WAR WITH ALGIERS. 577 XXX. which Jackson appeared; but he refused to answer in- CHAPTER terrogatories, and he listened, not without some insolent interruptions, to the decision of the judge, who imposed 1815. upon him a fine of $1000. His check for this amount March 31 was immediately tendered to the clerk; and the general, on leaving the court, was received outside by a worshiping crowd, in a short address to whom he took no little credit to himself for having condescended to submit to the law. A subscription for the discharge of his fine was speedily made up. Under the new arrangement of the army, Brown and May 17 Jackson were retained as major generals, with Macomb, Scott, Gaines, and Ripley as brigadiers. The ordnance, the engineers, and the Military Academy were preserved entire, with the two corps of horse and foot artillery, the latter, however, reduced to eight battalions. The rifle regiment, and eight regiments of infantry, were also retained. Upward of 1800 officers were discharged, not without great hardship to several, who had been in the army almost the whole of their lives. Among these was Wilkinson, who had just been honorably acquitted by the court appointed to investigate his Canada campaigns. Thus dropped in his old age by a government he had served the greater part of his life, he was provided for by a pension from his native State of Maryland. Just as the late war with Great Britain had broken out, the Dey of Algiers, taking offense at not having received from America the precise articles in the way of tribute demanded, had unceremoniously dismissed Lear, the consul, had declared war, and had since captured an American vessel, and reduced her crew to slavery. Immediately after the ratification of the treaty with England, this declaration of war had been reciprocated. Efforts had been at once made to fit out ships, new and VI.-O o XXX. CHAPTER old, including several small ones lately purchased for the proposed squadrons of Porter and Perry, and before 1815. many weeks Decatur sailed from New York with the May 19. Guerriere, Macedonian, and Constellation frigates, the Ontario, new sloop of war, four brigs, and two schooners. Two days after passing Gibraltar, he fell in with and June 17. captured an Algerine frigate of 44 guns, the largest ship in the Algerine navy, which struck to the Guerriere after a running fight of twenty-five minutes. A day or two after, an Algerine brig was chased into shoal water on the Spanish coast, and captured by the smaller vessels. Decatur having appeared off Algiers, the terrified June 30. Dey at once consented to a treaty, which he submitted to sign on Decatur's quarter-deck, surrendering all prisoners on hand, making certain pecuniary indemnities, renouncing all future claim to any American tribute or presents, and the practice, also, of reducing prisoners of war to slavery. Decatur then proceeded to Tunis and Tripoli, and obtained from both indemnity for American vessels captured under the guns of their forts by British cruisers during the late war. The Bey of Tripoli being short of cash, Decatur agreed to accept in part payment the restoration of liberty of eight Danes and two Neapolitans held as slaves. July 3. Later in the season Bainbridge sailed from Boston with the Independence 74, the Erie sloop-of-war, and two smaller vessels. Being joined by the Congress frigate, which had carried Eustis to Holland, and by Decatur's squadron, and finding every thing settled, he had nothing to do but to display his force in the ports of the Mediterranean, where the eclat of the American naval victories over the British caused him to be received with marked respect. A little incident which occurred at Malaga deserves notice, as showing how natural is the NORTHWESTERN INDIANS. 579 XXX. insolence of power, and how readily our navy officers CHAPTER could fall into the very practices of which we had complained so loudly in the British. A deserter from the 1815 Independence, being seized in the streets of Malaga by one of her officers, was discharged by the civil authority on the claim which he set up of being a Spanish citizen. Bainbridge, however, still demanded him, threatening, if he were not given up, to land and take him by force, and, if resistance were made, to fire upon the townthreats to which the authorities yielded. The return of Bonaparte to France excited a momentary alarm lest the unsettled questions of impressment and neutral rights might again come up; but his speedy downfall destroyed these apprehensions, and with them the hopes, also, of a new harvest to be reaped by neutral commerce. The