ABOUT US

First, we’re proud of our country and the men and women in uniform who serve us all. Second, we understand how important our US Navy and Coast Guard is. Even as we head to our neighborhood grocery stores and shopping malls, we realize how fortunate we are because of our armed services. While historians document the US Navy’s first organization in 1775, it was still many years away from fulfilling the needs of our new country. Once the United States won its independence from England, it became painfully obvious that it didn’t have a viable Navy. Pirates from the Barbary Coast controlled the flow of goods and commerce in the Mediterranean, and our new nation (in the absence of the British Navy that had once protected its own trade for the former British Colonies) immediately faced ransom and tribute payments to Pirates from Tripoli, Algiers and Morocco in order to trade with other nations. In fact, Presidents Washington and Adams struggled in futility…

The British fleet had defended American ships from the Barbary pirates while it was part of England. Once the US won its independence, however, US ships were on their own. Congress appropriated money for “tributes,” but the attacks continued. By 1794, the pirates were holding dozens of US citizens for ransom. Thomas Jefferson, who was then President George Washington’s Secretary of State, advised Congress to declare war on the pirates. Congress did not heed his advice. Washington sent diplomats to negotiate for the prisoners’ release, but with no success. When John Adams became President in 1797, he continued paying the pirates. Congress continued to authorize payments. By the turn of the century, Congress was paying twenty percent of the US’s annual revenue to the pirates.

President Thomas Jefferson took office in 1801. Jefferson, who believed that paying off the pirates only led to more demands, announced that there would be no more tributes paid. Tripoli demanded a payment of $225,000 on top of annual payments of $25,000. Jefferson refused to pay, and Tripoli declared war on the US.

Jefferson announced in his First Annual Message to Congress, “Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had [threatened] 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. . . .”

Years later in 1815, President James Madison sent the navy to the Barbary Coast once again. (The phrase “to the shores of Tripoli” from the Marine Hymn refers to this historic battle.) Madison eventually declared victory against the pirates in his Seventh Annual Message to Congress.

-Source, www.billofrightsinstitute.org