A NOTE ON SOURCES

Abook like this could not exist if not for the documents—the letters, the journals, the ships’ logs, and the rest—left by the participants. A compilation of the most essential of those is to be found in Naval Documents Related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers (1939–1944). The encyclopedic contents of this six-volume set must form the basis of any book written on this subject.

Another essential primary source is the collection called American State Papers. In effect, it is Congress’s diary, and contains reports, letters, and other materials, as well as congressional motions and minutes. It is available online at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwsp.html.

As the page-by-page source notes suggest, the personal papers of the participants have also been invaluable: the collected papers of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and George Washington have all been published in richly annotated editions that are generally available. Less accessible are the papers of Tobias Lear (not published but in the archives of the Clements Library at the University of Michigan) and Edward Preble (Library of Congress). Numerous other players in this drama left memoirs and correspondence. Many of those documents have been published and are listed in the bibliography below, including writings from James Leander Cathcart, many of the Barbary captives (among them William Ray and Elijah Shaw), and, in particular, the remarkable William Eaton.

Numerous other writers have written on this subject over the last two centuries, and below you’ll find a selected list of the best of the primary and secondary works.

Abbot, Willis J. The Naval History of the United States. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1896.

Adams, Henry. History of the United States During the Administration of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Library of America, 1986.

Allen, Gardner W. Our Navy and the Barbary Corsairs. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1905.

Allison, Robert J. The Crescent Obscured. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Baepler, Paul. White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Cathcart, James Leander. Tripoli: First War with the United States. La Porte, IN: Herald Print, 1901.

Cogliano, Francis D. Emperor of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson’s Foreign Policy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014.

Cooper, J. Fenimore. History of the Navy of the United States of America. New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1856.

Cunningham, Noble E., Jr. The Process of Government Under Jefferson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.

Dearborn, H. A. S. The Life of William Bainbridge, Esq., of the United States Navy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1931.

Eaton, William. The Life of the Late Gen. William Eaton. Brookfield, MA: E. Merriam & Co., 1813.

Edwards, Samuel. Barbary General: The Life of William H. Eaton. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.

Ellis, Joseph J. American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

Ferguson, Eugene S. Truxtun of the Constellation: The Life of Commodore Thomas Truxtun, U.S. Navy, 1755–1822. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1959.

Flexner, James Thomas. George Washington. 4 vols. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1965–1972.

Irwin, Ray D. Diplomatic Relations of the United States with the Barbary Powers: 1776–1816. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1931.

Kimball, Marie. Jefferson: The Scene of Europe. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1950.

Kitzen, Michael L. S. Tripoli and the United States at War: A History of American Relations with the Barbary States, 1785–1805. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 1992.

Lambert, Frank. The Barbary Wars. New York: Hill and Wang, 2005.

Lane-Poole, Stanley. The Story of the Barbary Corsairs. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1890.

London, Joshua E. Victory in Tripoli: How America’s War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Built a Nation. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005.

McCullough, David. John Adams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.

McKee, Christopher. Edward Preble: A Naval Biography, 1761–1807. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1972.

Mackenzie, Alexander Slidell. Life of Stephen Decatur, Commodore in the U.S. Navy. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1846.

Magoun, F. Alexander. The Frigate Constitution and Other Historic Ships. New York: Dover Publications, 1987.

Malone, Dumas. Jefferson and His Time. 6 vols. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1948–1981.

Morris, Charles. The Autobiography of Commodore Charles Morris, U.S. Navy. Boston: A. Williams, 1880.

Nash, Howard P. Jr. The Forgotten Wars: The Role of the U.S. Navy in the Quasi War with France and the Barbary Wars, 1798–1805. South Brunswick, NJ: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1968.

Naval Documents Related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers. 6 vols. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1939–1944.

Parker, Richard B. Uncle Sam in Barbary: A Diplomatic History. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004.

Quincy, Josiah. Figures of the Past from the Leaves of Old Journals. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1883.

Ray, William. Horrors of Slavery; or, The American Tars in Tripoli. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008.

Shaw, Elijah. A Short Sketch of the Life of Elijah Shaw. Rochester, NY: Strong & Dawson, 1843.

Sumner, Charles. White Slavery in the Barbary States. Boston: P. J. Jewett and Company, 1853.

Toll, Ian W. Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2006.

Tucker, Glenn. Dawn Like Thunder: The Barbary Wars and the Birth of the U.S. Navy. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1963.

Tucker, Spencer. Stephen Decatur: A Life Most Bold and Daring. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005.

Whipple, A. B. C. To the Shores of Tripoli: The Birth of the U.S. Navy and Marines. William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1991.

Wright, Louis B., and Julia H. Macleod. The First Americans in North Africa: William Eaton’s Struggle for a Vigorous Policy Against the Barbary Pirates, 1799–1805. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1945.

Zacks, Richard. The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805. New York: Hyperion, 2005.