Tripoli: Lear Pays
Finding that the translation of two copies of the Treaty into Arabic will require more time than I expected, I have thought it best for the Constitution to go over to Malta & Syracuse with our late captives, and return here again for me, which will deprive me of that happiness of seeing my dearest Fanny for 8 or 10 days more than I expected.
—TOBIAS LEAR (TRIPOLI) TO HIS WIFE, JUNE 6, 1805
LEAR WANTED TO REMAIN as short a time as possible in Tripoli. The shore breezes ruffling the palm trees, the smell of exotic spices in the marketplace, the sounds of half a dozen languages echoing in narrow alleys did nothing for him. Not only did the twice-widowed diplomat miss his young bride but he suffered from chronic pain in his ankles (probably gout) and the lotion and cotton cloths that he had brought were not working as well as the flannel bandages he had left behind in Malta.
Helping Lear cope with his absence from Fanny was the man’s near glee at the outcome of his negotiations. In every piece of correspondence, he referred to the “favourable” and “honorable” peace. “Within twenty four hours after I landed,” he wrote to William Higgins, naval agent at Syracuse, “every officer & seamen belonging to the late U. States frigate Philadelphia were sent on board our ships and the settlement of the whole left to my arrangement.”
In that decorous age, no one said anything critical directly to Tobias Lear. The Bashaw was full of smiles, as was Danish consul Nissen and Jewish financier Leon Farfara, who both gave him the ultimate compliment, informing him that the conditions he had imposed were indeed harsh. A four-year war was over; hostages were freed. No one said anything to man-of-the-hour Lear. However, around this time in early June Dutch diplomat Zuchet gave his government an insider’s perspective on the treaty. The veteran diplomat sent a report home recounting the conditions and then stated: “What misery has this Bashaw caused by his behavior! He personally should have suffered more than everyone else. He was held by the throat by the United States but, out of pity—that’s the only way to put it—he was accorded $60,000, which is still half of what Commodore Preble offered him last year.” Zuchet was baffled by the American diplomat’s largesse, and he was irritated that the impoverished beleaguered Yussef had yet again dodged disaster. Zuchet noted that with peace came a return to piracy, or in more precise terms, to state-sponsored attacks against nations without peace treaties. The instant the American blockade was lifted, Yussef sent out four Barbary cruisers to try to capture Neapolitan vessels and refill the treasury. Zuchet also observed that Murad Rais, the renegade Scot Peter Lyle, had completed refitting a 12-cannon xebec and was expected daily to go chase ships of the Hanseatic League.
Lear settled in as a guest at the Danish consulate, and he showed little curiosity about touring the city. Leather-bound books lined the walls of the study, and noontime brought ample meals and discussions of the ancient classics. Life without Fanny was made a tad more bearable by the cask of Madeira Lear had sent ashore as a present for consul Nissen. From the roof deck on the Danish consulate on June 6, Lear had watched the sails of three U.S. Navy vessels disappear carrying the prisoners to safety. Now Lear was left in Tripoli with Dr. Ridgely, a genial navy man emerging from eighteen months captivity, and with the convivial Dane Nissen, and with constant visitor Leon Farfara, the unofficial (and well-reimbursed) liaison between foreign diplomats and the Bashaw.
On the evening of June 6, when Lear found himself sleeping ashore, no full version of U.S.-Tripoli treaty yet existed. Rodgers had departed with the prisoners, but he carried only the preliminary articles. Although Lear would date the final treaty as signed on June 4 (thus confusing historians), that date was a finesse, a diplomatic connivance, to fulfill the Bashaw’s demand that peace be struck before the hostages departed.
Back on June 4 in the august salon of the divan, the Bashaw had signed the preliminary articles and rather airily told Lear to draft the rest of the treaty himself. Yussef had added that he foresaw no problems in the fine print.
Perhaps the reason the Bashaw anticipated no difficulties was that, as a perceptive judge of character, he already had sensed the accommodating nature of Lear and, more importantly, he knew that two very shrewd men would be helping Lear: Nissen and Farfara.
Lear sat down to draft the treaty. His task was made easier by the fact that he carried with him a draft of a peace treaty with Tripoli written in spring of 1803 by James Leander Cathcart, the meddlesome former U.S. consul to Tripoli. Lear borrowed thirteen of the seventeen articles verbatim and took the gist of two others.
The treaty—aimed at preventing abuses by one country against another—gives a fascinating glimpse into daily life on the Mediterranean circa 1805. Almost half the treaty concerns the arcane game of capturing ships and holding cargoes and passengers hostage. Many of these conditions might seem niggling to a modern reader, but they were the fine print that determined whether a vessel disappeared or returned home intact, whether cargoes survived, whether passengers slipped into slavery. In many respects, this treaty drafted by Cathcart (who was then furious at Tripoli’s actions) and copied by Lear was indeed among the most favorable ever written on the Barbary Coast. It stated, for instance, that American goods being carried on a ship of a nation at war with Tripoli shall not be confiscated.
