Miracles and Massacres Read online

  “About two hours,” said the sailor. “Two hours in the sun wearing nothing but a shirt. They’ll die in another hour or two, but the birds and bugs will get to feast on them first.”

  130 miles east of Derna

  April 10, 1805

  The meat was gone, as was the bread. After thirty-four days of marching, all that was left was rice. And distrust.

  “I have heard a rumor that you aim only to use me for the purpose of obtaining a peace with my brother,” Hamet told Eaton.

  “That’s absurd,” Eaton replied. He wanted to free the prisoners from the Philadelphia, but he wouldn’t trade Hamet for them. Nor would he trade Hamet for a peace treaty. Any peace that ended with the Pasha still on the throne would be a short-lived and worthless one.

  Besides, today was not a day for pessimism. The scout who’d been sent ahead to search for American ships had just returned with great news: they were just a week’s march ahead. Reinforcements were close—if only Eaton could keep his army together that long.

  65 miles east of Derna

  April 16, 1805

  Eaton’s army, which had grown to more than six hundred men, was too weak to march. The new soldiers, most of them Bedouins who’d been attracted by the promise of payment and the prospect of looting Derna, had put a heavy strain on their supplies.

  A few days earlier they’d finished their last ration of rice. The next day they had killed a camel for food.

  The hunger exacerbated the distrust. Eaton was worried that the foreign soldiers might soon rebel against him for leading them into this debacle. And he still wasn’t sure if Hamet believed that he wouldn’t be used as a bargaining chip. The whole expedition seemed to be hanging by a thread.

  That evening, a foreign soldier ran into camp, pointing frantically toward the ocean. Eaton ran to the shore and understood immediately. Out where the horizon met the sea, a ship had appeared.

  A United States warship.

  It would, Eaton knew, have guns, gold coins, and, most important, enough food to feed an army ten times the size of the one he currently had.

  For the first time that month, Eaton and his men knew they would not go to sleep on empty stomachs.

  At the gates of Derna

  April 26, 1805

  After five hundred miles, six weeks, and several near mutinies, William Eaton and his army had made it to the gates of the great port city of Derna. His rabble had not only survived intact, they had also beaten the Pasha’s reinforcements in the race to the city.

  After issuing a “Proclamation to Inhabitants of Tripoli,” which described in detail the founding of the United States and informed the city’s Tripolitans that Hamet was their rightful ruler, Eaton wrote a short letter to Governor Mustafa, cousin of the Pasha and commander of the Pasha’s troops in Derna.

  “Sir, I want no territory,” Eaton began. “With me is advancing the legitimate Sovereign of your country. Give us passage through your city and the supplies we need and you shall receive fair compensation.”

  For once, Eaton’s promise of compensation was not wholly unrealistic. Navy ships were nearby—one of them being the ship that had come to Eaton’s rescue ten days earlier. If the governor opened the city to Eaton, the ships would bring him a healthy reward for his cooperation. If he fought, the ships would shell the city.

  “Let no difference of religion induce us to shed the blood of harmless men who think little and know nothing,” Eaton told him. “If you are a man of liberal mind you will not have to think long about my propositions. Hamet pledges himself to me that you shall be established in your government. I shall see you tomorrow in a way of your choice.”

  The governor’s terse reply did not take long to arrive, and it did not require much interpretation.

  “My head or yours.”

  Derna

  April 27, 1805

  The battle with Governor Mustafa’s forces was just over an hour old, but it was already turning into a catastrophe. Eaton’s army was pinned down at the southeastern edge of Derna by an enemy twice its size. As bullets flew past them from the barricades defending the city, Eaton’s men were approaching a state of panic. His European mercenaries were faltering and his Arab allies were ready to retreat.

  Eaton, however, remained calm. He had waited his whole life for a battle like this. Decked out in the white, homemade officer’s uniform he’d designed himself and worn since leaving Alexandria, Eaton surveyed the scene. He tried to imagine what the great military minds of his favorite history books would do in this situation.

