At a cabinet meeting in the middle of May 1801, Jefferson and his advisers debated the Barbary States.38 At issue was whether the United States ought to dispatch a squadron under Commodore Richard Dale to the Mediterranean in a display of power to discourage further piracy against American shipping. “All concur in the expediency of [the] cruise,” Jefferson noted. He wanted to make sure they concurred in something else, too: that the naval forces were authorized—by executive, not legislative, authority—to “search for and destroy the enemy’s vessels wherever they can find them.”39 Should Dale
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