But, and it is a very large caveat, Tobias Lear did not choose to copy one immensely important clause from Cathcart’s draft. Cathcart wrote in Article 16: “No pretence of any periodical tribute or further payment of any denomination is ever to be made by either party.” This cessation of tribute goes to the heart of the war, and to the essence of the principles of the United States.
Lear never revealed why he dropped this demand for no tribute. The Jefferson administration had clearly stated its preference to stop paying tribute, but it had also allowed Lear in its April 9, 1803, Department of State instructions to agree to tribute but preferably in secret, in “no part of the public treaty.”
That is, apparently, what Tobias Lear did. In his only later account of the peace process, he wrote: “No Consular present is mentioned in the Treaty; but that it is understood will be given as is usual with all nations when a Consul shall be sent, it does not exceed 6,000 Dollars, and the particulars I shall send in my next.” Either Lear never sent the “particulars” or those particulars were so embarrassing as to be conveniently lost.
The U.S. prisoners had already departed from Tripoli, so Lear’s generosity is a bit baffling. One clue might be that Nissen and Farfara hammered the fact that all nations paid this. Also, Farfara, who often supplied the jewels or lent the money, at great profit to himself, had a huge incentive for the practice to continue. Lear demonstrated over and over that he had difficulty rejecting requests for traditional payments, “customary fees” or what European diplomats called usanza.
One aspect of usanza, however, the United States dearly wanted to stop was the enslaving of prisoners in times of war. The greatest outrage in the United States centered on Americans being forced into slavery, popularly pictured as being forced to wield palm-frond fans to keep flies off turbaned noblemen and their veiled harem girls.
Cathcart had written a clause which stated that—in the event of war—any prisoners captured by either side shall not be made slaves but shall be exchanged rank for rank. However, Cathcart—who had been imprisoned in Algiers for eleven years—had added a formula for redemption in case one side had more prisoners: $500 for a captain, $300 for a mate or a supercargo (owner’s agent), and $100 for each seaman. (This clause would have pleased Farfara, who often handled these transactions.) Cathcart also stipulated that no longer than a year should elapse before a prisoner is redeemed. This pragmatic approach would keep ransom timely and affordable. (Lear had paid $300 per each of 200 sailors while 100 prisoners were exchanged man for man at no cost.)
Lear adopted Cathcart’s language word for word, even though it seems staggering that the United States would codify a ransom system that could place a monetary value on American prisoners and could encourage Tripoli corsairs to capture U.S. ships. (Neither Jefferson nor Madison would ever comment directly on this humiliating clause in the treaty.)
Eaton favored a much tougher approach, as did Commodore Rodgers, who vowed never again to pay a ransom. When Eaton struck his Convention with Hamet Karamanli back in February near Alexandria, he specified in Article 10: “In case of future war . . . , captives on each side shall be treated as prisoners of war, and not as slaves, and shall be entitled to reciprocal and equal exchange, man for man, and grade for grade and in no case shall a ransom be demanded for prisoners of war, nor a tribute required. . . . All prisoners shall be given up on the conclusion of peace.”
Eaton was modeling his agreement on the gentlemanly rules of European warfare, in which French officers sometimes dined with their English adversaries as each side waited for appropriate prisoner exchanges.
Tobias Lear finished drawing up the treaty, and he handed it to Leon Farfara to have it translated into Arabic. According to Arabic scholars, the text sports at least a dozen mistranslations, most of which appear minor. However, one slip stands out as perhaps an intentional “dirty trick.”
The English for Lear’s Article 16 stated: “The Prisoners captured by either party shall not be made slaves.” The Arabic asserted the exact opposite: “The men captured by either party shall not be made prisoners of war.” The Arabic langauge boasts many words for slaves, but the translator chose to use none of them. Since both the Arabic and the English versions were considered “originals,” this misconstruction was also binding.
The American consuls before Lear were not devotees of Leon Farfara. Cathcart had written a half decade earlier: “On my arrival here [Farfara] like a pusillanimous scoundrel wrote me a letter imploring me for the love of God not to mention his name to the Bashaw, as it would be ruinous to him and detrimental to our affairs. I never saw him until I had delivered the Consular presents, when all the difficulty was surmounted he came like a Jerry Sneak and offered his services. And yet this fellow expects $1,000.” And with more than a whiff of anti-Semitism, he had added: “I have had this Christ-killing puppy and all his family in my house.”
Cathcart also recounted that Farfara had once purposely mangled the translation of Sweden’s treaty with Tripoli by omitting the clause that specified four years between payments instead of three.
