Thoughts on Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli (signed Nov.

4, 1796)
Michael Pixley

Having conducted further research into the text and context of the Treaty of Tripoli of 1796-7, I would
suggest that the oft-quoted Article 11 of this Treaty has been grossly taken out of context and is actually
irrelevant to the “Christian nation” debate. Further, I will argue that its use by secular humanists reflects
very poor academic research inasmuch as they isolate Article 11 from the full context of the Treaty from
which it is taken, they fail to explain Article 11 in light of the historical, diplomatic, and strategic context of
the day, and they use it as a proof-text without consideration of the nature of the document as a piece of
late-eighteenth century diplomacy. While I understand how very easy it is for one to read Article 11
without understanding its context and easily arrive at some very politically charged conclusions, this
violates an important rule of historical research that warns against back-projecting contemporary values and
meanings upon primary sources of an earlier era, especially without regard to the circumstances of its
composition. This is a very common snare, even among professional historians, but one that invariably
leads to false conclusions. I will argue that the actual text of Article 11 is irrelevant to any further meaning
beyond what was already clearly written in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. I will further
argue that the context of Article 11 within the overall Treaty of Tripoli takes on a larger meaning that is far
less romantic and idealistic than the lofty heights of humanist philosophy so enthusiastically attributed to it
by modern humanist commentators.

The Text of the Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli

“As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-
as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims],-
and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan
[Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever
produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.” (The Avalon Project:
Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy; website:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp.)

What does the 11th Article of the Treaty of Tripoli mean?

Article 11 means that the Christian Religion is not structurally built into the government of the United
States of America. This is a simple truth and one that is widely recognized. However, people read too
much into this statement, seeing things that are not there. Our Constitution is designed neither to establish
Christianity as the religion of the state or to perpetuate Christianity as the dominant religion of the people
or of the culture. This is not to say that the spirit of Christian holiness in Jesus Christ or Biblical values
dominating our nation would be a bad thing. Rather, I would submit that this would be a very good thing.
However, if this end (that Biblical holiness and justice would reign in the United States) is to be produced
then it must only be through the transformed hearts and minds of the people of the United States, not by
their being coerced through any structurally built-in religion forced upon them by the form of the
government itself. In short, I pray for the United States to have a godly, Christian government but this can
and must only come about because the people elect and prefer godly Christians for their governors. As our
first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay, wrote to Jedidiah Morse on 28 Feb 1797: “Providence
has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of
our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.” (http://snyders.ws/alan/quotes/jay.htm)
(http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/capital.asp) Notice what Jay is saying and what he’s not saying:
He is not saying that the government should be structured to guarantee that outcome. Rather, he is
implying quite the opposite: the government’s structure (i.e. its Constitution) should not be structured to
guarantee that the nation should be a Christian nation or that it should remain so through a government
founded upon the Christian Religion. This would work for us no better than it did for Britain, France,
Spain, or the Holy Roman Empire. However, he is saying that the United States was predominantly at that
time a “Christian nation” even though the government was not structurally designed to be Christian. Read
it again and notice that he refers to “our Christian nation”. Is this not an affirmation that one can have a
Christian nation coexist with a government that is not structurally founded upon the Christian Religion?
How, then, was the United States to be a “Christian nation”? Jay says, simply, by selecting and preferring
Christians for their rulers. Mind you, I do not think that this qualifies any or all Christians to be rulers, far
from it. I also do not believe that Christians should never vote for non-Christians, I have plenty of times. It
just means that if a nation is a Christian nation, then it will: a) be blessed by God to produce Christians who
can govern wisely, justly, and Biblically; and b) that people will vote for such wise Christians to be their
magistrates. The sad fact remains that some Christians do govern foolishly and are not worth our vote.

