Stephen Decatur: A Life Most Bold and Daring

By Spencer C. Tucker

Brave, energetic, intensely patriotic, Stephen Decatur is America's first great naval hero after John Paul Jones. His short and dramatic life is a story of triumph and tragedy told by the noted historian and author of some twenty books, Spencer Tucker. Decatur's raid into Tripoli Harbor in 1804 to burn the Philadelphia, a prized U.S. warship captured when it ran aground during the Barbary Wars, earned him international fame. An admiring Horatio Nelson described the feat as "the most bold and daring act of the age." Explaining the tremendous impact Decatur's action had on the early U.S. Navy, the author notes that it set a standard of audacity and courage for generations of future naval officers. At the age of twenty-five, Decatur was promoted to captain, becoming the youngest naval officer ever to attain that rank in the U.S. Navy. The book fully examines Decatur's astonishing achievements as it chronicles his rapid rise in the Navy, including his command of the Constitution and the United States, during the War of 1812, when he captured the British frigate Macedonian off the Azores. The book also recounts the cruise that many call his greatest triumph: Decatur sailed into the Mediterranean with a nine-ship American squadron to punish the dey of Algiers for taking American merchant shipping, securing peace with Algiers and keeping other Barbary states quiescent. Lionized by a grateful American public upon his return, Decatur offered a toast at a reception in his honor that is now legendary, "Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!" In describing Decatur's life, the author also examines Decatur's relationship with James Barron, a Navy captain who fatally shot Decatur during a 1820 duel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Release date: Dec 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781612515106

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STEPHEN DECATUR

Titles in This Series

Confederate Admiral: The Life and Wars of Franklin Buchanan

by Craig L. Symonds

Andrew Foote: Civil War Admiral on Western Waters

by Spencer C. Tucker

Thomas ap Catesby Jones: Commodore of Manifest Destiny

by Gene A. Smith

Joshua Barney: Hero of the Revolution and 1812

by Louis Arthur Norton

Matthew Calbraith Perry: Antebellum Sailor and Diplomat

by John H. Schroeder

Mad Jack Percival: Legend of the Old Navy

by James H. Ellis

Commodore Ellsworth P. Bertholf: First Commandant of the Coast Guard

by C. Douglas Kroll

Thomas Macdonough: Master of Command in the Early U.S. Navy

by David Curtis Skaggs

Grace Hopper: Admiral of the Cyber Sea

by Kathleen Broome Williams

The latest edition of this work has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of The United States Naval Academy Class of 1945.

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

© 2005 by Spencer Tucker

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First Naval Institute Press paperback edition published 2013.

ISBN 978-1-61251-510-6 (eBook)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Tucker, Spencer, 1937–

Stephen Decatur : a life most bold and daring / Spencer Tucker.

p. cm. — (Library of naval biography)

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

1. Decatur, Stephen, 1779–1820. 2. Admirals—United States—Biography. 3. United States. Navy—Biography. 4. United States—History—War of 1812—Naval operations. 5. United States—History, Naval—To 1900. I. Title. II. Series.

E353.1.D29T83 2004

973.4’7’092—dc22

2004016412

Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

987654321

For Wiley and Whit

CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

Chronology

1Early Life

2The Quasi-War

3The Tripolitan War

4Decatur and the Philadelphia

5End of the War with Tripoli

6Prelude to War: The Chesapeake-Leopard Affair

7The War of 1812: Capture of the Macedonian

8The War of 1812: Loss of the President

9War with Algiers

10Too Fine a Sense of Honor

Conclusion

Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

Further Reading

Index

FOREWORD

Stephen Decatur resides in the pantheon of American naval heroes on a level shared with few others. He is to the U.S. Sailing Navy what John Paul Jones was to the Continental Navy, David Farragut was to the Civil War Navy, George Dewey to the New Steel Navy, and Chester Nimitz to the vast three-element Navy of World War II. Each man achieved fame in a war that was crucial to America’s future, and each epitomized the qualities of a great naval leader. All embarked on sea careers as teenagers, Jones as a merchant seaman, Decatur and Farragut as midshipmen, and Dewey and Nimitz as student officers at the Naval Academy in Annapolis.