Lear had failed on two key points of the treaty: no tribute and no slaves, and now he would botch the agreement regarding the treatment of Hamet.
From day one, Bashaw Yussef deeply regretted agreeing to restore his brother’s family, and he badgered Consul Nissen to try to convince Lear to change his mind. Nissen, for his part, worried that he had perhaps pressed too hard a bargain on Yussef, and that it might one day come to haunt Danish interests. So Nissen asked Lear to soften on this demand. Lear remained firm at first.
Then, sometime in early June, this generous scholarly Dane, perhaps over a fine glass of Madeira or a collegial chat about Sophocles, swayed Lear into making a breathtaking concession: The United States would grant the Bashaw four years to return Hamet’s family. And the agreement would remain absolutely secret.
This marks an extraordinary change: Hamet was induced to leave Derne on the promise of regaining his wife and sons and daughters. Now, unbeknownst to him, he would be on probation for four years, and then he would have to hope that the United States would still be interested enough to force the Bashaw’s hand into fulfilling the bargain. From any angle, this was subterfuge. (Eaton, when he first heard of it in late 1807, called it far worse: a “national disgrace,” a “dishonor.”)
Lear, in a Secret Article, which he dated June 5, agreed to the following: “Whereas his Excellency the Bashaw of Tripoli has well grounded reasons to believe, if the wife and children of his brother (Hamet) should be delivered up to him immediately . . . the said brother would engage in new operations of hostility against him. . . . And the said United States willing to evince their good disposition . . . do hereby agree to a modification of the said article . . . so that the term of four years shall be fixed for the execution . . . during which time the said brother is to give evident proofs of his peaceful disposition towards the Bashaw.”
Lear signed it and put the U.S. diplomatic seal on the document. Lear, Nissen, Farfara, and Dr. Ridgely knew of this document, but it was a tightly held secret. Dutch consul Zuchet, who ferreted out the darkest plots and relayed much gossip, never found out about it, and Lear made no official report about it to Commodore Rodgers, the Department of State, or to Jefferson. If Lear ever wrote a syllable about his motives or rationale, those documents have since been lost or destroyed. After safekeeping the letters he wrote daily to his wife from May 25 to June 6, he preserved no letters that cover events from June 7 to June 21. Perhaps, just as during the Washington incident years earlier, Lear was once again demonstrating he was not above destroying embarrassing letters.
With utmost secrecy, Tobias Lear had chopped away the only favorable consideration that Hamet had won from his dangerous five-month expedition with Eaton.
Nissen later wrote to his foreign ministry to explain why he had swayed Lear. “Although this matter might seem of very little importance to our affairs or to me, both as consul and as a private individual, I nevertheless desired this modification, in order to show the Pasha and his Divan that I had not tried to deceive them, and the Pasha will regard it as a great service on my part, which he will perhaps repay to my successor, when the opportunity offers.” Nissen had sold out the United States, or really Hamet, for a vague promise of future gain. (Ironically, two years later, the Bashaw would demand an unusually hefty gift of $30,000 and 33,000 pounds of gunpowder from Denmark to renew its $5,000-tribute-a-year treaty.)
That second week of June, Lear had time on his hands waiting for Rodgers to return with the ransom and the Tripolitan prisoners. So he went shopping. He tried to find some Barbary horses worthy of sending to Washington City but found none fine enough. He did purchase two ostriches and several unusual breeds of sheep to take with him, as well as many unspecified presents for Fanny and his friends in Malta.
On June 10, one dozen officials signed and sealed the treaty, including Yussef’s son, first minister Mohammed Dghies, and Murad Rais, the admiral. At this point, Lear handed out tokens of the United States’ pleasure at this august signing. Lear made no mention of it in his official reports, but Dutch consul Zuchet stated: “They carried a present to the Bashaw and to his sons and to all the ministers who put their signature on the treaty, of jewelry in diamonds, cloths and watches, to the value of about $6,000.”
Tobias Lear was slavishly indulging the men who had enslaved Americans. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson assumed that Lear would avoid unnecessary tribute, but they assumed wrong. His orders allowed him to make payments in secret, and apparently he did just that.
A week later, on Monday, June 17, the sails of the Constitution hove into view. Choppy seas prevented the frigate from approaching the shore, but the battery on the castle volunteered a twenty-one-gun salute, and Commodore Rodgers answered boom for boom. Lear in his consular report never mentioned agreeing to reimburse Tripoli for gunpowder, but his expense account much later listed $250 paid for the general salute at the conclusion of the peace and then $152 for the first and second salute to the Constitution. (That $402 would buy enough gunpowder for ten times that many salutes.) A later American diplomat once disgustedly summed it up: “Mr. Lear never opposed a single demand; never evaded a threat.”