Back to the Treaty of Tripoli... The founding of the government itself cannot and will not attempt to secure
the end of making a nation a Christian nation, ergo “the government of the United States of America is not
in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.” Thus, Article 11 is, in the end, a true and accurate
statement. However, we must distinguish between the government and the nation. The government is a
political structure while the nation are the people and their culture. This Treaty refers only to the
government while it says nothing about the nation itself. Indeed, the Treaty says no more than what the
First Amendment already clearly says: that there is no official national religion of the United States of
America. This is something that all Americans, Christians or otherwise, should all agree on. This stands in
clear contrast to the official religions of the European states: Spain, France, England, the Holy Roman
Empire, etc. All of these powers have a government that espouse one established form of Christian religion
and consequently have a “character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen
[Muslims]” to quote the Treaty directly. The diplomatic purpose of this was quite clear from the language
that directly follows this first line. The U.S. has no such character as does Spain, France, England, and the
Holy Roman Empire which all seek to establish their religion through political, diplomatic, and military
means. Thus, we are not a religious power. Our policy is that of a state, not a church. Thus, our foreign
policy is driven by national interest, not by religious animosity. We wish to conduct relations with the
Muslim rulers of the Barbary States as two sovereign states rather than as two competing religions or as
religious powers. We, the USA, are not connected with those European states, commonly called
“Christendom” who committed the Crusades, who expelled the Muslims from Granada, and who have
waged war with Islam for centuries in Spain, in the Balkans, and throughout the Mediterranean Sea. This is
why the Treaty stated that, “the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any
Mehomitan nation.” This poignant statement would have been at odds with how Muslims rulers viewed us
as completely connected historically with each of those aspects of Christian-Muslim relations. This Treaty
attempted (and, we might add, utterly failed) to separate the United States in Muslim minds from those past
historical acts of war between Islam and Christendom. This is a statement that likely would not have been
easily accepted, if accepted at all, by the Muslim rulers. The omission of the 11th Article from every
known copy of the Treaty of Tripoli in the Arabic language, though we cannot be certain of the reason, may
easily reflect their lack of acceptance of this very point. Indeed, the Islamic world generally still connects
all Christendom, especially the USA, with this historical context (hence the wisdom of U.S. Presidents to
studiously avoid using the word “Crusade” in foreign policy speeches). The desires of the framers of this
Treaty to attempt to avoid that connection was well-conceived but somewhat naive in their expectations. It
did, of course, fail to achieve that. Finally, it stated in diplomatic niceties the clear wish to avoid engaging
in holy war or to be declared the object of jihad. “...it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from
religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
This also had a clear purpose but failed completely as the Barbary States declared war on the U.S. just a
few years later and jihad was a major aspect of that conflict.

What does the 11th Article of the Treaty of Tripoli not say?
In addition to what it does say, look at what Article 11 does not say or imply, regardless of what you may
believe about the founding of the United States:

It refers to “the government of the United States of America”, not to the “nation” or the “people” or the
“culture” or the “ideas of the Founding Fathers” or the “principles of the Founding Fathers” or the “faith of
the Founding Fathers” of the United States of America. It says nothing either for or against any of these
things. It’s just utterly silent. It says nothing about these. All it says is that, “the government of the United
States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion” which is no more than what we all
already know from reading the Bill of Rights. While this may sound intimidating in light of a
contemporary argument between humanism and various strands of Christian political thought, the argument
would have been foreign to the time and place in which the Treaty was written. To try to interpret this
Article to say, essentially, that the United States of America was founded as a secular humanist country is
both an anachronism and not aligned with intent of the Treaty itself. The document is silent on the
argument over whether Christian principles did or did not play any role, major or minor, in the shaping of
our country. This is a non-argument because it has nothing to do with the Treaty’s purpose.

