Read Online Jefferson's War by Joseph Wheelan - Free Book Online Page B

consumer’s preference for English products, a consequence of long familiarity. There were other barriers as well: the high French protective trade tariffs, and French certainty that American merchants would only use the profits from any trade with France to pay off their debts to France’s enemy, England.
    Frustrated by the British and French, U.S. merchants pursued alternative markets in Asia and along the Baltic Sea. American tobacco, flour, and rum were prized in the chilly northern principalities, and the merchantmen returned from the Baltic laden with iron; duck cloth, a durable cotton fabric; and hemp. But the Baltic commerce was only modestly successful. China, however, fired American businessmen’s imaginations with its potentially huge market. The trick was finding commodities the Chinese desired. The Empress of China cast off from Sandy Hook, New Jersey, in 1784 on its historic voyage to Canton bearing the shimmering hopes of businessmen who thought they had hit upon an ingenious solution to the conundrum of Chinese consumerism. The Empress was loaded with finished New England goods, which were bartered for furs in Vancouver and sandalwood in Hawaii. Chinese merchants snapped up their furs and sandalwood, encouraging U.S. merchants to expand their Oriental speculations to India and Indonesia. But for all their trouble the merchants were disappointed when their efforts scarcely dented the lost trade with Britain.
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    Jefferson reached the Adams home in the last damp, blustery
days of winter, his scientist’s curiosity piqued by the prospect of meeting a Barbary “musselman” in the flesh. The novelty wore off quickly after the three ministers sat down together at Abdrahaman’s home, and the Tripolitan gave them a matter-of-fact disquisition on temporary peace and “perpetual peace,” and their respective costs. Temporary peace was good for one year, he said, and would cost 12,500 guineas, plus a 10 percent commission for Abdrahaman, or roughly $66,000 in all. Perpetual peace—supposedly everlasting, yet, as they all well knew, anything but that—was a bargain in the long run, he said. It would cost 30,000 guineas, plus the customary 10 percent commission, or a total of about $160,000. Abdrahaman reminded them politely that a state of war existed between their nations until America bought its peace. Jefferson and Adams were aghast at the figures he had quoted; Jay had authorized them to borrow only $80,000 for treaties with all the Barbary States. Abdrahaman went on to inform them that Tunis would demand a similar payment, but Algiers, the most powerful corsair regency, would probably expect more, plus ransom for the twenty-one captives from the Maria and Dauphin. He did not mention Morocco, the fourth Barbary State.
    Adams and Jefferson argued vainly that America’s basis for relations with other nations was the converse of Tripoli’s: It regarded all nations as friends, and made war only upon provocation. How had the United States provoked Tripoli? they wanted to know. Abdrahaman said they didn’t understand the fine points of Islamic jihad, as it was interpreted in Barbary. He proceeded to illuminate the ministers. “The Ambassador,” Jefferson later wrote to Jay, “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 who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.” The ambassador said the pirate crews were inspired to “the most desperate Valour and Enterprise” by the promise of a slave and an extra share of the loot to the first crewman to board an enemy ship. Merchant ship crews seldom resisted, and Jefferson said Abdrahaman