On Tuesday, June 18, at 9 A.M. the Constitution lowered two cutters and ferried 48 Tripolitan citizens and 41 black slaves ashore, who had been made prisoners by the U.S. Navy. Huge joyous crowds greeted them at the wharf. Lear, however, was extremely apprehensive on two counts. First, he had promised 100 prisoners (not 89), and second, he worried about the Bashaw’s reception of slaves, who were not natives of Tripoli. “I was therefore obliged to make it appear that the blacks were his subjects, and were to be included in the exchange. I found no difficulty in the case, tho’ I am sure he was not convinced of the propriety of it.”
The Barbary nations were notorious for not ever redeeming their own captured citizens—the Dey of Algiers once said that he wouldn’t give an orange peel for one of his countrymen. The Bashaw was no doubt thrilled to receive 41 slaves worth as much as $500 each, or $20,000.
Lear had requested that Commodore Rodgers bring $65,000—that is, $60,000 for ransom and $5,000 to establish a consulate. Rodgers ordered the ransom carried ashore and sailors, two at each end, carried eight wooden chests of money into the castle and laid them at the Bashaw’s feet. He duly signed a receipt, dated June 19, which Lear attached to the treaty.
Lear was not done handing out money. Again, his official report makes no mention of this, but his expense account lists it. Nissen advised Lear to pay Leon Farfara $1,555 for his services, and Lear agreed. He put a note in the margin that he had paid the sum to Nissen, who gave him a receipt and promised to deliver it to Farfara, who apparently was unable to give him a receipt. (This secret payment would help lead the following year to Farfara’s murder by the Bashaw.)
Lear was also informed that for generations countries had paid a $10-per-head tax on all freed slaves who were allowed to leave Tripoli. Lear’s expense account chronicles $2,950 paid “to be divided among marine captains, first and second kasnadars, Bashaw’s secretary and the guardiano bashaw.” The 295 figure represents the 307 men and officers of the Philadelphia minus the five who turned Turk, five who died in captivity, and two who sought refuge at the French consulate.
In case Lear ran the risk of leaving Tripoli with any taxpayer dollars jangling in his pocket, he found it appropriate to tip very generously. He gave the astounding sum of $150 to servants and slaves of the Bashaw and prime minister, while taking coffee and refreshment. (To put it in perspective, the highest-paid Tripolitan servant at the United States consulate, the dragoman, received $4 a month.)
To cover his two-week stay, Lear also handed out $75 in tips to Nissen’s servants and to the former American dragoman. For a man representing the world’s only democracy, Lear assumed a magisterial pose.
Commodore John Rodgers remained briefly in Tripoli, long enough to come ashore to meet the Bashaw, an event he hardly mentions in his reports, and long enough to get into a fight. The consul for France, with Napoleon then riding high, had sent Lear and Rodgers a note demanding back pay for two freed American prisoners who claimed to be French citizens. Lear shilly-shallied over the legalistics, but Rodgers wrote Beaussier that he couldn’t respond at length because the “dark features of the subject preclude the admissibility of even decent language.” In other words, if I answer you, I will curse you. “I charge you, Sir, with having afforded protection to two Deserters from the U. States service.” Rodgers added, to save them from the noose, the French diplomat should keep the pair, but he shouldn’t even think of asking again for their wages. “I hope for both the regard I have for your Country and my own feelings, that you will not oblige me to say more.” Thus, with force, the matter ended.
On the afternoon of June 21, at 2 P.M., Lear boarded a cutter along with his friends, Danish consul Nissen, Spanish consul De Souza, and that clever observer Zuchet. The sailors rowed the diplomats about two miles out in the harbor, and a half hour later, the four men boarded the massive frigate Constitution. The masts, with sails furled, tilted this way and that. The frigate fired a seven-gun salute to these diplomats, and the men stayed aboard for three and a half hours, talking and drinking.
From the vantage point of the frigate, the diplomats could see the seven little corsair vessels and two other larger ships that the Bashaw was preparing to carry troops to Derne to take vengeance on the people who had supported his brother Hamet.
At 6 P.M., the foreign consuls climbed overboard into the second cutter and were rowed back to shore. The sailors aboard the Constitution in their white summer uniforms began hauling up the anchors. At 8 P.M. the cutter returned and was hoisted aboard.
The ship tacked, and the town of Tripoli faded in the darkness to the southeast. After a mere weekend of sailing, they reached Malta but were forced to remain in the quarantine area in the harbor.
Tobias Lear, feted as a hero, immensely pleased, wrote instantly to Fanny to come meet him aboard the ship and to bring his lotion for his ankles and his flannel bandages. He hoped that she felt well enough to proceed with him to Syracuse and maybe after that they could take a vacation together in Palermo, perhaps with another American couple, Dr. and Mrs. Sewell. He was confident that he had earned a vacation: “I have finished all our affairs [in Tripoli] much to my satisfaction and to the honor of our country.”