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

presents on the arrival of an Ambassador.” Consular and biennial presents were
to be paid on the same basis as Holland, Sweden, and Denmark. 64 The list of
naval material was fixed and evaluated at $60,000 and consular and biennial
presents were evaluated at $17,000. The treaty was signed within the incredible
time of less than 48 hours of negotiations on September 5, 1795. Proud of
having served his country, Cathcart noted how his fellow citizen Donaldson
concluded a peace treaty with hollow words:
thus in about forty-two hours after the arrival of Mr. Donaldson, peace
was established between the Regency of Algiers and the United States
of America, to the astonishment of every person in Algiers, friends as
well as foes, by a lame old man who understood no language but his
own, without funds or credit and surrounded with enemies. 65
On the spot, the treaty cost the state’s Khazna or treasury 21 guns’ salute
for the American flag and an “Algerine sabre, mounted with gold,” as gift from
the Dey to Humphreys. 66 The Dey also sent a present to Donaldson which
Cathcart said it was “of no great value” but which proved to be “a fine Barbary
stallion” as a token of his friendship and esteem. 67 On the long run, however,
this treaty was going to cost Algiers inestimable losses. But the most important
cost for Algiers were the years it passed struggling with the United States to
make it honor its treaty.
64 Cathcart, The Captives, p. 184-85.
65 Ibid., p. 188.
66 ASP/FA, 1:530, Mr. Skjoldebrand to Colonel Humphries, 10 th September, 1795. The American
government reciprocated with, as wrote Parker, “two tea sets with golden spoons. One wonders what
the Dey would have done with a tea set.” Parker, Uncle Sam in Barbary, p. 253.
67 Parker, Uncle Sam in Barbary, p. 102. Later, Joel Barlow, another American emissary to Algiers was
given two of those fine horses, Milton Cantor, “A Connecticut Yankee in a Barbary Court: Joel
Barlow’s Algerian Letters to his Wife,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3 rd Series, 19: 1 (Jan., 1962),
letter to his wife, Dec. 30, 1796, p. 108.
314