Yet Decatur had the shortest and most meteoric career, and was the officer to come to the most tragic end—death in a dual that captured nationwide attention. He went to sea at age nineteen and had served less than six years before guiding the disguised ketch Intrepid through shoals into the harbor at Tripoli under the cover of night and destroying the captured Philadelphia under the very guns of an enemy fort. This feat, called by British Admiral Horatio Nelson the most bold and daring act of the age, won Decatur promotion to the rank of captain at age twenty-five, the youngest captain in American naval history. During the War of 1812, he led the United States to victory over HMS Macedonian, thus taking the first major British warship of the war. When war with Britain ended, Decatur returned to the Mediterranean Sea in command of a nine-ship squadron, dictated peace at the mouths of cannon to the resurgent Barbary Corsairs, and left behind ships that formed the basis of an American naval presence in that region that continues to this day. Returning to the United States, he and his wife, Susan, built a fine home across Lafayette Square from the White House. Two years later he was dead before the age of 42, felled by a fellow officer’s bullet in a duel.

Given such stature, it is surprising that Decatur has been the subject of only four book-length biographies, one published by Alexander Slidell Mackenzie in 1848, a second by Charles Lee Lewis in 1937, and a third, recently, that was, in the author’s words, intended for a general audience. Perhaps the key reason for this paucity of books in almost two centuries is the lack of Decatur personal papers. Neither of the first two authors had access to as many corollary documents as Decatur’s twenty-first-century biographers. The third author, James Tertius de Kay, directs his recent biography of Decatur to a general audience and thus supplies only cursory notes and does not include citations to guide the interested reader to his sources.

Spencer Tucker, the author of this study, brings to it the standards and practices of a professional historian, and one as well versed in the era as he is in the nautical element. Tucker is the author of Arming the Fleet: U.S. Navy Ordnance in the Muzzle-Loading Era (1989); The Jeffersonian Gunboat Navy (1993); Injured Honor: The Chesapeake-Leopard Affair, June 22, 1807 (1996); and a previous volume in this series, Andrew Foote: Civil War Admiral on Western Waters (2000). Thus, Tucker is able to place Decatur squarely in the context of his times and assess how Decatur both reflected and shaped the development of the American nation and its navy. Beyond this, Tucker writes with a lively, engaging style, accessible to a wide audience and fully meeting the criteria of this series.

The Library of Naval Biography provides accurate, informative, and interpretive biographies of influential naval figures—men and women who have shaped or reflected the naval affairs of their time. Each volume will explain the forces that acted upon its subject as well as the significance of that person in history. Some volumes explore the lives of individuals who have not previously been the subjects of modern, full-scale biographies, while others reexamine the lives of better-known individuals adding new information, a differing perspective, or a fresh interpretation. The series is international in scope and includes individuals from several centuries. All volumes are based on solid research and written to be of interest to general readers as well as useful to specialists.

With these goals in mind, the length of each volume has been limited, the notes placed at the end of the text and restricted primarily to direct quotations. A brief essay on Further Reading provides access to previous biographies of the subject and directs the reader to the most important studies of the era and events in which the person lived and participated.

It is the intention that this combination of clear writing, fresh interpretations, and solid historical context will result in volumes that both restore the all-important human dimension to naval history and are enjoyable to read.

James C. Bradford

PREFACE

Fame came early to Stephen Decatur Jr., and had he not died young he might have made an even greater mark on the U.S. Navy. Nonetheless, the energetic, brave, and intensely patriotic Decatur became an icon of valor in a romantic age and remains one of the greatest of all U.S. Navy heroes. Born at Sinepuxent in Worcester County on the Maryland Eastern Shore on 5 January 1779, Stephen Decatur Jr. joined the U.S. Navy near the time of its birth. He became a midshipman at age nineteen, one of a cohort of young officers who went on to enjoy successful careers as navy officers. By 1799 he was a lieutenant serving in the Quasi-War with France. He received his first command—the schooner Enterprise—in 1803, during the Tripolitan War.

