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Updated: June 15, 2025
Finally, after fitting out this fourth squadron, at an expense of one million five hundred and seventy thousand dollars, and with Eaton in possession of Derne, the Administration paid sixty thousand dollars for peace and ransom, when Preble, ten months previously, could have obtained both for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Our means and our authority were merely naval, and that such were the expectations of Hamet his letter of June 29 is an unequivocal acknowledgment. While, therefore, an impression from the capture of Derne might still operate at Tripoli, and an attack on that place from our squadron was daily expected. Colonel Lear thought it the best moment to listen to overtures of peace then made by the Bashaw.
He expressed an entire willingness to be reinstated upon his throne by the Americans, and to do what he could for himself with his followers and friendly Arab tribes in the province of Derne. In case of success, he offered brilliant advantages to the United States. A convention was drawn up in this sense, signed by him as legitimate Pacha of Tripoli, and by Eaton, as agent for the United States.
Among the 140 witnesses there were also some notable figures: William Eaton, the hero of Derne, whom Burr's codefendant, Blennerhassett, describes for us as "strutting about the streets under a tremendous hat, with a Turkish sash over colored clothes," and offering up, with his frequent libations in the taverns, "the copious effusions of his sorrows"; Commodore Truxton, the gallant commander of the Constellation; General Andrew Jackson, future President of the United States, but now a vehement declaimer of Burr's innocence out of abundant caution for his own reputation, it may be surmised; Erick Bollmann, once a participant in the effort to release Lafayette from Olmutz and himself just now released from durance vile on a writ of habeas corpus from the Supreme Court; Samuel Swartwout, another tool of Burr's, reserved by the same beneficent writ for a career of political roguery which was to culminate in his swindling the Government out of a million and a quarter dollars; and finally the bibulous and traitorous Wilkinson, "whose head" as he himself owned, "might err," but "whose heart could not deceive."
An operation by land by a small band of our countrymen and others, engaged for the occasion in conjunction with the troops of the ex-Bashaw of that country, gallantly conducted by our late consul, Eaton, and their successful enterprise on the city of Derne, contributed doubtless to the impression which produced peace, and the conclusion of this prevented opportunities of which the officers and men of our squadron destined for Tripoli would have availed themselves to emulate the acts of valor exhibited by their brethren in the attack of the last year.
Between Hamet, who was in constant terror of his life and quite ready to abandon the expedition, and these mutinous Arabs, Eaton was in a position to appreciate the vicissitudes of Xenophon and his Ten Thousand. No ordinary person, indeed, could have surmounted all obstacles and brought his balky forces within sight of Derne.
Twice within the next four weeks, Tripolitan forces were beaten back only with the greatest difficulty. Derne was to be evacuated! Peace had been concluded!
An operation by land by a small band of our country-men and others, engaged for the occasion in conjunction with the troops of the ex-Bashaw of that country, gallantly conducted by our late consul, Eaton, and their successful enterprise on the city of Derne, contributed doubtless to the impression which produced peace, and the conclusion of this prevented opportunities of which the officers and men of our squadron destined for Tripoli would have availed themselves to emulate the acts of valor exhibited by their brethren in the attack of the last year.
Six hours before, the little American party held Derne triumphantly against all comers from Jusuf's dominions, and Hamet had prospects of a kingdom. Now he was a beggar, on his way to Malta, to subsist there for a time on a small allowance from the United States.
This hope was then at an end, and we certainly had never contemplated, nor were we prepared, to land an army of our own, or to raise, pay, or subsist an army of Arabs to march from Derne to Tripoli and to carry on a land war at such a distance from our resources.
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