Word: jefferson
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...Jefferson became President in early 1801, shortly after Yusuf Karamanli, the ruler of Tripoli, unwisely issued an ultimatum to the U.S.: If it did not pay him fresh tribute, he threatened, he would declare war on America. The new Commander in Chief coolly decided to let the ultimatum expire and take the declaration of war at face value. He summoned his new Cabinet, which approved the dispatch of a naval squadron and decided not to bother Congress--which was then in recess--with the information. He did not, in fact, tell the elected representatives of his plans until the fleet...
Over the next four years, in what Jefferson laconically described as a "cruise," the new American Navy bombarded the harbors of Algiers, Morocco and Tunisor threatened them with bombardment--until the states gradually agreed to cease cooperating with Karamanli. The Tripoli government, however, remained defiant and even succeeded in boarding and capturing the Philadelphia in 1803. That led directly to an episode that, as Henry Adams records in his history of the two Jefferson administrations, used to be known to every American schoolboy. In February 1804, Captain Stephen Decatur Jr. sailed straight into Tripoli harbor and set on fire...
...piracy, kidnapping and blackmail. Algiers had to be bombarded a few more times, and there was an awkward moment during negotiations in Washington when the Tunisian representative, Sidi Soliman Melli Melli, made it clear that he expected to be amused at public expense by some ladies of the night. (Jefferson and Secretary of State Madison were able to arrange an off-the-record State Department budget for that purpose, thus demonstrating that they understood the facts of life...
Taken together with some of Jefferson's other ambitious and quasi-constitutional moves--the Louisiana Purchase and the sending of the Lewis and Clark expedition to the West--the Barbary war exposed him to some Federalist and newspaper criticism for his secrecy, high-handedness and overly "presidential" style. But there was no arguing with success, and some historians believe that just as Jefferson was able to make use of Adams' Navy, so Madison, when he became President, was able to deploy Decatur's Navy, battle hardened and skillful, in the sterner combat of the War of 1812. Those who like...
...young nations had several things in common. Both had been heavily taxed colonies, and both had visionary leaders whose words had the power to inspire men to fight. Compare, for example, Thomas Jefferson's vision of the tree of liberty as one that must be "refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" with that of Haitian General Toussaint Louverture who, as he was captured by the French and was being taken to his death, declared, "In overthrowing me they have only felled the tree of Negro liberty ... It will shoot up again...