In October of that year the U.S. Navy frigate Philadelphia ran aground off Tripoli and was captured. The Tripolitans refloated the frigate and moved it into the harbor under the protection of Tripoli’s shore batteries. In what Adm. Horatio Nelson of the Royal Navy supposedly called the most bold and daring act of the age, on 16 February 1804 Decatur led eighty-three men into the harbor and destroyed the Philadelphia without himself losing a man. This success led President Thomas Jefferson to follow the recommendation of Commo. Edward Preble, Decatur’s commander, and advance him to the rank of captain; at age twenty-five, he would be the youngest man ever to hold that rank in the U.S. Navy. Certainly this one act assures Decatur of lasting fame.¹

Decatur’s destruction of the Philadelphia captured the imagination of the American public and set a standard of audacity and courage for generations of future U.S. naval officers. As one officer put it, To the example of personal gallantry thus set by Decatur before Tripoli, and the chivalrous spirit communicated to his companions in arms, we may ascribe in no small degree the heroic tone which has characterized all the after achievements of our navy.²

When Decatur died in 1820, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams mourned the loss of one of the nation’s heroes, a man who had illustrated its history and given grace and dignity to its character in the eyes of the world. Decatur was, said Adams, warm-hearted, cheerful, unassuming, gentle in deportment, friendly and hospitable, beloved in social life; with a soul all devoted to his country, and a sense of honor too disdainful of life. He was as dauntless as breathed in this nation, or on the earth.³

All great military commanders are to some extent lucky, and Decatur was no exception. He conferred with Preble soon after the latter received news of the capture of the Philadelphia, and was thus the first of the commodore’s captains able to offer to attempt to recapture or destroy the frigate. But for this fortunate circumstance, Decatur might not have reached the pinnacle of his profession; certainly he would not have been as popular a national figure.

Six months later Decatur led a division of Preble’s gunboats against their Tripolitan counterparts. In the hand-to-hand combat that followed, Decatur’s brother, Lt. James Decatur, was mortally wounded. Stephen Decatur, however, took two of the three Tripolitan vessels captured that day. That action and his earlier success against the Philadelphia ensured that Decatur was the most celebrated hero of the young U.S. Navy when he returned home in 1805.

In the War of 1812 Commodore Decatur first commanded the frigate United States, in which he defeated the Macedonian, the first British frigate captured in the war. Decatur was next given command of the frigate President. After being bottled up in port for two years by the British naval blockade, Decatur finally managed to get the President out of New York harbor in January 1815. Unfortunately, the ship ran aground in crossing the bar, resulting in damage and delay that ultimately led to its surrender to a pursuing British squadron. The striking of his colors while his ship was still able to fight is perhaps the only black mark on Decatur’s otherwise distinguished record.

After the war with Britain was over, Decatur led a nine-ship American squadron to the Mediterranean to punish the dey of Algiers for taking American merchant shipping. This cruise was Commodore Decatur’s greatest triumph. He not only secured peace with Algiers but also ensured that the other Barbary States remained quiescent. On his return to the United States, Decatur found himself lionized by a grateful American public. At one reception held in his honor he responded to the toasts with one of his own that became a legacy: Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!⁴

Appointed a member of the powerful new Board of Naval Commissioners—three senior captains who advised the civilian secretary of the navy on policy and regulations—Decatur settled with his wife in Washington and built a splendid home there. On 22 March 1820 a long-simmering feud with Capt. James Barron led to a duel between the two men in which Decatur was mortally wounded. His short life—he died at age forty-one—is thus an amazing story of triumph and tragedy.

