Sorry, this content is is john adams academy religious available in your region. This article is about the 1796 treaty.

The Treaty is often cited in discussions regarding the role of religion in United States government for a clause in Article 11 of the English language American version which states that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. British colonies in North America were protected from the Barbary pirates by British warships of the Royal Navy and treaties. Soon after the formation of the United States, privateering in the Mediterranean Sea and the eastern Atlantic Ocean from the nations of the Barbary Coast prompted the U. 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. Scan of the original Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary, written in Arabic, signed 4 November 1796. The official treaty was in Arabic, and a translated version by Consul-General Barlow was ratified by the United States on June 10, 1797.

The Treaty had spent seven months traveling from Tripoli to Algiers to Portugal and, finally westward across the North Atlantic Ocean, 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. 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. Official records show that after President John Adams sent the treaty to the U. 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 7th vote which unanimously approved the ratification recommendation. 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. It was not until these final goods were delivered that the Pasha of Tripoli recognized the Treaty as official. 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. Article 11 is missing from the Arabic version of the treaty. 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.