"Appropriations to Foreign Intercourse" or, James Madison--Pimp?

The winter of 1805-6 witnessed an unusual sight in Washington DC--the arrival of a Tunisian ambassador, Sidi Suliman Mellimelli. See https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/tunisian-envoy for some of the details.

The visit is also discussed in Irving Brant's James Madison (volume 4, dealing with Madison as Secretary of State), p. 306:

"Mellimelli landed next day with his party of eleven, including four Turkish attachés (he himself was a Turk), Negro servants and an Italian band. The ambassador called at once on Madison, followed by the carrier of his four-foot pipe. Mellimelli was a man of fifty, with an eight-inch black beard streaked with gray, who usually wore rich scarlet and gold silks topped by a twenty-yard turban of white muslin. The arrangements for him, he reported, were satisfactory, except for one omission. He needed some concubines. Madison supplied the deficiency with 'Georgia, a Greek,' and charged the cost to the State Department. 'Appropriations to foreign intercourse,' wrote Madison a few months later, 'are terms of great latitude and may be drawn on by very urgent and unforeseen occurrences.'"

(As Brant notes, to make the social scene in Washington a bit more colorful, not only was Mellimelli present, but so were numerous Indians, some sent east by Lewis and Clark. This created some social problems--the Sacs would not eat with the Osages because their tribes were at war--but after all the British and French ambassadors, Merry and Turreau, obeyed a similar taboo. At one point, at a reception in Dolley Madison's drawing room, Mellimelli asked the red men if they were followers of Mohammed, Moses [1], or Jesus Christ. "We worship the Great Spirit without an agent" was their reply. Mellimelli called them "vile heretics" and asked Jefferson how he could prove that these men were descended from Adam. "The president replied it was difficult.")

Did the public ever learn that Madison was charging this particular cost to the State Department? I have not seen anything stating that it did, though https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/tunisian-envoy
notes that Jefferson "assured one senator that obtaining peace with the Barbary powers was important enough to 'pass unnoticed the irregular conduct of their ministers'." Obviously the public didn't assume that Turks were either celibate or monogamous, but this is not a matter of simply tolerating "irregular conduct" for the sake of diplomacy but of actually providing the woman at taxpayers' expense. Were American voters of the time worldly enough to accept this? (It is true that fundamentalism was less strong in the US than it would be; the Second Great Awakening was just starting to get underway. Still, even some non-fundamentalists might think Madison went a bit too far...)

Remember that Madison's election in 1808 was not nearly as easy as it may look from the final electoral vote. Yes, he did overwhelmingly get the support of the Republican caucus in Congress--but that was because his opponents boycotted the caucus. And even then he faced opposition from a somewhat resurgent Federalist party (which capitalized on the unpopularity of the Embargo in New England), from Vice President George Clinton, and from his fellow Virginian Monroe. (See https://web.archive.org/web/2016030...tDetail.html?UserBlogID=24&UserBlogPostID=268 for some details.) Could some equivalent of a modern tabloid headline reading MADISON PIMPED FOR BARBARY PIRATES AT TAXPAYERS' EXPENSE [2] have been fatal to Madison's election hopes in 1808?

[1] According to
https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/tunisian-envoy
However, according to Brant, he gave the three alternatives as Jesus,Mohammed, or Abraham.

[2] Mellimelli brought a fine Arabian stud horse as a gift, and it might have been sold for enough to pay all the expenses of the Tunisian mission--including Georgia--but there's no need to burden a story with such details. Brant says (p. 308) that there is nothing to indicate whether the horse covered the cost of the mission.
 
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Could it have cost him the election? Possibly. Paying tribute to the Barbary pirates was never popular; in his book Power Faith and Fantasy--the only comprehensive history of U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East of which I'm aware--Oren argues that tribute was a huge portion of the U.S. budget as of the 1780s and 1790s. Jefferson himself was a major tribute-opponent. This little touch, if the opposition press got hold of it--could be used as fodder for claiming that Madison was prone to weakness on the issue. It would require the Federalists to abandon their previous position that paying tribute was cheaper than building a navy, held under Adams, but that switch probably isn't an unthinkable one. "Antagonizing the British while serving as procurer to the Barbary" would be a damaging accusation.

On the other hand, Madison's credentials as a founder were unimpeachable. Monroe would likely stand aside for his fellow Virginian in due course, for lack of stature if nothing else. Clinton might oppose him, among the broader Republican Party, but that would require Clinton to differentiate himself from Madison on this and other issues, and would risk a possible north/south split among Republicans.

