[Two hundred
years ago this week, the U.S.
declared war on the North African nation of Algiers, leading to the unremembered
conflict about which I wrote in Monday’s post. That
Second Barbary War is one of many such forgotten wars in American history,
and I’ll also highlight and AmericanStudy others for the remainder of the week’s
posts. Leading up to a special weekend post responding to a relevant recent
piece by one of my model AmericanStudiers.]
On three
longstanding legacies of the late 18th century conflict.
I wrote an
early post about what I would call the most significant legacy of the First
Barbary War (1801-1805): the Treaty of Tripoli
with which it concluded, and more exactly that treaty’s unequivocal statement
on the separation of church and state in America. In order to nip in the bud
precisely the kinds of anti-Muslim sentiments about which I wrote in yesterday’s
post, the Treaty’s authors (John Jay and Joel Barlow) included an article that
begins “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense
founded on the Christian Religion” in order to argue that “no pretext arising
from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony
existing between the two countries.” I’ve written at great length about “historian”
David Barton and his continual attempts to argue that the U.S. was founded
as a Christian nation; I don’t pretend that widespread knowledge of the Treaty
of Tripoli would dissuade Barton himself, but it might put a dent in the number
of Americans convinced by his inaccurate and mythologized accounts.
If the peace
treaty that concluded the First Barbary War provided one such lasting legacy,
the battle that won the war for the U.S. produced another. Although the
Barbary Pirates were primarily a naval threat, this war was won not just at
sea (as was the Second Barbary War) but also and perhaps most significantly on
land: led by Marine
Corps Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon, a small group of U.S. Marines and hundreds
of foreign mercenaries marched from Egypt into Algiers, capturing
the city of Derna, raising the U.S. flag in victory on foreign soil for the
first time, and contributing substantially to the decision of Barbary ruler Yusef
Karamanli to sign the peace treaty. It’s to remember this victory that the Marine Corps Hymn
includes the phrase “to the shores of Tripoli” in its opening line—although,
given the fact that O’Bannon’s troop included far more mercenaries than
Marines, it’d be important to complicate that enduring image of U.S. strength
with a recognition of how much we have also always depended on non-traditional
fighters and allies for such victories.
Many of the
First Barbary War’s soldiers were thus not part of the American military proper—but
many also were, and a group of six prominent
such American soldiers who were killed in the course of the war’s assaults
on Tripoli were honored in the nation’s oldest military monument: the Tripoli Monument.
Designed and sculpted in Italy with the help of the Bishop of Florence,
transported to the U.S. aboard none other than the U.S.S. Constitution, and displayed first at Washington’s Navy Yard,
then on the grounds on the Capitol, and finally at the U.S. Naval Academy in
Annapolis, the monument thus reflects not only the war’s efforts and losses,
but also the international, naval, and evolving Early Republic histories and
identities to which both Barbary Wars can and must be connected. Yet it also
and most simply—and in many ways most crucially—reminds us that these wars,
like all of our military conflicts, depended on the lives and sacrifices of individual,
ordinary Americans, both those who survived
to return to life in America and those who did not. I won’t make that point
about every war in this week’s series—but I could, and we should be sure to
remember it.
Next forgotten
war tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other under-remembered conflicts you’d highlight?
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