  Ahead of him was a well-entrenched, superior enemy. To advance into Mustafa’s seemingly impregnable line was to invite death, but to remain pinned down and panicked was unacceptable. And to retreat . . . No. He caught himself. He would never entertain the thought. William Eaton had not crossed a desert and defied hunger, desertions, and near mutiny only to run from the first sight of bullets.

  “Fix bayonets!” he yelled over the crash of the cannonballs launched from the naval ships on Eaton’s flank.

  The word was passed down the line, disordered as it was. It was hard to hear over all the noise, and for a moment, it looked like the orders had been lost. Then, a few of the Marines, the ones closest to Eaton, attached the sharp blades to the ends of their muskets, and the rest of his misfit army followed suit. The next order was the one Eaton believed he was born to give.

  “Charge!”

  Racing ahead of his men, his eyes flashing with excitement, he sprinted for the barricades. He knew the eight blue-and-red-clad leathernecks would follow him, but he wasn’t sure about the others. The hired guns had barely followed him out of Alexandria; would they really charge with him into a hailstorm of musket fire?

  The answer, Eaton quickly saw, was yes. Whether it was out of a selfish desire to loot Derna, a dream of putting Hamet in the Tripolitan throne, a fear of retreating and starving in the barren desert, or something else entirely, did not really matter. What did matter was that they were now following Eaton and the Marines, rushing headlong into a wave of heavy fire.

  Their shouts came in at least half a dozen different languages, but they were all the same. “To Derna!” “To Tripoli!” And, in Arabic, “Hamet Qaramanli!” from those with their scimitars held high.

  As bullets whizzed by Eaton’s head, he leapt over the barricade and into the enemy line, his army at his heels. An enemy soldier lunged at him with a bloody sword, but Eaton ducked, dropped to the ground, and rolled past his attacker. His foe spun around but was too slow. Eaton plunged his bayonet into the Arab’s stomach.

  The leathernecks fired their muskets into the chests of the enemy at point-blank range. Through the cloud of noise and dirt, one unlikely reality was quickly becoming clear: Mustafa’s soldiers were panicking. They hadn’t expected the audacious bayonet charge and now they were in a mad rush to retreat.

  The bravest enemy soldiers, Eaton saw through the chaos, were firing through the swirling dust, then running for cover, reloading and firing again. It was one of those soldiers who took direct aim at him. Eaton heard a “thwack!” and felt a piercing pain. The bullet had been aimed at his heart.

  It had only missed by inches.

  Eaton fell to the ground as his triumphant leathernecks, mercenaries, and Arabs—their swords and bayonets colored red with blood—rushed past him in pursuit of the retreating enemy. He clenched his teeth and wrapped his wound. His limp arm, which had taken the brunt of the enemy bullet, was not able to hold a musket any longer. Eaton drew his pistol and charged ahead, firing into any enemy soldier brave or foolish enough to still resist.

  Finally, after four hours of fighting, Derna fell silent. Atop Derna’s highest flagpole, the Stars and Stripes flapped in the wind.

  The city now belonged to the United States.

  Eaton took a deep breath. He was pleased, but he wasn’t finished. He would not be satisfied until the same flag flew over the Pasha’s palace in Tripoli.

  Derna

  May 31, 180
5

  In the month after Derna fell, the enemy continued to fight. The Pasha’s late-arriving reinforcements surrounded the city and outnumbered Eaton’s force. But Eaton had something the Pasha’s troops did not: a navy. With warships supplying Eaton with food, weapons, and money, the Pasha’s troops soon began to realize that the American army could hold out for as long as it took. Many of the Pasha’s men deserted and one enemy commander even approached Eaton about defecting.

  On this late spring morning, Eaton was pleased to see a new frigate, the USS Constellation, pulling up at the dock. An hour later, a messenger from the warship approached Eaton as he sat down for lunch.

