of conquest and expansion, by which she might once again establish
dominion west of the Alleghany Mountains, by the capture of New
Orleans, the key to the lower Mississippi Valley. It is a well-known
fact in history that that government refused to recognize the legitimacy
of the sale and transfer of the Territory of Louisiana by Napoleon to
the United States. She had looked upon the transaction with a covetous
and jealous eye, for she had nursed the hope some day of adding to her
own vast possessions, by conquest or purchase, not only the domain of
Louisiana, but that of Florida also. Had it not been that she was
engrossed with her military and naval forces in the turbulent wars in
Europe, during the ascendant period of Napoleon, the British Government
would most probably have employed her armies and navies mainly in the
accomplishment of these aims of territorial aggrandizement. Her invasion
of the Northwest territory from Canada, at the opening of the War of
1812-15, which so disastrously ended with the destruction of the British
fleet by Commodore Perry on Lake Erie, and the annihilation of the
British army by General Harrison at the battle of the Thames, was but an
entering wedge to her deep designs. After the fall of Napoleon and the
pacification of Europe relieved her armies and navies of further service
on that side of the ocean, she, in her pride and insolence, believed
that she would be invincible in America. Her cherished dream might now
at last be realized by the conquest and permanent possession of
Louisiana. We have mentioned the significant fact that overtures for
peaceful negotiations had been mutually arranged as early as January,
1814, and commissioners soon after appointed to meet at Ghent. When the
capitulation at Paris and the exile of Napoleon to Elba occurred within
a few brief months, repeated excuses for the delay of negotiations by
the British envoys were made. The United States wanted peace on
equitable terms, for she had nothing to gain by continuing the war.
England dallied and delayed; meanwhile marshaling her military and naval
forces for a final crushing blow on her American foe. When articles of
peace were signed on the twenty-fourth of December, the British
Government knew that information of the event would not reach the
belligerents in the Gulf of Mexico until some time in February. But His
Majesty, the King of England, and his councilors, confidently believed,
as did the officers in command of the English army and navy in this
expedition, that the victorious invaders would eat their Christmas
dinner in the subjugated city of New Orleans, and there to stay.
Gleig, an educated officer with the army of invasion, who became the
chief English historian of the campaign, in his "Narrative," has to
say:
The primary cause of our defeat may be traced to a source more
distant than I have mentioned; I mean to the disclosure of our
designs to the enemy. How this occurred, I shall not take upon me to
declare; though several rumors bearing at least the guise of
probability have been circulated. The attack on New Orleans was
professedly a secret expedition, so secret indeed that it was not
communicated to the inferior officers and soldiers in the armament
until immediately previous to our quitting Jamaica. To the Americans,
however, it appears to have been long known before. And hence it was
that, instead of taking them unawares, we found them fully prepared
for our reception. _That our failure is to be lamented no one will
deny, since the conquest of New Orleans would have been, beyond all
comparison, the most valuable acquisition that could be made to the
British dominion throughout the whole Western hemisphere. In
possession of that post, we should have kept the entire Southern
trade of the United States in check, and furnished means of commerce
to our own merchants, of incalculable value._
On the 29th of August, 1814, Colonel Edward Nichols, in command of the
land forces quartered in the Spanish capital of Pensacola, issued a
proclamation, from which we quote:
Natives of Louisiana! On you the first call is made to assist in
liberating from a faithless, imbecile government, your paternal soil.
Spaniards, Frenchmen, Italians, and British; whether settled, or
residing for a time in Louisiana, on you also, I call to aid me in
this just cause. The American usurpation in this country must be
abolished, and the lawful owners of the soil put in possession. I am
at the head of a large body of Indians, well armed, disciplined, and
commanded by British officers, a good train of artillery with every
requisite, seconded by the powerful aid of a numerous squadron of
ships. Be assured, your property, your laws, the tranquility and
peace of your country, will be guaranteed to you. Rest assured that
these brave Indians only burn with an ardent desire of satisfaction
for the wrongs they have suffered from the Americans, to join you in
liberating the southern province from their yoke, and drive them into
the limits formerly prescribed by my sovereign. The Indians have
pledged themselves not to injure the persons or properties of any but
enemies to their Spanish or English fathers. A flag, Spanish, French,
or British, over any door, will be a certain protection.