Most of the books written about Decatur have been frankly hagiographic, and all build on Alexander Slidell Mackenzie’s Life of Stephen Decatur, published in 1846. Mackenzie, a U.S. Navy officer, served in Commo. William Bainbridge’s Mediterranean Squadron in 1815 and crossed paths with his idol there. He is best known today as the captain of the brig Somers during a mutiny conspiracy in 1842. After discovering the plot, Mackenzie ordered a speedy trial and the execution at sea of three of the conspirators, one of whom was Acting Midn. Philip Spencer, a son of the secretary of war. There was a considerable public outcry over the affair, and Mackenzie was court-martialed but acquitted of the charge of murder on the high seas. The Somers affair helped bring about the establishment of the U.S. Naval Academy three years later and no doubt encouraged Mackenzie to turn to writing. Charles Lee Lewis’s The Romantic Decatur, published in 1937, is another laudatory work and the last serious Decatur biography published until 2004. William Dunne was working on such a project, but his death prevented its realization.

I was thus pleased when James Bradford, editor of the Naval Institute Press Library of Naval Biography series, asked me to take on this project. Just as I was preparing to submit the manuscript, James Tertius de Kay published A Rage for Glory: The Life of Commodore Stephen Decatur, USN (2004). De Kay’s is a colorful book, but it offers little new information and suffers from unsubstantiated suppositions on the part of the author and a lack of citations.

Decatur is a well-known figure. His naval career spanned two decades and three U.S. wars in which he was an important figure. Primary documents on his life and career include letters to and from the secretary of the navy, private correspondence, and ships’ logs. Much of this information has been published, particularly in Navy Department collections treating the Quasi-War, the Barbary Wars, and the War of 1812. Many of the dates of command assignments are in Decatur’s ZB File at the Naval Historical Center. I have quoted liberally from Decatur’s correspondence to give a sense of his thoughts and writing style. Because biographies in this series are limited to ninety thousand words, I have been forced to restrict my discussion of the history of the early U.S. Navy. I have, however, tried to discuss the wider issues involved.

A number of people were of immense help to me in this project. I am especially grateful to Cadet Shelley Cox, my research assistant at the Virginia Military Institute during the year before my retirement in 2003. Brad Wineman, doctoral candidate in history at Texas A&M University and now an adjunct instructor at VMI, helped me with research at a number of locations. I am also grateful for assistance rendered by Lt. Col. Janet Holley and other members of the staff of the Preston Library at VMI. As always, I appreciate the support and forbearance of my wife, Dr. Beverly Tucker.

CHRONOLOGY

STEPHEN DECATUR

1

EARLY LIFE

Stephen Decatur Jr. came from a nautical background. His grandfather, Étienne Decatur, had been a lieutenant in the French navy. The family traced its roots to the Netherlands, from which an ancestor named De Kater is said to have moved to Bordeaux, France, early in the seventeenth century. Étienne Decatur was born in the port city of La Rochelle in western France, probably in the early 1720s, and entered the navy at a young age. As a lieutenant he was assigned to the West Indies, where he contracted a tropical illness and nearly died. His doctors suggested that a cooler climate would aid his recovery, and Decatur took passage on a ship to Newport, Rhode Island, landing there in the late 1740s.

In Newport Decatur partially recovered his health and met and fell in love with Priscilla Hill. Her parents would not consent to the match unless Decatur renounced his commission and his French citizenship. He must have loved his fiancée greatly, for he agreed to their conditions. The Decaturs had a son, Stephen, who was baptized on 7 June 1752. Shortly thereafter the family moved to Philadelphia, where Étienne Decatur hoped to secure employment as a merchant ship captain. He had never fully recovered from the illness contracted in the tropics, however (probably yellow fever), and died soon afterward, leaving the family in somewhat difficult financial straits.

Somehow Priscilla Decatur managed to provide for her son’s upbringing. When he came of age young Stephen Decatur followed his father to sea. By 1774, when he was only twenty-two years old, Stephen Decatur was master of the merchant sloop Peggy. That same year he married Ann Pine of Philadelphia, a woman of Irish and Scottish descent. The couple had four children, all of whom reached adulthood. The eldest, a daughter, subsequently married Capt. James McKnight of the Marine Corps, who would die in a duel at Leghorn in October 1802. She then married a Dr. Hurst of Philadelphia. The Decaturs also had three sons: Stephen Jr., the oldest; James, who would be killed in battle at Tripoli; and finally John.

