Ion Perdicaris

known as the Perdicaris incident, which aroused international conflict in 1904.

Family life

Perdicaris' father, Gregory, was a Greek who had emigrated to the United States, married into a wealthy family from South Carolina, then returned to Greece as U.S. consul. Ion was born in 1840. In 1846 the family returned to Trenton, New Jersey where Gregory made a substantial fortune as one of the organizers of the Trenton Gas Co. Ion lived the careless life of a dilettante until the American Civil War. By 1862, the family's property in South Carolina was in danger of confiscation by the government of the Confederate States of America. He travelled back to Greece with the intention of renouncing his United States citizenship and acquiring Greek nationality so as to forestall any confiscation.

Ion ultimately emigrated to Tangier where he built a house known as the "Place of Nightingales" and filled it with exotic animals. In 1871, Perdicaris met Ellen, wife of the eminent telegraph engineer C.F. Varley in Malvern, England. Varley was absent on a cable-laying expedition and Ellen abandoned him for Perdicaris. The Varleys were divorced in 1873 and Ellen and Perdicaris settled in Tangier with the Varleys' two sons and two daughters. Fascinated by Moroccan culture, Perdicaris wrote several books (few of them published to a wide audience) on Morocco, and became the unofficial head of Tangier's foreign community. He maintained business interests in England and the United States and frequently visited New York.

The Perdicaris incident

On May 18, 1904, Perdicaris and Ellen's son Cromwell were kidnapped from their home by the bandit band of Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli. Several of the Perdicaris's servants were injured by Raisuli's men, and Ellen was left behind alone. Shortly after leaving Tangier, Perdicaris broke his leg in a horse fall. Raisuli demanded of Sultan Abdelaziz of Morocco, $70,000 ransom, safe conduct, and control of two of Morocco's wealthiest districts.

Despite the circumstances, Perdicaris came to admire and befriend Raisuli, who pledged to protect his prisoner from any harm. Perdicarus later said: "I go so far as to say that I do not regret having been his prisoner for some time... He is not a bandit, not a murderer, but a patriot forced into acts of brigandage to save his native soil and his people from the yoke of tyranny." [ [http://www.capitalcentury.com/1904.html "1904: 'Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead!'"] , Jon Blackwell, "The Trentonian".]

U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt was angered by the kidnapping, and felt obliged to react and his Secretary of State, John Hay, described the demands as "preposterous". At the urging of Hay and the Counsel-General of Tangier, Samuel R. Gummere, Roosevelt dispatched seven battleships and several Marine companies, under the command of Admiral French Ensor Chadwick, though with little idea of what U.S. forces could achieve on such hostile foreign soil. They were not to be used without express orders from Washington; the only plan for using them was to seize the custom-houses of Morocco, which supplied much of its revenue, if the Moroccan government did not fulfill the demands of the United States, which were to make the concessions necessary to persuade Raisuli to release Perdicaris, and to attack Raisuli if Perdicaris were killed anyway. The only Marines to actually land onshore were a small detachment of a dozen men, carrying only side-arms, who arrived to protect the Consulate and Mrs. Perdicaris. [Barbara Tuchman, "Perdicaris Alive or Raisuli Dead" in "Practicing History" (1982); originally published in "American Heritage" X, 5 in 1959.]

Roosevelt's resolve weakened still further when he was advised on June 1 that Perdicaris was not a U.S. citizen, in fact he had forfeited his American passport for a Greek one many years earlier; but Roosevelt reasoned that since Raisuli thought Perdicaris was an American citizen, it made little difference. Roosevelt tried to get Britain and France to join the U.S. in a combined military action to rescue Perdicaris, but the two countries refused, France actually reinforcing its garrison in anticipation of an American assault. Instead, the two powers were covertly recruited to put pressure on the Sultan to accept Raisuli's demands which he agreed to do on June 21. Hay saw the need to maintain face so he issued a statement to the Republican National Convention:

:"This government wants Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead."

According to all witnesses, the Convention, which had been lukewarm towards Roosevelt up until then, went wild at this remark. One Kansas delegate exclaimed, "Roosevelt and Hay know what they're doing. Our people like courage. We'll stand for anything those men do." [Edmund Morris, "Theodore Rex", p. 335.] This famous catchphrase quickly caught on, and helped Roosevelt secure his election.

Perdicaris and Varley were met personally by Gummere and Chadwick, who had spent much of the time of their capture with Perdicaris's wife. When Ellen Varley asked for the Admiral to provide a doctor for her husband, every medical officer in the American fleet volunteered.

The facts of the incident remained secret until 1933.

Later life

Perdicaris occasionally returned to Trenton where he maintained business interests. Perdicaris Place, off West State Street, is named for him and his father. Perdicaris died in London.

In popular culture

"Hostages to Momus", a short fiction story by the American author O. Henry was inspired by the kidnapping of Ion Perdicaris, who in the story is referred to as "Burdick Harris" ("Bur-dick-Harris" is a play on "Per-dic-aris", as both names rhyme with each other if pronounced as the author intended), a Greek citizen. The humorous story was written shortly after the incident.

The story of Ion Perdicaris was adapted to film in the 1975 motion picture "The Wind and the Lion" with Sean Connery in the role of Raisuli and Brian Keith as Roosevelt. However, to add some, perhaps spurious, glamour to the tale, Ion was replaced with Eden, played by Candice Bergen. While the movie does incorrectly show US marines invading Morocco, it succeeds in showing the personality of the Rausuli and his interaction with his prisoners. The incident is referenced in the book "In Mortal Danger" by Tom Tancredo and in "Inside the Asylum" by Jed Babbin.

Notes

External links

*Hunt, B.J. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28114 "Varley, Cromwell Fleetwood (1828–1883)"] in "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", Oxford University Press, 2004. Accessed 23 July 2005.