Inhabitants of Kentucky! You have too long borne with grievous
impositions. The whole brunt of the war has fallen on your brave
sons; be imposed on no longer; but either range yourselves under the
standard of your forefathers, or observe a strict neutrality. If you
comply, whatever provisions you send down will be paid for in
dollars, and the safety of the persons bringing it, as well as the
free navigation of the Mississippi, will be guaranteed to you.
Men of Kentucky! Let me call to your minds the conduct of those
factions which hurried you into this civil, unjust, and unnatural
war, at a time when Great Britain was straining every nerve in
defense of her own, and the liberties of the world. Europe is now
happy and free, and now hastens justly to avenge an unprovoked
insult. Accept of my offers; everything I have promised, I guarantee
to you, on the sacred honor of a British officer.
We might repeat such evidences of the purposes and plans of the
expedition to Louisiana. But we will close the subject with the
impressions of General Jackson himself.
In a contribution to the Philadelphia Times, of the 1st of November,
1898, Colonel A.C. Buell is authority for the following:
"It was related to me," says Colonel Buell, "by the late Governor
William Allen, of Ohio, when, as correspondent of the Missouri
Republican, I visited the venerable statesman at his home near
Chillicothe, in 1875. After an interview on the current political
situation, Governor Allen became reminiscent. A scrap-book beats the
best of memories in the world; so I will quote from my scrap-book the
exact text of this reminiscence. The Governor said:
"'Shortly after Arkansas was admitted into the Union, in 1836, I,
being a member of Congress, then called at the White House. General
Jackson--he always preferred to be called General, rather than Mr.
President--invited me to lunch with him. No sooner were we seated,
than he said: Mr. Allen, let us take a little drink to the new star
in the flag;--Arkansas! This ceremony being duly observed, the
General continued: Allen, if there had been disaster, instead of
victory, at New Orleans, there would never have been a State of
Arkansas.
"'This, of course, interested me; and I asked: Why do you say that,
General?
"'Then he answered that: If Pakenham had taken New Orleans, the
British would have claimed and held the whole of Louisiana Purchase.
"'But, I said, you know, General Jackson, that the Treaty of Ghent,
which had been signed fifteen days before the decisive battle,
provided for the restoration of all territory, places and
possessions, taken by either nation from the other, during the war,
with certain unimportant exceptions.
"'Yes, of course, Jackson replied, but the minutes of the conference
at Ghent, as kept by Mr. Gallatin, represent the British
commissioners as declaring in exact words: "We do not admit
Bonaparte's construction of the law of nations; we can not accept it
in relation to any subject-matter before us."
"'At that moment, pursued General Jackson, none of our commissioners
knew what the real meaning of those words was. When they were uttered
the British commissioners knew that Pakenham's expedition had been
decided on; our commissioners did not know it. Now, since I have been
Chief Magistrate, I have learned, from diplomatic sources of the most
unquestionable authority, that the British ministry did not intend
the Treaty of Ghent to apply to the Louisiana Purchase at all. The
whole corporation of them,--Pitt, the Duke of Portland, Grenville,
Perceval, Lord Liverpool, and Castlereagh, denied in toto the legal
right of Napoleon to sell Louisiana to us. They held, therefore, that
we had no right to that Territory. So you see, Allen, that the words
of Mr. Gouldburn, on behalf of the British commissioners, which I
have quoted to you from Albert Gallatin's minutes of the conference,
had a far deeper significance than our commissioners could penetrate.
These words were meant to lay the foundation for a claim on the
Louisiana Purchase, entirely external to the provisions of the Treaty
of Ghent. And in that way, the British government was signing a
treaty with one hand in front, whilst the other hand, behind its
back, was dispatching Pakenham's army to seize the fairest of our
possessions.
