The
Treaty of Tripoli as
presented to Congress
The
Treaty of Tripoli usually refers to the first
treaty concluded between the United States of America
and Tripoli
, otherwise
known in English as the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between
the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of
Barbary. The treaty was signed at Tripoli on November
4, 1796 and at Algiers
(for a
third-party witness) on January 3, 1797, finally receiving ratification from the U.S. Senate on June 7, 1797 and signed by
President John Adams on June 10, 1797.
Soon after
the formation of the United States, privateering in the
Mediterranean
Sea
and Atlantic Ocean
from the nations of the Barbary Coast prompted the U.S. to form a
series of so-called "peace treaties",
collectively known as the Barbary
Treaties. Individual treaties were negotiated with
Morocco
(1786), Algeria
(1795),
Tripoli (1797) and Tunis
(1797), all
of them more than once.
The United States
consul-general to
the Barbary states of Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis was
Joel Barlow, who dealt with the text of various
treaties (including the Treaty of Tripoli) and supported U.S.
diplomatic efforts in the Barbary Coast.
Commissioner
Plenipotentiary of the United States,
David Humphreys, was given the
right to establish a treaty with Tripoli and assigned Joel Barlow
and Joseph Donaldson to broker it. It was Joel Barlow who certified
the signatures on the Arabic original and the English copy provided
to him. Later, Captain Richard O'Brien established the original
transport of the negotiated goods along with the Treaty, but it was
the American Consul
James Leander
Cathcart who delivered the final requirements of payment for
the treaty. The treaty was broken in 1801 by the
Pasha of Tripoli over President
Thomas Jefferson's refusal to pay the
Pasha's demands for increased payments. The Treaty was renegotiated
in 1805 after the
First Barbary
War.
The first treaty is cited as historical evidence in the modern day
controversy over whether there was religious intent by the founders
of the United States government. Article 11 of the first treaty has
been interpreted as an official denial of a
Christian basis for the U.S. government.
Historical context
Barbary Pirates
For three
centuries up to the time of the Treaty, the Mediterranean
Sea lanes had been largely controlled by the north African Muslim states of the Barbary Coast (Tripoli, Algiers, Morocco and
Tunis) through privateering
(government-sanctioned piracy). The
Barbary nations considered themselves to be at war with any nation
that had not negotiated a "peace treaty" with them for a sum of
money.
Hostages captured by the Barbary
pirates were either
ransomed or forced into
slavery, contributing to the greater
Ottoman slave trade (of
which the Barbary states were a segment). Life for the captives
often was harsh, especially for Christian captives, and many died
from their treatment. Some captives "went Turk", that is, converted
to Islam, a choice that made life in captivity easier for
them.
Colonial America had come under attack as early as 1628. Attacks
continued into the 18th century, until advances in European
(especially British) military power began to limit the reach of the
Barbary nations. Before the
American
Revolution, the British colonies in
North America were protected from the Barbary
pirates by British
warships and treaties.
During the
Revolution, monarchical France
formed an
alliance with the colonies and assumed the responsibility of
providing protection of U.S. ships against the Barbary
pirates. After the U.S. won its independence with the
signing of the
Treaty of
Paris , it had to face the threat of the Barbary pirates on its
own. Two American ships were captured by Algerian pirates in July
1785 and the survivors forced into slavery, their ransom set at
$60,000. A rumor that Benjamin Franklin, who was en route from
France to Philadelphia about that time, had been captured by
Barbary pirates, caused considerable upset in the U.S. Without a
standing navy, much less a navy capable of projecting force across
an ocean, the U.S. was forced to pay tribute monies and goods to
the Barbary nations for the security of its ships and the freedom
of its captured citizens. As General
William Eaton informed
newly-appointed
Secretary of State John Marshall in 1800, "It is a maxim of the
Barbary States, that 'The Christians who would be on good terms
with them must fight well or pay well.'"
First Barbary War
In the course of negotiating with the Barbary nations, each of the
Barbary rulers continuously demanded increased payments to maintain
peace, even while occasionally capturing U.S. ships. The Pasha of
Tripoli was jealous of the ships the U.S. had recently given to
Algeria, and demanded similar payment be made to him. On September
25, 1800, Tripoli captured the U.S. ship,
Catherine,
robbed the crew and plundered its cargo. The Pasha said this was a
mistake and the captain responsible for the capture had been
punished. Even so, the Pasha warned Cathcart that either the U.S.
send additional payments, or the Pasha would declare war on U.S.
vessels within six months.