The Text Surrounding Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli

Many humanists have presented this treaty as a seminal moment in the legal history of our country, a
moment in which our Founding Fathers proclaimed to the world and future generations of Americans the
fundamental character of the country they had founded and the nature of the government they had created.
As humanist speaker Ed Buckner wrote, President John Adams and the Senators who signed this treaty into
law were “great freethought heroes.” He goes on to state that “From our perspective these men may be
heroes, but in truth the vote they cast was ordinary, routine, normal.” (Does the 1796-97 Treaty with Tripoli
Matter to Church/State Separation?”, Speech given to the Humanists of Georgia on June 22, 1997, accessed
at http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/buckner_tripoli.html) In his view, Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli
was the opportunity for these free-thinking heroes to establish as law the secular values of the United States
and to pass on to posterity the heritage of humanism upon which our nation was founded. Likewise, Frank
Lambert writes in his book The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America, “Ten years after
the Constitutional Convention ended its work, the country assured the world that the United States was a
secular state.” Frank Lambert, The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America. Princeton
University Press (2003). Accessed: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i7500.html. In his view, then, the
Treaty of Tripoli was intended to be a clear and deliberate message to the world regarding the contents of
Article 11. Yet, do these assertions fit with the text of the treaty itself or with the context surrounding its
composition? Was the Treaty of Tripoli a clear and bold message to the world? Was the Treaty of Tripoli
intended to be a beacon to future generations of Americans regarding the values of the Founding Fathers?

The Treaty of Tripoli was a Capitulation and a Ransom Payment to Islamic Terrorists
The Treaty of Tripoli was, in fact, a bold statement to the world, but hardly a proud one, and certainly not
one worthy to be proclaimed to future generations of Americans as a founding philosophical statement
regarding our national character. Those who proudly quote the 11th Article of the Treaty might be quite
shocked were they to read the entire treaty and understand that its true intent was, in diplomatic terms, a
capitulation to Islamic terrorists and a national payment of tribute to a pirate state. The oft-cited statement
of secular humanists appears in Article 11, but what do Mr. Buckner’s “freethought heroes” say in Article
10? Well, here you are:

ARTICLE 10
“The money and presents demanded by the Bey of Tripoli as a full and satisfactory consideration
on his part and on the part of his subjects for this treaty of perpetual peace and friendship are
acknowledged to have been received by him previous to his signing the same, according to a
receipt which is hereto annexed, except such part as is promised on the part of the United States to
be delivered and paid by them on the arrival of their Consul in Tripoli, of which part a note is
likewise hereto annexed. And no presence of any periodical tribute or farther payment is ever to be
made by either party.”

It’s also worth reading a translation of the Arabic version of the same Article 10 clause:

“Praise be to Allah! Declaration of the tenth article. Be it known that the Americans have paid the
present and the money for the peace treaty on the hand of the exalted Lord, our Master, the Lord
Hassan Pasha... and they are now acquitted of the number of presents and likewise of the
money...”

Included in the treaty were a receipt of first-round tribute (i.e. ransom) paid and another detailed list of
further tribute yet obligated to be paid by the U.S. government to the Pasha of Algiers to get our American
sailors back from captivity (the Barbary states sold sailors who were not ransomed into slavery):

The Receipt: Praise be to Allah. The present writing done by our hand and delivered to the
American Captain OBrien makes known that he has delivered to us forty thousand Spanish
dollars,-thirteen watches of gold, silver & pinsbach,-five rings, of which three of diamonds, one of
 saphire and one with a watch in it, One hundred & forty piques of cloth, and four caftans of
brocade,-and these on account of the peace concluded with the Americans....

Praise be to Allah. This is a memorandum and a statement of what the Americans are still obliged
to pay on account of the peace treaty:

twelve thousand Spanish dollars

five hawsers-8 Inch
three cables-10 Inch
twenty five barrels tar
twenty five barrels pitch
ten barrels rosin
five hundred pine boards
five hundred oak boards
ten masts (without any measure mentioned, suppose for vessels from 2 to 300 ton)
twelve yards
fifty bolts canvas [Arabic includes the words: “for sails”]
four anchors

“This is what the Americans are still obliged to pay... when the Consul comes from his country,
they shall have to bring all that we have mentioned, amounting to this number, when he arrives at
the well-preserved Tripoli, may Allah protect her by His grace, amen!”

(The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy; website:

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp.)

