icipating
trouble, Jefferson had sent a small squadron to the Mediterranean even
before the dramatic act of the Pasha at the American consulate; and
hostilities began on August 1 with the capture of a corsair by the
schooner Enterprise. Therewith Jefferson's dreams of a navy for coast
defense only vanished in thin air.

Contrary to all expectations, the Tripolitan War dragged on for four
years, causing the peace-loving Administration no end of embarrassment.
So far from reducing expenditures, Gallatin was obliged to devise new
ways and means for an ever-increasing naval force. An additional duty of
two and one half per cent was laid on all imports which paid an _ad
valorem_ duty, and the proceeds were kept as a separate treasury
account. The Administration was sensitive to the charge that it was
guilty of the very crime which it had accused the Federalists of
committing--"taxing the industry of our fellow citizens to accumulate
treasure for war." With superior wisdom and a higher sense of popular
responsibility, the Republicans, so the argument ran, were establishing
a "Mediterranean Fund," so that the people might know in detail just
what was collected and spent for war purposes.

Tales of individual daring go far to relieve the tedious record of
ineffective blockades and bombardments during the war. Two exploits left
an imperishable memory in the minds of contemporaries--Lieutenant
Stephen Decatur's destruction of the captured frigate Philadelphia,
under the guns of the forts in the harbor of Tripoli; and the tragic
death of Lieutenant Richard Somers and the crew of the Intrepid, as they
were about to blow up the Tripolitan gunboats in the harbor. These deeds
of heroic adventure created the very last thing that Jefferson desired,
something closely akin to an _esprit de corps_ in the new navy.

It was not so much the onslaughts of Commodore Preble's gunboats,
however, as an unexpected attack on his eastern frontier which brought
the Pasha to terms. His exiled brother, Hamet Caramelli, had fallen in
with an American adventurer by the name of Eaton, who persuaded him to
join an expedition against their common enemy. With a motley army they
marched across the desert from Egypt and fell upon the outlying domains
of the Pasha. That astute monarch then yielded to persuasion. On June 3,
1805, with many protestations that he was being subjected to humiliating
terms, he agreed to live on terms of peace with the United States