When the War of American Independence began in 1775, Decatur and Ann supported the Patriot cause. The next year Decatur secured approval from the Continental Congress to sail the schooner L’Esperance to Hispaniola in order to purchase gunpowder and arms for the rebels. Then, in 1779, Decatur took command of a succession of Philadelphia-syndicated privateers. It is unclear whether the first of these, the galley Retaliation (commissioned in June 1779), had any success. The next, the sloop Comet (commissioned on 9 September 1779), captured four English merchant ships. A third, the fifteen-gun brig Fair American (commissioned on 20 April 1780), carried a crew of 135 men and cruised in company with the larger Holker, a very successful privateer captained by Roger Keane. Together the two captains took a number of British vessels, including the armed ship Richmond, which fought before surrendering.

On 23 July 1781 Decatur took command of the Royal Louis, a sizable vessel mounting twenty-two guns with a crew of two hundred. The Royal Louis captured the Royal Navy brig Active but on 8 October, was in turn taken by the thirty-two-gun British frigate Amphion. After a brief imprisonment in New York, Decatur took command of the thirteen-gun privateer Rising Sun and cruised to European waters.¹

When Maj. Gen. William Howe’s British troops occupied Philadelphia at the end of September 1777, many Patriot families fled the city. Ann Decatur and her young daughter were among them, temporarily relocating to a two-room log cabin in Sinepuxent, Worcester County, on the Maryland Eastern Shore. There, on 5 January 1779, Stephen Decatur Jr. was born. Several months later Ann Decatur returned to Philadelphia with her two children.

Stephen Decatur Sr.’s privateering had garnered him both prestige and a tidy sum in prize money. When the peace was concluded in 1783, he returned to his civilian profession, commanding ships in the Atlantic trade for the Philadelphia merchant firm of Gurney & Smith, which had invested in his last two privateering ventures. Decatur eventually became joint owner with that firm of the ships Pennsylvania and Ariel. In these two vessels he undertook a number of voyages to Bordeaux, France.

Although Stephen Jr. was only four years old at the end of the War for Independence, he undoubtedly heard many stories of his father’s wartime experiences as he was growing up. He must have felt great pride in his father’s exploits and subsequent success as a merchant ship captain, and no doubt the stories influenced young Decatur’s decision to pursue a career at sea.²

Arguably the most important city in America, the Philadelphia of Stephen Decatur’s childhood had been the capital of the United Colonies until 1781, then of the United States under the Articles of Confederation from 1781 to 1789, and remained the capital under the Constitution from 1790 to 1800. Philadelphia was a leading port and business center, and, with a population in the late 1790s of some seventy thousand people, also America’s largest city. One English visitor described it as a very fine town of well-built houses of good brick, but extremely dull and with a layout disagreeable in its regularity. Unlike most American cities of the day, Philadelphia boasted cobblestone streets and brick sidewalks. Regularly spaced elms and poplars provided welcome shade in the stifling hot summers, when many of the city’s residents left to avoid yellow fever.

Although depreciated by some for its lack of social life, sometimes attributed to the Quaker influence, Philadelphia was not lacking in cultural amenities. It had a university, a public library, a museum, a philosophical society, two theaters, and circuses. It must have been an exciting place for a boy, especially one with a ship captain for a father. At the bustling docks young Stephen could find vessels that regularly sailed to and from Europe, India, and China.³

The Decatur children seem to have experienced a normal and happy childhood. Their mother, Ann Pine Decatur, and their grandmother Priscilla Decatur were the children’s primary caregivers during their father’s long absences. As a young boy Stephen suffered from whooping cough, and when he was eight his father took him in the Ariel on a cruise to Bordeaux in hopes that the trip and the sea air might help to restore his son’s vigor. Evidently he was correct, for not long into the voyage the boy’s health improved.

Captain Decatur must have been pleased that his young son was so interested in every detail of the ship’s operation. The boy enjoyed watching the crew at work and learning about the sails and rigging. He returned to Philadelphia healthier than he had ever been and determined to pursue a career at sea. His mother objected to any additional cruises for the time being, however, insisting that her son first pursue a formal education.

