In 1774, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, which effectively shut down the city of Boston and revoked the historic charter of Massachusetts, replacing it with royal authority. This affront to the liberties of American colonists greatly troubled Madison and pushed him into the camp of American separatists, and it was here that Madison found his true calling and to which he would devote the rest of his life. Madison was elected to the Confederation Congress, where his brilliant mind and extraordinary work ethic soon gained the young Virginian the admiration of his fellow congressmen and made him a leader in the national assembly.

James Madison was one of our nation’s most important founding fathers and played a critical role in the shaping United States. Known to history as the “Father of the Constitution,” Madison’s brilliant mind was among the finest the nation has ever produced and his grasp of the theories of republican government and his efforts to implement those theories were unparalleled.

When the Democratic-Republicans came to power in 1800, the Jefferson administration effectively shut down and disbanded both the United States Army and Navy. As a result, when American merchant ships were illegally seized as contraband of war by both the British and the French during the Napoleonic wars, the United States was helpless to respond. Consequently, President Jefferson, who was philosophically opposed to war, decided to strike back economically rather than militarily.

In June 1807, several British sailors deserted from Royal Navy ships stationed near Norfolk, Virginia, and signed on with the USS Chesapeake, a 50-gun frigate commanded by Captain James Barron that was preparing to sail to the Mediterranean. Admiral George Berkeley, who commanded the British fleet in North American waters, was frustrated at the repeated desertions and sent word via the British frigate Leopard, commanded by Captain Salusbury Humphreys, to the British squadron to detain and search the Chesapeake for deserters. On the morning of June 22, Captain Humphreys had a message delivered declaring that there were deserters on board the Chesapeake and requesting permission to inspect the crew. Captain Barron denied the request, and the Leopard then fired two warning shots across the bow of the Chesapeake. Two minutes later, the Leopard poured a full broadside of solid shot and canister at point blank range into the helpless American frigate.

The War of 1812 has been called the “second American Revolution,” but the facts do not fully support that assertion. It is true that in both cases America’s enemy was Great Britain and the main catalyst that took us to war was American anger resulting from British transgressions, but the road to this second fight between these two countries was largely an unintended consequence of the almost continuous war that raged from 1793 to 1815 between England and France. 

After the city of Derne fell to General William Eaton’s expedition on April 27, 1805, Yusef Karamanli, the Pasha of Tripoli, knowing his capital city was next, again sent word to Tobias Lear, the American Consul to Algiers that he wanted peace. The final terms included an exchange of prisoners and the end of all tribute payments to Tripoli, the first agreement of its kind ever reached with a Barbary State.

In 1804, William Eaton, the former Consul to Tunis, hatched a plan to end the war with Tripoli. Eaton proposed to invade Tripoli, drive the Pasha, Yusef Karamanli, from the throne, and replace him with his older brother Hamet. In the process, all American prisoners would be released, and all tribute demands ended. In early March 1805, Eaton began a 400-mile trek to his first objective, the city of Derne, an important Tripolitan seaport east of the capital. Following a harrowing fifty-four-day march, the army arrived on the outskirts of town and Eaton sent surrender demands into the city to which the Governor responded, “My head or yours.” Taking that as a “no,” Eaton launched his attack on April 27, while three ships from the Mediterranean squadron fired on the town.

In January 1804, Captain Edward Preble sent Lieutenant Stephen Decatur the following instructions: “It is my order that you proceed to Tripoli…enter that harbor in the night, board the Philadelphia, burn her and make good your retreat with the Intrepid.” The plan was audacious and filled with risk as the Philadelphia was surrounded by a dozen Tripolitan warships. On the evening of February 16, Decatur entered the harbor and the Intrepid slowly drifted towards the Philadelphia, whose guards hailed the ship asking its intention. Decatur’s Sicilian pilot stated his ship had lost its anchor in the storm and requested permission to tie his ship to theirs for the night and they agreed.

On May 10, 1801, Tripoli declared war on the United States, hoping to coerce President Thomas Jefferson to increase tribute payments, but Jefferson felt the honor of the United States was at stake and he refused. Instead, Jefferson sent Commodore Richard Dale and a small fleet of American frigates to impose a blockade of Tripoli. In September 1803, to better prosecute the war, additional warships were sent to the Mediterranean under the command of Captain Edward Preble along with a star-studded cast of future naval heroes including Oliver Hazard Perry, Issac Hull, Stephen Decatur, and John Rodgers. But before Preble’s fleet was on station and aggressive action could be taken, one of the American ships, the frigate USS Philadelphia under Captain William Bainbridge, met with disaster.

For several centuries, the northern crescent of Africa had been controlled by the Ottoman Empire and consisted of several puppet states including Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli. Each of these Muslim provinces, known collectively as the Barbary States, derived their main revenue from seizing unarmed merchant ships, taking the crews prisoner, and offering to return them for a ransom payment, or, failing that, selling them into slavery. After the American Revolution, as American merchantmen began to ply the waters of the Mediterranean without the protection of the Royal Navy, they suffered the same fate.