The Battle of New Orleans: including the Previous Engagements between the Americans; and the British, the Indians and the Spanish which led to; the Final Conflict on the 8th of January, 1815Smith, Z. F. (Zachariah Frederick)
History
The Battle of New Orleans: including the Previous Engagements between the Americans; and the British, the Indians and the Spanish which led to; the Final Conflict on the 8th of January, 1815
Smith, Z. F. (Zachariah Frederick)
New Orleans, Battle of, New Orleans, La., 1815
In this historic review, we dwell exhaustively upon the episode of this
battle on the west bank, on the 8th of January, 1815, not because of any
intrinsic importance of the subject, but rather from the sensational
incidents which attended the movements of the belligerents, and which
were consequent upon the issue. The galling words of General Jackson,
hastily and unguardedly uttered in an attempt to throw the blame of
defeat upon a small detachment of Kentucky militia, "the Kentuckians
ingloriously fled," were resented as an undeserved stigma upon the honor
and good name of all the Kentuckians in the army, and upon the State of
Kentucky herself. The epigrammatic phrase, construed to mean more than
was intended, perhaps, like Burchard's "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion,"
struck a chord of sympathetic emotion that vibrated not only in the army
and the community of Louisiana, but throughout the entire country. These
burning words are of record in the archives at Washington, and
remembered in history; but the facts in full, which vindicate the truth
and render justice to whom it is due, are known to but few, if known to
any now living. In the words of Latour: "What took place on the right
bank had made so much sensation in the immediate seat of war, and had
been so variously reported abroad, to the disparagement of many brave
men, that I thought it a duty incumbent on me to inquire into
particulars and trace the effect to its cause."
Rather than give our own impressions, we quote from "Reid and Eaton's
Life of Jackson" an account of this affair, interesting because written
when the subject was yet fresh in the public mind, and from the intimacy
of the authors with the personal and public life of General Jackson:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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