The Louisiana Purchase 177of Representatives bring charges against District
Judge John Pickering. Pickering was clearly
deranged—he had frequently delivered profane and
drunken harangues from the bench—and the Senate
quickly voted to remove him. Then Jefferson went
after a much larger fish, Samuel Chase, associate
justice of the Supreme Court.
Chase had been prominent for decades, an early
leader of the Sons of Liberty, a signer of the
Declaration of Independence, and active in the affairs
of the Continental Congress. Washington had named
him to the Supreme Court in 1796, and he had deliv-
ered a number of important opinions. But his han-
dling of cases under the Sedition Act had been
outrageously high-handed. Defense lawyers had
become so exasperated as to throw down their briefs
in disgust at some of his prejudiced rulings. However,
the trial demonstrated that Chase’s actions had not
constituted the “high crimes and misdemeanors”
required by the Constitution to remove a judge. Even
Jefferson became disenchanted with the efforts of
some of his more extreme followers and accepted
Chase’s acquittal with equanimity.
Opinion of the Supreme Court for Marbury v.
Madisonatmyhistorylab.com
The Barbary Pirates
Although Jefferson cut back the army and navy
sharply in order to save money, he temporarily
escaped the consequences of leaving the country
undefended because of the lull in the European war
signalized by the Treaty of Amiens between Great
Britain and France in March 1802. Despite the fact
that he had only seven frigates, he even managed to
fight a small naval war with the Barbary pirates with-
out damage to American interests or prestige.
The North African Arab states of Morocco,
Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli had for decades made a busi-
ness of piracy, seizing vessels all over the Mediterranean
and holding crews and passengers for ransom. The
European powers found it simpler to pay them annual
protection money than to crush them. Under
Washington and Adams, the United States joined in the
payment of this tribute; while large, the sums were less
than the increased costs of insurance for shippers when
the protection was not purchased.
Such spinelessness ran against Jefferson’s grain.
“When this idea comes across my mind, my faculties
are absolutely suspended between indignation and
impatience,” he said. When the pasha of Tripoli tried
to raise the charges, Jefferson balked. Tripoli then
declared war in May 1801, and Jefferson dispatched a
squadron to the Mediterranean.
ReadtheDocumentBut the pirates were not overwhelmed, and a
major American warship, the frigate Philadelphia,
had to be destroyed after running aground off the
Tripolitan coast. The payment of tribute continued
until 1815. Just the same, America, though far
removed from the pirate bases, was the only mar-
itime nation that tried to resist the blackmail.
Although the war failed to achieve Jefferson’s pur-
pose of ending the payments, the pasha agreed to a
new treaty more favorable to the United States,
and American sailors, led by Commodore Edward
Preble, won valuable experience and a large portion
of fame. The greatest hero was Lieutenant Stephen
Decatur, who captured two pirate ships, led ten
men in a daring raid on another in which he took
on a gigantic sailor in a wild battle of cutlass
against boarding pike, and snatched the stricken
Philadelphiafrom the pirates by sneaking aboard
and setting it afire.The Louisiana Purchase
The major achievements of Jefferson’s first term had
to do with the American West, and the greatest by far
was the Louisiana Purchase, the acquisition of the
huge area between the Mississippi River and the
Rocky Mountains. In a sense the purchase of this
region, called Louisiana, was fortuitous, an accidental
by-product of European political adjustments and the
whim of Napoleon Bonaparte. Certainly Jefferson
had not planned it, for in his inaugural address he had
expressed the opinion that the country already had all
the land it would need “for a thousand generations.”
It was nonetheless the perfectly logical—one might
almost say inevitable—result of a long series of events
in the history of the Mississippi Valley.
Along with every other American who had
even a superficial interest in the West, Jefferson
understood that the United States must have access
to the mouth of the Mississippi and the city of New
Orleans or eventually lose everything beyond the
Appalachians. “There is on the globe one single
spot, the possessor of which is our natural and
habitual enemy,” he was soon to write. “It is New
Orleans.” Thus when he learned shortly after his
inauguration that Spain had given Louisiana back
to France, he was immediately on his guard.
Control of Louisiana by Spain, a “feeble” country
with “pacific dispositions,” could be tolerated; con-
trol by a resurgent France dominated by Napoleon,
the greatest military genius of the age, was entirely
different. Did Napoleon have designs on Canada?
Did he perhaps mean to resume the old Spanish
and British game of encouraging the Indians to