Thomas Jefferson did not end slavery in the United States, though he did make an attempt. In the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson condemned the act of slavery in rather curious language. He called it, “this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers.” Pirates? Infidels? These seem like odd terms with which to describe plantation owners. But Jefferson wasn’t talking about the South. He was talking about North Africa.

In the two centuries before the Declaration, over a million Europeans and Americans were taken as slaves by North African pirates, or the “Barbary Pirates” as they were known at the time. Jefferson took a particularly hard line on this. He was determined to end the practice and, as president, he built the U.S. Navy almost exclusively for that purpose, a fact is still commemorated in the Marines’ Hymn:

From the Halls of Montezuma
To the Shores of Tripoli
We fight our countries battles
On the land as on the sea

The first major war of an independent United States was fought on the shores of Tripoli, and Algiers and Morocco and Tunis. By 1805, the war was over and Americans were no longer threatened with slavery in the Mediterranean. It would take another 60 years, and another bloody war, before Americans were freed from slavery at home.

For more on the topic, read this survey of new books on the Barbary conflict.

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