On Wed, 23 Nov 2016 11:52:43 -0800, "Sterling Archer"
wrote:

Article XI, Treaty of Tripoli - 1797
Context my good man- CONTEXT.


Take note of the final statement - which blows your assertion that it
is "the law of the land" right out of the water - ntably:

A second treaty, the Treaty of Peace and Amity signed on July 4, 1805,
superseded the 1796 treaty. The 1805 treaty did not contain the phrase
"not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."[



Read the whole blooming thing with an open and functioning mind.

I know it is long and wordy - it is copied from Wikipedia but all of
the information contained within is verifiable with a short google
search. The ability to read and comprehend the english language at
something approaching a 5th grade level is, however, required.

The Treaty of Tripoli (Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the
United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of
Barbary) was the first treaty concluded between the United States and
Tripolitania, signed at Tripoli on November 4, 1796, and at Algiers
(for a third-party witness) on January 3, 1797. It was submitted to
the Senate by President John Adams, receiving ratification unanimously
from the U.S. Senate on June 7, 1797, and signed by Adams, taking
effect as the law of the land on June 10, 1797.

It has attracted attention in recent decades because of a clause in
Article 11 stating that "the Government of the United States of
America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."


For three centuries up to the time of the Treaty, the Mediterranean
Sea lanes had been preyed on by the North African Muslim states of the
Barbary Coast (Tripoli, Algiers, Morocco and Tunis) through
privateering (government-sanctioned piracy). Hostages captured by the
Barbary pirates were either ransomed or forced into slavery,
contributing to the greater Ottoman slave trade (of which the Barbary
states were a segment). Life for the captives often was harsh,
especially for Christian captives, and many died from their treatment.
Some captives "went Turk", that is, converted to Islam, a choice that
made life in captivity easier for them.[2]

Before the American Revolution, the British colonies in North America
were protected from the Barbary pirates by British warships and
treaties. During the Revolution, the Kingdom of France formed an
alliance with the colonies and assumed the responsibility of providing
protection of U.S. ships against the Barbary pirates.[3] After the
U.S. won its independence with the signing of the Treaty of Paris
(1783), it had to face the threat of the Barbary pirates on its own.
Two American ships were captured by Algerian pirates in July 1785 and
the survivors forced into slavery, their ransom set at $60,000. A
rumor that Benjamin Franklin, who was en route from France to
Philadelphia about that time, had been captured by Barbary pirates,
caused considerable upset in the U.S.[4] Without a standing navy, much
less a navy capable of projecting force across an ocean, the U.S. was
forced to pay tribute monies and goods to the Barbary nations for the
security of its ships and the freedom of its captured citizens. As
General William Eaton informed newly appointed Secretary of State John
Marshall in 1800, "It is a maxim of the Barbary States, that 'The
Christians who would be on good terms with them must fight well or pay
well.'"[5]

Soon after the formation of the United States, privateering in the
Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean from the nations of the Barbary
Coast prompted the U.S. to initiate a series of so-called peace
treaties, collectively known as the Barbary Treaties. Individual
treaties were negotiated with Morocco (1786), Algiers (1795), Tripoli
(1797) and Tunis (1797), all of them more than once. The United States
consul-general to the Barbary states of Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis was
Joel Barlow, who dealt with the text of various treaties (including
the Treaty of Tripoli) and supported U.S. diplomatic efforts in the
Barbary Coast. Commissioner Plenipotentiary of the United States,
David Humphreys, was given the right to establish a treaty with
Tripoli and assigned Joel Barlow and Joseph Donaldson to broker it. It
was Joel Barlow who certified the signatures on the Arabic original
and the English copy provided to him. Later, Captain Richard O'Brien
established the original transport of the negotiated goods along with
the Treaty, but it was the American Consul James Leander Cathcart who
delivered the final requirements of payment for the treaty.
President George Washington appointed his old colleague David
Humphreys as Commissioner Plenipotentiary on March 30, 1795, in order
to negotiate a treaty with the Barbary powers.[6] On February 10,
1796, Humphreys appointed Joel Barlow and Joseph Donaldson as "Junior
Agents" to forge a "Treaty of Peace and Friendship".[7] Under
Humphreys' authority, the treaty was signed at Tripoli on November 4,
1796, and certified at Algiers on January 3, 1797. Humphreys reviewed
the treaty and approved it in Lisbon on February 10, 1797.[7]

The official treaty was in Arabic text, and a translated version by
Consul-General Barlow was ratified by the United States on June 10,
1797. Article 11 of the treaty was said to have not been part of the
original Arabic version of the treaty; in its place is a letter from
the Dey of Algiers to the Pasha of Tripoli. However, it is the English
text which was ratified by Congress. Miller says, "the Barlow
translation is that which was submitted to the Senate (American State
Papers, Foreign Relations, II, 18-19) and which is printed in the
Statutes at Large and in treaty collections generally; it is that
English text which in the United States has always been deemed the
text of the treaty."[8]

