On a dark night in February 1804, the ketch Intrepid, commanded by U.S. Navy Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, entered the harbor of Tripoli. The United States had gone to war against Tripoli in 1801, and the Navy had spent two years in mostly lackluster blockading. On 31 October 1803, however, the frigate Philadelphia had gone aground off Tripoli. Her 307-man crew surrendered into captivity, and when the frigate came off the shoals in a storm, the Tripolitans were able to take her into Tripoli Harbor.
Three months later, Decatur and volunteers from the Intrepid boarded the Philadelphia, scattered or killed her watch, burned the ship, and made good their escape. The raiders arrived back in Malta, where Decatur reported to his squadron commander, Commodore Edward Preble, that the frigate had been destroyed with no loss of American life.
Decatur’s famous raid is one of the defining exploits in the early history of the U.S. Navy. In his 19 February 1804 letter to Secretary of the Navy Robert Smith, Preble reported the success of the expedition and stated that the conduct of Decatur and his men “cannot be sufficiently estimated—It is beyond all praise.”1
In a separate letter that same day to Smith, Preble wrote that the 25-year-old Decatur was “an Officer of too much Value to be neglected.” His gallantry and daring, Preble said, “would in any Navy in Europe insure him instantaneous promotion to the rank of post Captain.” He asked Smith to recommend to President Thomas Jefferson that Decatur be promoted, which would serve “as a stimulus” for others to emulate and would be a “real service to our Navy.”2
Secretary Smith put the recommendation before President Jefferson, who agreed, and promoted Decatur to captain, graciously backdating the commission to the date of the raid, 16 February 1804. Smith enclosed Decatur’s commission and a letter to Decatur within a dispatch to Preble.
Smith’s short letter to Preble reflects Jefferson’s personal involvement, as it contains the repeated use of “our” and “we” to describe their actions. Smith congratulated Preble on Decatur’s successful raid, adding that as “a testimonial of our high sense of the brilliancy of this Enterprize, we send The Hero a Captain’s Commission. Knowing that you will feel great pleasure in presenting it to him I herewith send it to you for that purpose.”3
Carried by the frigate John Adams, the letter and commission for Decatur arrived off Tripoli on 7 August. Decatur was busy that day leading a division of gunboats in a ferocious bombardment of Tripoli gun batteries. Afterward, he reported to the flagship, the frigate Constitution. Preble handed him the letter and the commission.4
Smith’s letter referred to the “extraordinary peril” involved in burning the Philadelphia under the guns of the bashaw’s castle. The expedition, a “brilliant Enterprize,” reflected “the highest honor on all the Officers and men concerned.” Smith continued, “The President has desired me to convey to you his Thanks for your gallant Conduct on this occasion, and he likewise requests that you will in his name thank each Individual of your gallant Band for their honorable and valorous Support rendered the more honorable from its having been volunteered.” The captain’s commission, which Smith enclosed, was “a Testimonial of the President’s high opinion of your gallant Conduct.”5
Until now, it was unclear if Decatur ever responded to this high praise and to his promotion. No letter is reprinted in the Navy’s document collection, Naval Documents Related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers, and none of the biographies of Decatur mentions a response. It would be understandable if Decatur had not responded. He disliked writing, and there are so few Decatur letters besides reports on operational matters that one biographer wonders whether Decatur was dyslexic. To Keith Spence, a prisoner in Tripoli, Decatur once wrote, “I need not tell you I dislike writing, you know it, and my reason, for fear you should have forgotten, I will tell you, I have always thought, that they who write badly should write little or by the way of practice a great deal. Now as I know I can never become an adept, I know you will think me prudent for not writing much.”6
‘Convey to the President My Thanks’
But Decatur did respond. He waited for more than three months, likely timing his response to the first ship departing from the squadron to return to the United States. Decatur’s 15 November 1804 letter, addressed to Secretary Smith, reads in its entirety:
SIR,
I have had the honor of receiving, by the John Adams, your most flattering letter of the 22d of May, enclosing a captain’s commission from the President. I find my services have been far over-rated, and I feel myself at a loss for words sufficient to express my gratitude to the President and to yourself on the present occasion.
As you have directed, I have given the thanks of the President to the officers and men employed on this service, each of whom feels sensibly the honor conferred on them, and I return their thanks to the President, with assurances of their highest regard; I also beg leave to request you will convey to the President my thanks for the very distinguished honor he has conferred on me, with assurances, that I shall look forward, with impatience, for an opportunity to do away a part of the obligation I owe my country.
I have the honor to be, with respect,
Sir, your obedient servant,
Stephen Decatur, jun.
As often happened in the early republic with official correspondence considered significant, the government provided the letter to the newspapers. Decatur’s letter was reprinted in multiple newspapers across the United States.7 It is unclear why the Navy’s multivolume Barbary Wars document collection, supervised by Commodore Dudley W. Knox and patronized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, does not contain the letter. Thanks to its distribution for public consumption, though, the letter did survive—to be rediscovered recently courtesy of online newspaper archives.
