Robert May offers an imaginative new approach to antebellum America's notorious "filibusters"--the adventurers who organized or participated in private military attacks on nations with which the United States was formally at peace. Condemned abroad as pirates, the filibusters were often celebrated at home as heroes who epitomized the spirit of Manifest Destiny. May explains the romantic, mercenary, ideological, and psychological desires that drove thousands of men to join filibustering expeditions; how they were financed; and why the U.S. government had little success in curtailing them. He also reveals the legacy of anti-Americanism that filibustering generated in Latin America, where people regarded the attackers much the way we look upon international terrorists today

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