Such a result at New Orleans would not have affected the outcome of the war, for a peace favorable to the American arms had already been declared at Ghent. But how profoundly a defeat would have influenced the personal and political fortunes of Andrew Jackson and all the events in American history which hung upon his subsequent career! General Jackson won the presidency in 1828 because he was the military hero of the day. His popularity was due to the brilliant victory that he won at New Orleans. After his defeat in 1824, a spectacular visit which he made to the field of the 1814 battle renewed the souvenirs of the great fight and intensified his popularity; and in 1828 he was triumphantly elected. If he had been defeated in battle by Pakenham, and New Orleans had been taken, his fame would have been extinguished then and there. And without Jackson--should we ever have had machine politics? It was he who introduced these into our government. He was the inventor and discoverer of the spoils system. "To the victors belong the spoils" was the maxim of his lieutenant, Marcy, and his own principle of action. We have never been able quite to shake off the system which he fastened upon the country. Patronage has been the curse of our politics from that day to this. Then there was his determined and disastrous assault on the United States Bank. Upon this institution, which was founded by Alexander Hamilton, and whose position somewhat resembled the present position of the Bank of England, the financial system of the country depended. Jackson attacked it as a "wicked monopoly," as a concrete expression of the "money power." He succeeded in wrecking the bank, in bringing on the panic of 1837, which wrought untold ruin and disaster to the people, and in inaugurating in its place the system of wildcat State banks and currency chaos which lasted up to the Civil War. But Jackson attacked more than the United States Bank and the principle that public office is a public trust. He attacked nullification. Nullification meant that the States could refuse to recognize or obey the laws of the United States. He struck that dictum hard, when it made its appearance in South Carolina, and paralyzed it to such an extent that the portion of the nation which did not believe in secession was able to get its preponderant growth, and organize its strength, and prevent disunion, when the test finally came. Jackson saved the Union by stunning the nullification snake until the republic was big enough and strong enough to trample it under foot. And that, no doubt, was the greatest event that hung on the contingency of Lafitte's choice of sides at New Orleans. CHAPTER XVI IF JAMES MACDONNEL HAD NOT CLOSED THE GATES OF HUGOMONT CASTLE