"'You can also see, my dear Allen, said the old General, waxing
warmer, you can also see what an awful mess such a situation would
have been, if the British programme had been carried out in full. But
Providence willed otherwise. All the tangled web that the cunning of
English diplomacy could weave around our unsuspecting commissioners
at Ghent was torn to pieces, and soaked with British blood, in half
an hour, at New Orleans, by the never-missing rifles of my Tennessee
and Kentucky pioneers; and that ended it. British diplomacy could do
wonders; but it could not provide against such a contingency as that.
Now, Allen, you have the whole story; and know why Arkansas was saved
to the Union.'"
JUST LIKE JACKSON.
During the war of 1812-15, the officials of the English Government,
civil and military, distinguished themselves by their haughty arrogance
and insulting tone of superiority toward the American people; and were,
with revengeful malice, guilty of vandalism, spoliations, and cruelties,
which were a disgrace to civilization, not to speak of the massacres and
butcheries of thousands of women and children by the savage Indians,
whom they employed and paid to commit these crimes. Andrew Jackson soon
put an end to these English barbarisms wherever he commanded the
American armies. An incident, illustrative of his summary methods of
dealing with the insolence of his enemies in authority, occurred at
Pensacola. The English fleet and army had come in and quartered there in
the Spanish capital, with the approval and aid of the Spanish governor,
though Spain was at peace with the United States. The British assured
him that they would soon be in possession of Louisiana and the coast
country, and would fully protect the Spaniard as an ally and friend.
When Jackson marched his army to Pensacola, and sent in a message to the
governor to expel the British soldiers from the city and order their
fleet out of the harbor, the reply of the Spaniard was truckling to the
English in tone and evasive and insolent toward the American officer in
command. General Jackson replied in the following language:
Your Excellency has been candid enough to admit your having supplied
the Indians with arms. In addition to this, I have learned that a
British flag has been seen flying on one of your forts. All this is
done while you are pretending to be neutral. You can not be surprised
then; but on the contrary will provide a fort in your town for my
soldiers and Indians, should I take it into my head to pay you a
visit. In future, I beg you to withhold your insulting charges
against my government, for one more inclined to listen to slander
than I am; nor consider me any more as a diplomatic character, unless
so proclaimed to you from the mouths of my cannon.
The old hero meant all he said; for he marched upon the town, forced a
surrender, sent the British flying to their ships for safety, and
compelled the fleet to put to sea.
HUMILIATION OF ENGLAND.
No event in the modern history of her military operations brought a
deeper disappointment and a keener sense of humiliation to the English
Government, and to the nation, than did the disastrous failure of this
expedition, fitted out in haughty pride for the invasion and conquest of
Louisiana. The true story of the campaign and battles was in the main
suppressed by the Tory press, in the interest of the reigning dynasty
and to save the pride and prestige of a really great and imperial
people. A coincidence occurred to aid in diverting the mind of the
public from the contemplation of the deplorable event. On the 23d of
February, 1815, news of the defeat at New Orleans reached London. On the
same day arrived the intelligence of the escape of Napoleon from Elba,
and of his landing on the shores of France. Public attention was
diverted by the new sensation. The government press fostered the
illusion, and the horrors of New Orleans were not so fully known or
felt.
William Cobbett, the noted Liberal essayist and author, of England,
wrote of the event: "And this was all the people of the duped nation
ever heard of the matter. Bonaparte had landed from Elba, and the battle
of Waterloo soon succeeded. Both the Government and the people were glad
to forget all about this unmerciful beating in America. This battle of
New Orleans broke the heart of European despotism. The man who won it
did, in that one act, more for the good and the honor of the human race
than ever was done by any other man."
The author, discussing the incidents and issues of this remarkable
campaign, in the light of the vast superiority in both military and
naval forces of the British over the Americans, their more thorough
equipment, and their veteran discipline under the best-trained officers
in the world, put the inquiry: "How can we account for the repeated
reverses, and the final over-whelming defeat and expulsion from the
country, of such a vast and formidable armament by an inferior body of
raw recruits, suddenly improvised for defense from the militia of the
country, and but poorly armed and equipped?" "Providence!" was the
reply; nothing less than Providence could have baffled and beaten such
a powerful foe, bent on conquest and spoliation for a wicked purpose,
with a wicked spirit, and in a wicked cause. England's boastful pride
and intolerant and cruel insolence toward her American kindred was
humbled at last. The God of battle had once again in time punished a
strong nation for its stubborn crimes, and given victory to the
oppressed. Providence was with Jackson and his militia!
