The Project Gutenberg eBook, Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December,
1860, by Various

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Title: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860

Author: Various

Release Date: March 5, 2004 [eBook #11465]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 6, NO.
38, DECEMBER, 1860***

E-text prepared by Joshua Hutchinson, Sheila Vogtmann, and Project
Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS

VOL. VI.--DECEMBER, 1860.--NO. XXXVIII

THE UNITED STATES AND THE BARBARY STATES.

Speak of the relations between the United States and the Barbary
Regencies at the beginning of the century, and most of our countrymen
will understand the War with Tripoli. Ask them about that Yankee crusade
against the Infidel, and you will find their knowledge of it limited to
Preble's attack. On this bright spot in the story the American mind is
fixed, regardless of the dish we were made to eat for five-and-twenty
years. There is also current a vague notion, which sometimes takes the
shape of an assertion, that we were the first nation who refused to pay
tribute to the Moorish pirates, and thus, established a now principle in
the maritime law of the Mediterranean. This, also, is a patriotic
delusion. The money question between the President and the Pacha was
simply one of amount. Our chief was willing to pay anything in reason;
but Tripolitan prices were too high, and could not be submitted to.

The burning of the Philadelphia and the bombardment of Tripoli are much
too fine a subject for rhetorical pyrotechnics to have escaped lecturers
and orators of the Fourth-of-July school. We have all heard, time and
again, how Preble, Decatur, Trippe, and Somers cannonaded, sabred, and
blew up these pirates. We have seen, in perorations glowing with pink
fire, the Genius of America, in full naval uniform, sword in hand,
standing upon a quarter-deck, his foot upon the neck of a turbaned Turk,
while over all waves the flag of Freedom.

The Moorish sketch is probably different. In it, Brother Jonathan must
appear with his liberty-cap