Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates

From the Prologue...

Mercilessly, the pirates stripped O'Brien and his men of shoes, hats, and handkerchiefs, leaving them unprotected from the burning sun during the twelve-day voyage back to the North African coast. On arrival in Algiers, the American captives were paraded through the streets as spectators jeered.

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“Our sufferings are beyond our expression or your conception,” O'Brien wrote to America's minister to France, Thomas Jefferson, two weeks after his arrival in Algiers. Those sufferings would only get worse. Several of the captives from the Maria and the Dauphin would die in captivity of yellow fever, overwork, and exposure--and in some ways, they were the lucky ones. The ways out of prison for the remaining prisoners were few: convert to Islam, attempt to escape, or wait for their country to negotiate their release. A few of the captives would be ransomed but, for most, their thin blankets wore out as year after year passed and freedom remained out of reach. Richard O'Brien would be ten years a slave.

America had not yet elected its first president, but it already had its first enemy.