DEATH OF LORD PAKENHAM.
Pakenham died the death of the brave soldier, the heroic Briton, and the
beloved commander. His wounds were mortal, and he was at once borne back
to headquarters unconscious and dying. No last words came down to us
through the grief-stricken aids who ministered to him in his last hour.
The British accounts of his wounding and death-scenes are conflicting
and unsatisfactory. Judge Walker, in his work, "Jackson and New
Orleans," after much research, says that Pakenham was wounded first
while attempting to rally the Forty-fourth Regiment, whose chief
officer, Colonel Mullins, had failed to lead it to a second attack,
after the first repulse by the Tennessee and Kentucky infantry. A
musket-ball broke his right arm, and another killed his horse. His aid,
Captain McDougall, assisted him to mount his own horse, a creole pony,
and led him forward by the bridle-rein, the General's wounded arm
hanging helpless at his side. Pakenham continued in front, and to
encourage his men. As the Ninety-third Highlanders came up, he raised
his hat in his left hand, waved it in the air with enthusiasm, and
shouted:
"Hurrah! Hurrah! brave Highlanders!"
A discharge of grape-shot almost annihilated the group. One shot passed
through the General's thigh, and at the same time through the body of
the pony, and both went down, never to rise again. As the aid raised him
once again in his arms, the chief received a third and fatal wound in
the groin. He was borne back then, near to his headquarters, and placed
under a large oak tree, where, beyond the surgeon's skill, he shortly
breathed his last.
BRITISH SOLDIERS WON LAURELS IN EUROPEAN WARS.
From English authorities we learn that there were in the English army,
under Pakenham, regiments that had won laurels at Martinique, Badajoz,
Salamanca, Vittoria, the Pyrenees, and Toulouse. The English chronicler,
Cooke, says of some of these veterans, who touched, on their way to
America from the coasts of France, the shore of Old England for a few
days, that "scraps from our colors, or other little souvenirs, were
craved for with outstretched hands, to find a resting place in the fair
bosoms of the ladies of Devonshire."
Others again were but recently transported from the fiery ordeals of
Corunna, Busaco, and Ciudad Rodrigo, says the same author. England never
sent forth from her borders a braver or better-disciplined body of
soldiers, as was proven in every trial of campaign and battle of the
invasion of Louisiana. No other troops in the world could have behaved
with more sturdy gallantry or fought with superior courage. Their defeat
was destiny. Providence and General Jackson did it!
GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON.
Andrew Jackson was born in the Waxhaw settlement on the 15th of March,
1767, so near the border of North and South Carolina as to leave it a
question of contention as to which State may claim the honor of his
nativity. His father, Andrew Jackson, came over from Carrickfergus, on
the north coast of Ireland, in 1765. His mother was Elizabeth
Hutchinson. The father died before the birth of Andrew. His birthplace
was a rude log cabin of the border. His education was limited to the
elementary studies of the country schools of his day. At the age of
fourteen he entered the colonial army, and, young as he was, displayed
the same spirit of patriotic courage and indomitable will that made him
famous. Two elder brothers had entered the army before him, and both
gave their lives a sacrifice to the cause of liberty. The mother died
soon, of grief and the hardships of war. Young Andrew was taken
prisoner, and roughly treated by his captors. He was nearly starved in
prison at Camden. While thus confined, an English officer insolently
ordered him one day to black his boots. Jackson indignantly refused, for
which offense the brutal officer beat him over his head with his sword,
inflicting injuries which caused suffering in after life. This incident
is related to have greatly intensified Jackson's hatred of the English
throughout his life. An orphan, and alone in the world, when the War of
the Revolution was over he was apprenticed to learn the saddler's trade.