While one should not read too much into this four-sentence thank-you note, two points stand out. First, the letter sheds light on Decatur’s character—his modesty and sense of obligation. He refers to his role in the burning of the Philadelphia as “over-rated,” but at the same time, he would strive, in his own eyes, to earn the honor bestowed on him.8 Second, a democratic spirit pervades the letter. Decatur had complied with the President’s request to assemble the men who had been on the expedition to thank “each Individual” in the President’s name, a step perhaps unprecedented in the U.S. Navy. These being boisterous American “tars,” however, it did not end there; Decatur conveyed to the President (through Smith) that the sailors gave Jefferson their thanks and “assurances of their highest regard.”
A Leapfrog Promotion?
Although Decatur had become a national hero by burning the Philadelphia, within the Navy, his promotion was controversial because he vaulted over seven more-senior lieutenants. These included Charles Stewart, Isaac Hull, Andrew Sterrett, and Richard Somers, men who had acquired stellar reputations themselves.
The chief clerk of the Navy, Charles W. Goldsborough, wrote a private letter to Preble (also not in the Barbary Wars document collection), suggesting he advise Decatur to decline the promotion, an act of grace that would “immortalize” him, show his “noble disinterestedness,” and avoid the inevitable “bickerings” his promotion would instill in his brother officers.9
It is doubtful that Preble followed this rather naive advice. Alexander Mackenzie, Decatur’s first biographer, who knew some of the officers involved, asserted that all of the passed-over lieutenants “acquiesced” in the promotion.10 Perhaps Stewart and Somers acquiesced. Decatur had been their friend since boyhood, and besides, the same ship that brought out the captain’s commission for Decatur brought out their commissions as “master commandant,” a rank above lieutenant the navy had just reestablished, perhaps in part as a balm to these proud men’s egos.
But at least one of the officers, Andrew Sterrett, found the idea of serving under an officer who had been junior to him dishonorable. Sterrett had his own claims to promotion—his command of the schooner Enterprise in her 1801 victory over the corsair Tripoli had garnered the formal thanks of Congress and a personal letter from Jefferson.11 When Sterrett complained, Smith tried to mollify him. Taking a cue from Preble, who thought Decatur’s promotion would act “as a stimulus,” Smith suggested that Decatur’s promotion would spur Sterrett’s ambition and that on the same principle the President promoted Decatur, he might “raise” Sterrett to the highest command. The suggestion that any of these seven officers might need a “stimulus” was offensive, and Sterrett resigned in a huff.12
Decatur’s promotion was richly deserved, and his long-lost letter in response to the promotion shows grace and tact. But Decatur’s promotion also shows the internecine politics and touchy honor working within the American naval officer corps.
1. Dudley W. Knox, ed., Naval Documents Related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers (hereinafter NDBW), 7 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1939–45), 3:413, Preble to Smith, 19 February 1804.
2. NDBW, 3:441, Preble to Smith, 19 February 1804.
3. NDBW, 3:427, Smith to Preble, 22 May 1804.
4. Spencer C. Tucker, Stephen Decatur: A Life Most Bold and Daring (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004), 71–72.
5. NDBW, 3:427–28, Smith to Decatur, 22 May 1804.
6. NDBW, 4:346, Decatur to Spence, 9 January 1805; James Tertius De Kay, A Rage for Glory: The Life of Commodore Stephen Decatur, USN (New York: Free Press, 2004), 221–22.
7. Among the newspapers printing the letter: Albany Gazette, 18 March 1805; [Charleston, SC] City Gazette, 18 March 1805; [Easton, MD] Republican Star, 19 March 1805; [Worcester, MA] National Aegis, 20 March 1805; [Hartford, CT] American Mercury, 21 March 1805; and [Boston] Independent Chronicle, 21 March 1805.
8. In the Age of Sail, the word “rate” had a distinct naval meaning—as in a 74-gun ship-of-the-line being a “second rate”—but the word “overrated,” which has existed since 1586, does not seem to have a naval derivation.
9. De Kay, A Rage for Glory, 70; Thomas Sheppard, “There Will Still Remain Heroes and Patriots: The Politics of Resignation in the Early American Navy,” Journal of Military History 84, no. 2 (April 2020): 388.
10. Alexander S. Mackenzie, Life of Stephen Decatur (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1846), 106–7.
11. Irvin Anthony, Decatur (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1931), 148; Charles W. Goldsborough, The United States Naval Chronicle (Washington, DC: James Wilson, 1824), 197–98.
12. Sheppard, “There Will Still Remain Heroes,” 388; Robert J. Allison, Stephen Decatur: American Naval Hero, 1779–1820 (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), 66; Terrence S. McCormack, “The Last Voyage of Andrew Sterett,” Naval History 26, no. 2 (April 2012): 58–64.