The Treaty had spent seven months traveling from Tripoli to Algiers to
Portugal and, finally, to the United States, and had been signed by
officials at each stop along the way. There is no record of discussion
or debate of the Treaty of Tripoli at the time that it was ratified.
However, there is a statement made by President Adams on the document
that reads:




Now be it known, That I John Adams, President of the United States of
America, having seen and considered the said Treaty do, by and with
the advice and consent of the Senate, accept, ratify, and confirm the
same, and every clause and article thereof. And to the End that the
said Treaty may be observed, and performed with good Faith on the part
of the United States, I have ordered the premises to be made public;
And I do hereby enjoin and require all persons bearing office civil or
military within the United States, and all other citizens or
inhabitants thereof, faithfully to observe and fulfill the said Treaty
and every clause and article thereof.

Official records show that after President John Adams sent the treaty
to the Senate for ratification in May 1797, the entire treaty was read
aloud on the Senate floor, and copies were printed for every Senator.
A committee considered the treaty and recommended ratification.
Twenty-three of the thirty-two sitting Senators were present for the
June 7 vote which unanimously approved the ratification
recommendation.[9]

However, before anyone in the United States saw the Treaty, its
required payments, in the form of goods and money, had been made in
part. As Barlow declared: "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."[1] However, this was an incomplete
amount of goods stipulated under the treaty (according to the Pasha of
Tripoli) and an additional $18,000 had to be paid by the American
Consul James Leander Cathcart at his arrival on April 10, 1799.[10]

It was not until these final goods were delivered that the Pasha of
Tripoli recognized the Treaty as official. In Treaties and Other
International Acts of the United States of America by David Hunter
Miller, which is regarded as an authoritative collection of
international agreements of the United States between 1776 and
1937,[11] Hunter Miller describes, "While the original ratification
remained in the hands of Cathcart ... it is possible that a copy
thereof was delivered upon the settlement of April 10, 1799, and
further possible that there was something almost in the nature of an
exchange of ratifications of the treaty on or about April 10, 1799,
the day of the agreed settlement."[10] It is then that the Pasha
declares in a Letter to John Adams on April 15, 1799, "Whereby we have
consummated the Peace which shall, on our side, be inviolate, provided
You are Willing to treat us as You do other Regencies, without any
difference being made between Us. Which is the whole of what We have,
at present, to say to You, wishing you at the same time the most
unlimited prosperity."[

Article 11 has been and is a point of contention in popular culture
disputes on the doctrine of separation of church and state as it
applies to the founding principles of the United States. Some
religious spokesmen claim that—despite unanimous ratification by the
U.S. Senate in English—the text which appears as Article 11 in the
English translation does not appear in the Arabic text of the
treaty.[10] Some historians have argued that the phrase specifically
refers to the government and not the culture, that it only speaks of
the founding and not what America became or might become,[12] and that
many Founding Fathers and newspapers described America as a Christian
nation during the early Republic.[13]





Article 11
Article 11 reads:


Art. 11. 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
Mussulmen (Muslims); and as the said States never entered into any war
or act of hostility against any Mahometan (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.

According to Frank Lambert, Professor of History at Purdue University,
the assurances in Article 11 were "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." Lambert writes,
"By their actions, the Founding Fathers made clear that their primary
concern was religious freedom, not the advancement of a state
religion. Individuals, not the government, would define religious
faith and practice in the United States. Thus the Founders ensured
that in no official sense would America be a Christian Republic. Ten
years after the Constitutional Convention ended its work, the country
assured the world that the United States was a secular state, and that
its negotiations would adhere to the rule of law, not the dictates of
the Christian faith. The assurances were contained in the Treaty of
Tripoli of 1797 and were 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.[14]
The treaty was printed in the Philadelphia Gazette and two New York
papers, with only scant public dissent, most notably from William
Cobbett.[15]
NOTE
A prominent member of Adams' cabinet, Secretary of War James McHenry,
claims that he protested the language of article 11 before its
ratification. He wrote to Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott,
Jr., September 26, 1800: "The Senate, my good friend, and I said so at
the time, ought never to have ratified the treaty alluded to, with the
declaration that 'the government of the United States, is not, in any
sense, founded on the Christian religion.' What else is it founded on?
This act always appeared to me like trampling upon the cross. I do not
recollect that Barlow was even reprimanded for this outrage upon the
government and religion."

ALSO TAKE NOTE!!!!!!!!!!

A second treaty, the Treaty of Peace and Amity signed on July 4, 1805,
superseded the 1796 treaty. The 1805 treaty did not contain the phrase
"not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."[