posts of Prairie du Chien and Michilimackinac having been reoccupied, steps were taken for a complete pacification of all the Northwestern tribes. At a council held at Detroit, at which were represented the Sen- Sept. 1. ecas, Delawares, Shawanese, Wyandots, Potawatomies of Lake Michigan, Ottawas, and Chippewas, with some bands, also, of the Winnebagoes and Sauks, and at which the famous Prophet, the brother of Tecumseh, was present, the hatchet was formally buried as between all these tribes, and as between them and the United States. Other treaties soon followed with the Potawatomies of the Illinois, the Piankeshaws, Osages, Iowas, Kansas, Foxes, Kickapoos, and various bands of the great Sioux confederacy, with several of which formal relations were now first established. Some owners of Washington lots, anxious lest the question of removal might be again agitated, had erected on XXX. CHAPTER Capitol Hill a temporary building, of which a lease was taken, and in which the new Congress met. That Re1815. publican faction in the Senate which had so long embarrassed Madison, no longer existed. Of its late members, some had resigned, some had lost their seats, and others had been bought off by offices. The only opposition senators were now the Federalists, increased to fourteen in number, among them Mason, of New Hampshire; Gore, of Massachusetts; Dana, of Connecticut; King, of New York; Horsey, of Delaware; and Harper, of Maryland. The leaders on the other side were Macon, transferred from the House, of which he had so long been a member, to the Senate; Campbell, who again re-appeared from Tennessee; and James Barbour, late governor of Virginia, in which office he had been succeeded by Wilson Cary Nicholas. The House had a hundred and seventeen Democrats to sixty-five Federalists. On the administration side were Root and Taylor, of New York; Henry Southard, of New Jersey; Findley, of Pennsylvania, now the father of the House; Wright, William Pinkney, and Smith, of Maryland, who, having lost his seat in the Senate, appeared now as member from Baltimore; Burwell, of Virginia; Calhoun and Lowndes, of South Carolina; Forsyth, Wilson Lumpkin, and Richard H. Wilde, of Georgia; Clay, Richard M. Johnson, Desha, and M'Kee, of Kentucky; M'Lean, of Ohio. General Harrison, of Ohio, and John Tyler, of Virginia were among the new members. On the other side appeared Webster, of New Hampshire; Pickering and Cyrus King, of Massachusetts; Grosvenor, of New York; John Sergeant and Joseph Hopkinson, of Pennsylvania; Hanson, of Maryland; Randolph, of Virginia, who had defeated Eppes by a very close vote; and Gaston, of North Carolina. Clay, who had been chosen to Congress in his absence, and CURRENCY-FINANCES-DEBT. 681 again, to avoid all controversy, since his return, was CHAPTER placed anew in the speaker's chair. XXX. The great subjects of interest were the national finan- 1815. ces, and especially the currency, thrown by the war into great confusion. The bank notes of New York were at fourteen per cent. discount for specie or Boston paper, those of Philadelphia and Baltimore at sixteen per cent. Dallas, struggling with the suspended banks for the privilege of supplying the country with an irredeemable paper, had refused to accept, in payment of public dues, the notes of any non-specie paying bank which did not reciprocate by receiving and paying out treasury notes at par. But in this struggle the banks had the best of it. The treasury notes under $100 being fundable, at the pleasure of the holder, in seven per cent. stock, were of greater value than the bank paper, and, instead of passing into circulation, they were collected and converted into stock. The holders of a part of the over-due treasury notes of the older issues were content to accept in liquidation a six per cent. stock, at the rate of ninety-five dollars in stock for every hundred dollars in notes. The unpaid portion of the old Revolutionary debt amounted to thirty-nine millions, about half of it in three per cent. stock. A new debt had been contracted in the prosecution of the late war of sixty-three millions, partly in seven per cents., but mostly in six per cents., to which was to be added seventeen millions of unfunded treasury notes, and a large mass of unliquidated claims. The amount of this new debt was, however, but a very small portion of the pecuniary loss occasioned by the war, and by the policy in which it had originated. That policy had for seven years interrupted and almost destroyed the foreign trade of the country, a trade which, in spite of all belligerent encroachments and interfer |