In 1788, at age eleven, Stephen began studies in writing, grammar, and arithmetic at the Reverend Doctor James Abercrombie’s Protestant Episcopal Academy. His classmates there included future fellow naval officers Richard Somers and Charles Stewart, and future diplomat Richard Rush. Decatur was intelligent, but he was apparently only an average student, probably because he was not much interested in schoolwork. There is also evidence that he suffered from a learning problem, perhaps dyslexia. Far more important to him than his studies at the academy were his adventures with his friends. Somers, Stewart, and Decatur all loved the water, and in the summer months they would swim across the Delaware River to Windmill Island. During the winter the boys enjoyed skating on the Schuylkill River.

Decatur seems to have been a handsome, lively, and intelligent boy, taking the lead among his friends in both adventure and mischief. His first biographer, Alexander Mackenzie, who interviewed Decatur’s surviving childhood friends, described him in these years as frank and generous in temper, giving utterance always to his thoughts and opinions, as they rose in his mind. His habit of blurting out the whole truth as he saw it and refusing to back down from a position once taken likely landed young Stephen in his share of fights. These same qualities later led him into duels, the last of which cost him his life. It was also said of the young Decatur that he was a champion of the underdog. Mackenzie wrote that he had a modesty and gentleness of demeanor, which accompanied him in advancing years, and in the maturity of his renown.⁴

An event that occurred when Decatur was about fourteen reveals much about his character. He embraced the political opinions of his family, including his father’s belief that the United States should avoid involvement in the wars of the French Revolution that were then sweeping through Europe. Reportedly, Stephen and some friends were on their way to go fishing when they encountered a demonstration in honor of Citizen Edmond Charles Genêt, minister plenipotentiary of the French Republic. The crowd was demanding that the U.S. government join France in its war against Britain. As the boys made their way through the crowd, the Jacobins in it demanded that they replace the blue cockade of the United States that they were wearing in their caps with the tricolor of revolutionary France. When one of the crowd tried to remove Stephen’s cockade, young Decatur, heedless of the fact that the boys were outnumbered—and by adults—hit his assailant. A general brawl ensued, and Decatur and his friends were getting the worst of it until some of his father’s sailors happened along and rescued them. The story has it that Decatur had been roughed up, but he still had his blue cockade.⁵

After completing his schooling at the Episcopal Academy, Decatur entered the University of Pennsylvania. His mother apparently wanted him to study for the priesthood, but that career did not interest Decatur, who in any case pursued his studies from duty rather than desire. Anxious to get on with his life and see the world, he was determined to enter his father’s profession. Decatur Senior, who certainly knew about the hardships of life at sea and was now quite well off financially, may also have had other plans for his son.

In 1796, at age seventeen, Decatur left the university and joined his father’s firm, Gurney & Smith, as a clerk. The firm was involved in shipbuilding as well as the seagoing trade, and for the time being, at least, this was as close as Decatur was able to get to a life at sea. He seems to have applied himself to his work, learning about the business of international trade. No doubt many stories about the seafaring life passed through the office, and Decatur’s longing for the sea only intensified during these years. He spent much of his free time working to master mathematics, which had not been one of his stronger subjects at the academy. He also enjoyed drawing sailing vessels and making ship models.⁶

Meanwhile, events were about to create an opportunity for Decatur to realize his dream, for the United States was about to establish a navy. Following the War for American Independence, the young republic had disbanded its army and navy. There was no longer an immediate foreign threat, money was short, and there was a general public perception, at least among Republicans, that standing military establishments were a menace to liberty. The U.S. Army was reduced to fewer than a hundred men, and the navy was abolished altogether. Naval personnel were dismissed, and the few ships remaining were sold. After the Alliance was sold in June 1785, the United States was without warships for a decade. Meanwhile, foreign trade burgeoned. Much of this commerce was with Europe, and some of it passed through the Mediterranean, where American ships were increasingly subject to the depredations of the North African Barbary States. Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli were essentially pirate states whose major source of revenue came from the seizure of merchant ships belonging to weaker powers. For centuries, warships of these states had been seizing ships, confiscating their cargoes, and enslaving or holding their crews for ransom.