  After briefly exchanging greetings the messenger got right to the point. “Sir, I am here to advise you that President Jefferson has revised his orders.”

  Eaton had expected news about additional weapons or troops. He was confused.

  “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t quite know what you are talking about.”

  The messenger continued: “When you took Derna, the Pasha quickly realized that he could lose the throne. So he sued for peace. He told President Jefferson that he would stop all attacks on American ships and release the Philadelphia prisoners in exchange for sixty thousand dollars. It is my duty to inform you that the United States government has decided to accept his offer.”

  Questions raced through Eaton’s mind. Why would the United States allow a tyrant to remain on the throne when his defeat was imminent? Did they really expect him to live up to his word? What would happen to Eaton’s Arab allies? To Hamet?

  The messenger, sensing Eaton’s apprehension, continued. “I am here under orders from the president to escort Hamet Qaramanli and all American troops to Sicily. I can also transport your European soldiers and a few of the Arabs. The rest must fend for themselves.”

  Tripoli

  June 4, 1805

  William Ray had lived as a slave for nineteen months. He ate when the Pasha’s men said he could eat. He worked when the Pasha’s men ordered him to work, which was from sunrise to sunset, seven days a week. He slept when the Pasha’s men allowed him to sleep.

  But today was different. When he’d woken up this morning, no one was there to drag him out to the sea.

  The captain of the Philadelphia called together his former crew and told him what he’d learned: reports of a treaty. Details were still sketchy, but the Pasha had granted their release.

  “We are free,” the captain told them. “And tomorrow, we’re going home!”

  For the second time, William Ray’s life was saved from suicide—which he had contemplated many times in the last nineteen months—by the words of a sailor in the United States Navy.

  At sea; Washington, D.C.; Sicily

  June 20, 1805

  William Ray and the men of the Philadelphia were emaciated and exhausted, but they were also elated. They were sailing home to the United States, where a hero’s welcome awaited them.

  In Washington, Thomas Jefferson was triumphant. He was being heralded as the commander in chief that freed three hundred American hostages. Now he could use that success to reduce the size of the American navy and get the budget in order.

  On the island of Sicily, Hamet Qaramanli was dejected, but grateful to William Eaton and his troops. As a token of his appreciation, Hamet presented Presley O’Bannon, the officer in charge of the departing Marines, with Hamet’s most prized possession: a weapon he had carried from Alexandria to Derna. Its slim blade was slightly curved. Its ornate handle was shaped like the letter J, and running the length of the sword—a scimitar, to be precise—were engraved Arabic words.

  William Eaton, on the other hand, was not so grateful. In fact, he was bitter. He was willing to concede that the treaty with the Pasha was “more favorable and—separately considered—more honorable than any peace obtained by any Christian nation with a Barbary regency at any period within a hundred years.” But he raged at the opportunity that had been lost. “I firmly believe,” he later told a friend, “we would have entered Tripoli with as little trouble as we did Derna.”

  EPILOGUE

  Monticello; Washington, D.C.; Tripoli

  June 1815

  At seventy-two years old, Thomas Jefferson looked back on a life full of historic accomplishments. With the Declaration of Independence he had given his new nation its creed. With the Louisiana Purchase he had doubled its size. His ideas about religious freedom would inform the nation’s First Amendment, and his belief in small government would inspire generations of Americans to remain skeptical of centralized power.

  The Barbary War was not, however, one of Jefferson’s finest moments. By allowing Pasha Qaramanli to remain on the throne, he had chosen compromise over victory. He had shown weakness, and that weakness had provoked more aggression. It was a great irony that, after a daring, five-hundred-mile march to Derna, the Pasha of Tripoli would keep his job, while many officers of the American navy would lose theirs.

  In the ten years after the release of the Philadelphia prisoners, the Pasha had broken almost every term of the treaty. Tripoli and the other Barbary states had resumed their attacks on American ships. Now another U.S. president was again forced to deal with the situation.