Now, once again, what were Mr. Buckner’s “freethought heroes” really saying in this treaty? Were their
thoughts really so free and uplifted, or did they have more down-to-earth matters on their minds? Any free-
thinking person must admit that what this treaty is really all about is negotiating with Islamic terrorists!
They were saying, in so many diplomatic words: ‘we capitulate, we know that we lack the naval force
necessary to protect American merchant shipping on the high seas, therefore please take our money as
ransom payment, take our ship-building materials as tribute, please give us back our hostages and let us live
in peace and friendship while you continue your piracies on the high seas.’ Was this Treaty really a
message to the world as Mr. Lambert asserts? Yes, but not the message that anyone would be proud to
admit to today. The message was, the United States government negotiates with terrorists and pays them
off. Incidentally, did you notice all of the ship-building materials included in the tribute payment from the
U.S. to Tripoli? Why did the Pasha want all of those materials? What were they to be used for? It is fairly
obvious that they were destined to be used to build and repair more Islamic pirate ships to raid more
Christian shipping and take more Christians as hostages and slaves! Is this really the high point of
American political philosophy as the humanists suggest? Or was it really the low point in American
diplomacy? I think the text speaks for itself on that question. Can we now say with Mr. Lambert that “Ten
years after the Constitutional Convention ended its work, the country assured the world that the United
States was a secular state”? Indeed, it would be more accurate to say that “Ten years before fielding
anything resembling an effective navy, the United States assured the Islamic world that terrorism and piracy
do indeed pay handsome dividends when its victims can’t defend themselves.” It is for the humanists to
answer why, if this is the case, our Founding Fathers chose this sort of utterly humiliating treaty to insert a
message to future generations regarding political philosophy? This makes no sense in the humanist
context. However, in the diplomatic and strategic context of the day, Article 11 makes perfect sense.

What, Then, Did Article 11 Really Mean?

Why, then, did Article 11 exist? What did it really mean? After all, had our Founding Fathers wanted to
leave their descendants with a clear, lasting statement about our national and philosophical origins, why put
it in a treaty of capitulation to terrorists? Is that not, by any standard, an utterly bizarre place to put a
statement to posterity or a assurance to the world? Can any humanist explain why this language should
appear, of all places, in the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli and nowhere else? Why this treaty? Why Article 11?
As with all treaties, this treaty attempts speak to another state in language that will achieve the intended
effect. Diplomacy is a very pragmatic art, especially where powerful economic interests are concerned and
the vulnerability of U.S. merchant shipping on the high seas was a very powerful economic interest.
Humanists are always quick to point out that the treaty passed unanimously, without significant debate, and
the results were ordered to be published in public by President John Adams and, finally, that the publication
of which caused no known public uproar or consternation. These raw facts are correct but their
interpretation of them is, in light of the strategic situation at the time, quite mislead. Given the nature of the
treaty, are we really expected to believe that the supposedly-philosophical statement to the world and
posterity of Article 11 was really the cause of the unanimous vote, the publicity surrounding the treaty, or
the general public acceptance? Or was it really something more mundane, more realistic, more believable?
Could it have been simple, raw economic interest? Could the treaty, the debate, the vote, and the publicity
really have revolved around a different message: a message to American investors, American financiers,
American merchants, American sailors, and American consumers that their federal government was doing
all it could to protect the American economy from the depredations of Islamic terrorists in the form of
pirates? Is this argument sounding somewhat familiar? This relation of diplomacy to national interest and
economics hasn’t changed from then to now. Is it not more reasonable that the unanimous acceptance by
government and public had more to do with down-to-earth national economic interest than high and lofty
secular humanist ideals? Is it not more plausible that the Treaty of Tripoli, including Article 11, was an
example of down-and-dirty diplomacy rather than timeless political philosophy? We should recall that
America was constantly being threatened by war with France and Great Britain. Americans would do
anything to avoid war with Islamic pirates as well. Fear is a powerful motivator. So is money. Both were
well at work in the forming of the Treaty of Tripoli. Need we look any further for the motivations of the
federal government in writing the treaty and the motivations of the American people in accepting is
willingly? While humanists who cite the Treaty of Tripoli are probably quite sincere in their beliefs
surrounding Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli, this cannot undo the fact that their use of it as a proof-text is
an example of extremely bad historical scholarship in accepting what amounts to a humanist morality tale
rather than striving for solid research into American diplomatic history.