The Pasha then commenced thus: "Counsul there is no
Nation I wish more to be at Peace with than yours, but all Nations
pay me & so must the Americans."
I answered "we have already paid you all we owe you
& are nothing in arrears."
He answered that for the Peace we had paid him it was
true, but to maintain the Peace we had given him
nothing.
I observed that the terms of our Treaty were to pay him
the stipulated stores [and the] cash and in full of all demands
forever....
The Pasha then observed that we had given a great deal
to Algiers and Tunis.... he hoped the United States would neglect
him as six or eight vessels of the value of his would amount to a
much larger sum than ever he expected to get from the United States
for remaining at Peace.
Meanwhile, the U.S. was quickly losing patience with the Barbary
nations, and had been building up its Navy in preparation for armed
confrontation. On May 15, 1801, President Thomas Jefferson's
cabinet again advised him to send a squadron to the Mediterranean,
but only as a retaliatory force. On May 20, 1801, Commodore Richard
Dale was commissioned to lead three frigates and a schooner to
patrol the Mediterranean sea lanes. They set sail on June 2, 1801.
However, unknown to Jefferson, the Pasha of Tripoli declared war
against the United States on May 10, 1801. In sending the Navy
squadron to the Mediterranean, Jefferson declared,
"To this state of general peace with which we have been
blessed, one only exception exists.
Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States,
had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in
compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war, on our failure
to comply before a given day.
The style of the demand admitted but one
answer.
I sent a small squadron of frigates into the
Mediterranean."
Soon after
Commodore Dale sailed into a neutral British port near the Straits of
Gibraltar
, he discovered that Tripoli had declared war on the
U.S. Dale’s commission only authorized him to blockade
adversarial ports and capture hostile ships, so he could not attack
Tripoli directly. However, he notified the Pasha of Tripoli that he
could negotiate terms of surrender.
Through subsequent battles, Tripoli eventually agreed to terms of
peace with the United States. Tobias Lear negotiated a second
"Treaty of Peace and Amity" with the Pasha Yusuf on June 4, 1805.
To the dismay of many Americans, the new settlement included a
ransom of $60,000 paid for the release of prisoners from the
USS Philadelphia
and several U.S. merchant ships. By 1807, Algiers had gone back to
taking U.S. ships and seamen hostage. Distracted by the preludes to
the
War of 1812, the United States was
unable to respond to the provocations until 1815, with the
Second Barbary War, thereby concluding
the encompassing
Tripolitan Wars
(1800-1815).
Signing and ratification
David Humphreys was appointed Commissioner Plenipotentiary on March
30, 1795, in order to serve with the negotiation of the treaty
between the United States and the Barbary powers. On February 10,
1796, he appointed Joel Barlow and Joseph Donaldson as "Junior
Agents" to forge a "Treaty of Peace and Friendship" . Under
Humphreys's authority, the treaty was signed at Tripoli on November
4, 1796, and certified at Algiers on January 3, 1797. Humphreys
reviewed the treaty and approved it in Lisbon on February 10,
1797.
The official treaty was in Arabic text, and a translated version by
Consul-General Barlow was ratified by the United States on June 10,
1797. Article 11 of the treaty was said to have not been part of
the original
Arabic version of the
treaty; in its place is a letter from the Dey of Algiers to the
Pasha of Tripoli. However, it is the English text which was
ratified by Congress.
The Treaty also had spent 7 months traveling from Tripoli to
Algiers to Portugal and, finally, to the United States, and had
been signed by officials at each stop along the way. Neither
Congress nor President Adams would have been able to cancel the
terms of the Treaty by the time they first saw it, and there is no
record of discussion or debate of the Treaty of Tripoli at the time
that it was ratified. However, there is a statement made by
President Adams on the document that reads:
President Adams's signing statement
Now be it known, That I John Adams, President of the
United States of America, having seen and considered the said
Treaty do, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate,
accept, ratify, and confirm the same, and every clause and article
thereof.
And to the End that the said Treaty may be observed,
and performed with good Faith on the part of the United States, I
have ordered the premises to be made public; And I do hereby enjoin
and require all persons bearing office civil or military within the
United States, and all other citizens or inhabitants thereof,
faithfully to observe and fulfill the said Treaty and every clause
and article thereof.