  At just five foot four and barely one hundred pounds, James Madison could appear, upon first impression, weak and frail. But his looks were deceiving. Madison built America’s first great navy. He led the United States to victory over Great Britain in the War of 1812. And he was determined to do what his country had failed to do ever since Thomas Jefferson met Abd al-Rahman in London: He would achieve peace through strength, not appeasement. Madison made it the “settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute.”

  While Jefferson rested at Monticello, an armada was parked in the port of Tripoli with enough firepower to turn the city into rubble. One ship brought a personal message for the Pasha from James Madison himself. “The United States,” the president had written, “while they wish for war with no nation, will buy peace with none.”

  The American captain who delivered the president’s message was Stephen Decatur, the same man who’d led the daring mission to destroy the USS Philadelphia. Decatur, at Madison’s behest, had also delivered the same ultimatum to the Barbary states of Algiers and Tunis.

  After the capture of thirty-five American ships and seven hundred American hostages, the United States’ thirty-year war with the Barbary pirates was finally over. It had not ended with a bribe, or a treaty, but with a demand for peace, backed by a credible threat of overwhelming force.

  Today, a scimitar modeled after the one given by Hamet to Presley O’Bannon hangs at the side of every United States Marine officer in dress uniform. The “Marines’ Hymn,” which is the oldest official song in the military, contains a reference to the war where American leathernecks first proved their incredible resilience:

  To the shores of Tripoli.

  5

  Edison vs. Westinghouse: An Epic Struggle for Power

  New York City

  Spring 1885

  “Fifty thousand dollars? You are mad.”

  Nikola Tesla straightened his shoulders. His eyes never wavered from Thomas Edison. He responded, “You promised me fifty thousand dollars if I resolved those engineering problems.” He lifted his chin slightly. “The designs are complete.”

  Edison wondered if he had made a mistake hiring this strange young Serb from Continental Edison, his subsidiary in Paris, nine months earlier. Edison had tasked him with designing an improved method of power transmission, but instead of working with direct current distribution—the technology that Edison had championed—he’d concentrated on alternating current. Tesla insisted that alternating the direction of electrical charges was better than a constant flow in a single direction because it allowed electricity to be transmitted from great distances with less power loss. Edison—both for practical and financial reasons—vehemently disagreed.

  Edison rose from his ch
air so he was level with the standing Tesla. “You misunderstood. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work.”

  “I won’t leave without my money.”

  Edison knew Tesla was odd, but he never expected to be confronted in this fashion. Tesla counted every step he took, worked only with objects and numbers divisible by three, seldom shook hands, and refused to touch another person’s hair. His fastidious attire and precise English annoyed the untidy Edison. Does Tesla really believe that being neat makes him a better man? Edison thought to himself. A better inventor?

  “This is absurd, Nikola. You earn eighteen dollars a week, a generous salary. Didn’t we just deny your request for a seven-dollar-per-week raise? How could you possibly believe those designs were worth fifty thousand dollars?”

  “Because you promised.”

  Edison stared disapprovingly at him, a practiced look that was sufficient to dissuade most employees.

  Tesla was not so easily put off. “And because I need the money for my work with alternating current.”

  Edison chewed his unlit cigar. This last statement irritated him to no end. Edison had reservations about direct current technology, but he was deeply committed to it. Most of his inventions, the expertise of his companies, and his factory tooling were all aimed at direct current. Was Tesla trying to wreck everything Edison had built?

  “Nikola, you have splendid ideas, but alternating current is utterly impractical. I need your mind on your assigned work.”

  “Yes, and I’ve completed my assigned work. Now I’ve come for the bonus you offered me to improve the electrical distribution system.”

  “To finance work on alternating current?”

  “How I use the money is not your business.” The dapper, twenty-eight-year-old engineer looked down for a moment, as so many others had done when coming face-to-face with Edison. But then he quickly lifted his head back up. “Mr. Edison, with deference to your grand accomplishments, the future is alternating current. It’s the only way to transmit high-voltage energy over long distances.”