Mr. Lambert does hit on one truth regarding the Treaty when he says that Article 11 was “intended to allay
the fears of the Muslim state by insisting that religion would not govern how the treaty was interpreted and
enforced. John Adams and the Senate made clear that the pact was between two sovereign states, not
between two religious powers.” Here he gets to the real, mundane, unexciting purpose of Article 11. It was
not a message to future ages about the godless character of our nation’s founding. It was an effects-based
political message intended to avoid religious war with the Islamic powers. It attempted to accomplish this
by drawing a clear line of distinction between the U.S. government, which per the 1st Amendment does not
have a national religion, and many (or most) of the other states in Europe in which Christianity was the
official state religion and their monarchs were officially vowed to uphold that religion in the state against
all other religions. In simple terms, it was a plea to the Muslim pirates to treat American maritime interests
in a different category than European so-called “Christian” maritime interests. It was quite a reasonable
plea, but a plea nonetheless, to ‘leave us out of your anti-Christian jihad.’ It didn’t work. It was, perhaps,
worth a try if only because we had nothing to lose but the attempt to negotiate a permanent peace
settlement with a Jihadi Pirate State proved naive. The Islamic states continued to view America as a
“Christian / Crusader” state that was just as guilty of the Crusades as England, France, and Spain and the
feeble plea to be left alone that was the true intent of Article 11 changed absolutely nothing in that regard.
Further, this treaty was violated in short order and war with the U.S. commenced again. Having already
demonstrated that the U.S. would pay tribute, the Barbary States were in no mood to honor treaties with
‘infidels’.

To reiterate what should by now be self-evident, the intended audience of Article 11 was not the rest of the
world and it certainly was not posterity, it was Hussan Pasha of Algiers and his fellow ‘pirate kings’ who
embraced the reality of a Religious Islamic State under which all of their subjects felt the direct application
of the Koran through the political power of Sharia law. To be fair, is this really any different from how
Spain, France, and the Holy Roman Empire forcibly applied their forms of so-called Christianity to their
non-Christian subjects? Then again, that’s the whole point of Article 11, is it not? Article 11 was intended
to highlight the difference between this philosophy of government and that instituted in the United States.
In fact, the reason why Christians believe this politically-coerced form of religion to be wrong is precisely
because of what Scripture has to say about the nature of political power versus the nature of salvation.
Certainly some of our Founding Fathers were motivated by this Biblical philosophy while others were
motivated by unbiblical Deistic, naturalistic, and rationalistic philosophies. However, the political
philosophy of a government that is not “in any sense founded on the Christian Religion” is an idea that is
not at all inconsistent with the ideas found in the Westminster Standards. Just as easily as Article 11 might
suggest secular origins to a humanist it could also suggest to a Christian that it is precisely because the
United States as a nation was founded on Reformed Christian principles that we do not have a government
that is structurally designed to propagate the Christian religion. After all, to found a government on the
Christian religion in any sense that would have been understood by an Islamic ruler or, for that matter, a
European ruler would be antithetical to the Biblical principles regarding the purpose of government as
understood by the Westminster Divines. Thus, it is truly ironic that the statement in Article 11 is used as a
proof-text that America was not founded on Christian principles when, in fact, the idea behind Article 11 is
really quite consonant with the political ideas that are accepted by Reformed Christian churches. Even
accepting, then, the incredibly ridiculous premise that Article 11 was intended to be a lasting philosophical
statement, it would still be meaningless on the debate over the Christian origins of the political philosophy
behind the Constitution. Again, this diplomatic and political meaning is utterly different from the notion
that Biblical Christian principles played no role in the forming of the American nation or in the
development of American political ideas.

