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The End of Barbary Terror: America's 1815 War Against the Pirates of North Africa. By Frederick G. Leiner. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-19-518994-9. Maps. Illustrations. Source notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 239. 828.00.
America's struggle to eliminate state-sponsored piracy and the enslavement of its seamen by the Barbary states of North Africa during the early national era constitutes one of the most dramatic episodes of the young Republic. For the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps the Barbary War created some of its earliest heroes and most daring exploits of its entire history. The best remembered of these involves Stephen Decatur and the burning of the USS Philadelphia in the harbor of Tripoli. For the most part, the studies of this first undeclared war end with the ransom of the Philadelphia's prisoners in 1805. But this was...