Ottoman Algeria in Western Diplomatic History with ... - Bibliothèque

according to him, only “the wisdom or passions of the people may produce
changes.” 53
The aristocratic federalists opted for playing on the second
alternative—passions—to avert those who wanted “equality in all things.” For
the purpose, no better argument could be more forceful than the Algerine scare:
“the Algerines exclude us from the Mediterranean and adjacent countries; and
we are neither able to purchase nor to command the free use of those seas,”
bragged Jay. 54
Likewise, Jefferson lamented: “Before the war, these States
depended on their whale oil and fish… now the Algerines exclude them from
bringing their fish into the Mediterranean.” 55
Subsequently, unscrupulous
politicians and propagandists skillfully used the issue of captives and the socalled
Algerine piracy as an argument in the campaign for the ratification of a
new constitution. What American writers call the ‘Algerian crisis’ or
America’s most alarming foreign policy emergency 56 was no more than the
victimization of Algiers as a result of embellished rumors and politician
machinations to attain political ends.
From 1785 to 1789, an ‘Algerine scare’ spread throughout the thirteen
states to reach the point of hysteria. During the summer of 1785, for example,
erroneous rumors spread throughout the country that Benjamin Franklin, on his
way back to the USA, was captured by Algerine pirates and that he bore his
“slavery to admiration.” 57 That rumor produced a frenzied correspondence in
53 USDC, 3:115, From John Jay Jo Thomas Jefferson, October 27, 1786.
54 CPPJJ, 3:300, An Address to the People of the State of New York, 17 September 1787.
55 Jefferson, Memoir, 2:71, To Mr. Carmichael, December 26, 1786.
56 Peskin, “Lessons of Independence,” p. 298.
57 WTJ1, 1:449, To Dr. Franklin, October 5, 1785.
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