Conclusion
Article 11 is correctly understood as a pragmatic article in a pragmatic treaty. The U.S. was on the losing
end of a conflict with the Barbary states and at that point the U.S. lacked the means to seriously protect
U.S. ships or prosecute a major naval war in the Mediterranean Sea. Significantly, in light of subsequent
events as the war resumed and the United States gained a more advantageous military position vis-a-vis the
Barbary States, nothing like this Article or this language was ever included again on any subsequent treat.
The attempt had been made once to assume a diplomatic relation distinct from the rest of “Christian
Europe”, the attempt had failed, and we never tried again. That’s what this treaty was, a diplomatic
maneuver, nothing more. While (as I have already argued) the actual statement in Article 11 was quite true,
the treaty itself was pure diplomatic pragmatism. It was not a message to the ages regarding the nature of
our national past or our founding. It was nothing of the sort and those who would like to use this treaty as a
proof-text for a major historical or philosophical statement by the Founding Fathers need to answer why, if
our Founding Fathers had wanted to leave a message for future generations on the nature of our country’s
founding, would they have chosen to do so in an obsequious peace treaty with a Muslim state regarding our
highly unflattering payment of an obscene ransom for a dishonorable peace with terrorists. Further, it is
significant that the content of Article 11 was never again repeated in any subsequent treaty with those states
or any other. Why? It was because the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11 and all, was an embarrassment for
our new country and something that nobody, but nobody, wanted to hold up to future generations as a good
example of anything, diplomatic, legal, philosophical, or otherwise. It was best remembered only as a
warning against ineffective diplomacy and military impotence... until it was resurrected by modern secular
humanists to argue as a poor proof-text for an idea that had nothing whatsoever to do with the original
purpose of the Treaty. When we read it simply as a piece of diplomatic history, as it should be, the
politically loaded overtones to our generation dissipate. This is why historians must be so careful not to
impart the prejudices of their own day onto a past era (a nearly impossible task at times). Whatever the
content, the extent, or the diversity of the faiths of the people of that generation, whatever the extent to
which that faith influenced their political beliefs and actions, it is very poor history to take the humanistic
worldview and the values of one faction in a social battle of the late 20th century and apply that worldview
and those values to the framers of a diplomatic treaty of the late 18th century. As to the question of the faith
or influence of the faith of the Founding Fathers over the Constitution, this is a separate question upon
which the text of this treaty is silent. As far as its influence over church-state relations, the 11th Article
echoes nothing more than what the Founding Fathers had already stated in the First Amendment: that the
federal government of the United States will establish no national religion.

A Final Thought
As a diplomatic overture for the U.S. to be accepted as completely distinct and on different relations than
“Christian Europe”, it was somewhat naive for our government to expect this to be taken seriously by the
Muslim rulers. In fact, history bore out the thesis that this policy was naive and largely failed to achieve its
purposes because the Muslim Barbary states subsequently declared war on the U.S. and treated the U.S. in
their policy no different from how they treated the rest of Christian (i.e. infidel) Europe. In other words,
the Muslims didn’t care that we claimed religious toleration for all faiths, we were still a nation of Christian
infidels in their eyes (not much has changed since then). We still defend the rights of Muslims to practice
their religion because of what our religion says about the division between the nature of political and
military power and the nature of salvation and spiritual power. We do so despite the fact no Muslim state
reciprocates in granting Christians the rights in their states that the United States grants Muslims in ours. In
the market of non-coerced ideas, Christianity is not afraid of dying without the power of the state, it is
sustained by the power of God. If history is any guide, we have more to fear from political sponsorship
than from political adversity. Yet, can the same be said of Islam, where political backing is sought to
sustain a religion lacking grace or real spiritual power? Indeed, given the state of governmental-controlled
education in post-Christian countries such as the United States, can the same be said of evolutionary
humanism?