| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Stephen Decatur: American Naval Hero, 1779–1820. By Robert J. Allison. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. x, 253 pp. $34.95, ISBN 1-55849-492-8.)

There is no doubt that before the end of his short life Commodore Stephen Decatur blazed among the brightest stars in a young United States. Over twenty American towns were named for him, he earned accolades for deeds including the burning of the captured Philadelphia in the harbor of Tripoli in 1804, the capture of HMS Macedonian in 1812, and a scourging of the Barbary Coast in 1815 that led to an unconditional peace with Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis. Fellow Americans even twisted his singular failure, the surrender of the heavy frigate President to a British squadron off New York in the opening weeks of 1815, into a victory of sorts: heroic resistance against overwhelming force while inflicting as much damage as taken. Then, long before old age could tarnish a young man's fame and warp it into an old man's bitterness, Decatur fell to a bullet of the defrocked captain James Barron in a duel of honor.

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