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The Barbary Wars Political Agenda Setting in Early America: The Barbary Wars Amanda J. Sauer Masters of Arts Thesis California State University San Marcos Dr. Al-Marashi Sauer 2 Political Agenda Setting in Early America: The Barbary Wars Table of Contents Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................... 3 Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 5 The Concept of Political Agenda Setting .................................................................................... 7 Research Methodology ................................................................................................................. 9 Literature Review ....................................................................................................................... 12 American Interaction With the Barbary States ....................................................................... 16 Political Agenda Setting Under the Federalists: the Dismissal of Public Opinion ............... 20 Political Agenda Setting Under the Jeffersonian Republicans: the Essential Role of Public Opinion......................................................................................................................................... 32 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 48 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 51 Primary Sources .............................................................................................................. 51 Newspapers ...................................................................................................................... 52 Secondary Sources .......................................................................................................... 53 Sauer 3 Acknowledgments I know that without my family that I would not be here. The support that I have gotten from my husband has made a world of difference, and if you were to ask him, he would claim to be an expert on the Barbary Coast by now. I also want to thank my parents for all of the support. This last year, without them I do not know that I would be finishing. The days that my mom helped me edit and work through what I meant to say, even if on paper it didn’t quit come out that way. My father whose love of history encouraged me to pursue not only one degree, but two degrees in history. I want to thank Dr. Jill Watts for always knowing that I could do it and pushing me to apply for the graduate program even when I was unsure of myself. Also for sitting me next to Doris Morgan. I want to thank Dr. Ibrahim Al-Marashi for encouraging my interesting in Middle Eastern History and pushing me to pursue it even when others told me that I shouldn’t. I want to thank him also for guiding this thesis and supporting me at a time when I needed it the most and needed to change from the path that my thesis was going down. I want to especially thank Dr. Kimber Quinney. Without her I would not have found my love for foreign policy and looked for the path to pull my interest in Thomas Jefferson and the Middle East together. No matter how many times I say thank you, I don’t think I can even express how much you have helped me has meant to me and helped me over all. It has made the greatest difference in my writing and my education. Thank you for pushing me and believing in me. And lastly I want to thank Doris Morgan. Thank you for being my best friend and being there for me through all of this. Sauer 4 Abstract This thesis explores the extent to which the first four presidents of the United States – Federalists George Washington and John Adams and the Republicans, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison - relied on political agenda setting. The thesis demonstrates that each president used his relationship with early American media to set his presidential agenda. One of the more important yet understudied examples of American foreign relations in the early Republic is the nation’s conflict with the Barbary States from 1783 to 1817. The Barbary Wars thus serve as an excellent case study for assessing political agenda setting in early America. Despite widespread agreement about the principle of popular sovereignty, early American political leaders disagreed about the role that the people should play in government after delegating their authority to their elected representatives. Although agenda setting was not recognized as a political term until the 1960’s, there is significant evidence to indicate that it was employed as early as the 1790s with regard to the Barbary States. Sauer 5 Political Agenda Setting in Early America: The Barbary Wars “As there are cases where the public opinion must be obeyed by the government; so there are cases, where not being fixed, it may be influenced by the government. This distinction, if kept in view, would prevent or decide many debates on the respect due from the government to the sentiments of the people.” —James Madison, “Public Opinion” National Gazette, December 17, 1791 Introduction Although the phrase was not used with any regularity until 1780, historians have documented that public opinion was exercised by the American Revolutionaries and by the earliest leaders of the American Republic. The proliferation of newspapers by the 1790s allowed the American public a voice that, once it had been expressed and disseminated en masse, seemed insuppressible. By the 1830s, public opinion was so evident in early American life that Alexis de Tocqueville, even in his admiration of democracy in America, identified a “tyranny of the majority.”1 Whether intended or welcomed by the Founders, public opinion came to be synonymous with American democracy. But it was not until 1780, that the concept was identified as a force of critical reason, and evidence suggests to indicate that once unleashed, public opinion was tremendously important to the early American political scene.2 One of the earliest indications of a shift in the acknowledgement of public opinion as a tool in the Federalist versus Democratic-Republican (hereafter Republican) debates was an unsigned editorial in the National Gazette, a Republic newspaper, in which James Madison declared that “public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.”3 1 Alexis de Tocqueville, Book 1, Chapter XV, Democracy in America http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/detoc/1_ch15.htm 2 Mark Schmeller, The Political Economy of Opinion: Public Credit and Concepts of Public Opinion in the Age of Federalism,” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Spring, 2009): 35-61. Spoken in 1791, Madison sent in an unsigned editorial to the National Gazette that was addressing the importance on the subject of public opinion with the growing partisan contestation, with Democratic-Republicans and Federalists advancing divergent definitions of public opinion. 3 Ibid., 36. Sauer 6 But what is perhaps less appreciated is the potential that the early presidential administrations had to influence public opinion, not merely with regard to their respective Federalist and Republican political principles and positions, but also with regard to foreign policy. This thesis explores the extent to which the first four presidents of the United States— Federalists George Washington and John Adams and the Republicans, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison—relied on political agenda setting. Although the Founders would not have recognized their actions as captured by this modern concept, this thesis demonstrates that each president used his relationship with early American media to set his presidential agenda. This constituted more than merely relaying information in an attempt to influence opinions. Political agenda setting was an even more assertive tool, used by the early presidents to set their own foreign policy agendas. This study relies on Paul Light’s definition of agenda: “The President’s agenda is perhaps best understood as a signal. It indicates what the President believes to be the most important issues facing his administration.”4 One of the more important yet understudied examples of American foreign relations in the early Republic is the nation’s conflict with the Barbary States from 1783 to 1817. The Barbary Wars thus serve as an excellent case study for assessing political agenda setting in early America. This study reveals that the Federalists and the Republicans had very different agendas that they were attempting to impose on the American citizens, and that those distinctions become clear with regard to the nation’s involvement with the Barbary States. The thesis begins by defining political agenda setting as a framework of analysis. It then provides a brief description of the research methodology and a review of the relevant literature. A brief historical 4 Paul Light, The President's Agenda (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press), 1991: 2-3. Sauer 7 background of U.S. involvement with the Barbary States is followed by an assessment of political agenda setting by contrasting the Federalist and Republican policies during the Barbary Wars. The Concept of Political
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