Immediately after the Revolutionary War, the US lost the protection of the naval forces
of Britain and France in the Mediterranean.
And the Barbary pirates were the naval forces of the, uh, satellite states of the Ottoman
Empire, who essentially demanded tribute or would seize commercial vessels and hold as
prisoners and hostages their crews, and sometimes even put them into slavery.
Jefferson heard about the seizures of American commerce, and he realized that something had
to be done, but he was against paying tribute or ransom.
So, when the issue came up in Jefferson's time, Jefferson did explicitly authorize the
naval forces that Congress had provided him to defend American commerce, and if they saw
a Tripolitan, uh, Barbary pirate ship coming out to attack a, uh, US commercial vessel,
they were given instructions to go ahead and prevent that attack, and to attack those vessels.
He did not inform Congress of those specific instructions.
It's important to emphasize that Jefferson did nothing wrong.
When Congress provided him with these very impressive ships, their purpose was to defend
American commerce in the Mediterranean.
That's why they were built.
That's why Congress paid for them.
The notion that there had to be a declaration of war before any kind of military action
went on between the United States and some other foreign country, that was not anything
that occurred to any of the major framers of the Constitution at the time.
They regarded the use of these vessels as purely defensive.
They were going to be going out into the Mediterranean and protecting American commerce, and the
Tripolitan, or Tunisian, or Algerian ships that would come out and attack our commerce
had already proved to be aggressive and offensively attacking.
The issue of a declaration of war never came up.
No one suggested that these actions were illegal because of a lack of declaration of war.
The important precedent that an objective person would derive from these is that first
of all, that Congress can authorize use of military force without a declaration of war,
just by providing the president with frigates to defend American commerce.
This is the way our Constitution works with power over the same issue distributed to different
branches.
So, um, it's very important that people realize that you can't simply resolve these kinds
of disputes in our constitutional system by saying, oh the president has this power, commander
in chief.
Oh, the Congress has that power, power to declare war.
That doesn't work, that's not what the framers intended.
The framers intended to give powers to both branches and, indeed, to the Supreme Court
as well.
To be able to affect the very same issues so there would be conflict between the branches
based on real power.
So the, the Barbary pirates then are a very important part of our constitutional history,
and they show that Congress, uh, can give the pre, president powers to use force largely
in that case in self-defense, um, in a continuing dispute with foreign powers.