At the close of the American Revolution there were less than five thousand persons in New Orleans. During that Revolution a considerable number of respectable British settlers who wanted to avoid the War of Independence, settled in West Florida and about Natchez, and in other spots contiguous to New Orleans. Hence the Revolution was hardly over before the first chapter of manifest destiny was directed from Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kentucky upon the opening of the Mississippi River. That physical achievement was so important to the producers on the Ohio and the Tennessee Rivers that schemes of every sort were tried to hasten the opening of commerce to the Gulf. One Senator of the United States was expelled from his place for an intrigue partaking of the nature of treason with the British who still backed up the Spanish on the Gulf; and a Vice President was actually pursued nearly to the Gulf and brought back and tried for treason at Richmond. How long the United States might have had to wait the slow course of diplomacy or the rough chance of war to get New Orleans, is uncertain, but Napoleon, who had acquired Louisiana by his mastery over Spain, believing that he could not hold it against the English fleets, made haste to sell it to the Americans for a sum of money and old commercial claims. Eighty-two years ago, or about the rounded lifetime of an old man, the Americans occupied New Orleans, and much of the city burnt up the year our forefathers were voting for the first President of the United States. A French newspaper had been issued in New Orleans several years before the American possession. There were perhaps eight thousand persons in the city when it was transferred to us. Twelve years after the transfer, the Americans under General Jackson had to give battle to hold the city, which the English attacked with the best troops they had used in Spain against Napoleon who had already fallen. Napoleon was contemplating his last endeavor to astonish the world at Waterloo, when the English and Americans, unconscious that a treaty of peace had been made between themselves, fought the battle of New Orleans, which resulted in more disaster to the British arms than any battle on land during our second conflict for independence. In St. Paul’s Cathedral stand the monuments and statues of Packenham and Gibbs who lost their lives in the marshes around New Orleans.