18051776 Club
Karamanli signs; four years of war with the United States ends in Tripoli
The U.S. pays $60,000 for its prisoners, a sum Jefferson's men are careful to call ransom, not tribute.
Four years after Yusuf Karamanli declared war on the United States by chopping down the flagstaff outside the American consulate in Tripoli, his position had become untenable. The U.S. Navy had blockaded his harbor, Stephen Decatur had burned his most valuable prize, and a ragged column of eight Marines and five hundred mercenaries had just seized Derna at the point of a bayonet. On June 10, 1805, Karamanli signed the Treaty of Tripoli — ending hostilities, though the United States agreed to pay $60,000 for the release of American prisoners, a distinction the Jefferson administration carefully labeled "ransom," not "tribute."…