For the Federalists, the problem is that they lack top-tier talent. Thomas Pinckney and Rufus King are not the stuff of which a Madison defeat is made. However, I could see one possible Federalist that might pull it off; Jay. He had experience as sec-state, was fairly moralistic and devout [later founder of the American Bible Society], and if his stature wasn't quite equal to Madison, it was at least somewhere in the ballpark. Jay's problem as a presidential candidate was that the south loathed him, due to Jay's treaty [ironically, written to try and ensure good relations with the British]. So he'd need a political ally that could bring either votes from the mercantile south--Pinckney swinging South Carolina--or the new western frontier. And with the frontier, you have a war hawk problem, so finding the right VP is a non-tryvial challenge.

Anyway, I'm all for it, and not just because I really enjoy Jay. A foreign-policy-focused election of 1808 would be fun.
 
Mostly genuine question, partly desire to be a smartass, but do we know why Madison didn't use one of his slaves to "pay out of pocket," so to speak? I know morality when it came to slavery was inconsistent, but it seems genuinely weird that, based on the knowledge that using female slaves as concubines was common enough to be used as an argument against slavery, this wasn't the choice or an option.
 
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My question is just how were you able to get a copy of the 6-volume Brant Madison biography? I can't find that thing anywhere!
 
The electorate was probably more “worldly” than it would be in the Jacksonian era and beyond.

Maybe, to a certain extent, but fear of women being sold into "white slavery by the heathens of Barbary" was still a big cultural hot-button. There were several prominent plays and novels on the subject in the immediate post-independence period, which would still have been current. Moral panicks have been created over less, with less cultural fodder behind them.

The main impact might be bringing a bigger name to run for the Federalists and, equally important, convincing at least some in the DR caucus to back Clinton and not Madison. In no way is George Clinton above demagoguing this, if there's a possibility he might get to be president as a result.
 
Keep in mind that political mudslinging of the day included accusing opponents of hermaphroditism, monarchism, and bigamy, not to mention a panoply of other outrageously personal half truths or falsehoods.

Calling an opponent a pimp (which was done frequently as well), even if technically correct, probably does not breach any kind of line in the sand. I don't think the Federalists make much hay of this even if they try. And the Southern-Western bloc of the DRs isn't breaking down in 1808 unless the Federalists have a much better candidate.
 
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raharris1973

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Maybe, to a certain extent, but fear of women being sold into "white slavery by the heathens of Barbary" was still a big cultural hot-button. There were several prominent plays and novels on the subject in the immediate post-independence period, which would still have been current. Moral panicks have been created over less, with less cultural fodder behind them.

The main impact might be bringing a bigger name to run for the Federalists and, equally important, convincing at least some in the DR caucus to back Clinton and not Madison. In no way is George Clinton above demagoguing this, if there's a possibility he might get to be president as a result.

Maybe. One thing is that given the fluctuating definition of "whiteness" in America, the selection of an "ethnically appropriate" prostitute like this Greek woman might be less hot button than if what a prostitute with a northwest European assumed background.
 
Maybe, to a certain extent, but fear of women being sold into "white slavery by the heathens of Barbary" was still a big cultural hot-button. There were several prominent plays and novels on the subject in the immediate post-independence period, which would still have been current. Moral panicks have been created over less, with less cultural fodder behind them.

The main impact might be bringing a bigger name to run for the Federalists and, equally important, convincing at least some in the DR caucus to back Clinton and not Madison. In no way is George Clinton above demagoguing this, if there's a possibility he might get to be president as a result.
We're still a few decades before the Greek Slave statue is carved at this point, aren't we?
 

TruthfulPanda

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Maybe. One thing is that given the fluctuating definition of "whiteness" in America, the selection of an "ethnically appropriate" prostitute like this Greek woman might be less hot button than if what a prostitute with a northwest European assumed background.
The hottness of the button depends on the intent of who is paying for the leaflets ... if need be she will be an Anglo-Saxon Protestant by birth and brought to Greece as a baby ...
 
Maybe. One thing is that given the fluctuating definition of "whiteness" in America, the selection of an "ethnically appropriate" prostitute like this Greek woman might be less hot button than if what a prostitute with a northwest European assumed background.
Greece at this point was still part of the Ottoman Empire.

However, the orientalist type tropes about white Europeans kidnapped into harems hadn't really caught hold I think by 1806.
 
Greece at this point was still part of the Ottoman Empire.

However, the orientalist type tropes about white Europeans kidnapped into harems hadn't really caught hold I think by 1806.

They're definitely well-established in the U.S. by the 1790s.
 
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