Who won the Battle of New Orleans?
Andrew Sullivan's rant today about Pat Buchanan's white-people obsession reminded me of a passage I'd been meaning to post from Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. I met Howe at a book festival in Winston-Salem in September and was so entertained by him that I paid full cover price for his book, which won last year's Pulitzer for history. I'm now about one-fifth of the way through, and it really is staggeringly good, as evidenced by this bit about Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans:
Jackson's force counted but few regulars. There were Tennessee militia (the component with whom the Tennessee general felt most comfortable), Louisiana militia, mostly French-speaking, and mounted Mississippi dragoons. There was an Irish American regiment called the Louisiana Blues, and two battalions of black men, one made up of African Americans and the other of Haitian immigrants. Some of the black soldiers were slaves on loan from their masters to the army, but most of them were free men. Jackson addressed the blacks as "brave fellow citizens" and had promised them pay and respect the equal of whites'. Up from their hideout at Barataria came the notorious pirate band of Jean and Pierre Lafitte—who had cast their lot with the Americans after deciding that a strong presence by the Royal Navy was not in their best professional interests. Jackson's orders to this heterogeneous army had to be translated not only into French but also into Spanish (because Louisiana had been a Spanish colony as well as a French colony before becoming an American state) and Choctaw, the language of the Native American allies who protected his left flank.
This motley crew, with no help at all from the 2,000 Kentucky militiamen who arrived four days before the battle and then ran away under fire, crushed the British in one of the most famous (if pointless) of American military victories. Afterwards, Jackson failed to hold to his promise to the black soldiers and "The Hunters of Kentucky," a song that extolled the bravery of the Kentucky militia at New Orleans, became one of the big hits of the 1820s. Oh well.
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1
Actually, reading Andrew Sullivan always reminds me of Andrew's Trig Palin obsession.... and it is very disturbing.
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2
Read about Jackson wiping out a Native-American rebel group and then adopting a surviving young boy and raising him as his son. (He died in his teens.) A complex man.
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3
Hey Justin - thanks for the mention of the book, definitely going to look into it, but I just thought that well, while Andrew Sullivan does go on quite a bit; he does have a point. As a minority, 1st generation Latino born here, I've always been amazed growing up and look back, how much American history glosses over the numerous other races here long before the America we know came into existence. Even in your reference about this great book, how many Americans ever studied or knew that Louisiana was a Spanish colony before French, before American?
Perhaps if we did more to embrace our multi-ethnic heritage and more MSM writers talked about it, we wouldn't have the shocked outrage last year of the idea of electing a black president and other trends. While as Americans we've prided ourselves on the 'melting pot' concept, its rarely ingrained in our cultural and historical perspective. Just a thought, and again, great suggestion on the book, will look into it, thanks.
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3.1
Oh, I agreed with Sullivan's anti-Buchanan thing. I can be very pro-rant.
Not so sure about his Trig Palin obsession, though.
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4
Not much of a rant, but very English. My version would probably read "Hey Buchanan, F*** off!!"
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5
We as a nation should be ashamed of what happened in that time period at the hands of the presidents and congress. Andrew Jackson was the worst of any president and should not be honored in any way at all!
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