Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History
by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger
Nonfiction
251 pages
Penguin Sentinel (2015)
Suggested for: Rhetoric students/adults
On 27 April, 1805, an intrepid group of eight U.S. Marines, along with roughly four hundred Arab mercenaries, launched an attack that would become known as the Battle of Derna. The eight Marines and fifty Greek mercenaries, fueled by nothing but prayer and pluck, rushed headlong into a shower of musket fire to take the main artillery battery. Marine Corps First Lieutenant Presley Neville O'Bannon, leader of that brave bunch, went down in history as the man who planted the first American flag on foreign soil, and the heroism of those brave men would be immortalized in a line in the Marine Hymn--" ... to the shores of Tripoli!"
Many students are familiar with that story, but often they do not know what events led up to Derna. Before the Marines and mercenaries set foot on the field of battle, they marched more than 520 miles. Across an African desert. For FIFTY days. With rapidly dwindling supplies. It might have been a bit easier if all of the fighters had been disciplined Marines. However, U.S. Army Lieutenant William Eaton, the U.S, Consul to Tripoli and diplomat in charge of the ragtag bunch of mercenaries, faced near daily outbursts of mutiny from the non-American soldiers. It is a testament to his leadership abilities that he held the mayhem in check and arrived, despite the harrowing march, with his men ready to fight.
Despite being an ocean and a continent away from the United States, the battle was vital to U.S. interests. The economy of the fledgling nation was still bowed beneath the weight of the financial toll taken by the war for independence. U.S, President Thomas Jefferson, fed up with the Barbary Pirates thieving their way through one American maritime shipping vessel after another, knew that action was needed.
Kilmeade and Yaeger's book is a nonfiction compulsive thriller of a ride through the background, the Barbary Wars, and the aftermath. One of my Rhetoric students was constantly found reading this book when he was supposed to be working on other subjects, so this one is definitely student vetted.
Suggestion for Dialectic students: The Barbary Pirates by C. S. Forester
