"When will these demands end?" asked United States Consul Cathcart of the Bashaw of Tripoli. "Never! They will never be at an end," answered the bashaw, coolly. "Then I will declare war on my own responsibility," said the consul. And so finally war was declared.

The United States sent Commodore Edward Preble with a fleet to Tripoli, and they arrived shortly after the pirates had captured the American ship Philadelphia. The officers and crew of the captured vessel were taken to Tripoli and a ransom of five hundred dollars a head placed on each man. The Philadelphia was anchored in the harbor in plain sight of the town.

Lieutenant Decatur.

One of the officers on Preble's ship, young Stephen Decatur, begged to be allowed to destroy the Philadelphia, in order that the pirates might not be able to use her in their war against the United States. Permission was given him, and Decatur took a party of picked men and started on his adventure. He first captured a boat belonging to the pirates which was loaded with a cargo of women slaves they were sending to the markets of Constantinople. This vessel he fitted up and new baptized The Intrepid. She sailed into the harbor of Tripoli one midnight with all her crew, except the man at the helm, lying flat on their faces on the deck. The ship was hailed, but her captain gave plausible answers till they reached the side of the Philadelphia. In a moment Decatur and his crew had boarded her, and throwing over the deck pitch, tarred cloth, and all sorts of combustibles, set fire to her. Before the enemy had recovered from their surprise, the Intrepid with all sails spread was outside the harbor, which was lighted up as brightly as noonday by the burning ship. Decatur lost not one man, while the Tripolitans lost twenty, or nearly that number, who were surprised on the ship, and part of whom were drowned from leaping off the burning vessel.

In the mean time General Eaton went to Egypt and found Bashaw Hamet, a brother of the reigning Bashaw of Tripoli, who claimed that he was the rightful prince of Tripoli, and promised General Eaton that he would forever keep peace with the Americans if he would aid him in recovering his throne. Eaton had only a handful of men with him, yet with the force of Moors and Arabs which

Hamet succeeded in raising, they started overland from Egypt to Tripoli to subdue this barbarous empire and recover his throne for Hamet. The little force actually laid seige to, and captured the city of Derne, the most eastern town in Tripoli. At this moment, however, peace was made between the reigning bashaw and the United States; General Eaton was obliged to give up the town, while poor Hamet, who found himself worse off than before, was left without a kingdom or even a home.

Mohammedan Soldier.

The American valor in this war had the good effect of convincing the pirates that the United States was not a country to be trifled with. They said we were too much like the English, and for the present no more demands were made for either ships or jewels as presents, by these autocrats of the seas.

CHAPTER VI.

JEFFERSON'S SECOND TERM.

Aaron Burr's Duel with Hamilton. - Hamilton's Death. - Burr's Disgrace. — First Steamboat on the Hudson. Fulton's Triumph. - The Great Event of Jefferson's Administration.

WHEN Jefferson's first four years of office expired, he was elected for another term. George Clinton was made vice-president, in place of Aaron Burr, who had been getting into disgrace. You have heard something about Burr early in the Revolutionary War, when he marched up with Arnold to take the fortress of Quebec. He did good service then and afterwards in the war, and in the early days of the republic was thought to be a brave soldier and a brilliant

statesman.

Washington did not like or trust Aaron Burr, however, and Washington's friend, and secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, liked him even less, and did not trust him at all. Hamilton more than any one had opposed Burr in all his political schemes, and there was a strong feeling between the two men, although up to the last of Burr's vice-presidency they had not quarreled outright.

In those days, duels were common. If a man felt himself insulted

he challenged his foe to meet him in mortal combat, and the two

stood up with pistols and fired at each other till one or the other fell. Hamilton himself had already lost a son in a duel, and ought to have been brave enough to have set his face against such foolish wickedness. Yet, when Burr, in a fit of anger, challenged him, Hamilton accepted it, and the two men went out to meet each other in this coldblooded manner, which they called an affair of honor. They met on Weehawken Heights, opposite New York city on the Jersey shore.. Hamilton fired his pistol into the air, and made no effort to kill his opponent;

but Burr aimed deliberately, and Colonel Hamilton fell with a mortal wound in his side.

Notwithstanding dueling was fashionable among military men and men of the world, the death of Alexander Hamilton, who was so much beloved, and had been a faithful servant of his country, seemed to awake the whole country to a sense of the horror of such a deed. Burr was denounced as a murderer, and from that moment he sank in public estimation, never to rise again.

If Burr had possessed sufficient manhood to retrieve his past errors, he might easily have done so. He had still many friends, and he had been gifted by nature with the power of winning love and confidence. But he was a restless, ambitious, scheming man, and his bitter disappointment at the failure of his political career made him false and unprincipled. For a time he was absent in a tour through the West, and little was heard of him, except accounts of his visits in western cities, and of his being entertained like a prince in the houses of wealthy western friends.

All at once the report burst like a thunderclap upon the country,

that Aaron Burr was secretly plotting to invade Louisiana, seize

New Orleans, stir up a rebellion in the Western States, break up the Union, and make himself emperor in the domains he had gained by treason. All the country was filled with excitement. Burr was arrested and tried for treason in Richmond. Nothing could be proven against him. He explained in defense that he was intending to invade Mexico, and the Spanish possessions in America, in case of a war with Spain, which then was threatened. Whether he was guilty or innocent. could not be decided from

the evidence brought forward, and he was finally acquitted. But the once brilliant Aaron Burr, third vice-president of the United States, was from thenceforth a disgraced and ruined man, and his name ranked next to that of Benedict Arnold in ignominy, and the contempt of all good patriots.

The trial of Burr was the most important political event of Jefferson's second term. But the greatest event in his whole administration was now at hand. Let me tell you what it was.

One day in September, 1807, a crowd of people were assembled on one of the piers of Hudson River in New York city, to see an extraordinary boat set out on a voyage. The boat was not to be carried by oars or sails, but by steam, a wonderful new means of locomotion, which James Watts of England had done much to bring into use as a motive power, and which many scientific men in Europe and America had been experimenting with during the last half century. The enterprising American who had built the strange new boat now about to start upon its trial trip, was Robert Fulton of Pennsylvania. He had started out in life as an artist, had painted