Official records show that after President
John Adams sent the treaty to the Senate for
ratification in May 1797, the entire treaty was read aloud on the
Senate floor, and copies were printed for every Senator. A
committee considered the treaty and recommended ratification, 23 of
the 32 sitting Senators were present for the June 7 vote which
unanimously approved the ratification recommendation.
However, before anyone in the United States saw the Treaty, its
required payments, in the form of goods and money, had been made in
part. As Barlow declared: "The present writing done by our hand and
delivered to the American Captain OBrien makes known that he has
delivered to us forty thousand Spanish dollars,-thirteen watches of
gold, silver & pinsbach,-five rings, of which three of
diamonds, one of saphire and one with a watch in it, One hundred
& forty piques of cloth, and four caftans of brocade,-and these
on account of the peace concluded with the Americans." However,
this was an incomplete amount of goods stipulated under the treaty
(according to the Pasha of Tripoli) and an additional $18,000
dollars had to be paid by the American Consul James Leander
Cathcart at his arrival on April 10, 1799.
It was not until these final goods were delivered that the Pasha of
Tripoli recognized the Treaty as official. In
Treaties and
Other International Acts of the United States of America by
David Hunter Miller, which is
regarded as an authoritative collection of international agreements
of the United States between 1776 and 1937, Hunter Miller
describes, "While the original ratification remained in the hands
of Cathcart... it is possible that a copy thereof was delivered
upon the settlement of April 10, 1799, and further possible that
there was something almost in the nature of an exchange of
ratifications of the treaty on or about April 10, 1799, the day of
the agreed settlement." It is then that the Pasha declares in a
Letter to John Adams on April 15, 1799, "Whereby we have
consummated the Peace which shall, on our side, be inviolate,
provided You are Willing to treat us as You do other Regencies,
without any difference being made between Us. Which is the whole of
what We have, at present, to say to You, wishing you at the same
time the most unlimited prosperity."
Article 11
Article 11 has been a point of contention in disputes on the
doctrine of
separation
of church and state as it applies to the founding principles of
the United States.
Article 11
Article 11 reads:
Art.
11.
As the Government of the United States
of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself
no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility,
of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never
entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the
parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall
ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the
two countries.
Advocates of the separation of church and state claim that this
text constitutes evidence that the United States Government was not
founded on the Christian religion. The Senate's ratification was
only the third recorded unanimous vote of 339 votes taken. The
treaty was printed in the
Philadelphia Gazette and two New
York papers, with no evidence of any public dissent.
Translation
Miller's Investigation and Notes
The translation of the Treaty of Tripoli by Barlow has been found
faulty, and there is doubt whether Article 11 in the version of the
treaty ratified by Congress corresponds to anything of the same
purport in the Arabic version.
In 1931 Hunter Miller completed a commission by the United States
government to analyze United States's treaties and to explain how
they function and what they mean to the United States's legal
position in relationship with the rest of the world. According to
Hunter Miller's notes, "the Barlow translation is at best a poor
attempt at a paraphrase or summary of the sense of the Arabic" and
"Article 11... does not exist at all."
After comparing the United States's version by Barlow with the
Arabic and the Italian version, Miller continues by claiming that:
The Arabic text which is between Articles 10 and 12 is
in form a letter, crude and flamboyant and withal quite
unimportant, from the Dey of Algiers to the Pasha of
Tripoli.
How that script came to be written and to be regarded,
as in the Barlow translation, as Article 11 of the treaty as there
written, is a mystery and seemingly must remain so.
Nothing in the diplomatic correspondence of the time
throws any light whatever on the point.
From this, Miller concludes: "A further and perhaps equal mystery
is the fact that since 1797 the Barlow translation has been
trustfully and universally accepted as the just equivalent of the
Arabic... yet evidence of the erroneous character of the Barlow
translation has been in the archives of the Department of State
since perhaps 1800 or thereabouts..." It is important to note,
though, that as Miller said:
It is to be remembered that the Barlow translation is
that which was submitted to the Senate (American State Papers,
Foreign Relations, II, 18-19) and which is printed in the Statutes
at Large and in treaty collections generally; it is that English
text which in the United States has always been deemed the text of
the treaty.
However the Arabic and English texts differ, the Barlow translation
(Article 11 included) was the text presented to, read aloud in, and
ratified unanimously by the U.S. Senate.
See also
References
External links
- Arguments in support of view that Article 11 shows the United
States was not a Christian nation:
- Arguments against the view that Article 11 shows the United
States was not a Christian nation:
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