’t expect to find him still at Derne but if he still was there . . . He informed him that peace had been concluded on June 3 and “[I] have to desire that no farther hostilities by the forces of U. States be committed against the said Joseph Bashaw, his subjects or dominions, and that you evacuate and withdraw our forces from Derne.” The message contained no mention whatsoever of praise for Eaton’s conquest.

On Thursday, June 6, the sailors aboard three U.S. Navy ships prepared to leave Tripoli. Captain William Bainbridge, safely aboard the Constitution, wrote a jaunty note of thanks to Lear, his mood so fine that he joked that if the Bashaw imprisoned Lear, he would return and take the diplomat’s place. (Perhaps the navy men sensed a certain nervousness on Lear’s part to be left in Tripoli, with only Dr. Ridgely for American company onshore and the wobbly Vixen at sea.)

Lear labored over his letter to Eaton, trying hard to strike the right tone. As he arrived at the ticklish subject of Hamet and Derne, all his skills in diplomacy and circumlocution would be required.

“I found the heroic bravery of our few countrymen at Derne, and the idea that we had a large force and immense supplies at that place, had made a deep impression on the Bashaw—I kept up that idea, and endeavored, from thence, to make an arrangement favorable to his brother, who, altho’ not found to be the man whom many had supposed, was yet entitled to some consideration from us. But I found that this was impracticable, and that if persisted in, would drive him to measures which might prove fatal to our countrymen in his power.”

The word fatal is no random dire adjective. Although Lear might have believed what he wrote, very few others in the region believed that the captives’ lives were at stake. Dutch consul Zuchet had dismissed the threat as a “pantomime.” Yussef was nearly out of funds, missing a third of his kingdom, with his troops on the verge of mutiny and his navy in tatters, and a revitalized U.S. fleet soon to arrive. Commodore Rodgers also didn’t share this belief of his friend. Two days later, he wrote to the secretary of the navy: “I never thought myself that the Lives of the American Prisoners were in any danger.”

Lear tiptoed onward in his letter to Eaton: “I therefore engaged, of course, that on the conclusion of peace, we should withdraw all our forces and supplies from Derne, and other parts of his dominions, and the Bashaw engages, that if his brother withdraws himself quietly from his dominions, his wife and family should be restored to him.—This is all that could be done, and I have no doubt but the U. States will, if deserving, place him in a situation as eligible as that in which he was found.”

Lear closed his letter: “I pray you will accept yourself and present to Mr. OBannon and our brave countrymen with you, my sincere congratulations on an event which your and their heroic bravery has tended to render so honorable to our country.”

Lear sealed the letter and had it rowed out to Captain Hugh Campbell on the Constellation; Campbell instantly made ready to sail eastward to Derne.

Tobias Lear, amid his flurry of hollow compliments, had failed to mention that he had crafted a secret agreement with the Bashaw postponing the return of Hamet’s family. Lear would never write home a single word about the “Secret Article.” That duplicitous document would remain hidden from Eaton, Jefferson, and the world for two years.