At eighteen he began the study of law, in the office of McCoy, in
Salisbury.
In 1788, Jackson was appointed public prosecutor for western North
Carolina, now Tennessee. He removed and located at Nashville, and very
soon was engaged in an active and remunerative practice. In 1796, he sat
as a delegate in the convention at Knoxville, to frame a constitution
for Tennessee, admitted into the Union as a State in that year. He was
the first representative in Congress of the new State. But one year
afterward, he was elected a senator of the United States Congress. In
1798, he resigned his seat in the Senate to accept an appointment as
judge of the Supreme Court of his State, which office he held for six
years. He engaged repeatedly in personal rencounters and duels, and in
the latter received wounds that caused him great physical suffering
during life.
Since 1801, he had been commander of the Tennessee militia. On the
declaration of war against England, Jackson offered his services, with
twenty-five hundred troops, to the Government for the defense of the
country. He was ordered to Natchez with two thousand men to operate
against any movement of the enemy on New Orleans. No enemy appearing on
the coast, he was ordered by Secretary Armstrong, of the War Department,
to disband his army. This foolish order Jackson disobeyed, and very
properly led his men back to Tennessee before dismissing them. His
famous campaign against the great Creek nation, in 1814, and his
repeated victories over these savage allies of England, breaking their
power and compelling peace; his Gulf Coast campaign and battles around
New Orleans, crushing the British army and driving it from the country;
his successful career as President of the United States, are well known
in the history of our nation, and distinguish him as one of the ablest
and most forceful characters our country has ever produced. He died at
the Hermitage, full of honors and renown, on the 8th of June, 1845,
having lived a patriot citizen, an able military chieftain, and a great
leader in the civic affairs of State and nation.
ISAAC SHELBY, GOVERNOR OF KENTUCKY.
Fortunate was it for Kentucky and for the nation that Isaac Shelby
directed the military affairs of the Commonwealth during the period of
the second war with England. This famous pioneer of the famous pioneers
of Kentucky was born in Maryland, on the 11th of December, 1750, near
Hagerstown. Early in life he was employed as a land surveyor. On the
threatened invasion of Virginia by the federated army of the Northwest
tribes under the celebrated chief, Cornstalk, he was lieutenant of a
company in the command of his father, General Evan Shelby, and gained
distinction for gallant services in the great victory won at Point
Pleasant on the 10th of October, 1774, which forced the Indians to sue
for peace. He visited Kentucky in 1775, with the vanguard of pioneer
explorers, and marked the lands which afterward, in 1780, he returned
and secured by entry and upon which he settled with his family after the
Revolutionary War.
When he removed from Maryland, he settled near the borderline of
Virginia and North Carolina, then not well defined. Believing his
residence on Virginia soil, he was elected to the Virginia Legislature
in 1779. But the survey of the boundary line determined him a citizen
of North Carolina, and as such he was officially known after until his
final removal to Kentucky. In the gloomiest period of the War for
Independence, in the southern colonies, after the defeat at Camden and
the surrender of Charleston, Shelby became famous as a border leader of
what seemed the forlorn hope of the colonists, and for his frequent
victories over the enemy. With Colonels Sevier and Clarke, he led his
command to the attack and capture of a strong fort in the Cherokee
country, which had, garrisoned by British, Tories, and Indians, greatly
harassed the settlers in west North Carolina. Soon after, in August,
1780, he inflicted a loss of several hundred by an attack on the British
at Musgrove's Mill, South Carolina, and escaped with little loss of his
own men. But his greatest victory, and one of the most decisive of the
war, was won at King's Mountain. Joining forces with Colonels Sevier and
Campbell, a bold attack was planned and made on the notorious General
Ferguson, encamped on King's Mountain. Without artillery, these
frontiersmen, with their flint-lock rifles, boldly attacked Ferguson's
veterans, advancing on the enemy up the mountain side, and keeping up
the fight until Ferguson and nearly four hundred of his men were slain,
and over seven hundred made prisoners.
[Illustration: ISAAC SHELBY.
First and Sixth Governor of Kentucky.]