The U.S. States Marine Corps Hymn has the phrase- “we will fight our countries battles to… the shores of Tripoli.”
Those words have animportance to the War on Slavery.
Slavery has been traced to Mesopotamia in 6800 B.C. in which captured enemies wereforced to Work.
Slavery today is estimated to consist of over twenty million people forced to work in mines, fishing, and sex industries.
Numerous groups work on both the Local and Global stages to end slavery.Covenant Houseoperates inmore than 20 cities. In New Orleans it reports seeingapproximately 100 victims a year.
Globally organizations such as The National Child Traumatic Stress Network and Free the Slaves work to free slaves and provide education for life after slavery.
America’s involvement in ending slavery on the Global Level increased in 1801 with President Thomas Jefferson.
The Barbary Slave Trade was the action of four North African Muslim States: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya (known as the Barbary States) who raided European towns from the 1400s to the 1800s; capturing more than individuals they sold as 1,200,000 slaves.
In 1784, the Barbary States demanded millions in tributefor the ransom of American sailors captured.
In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to London to negotiate peace with Tripoli’s envoy, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman.
However, the Ambassador stated his position as: “It is written in the Koran, that all nations which has not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also that the man first to board a vessel has one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy’s ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such a terror into the foe that the cried for quarter at once…”
With not other options, for the next 15 years, the US made an annual payment of $1,000,000.00 for safe passage of American Ships.
While it began to build a navy.
In 1798, "one stock of black leather and clasp" were issued to each Marine every year as protection against sword slashes to the throat from Arabic Muslim troops armed with scimitars.
In 1800, Thomas Jefferson was elected President and refused to pay the tribute to the Barbary Coast.
On May 10, 1801 after being refused his demand $225,000.00 from the United States, the Pasha of Tripoli declared War on the United States.
In 1803 Tripoli captured the USS Philadelphia, which had run aground in the harbor, and enslaved the American Sailors. The Philadelphia then became a defensive battery for the Barbary Pirates.
In 1805, ten marines and 500 mercenaries marched across the desert and attacked the Triploitan city of Derna. For the first time the United States flag was raised on foreign soil. The action is memorialized in the Marines Hymn, and the term “leathernecks.”
However it took, a second Barbary Coast War in 1815 and finally occupation and colonial rule by the French in 1830 to end the slave trade of the Barbary Coast Pirates.
In 2014, in Nigeria, 234 girls were kidnapped from school by Book Hiram and sold as to Islamic militants as brides by Boko Haram, a terrorist group for $12.00 each.
The world realized slavery has not ended.
Estimates today or that more than 20 million people are slaves, with over 16 million for labor and 4 million for sex. Five million are under age 18.
Efforts are being made by groups such as “Free the Slaves” to educate consumers to boycott products made by slave labor from mining and fishing in countries such as Ghana, the Congo, Brazil, Haiti, Nepal, and India.
