Transcriber’s Note: New original cover art included with this eBook is
granted to the public domain. The table of contents lists a poem “WHY
SHOULD I FEAR TO DIE?” that doesn’t actually appear in the magazine.
TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY
VOL. II. NASHVILLE, TENN., JUNE, 1906. NO. 3
CONTENTS
HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF THE SOUTH John Trotwood Moore
A MASTER HAND FOR MARRYIN’ Florence L. Tucker
MEMORIES John Trotwood Moore
MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY Mrs. H. P. Cochrane
TOM’S LAST “FURAGE” John Trotwood Moore
CASEY, THE FIFER Henry Ewell Hord
IN THE STRAWBERRY COUNTRY John Trotwood Moore
THE CANDLE John Trotwood Moore
THE HISTORY OF THE HALS John Trotwood Moore
WHY SHOULD I FEAR TO DIE? Poem
WITH OUR WRITERS
WITH TROTWOOD
Copyright 1906 by Trotwood Publishing Co. All rights reserved. Entered as
second class matter Sept. 8, 1905, at the Postoffice at Nashville, Tenn.,
under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.
Historic Highways of the South
PAPER VI.—THE ROAD TO NEW ORLEANS—THE NIGHT ATTACK
BY JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE
It was the last of April when I journeyed to New Orleans to study the
battlefield I had wished so often to see. No battlefield has ever
appealed to me as has that—none has come near it to me, in sentiment,
except when I stood in the trenches of Valley Forge and saw the
blizzard-swept lines where Patriotism stood in the last ditch.
[Illustration: Looking toward the British line.]
New Orleans is easily the greatest signal victory ever won on American
soil. History shows nothing in its class except King’s Mountain.
Everything else in the Civil War that we now regard as decisive was an
evenly matched, mathematically planned contest, between great armies, in
which, so far as the records go, one lost about as much as the other,
with victory at last on the banner of the side with the most troops, the
most guns, the better equipment and the best food for marching men.
Shiloh, Stone River, Chickamauga, in the West—Bull Run, Seven Days,
Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, in the East—these were all great
steel-sheathed locomotives rushing full speed to a head-on collision.
And, after the collision, there was scrap-iron all around.
But New Orleans was a steel ram striking a man-of-war, and the
man-of-war was not. There is only one way to explain the miracle of the
unexpected—the incongruity of the Incongruous—and that is, Providence.
Now, Providence had selected Jackson for this job.
Five miles below the city the street car lines stop, but it is an
interesting walk to clamber up on the bermuda and melilotus-covered levee
and follow the river to the Chalmette battlefield. The air is soft and
warm, the big river sweeps splendid along, the beautiful old homes on the
banks peep sleepily out from pecan and great moss-covered oaks. Far away
to the southeast stretch plain and forest.
No wonder they fought for it, you say. Who would wish to die in a fairer
land, under sunnier skies?
Then you get a shock.
[Illustration: The field across which the British charged.]
Just at the battlefield and where the unfinished Chalmette monument
(and why should it remain unfinished, O, ye of little faith save in your
scrambling for dollars?) looms up there is a repulsive derrick very
nearly on the spot where Jackson’s grim lines ran up to the river, and
where the Carolina’s fiery little battery spat at the Red Coats from
their earthworks. All around are evidences of something that smells
like Russell Sage, Rockefeller, Morgan or New York Life. It is a sugar
refinery, said to be the biggest of its kind anywhere—a trust, and hence
a thief by nature, and now it has butted into the battlefield, buying
as it goes, and paying for the privilege of wiping sentiment out with
sugar-coated pills. Its great banks already overtop the spot where
Jackson stood under the moss-grown oaks. Its embankments shut out the
sun of New Orleans. When it gets ready it will take the rest of the
battlefield. The sight of it and its vandalism hurts, and the hurt was
worse when I found that New Orleans did not care. Nay, I think from what
I heard, that she was prouder of the refinery than she was of the battle;
for everybody could tell me of the refinery, and no one knew anything
of the battle save a little woman who kept the cottage and grounds where
the half-completed Chalmette monument marked the spot of Jackson’s
breastworks and glorious stand. She knew that Jackson’s breastworks ran
down the row of trees at the lane, that his headquarters were right
over there in that clump of old oaks, and that Pakenham was buried for
six months under that pecan tree, where some old masonry showed there
had been a grave. The rest of it I had to dig out of the library of the
Historical Society.
An old fisherwoman who stood on the levee where Jackson’s line touched
the river, and where the cotton bales were confiscated to help form the
first line of breastworks, in answer to my question, told me, after
expectorating a large quantity of snuffy fluid into the river, that she
“had heurn of a right peart fight bein’ fit hereabouts when my mammy was
a baby—but jes’ whur I can’t say.”
[Illustration: “That Jackson’s headquarters were right over there in that
clump of oaks.” The trees alone were there, this house having been built
after the original one was burned.]
In his “Naval War of 1812,” Theodore Roosevelt thus graphically describes
the place as he thought it was then: “Amid the gloomy semi-tropical
swamps that covered the quaking delta thrust out into the blue waters of
the Mexican Gulf by the strong torrent of the mighty Mississippi, stood
the fair French city of New Orleans. Its lot had been strange and varied.
Won, and lost once and again, in conflict with the subjects of the
Catholic king, there was a strong Spanish tinge in the French blood that
coursed so freely through the veins of its citizens; joined by purchase
to the great Federal Republic, it yet shared no feeling with the latter
save that of hatred to the common foe. And now an hour of sore need had
come upon the city, for against it came the red English, lords of fight
by land and sea. A great fleet of war vessels—ships of the line, frigates
and sloops—under Admiral Cochrane, was on the way to New Orleans,
convoying a still larger fleet of troop ships, with aboard them some ten
thousand fighting men, chiefly the fierce and hearty veterans of the
Peninsular War, who had been trained for seven years in the stern school
of the Iron Duke, and who were now led by one of the bravest and ablest
of all Wellington’s brave and able lieutenants, Sir Edward Pakenham.”
When the President wrote that he was young and undecided whether he
would hunt grizzlies or write poetry, I, for one, am glad he hunted the
grizzly. Imagine any man standing on the melilotus-covered levees of the
Father of Rivers and tracing from horizon to horizon the faint penciling
of a sky so blue that it flushes at times into purple, corralling in
the compass of its circle, now an old mansion, pecan-shadowed and
wisteria-crowned, now a meadow, cattle-dotted and sheened with little
lakes, now groves of oak and ash, moss swept with hoariness, now fields
beyond, broad in their Southern fullness, big in benisons of eternal
summer—imagine this true picture, and then hearing from the Far North
the sepulchral croak of a sophomoric bullfrog: “Amid the g-l-o-omy
semi-tropical s-w-a-a-mps that covered the q-u-a-king delta!”
I failed to see the gloomy swamps, and the only things that ever quaked
there were the bull-bellied British, marching nearly a century ago for
the lust and plunder on this fair Creole city, utterly unconscious that
any foe worthy of their steel and stomachs stood before them, until
suddenly out of the sunset and shadows of the memorable day of the
evening of their landing Jackson’s grim Indian fighters fell on them in
the darkness and fought them to a finish, as they fought all beasts, at
close quarters, with clubbed guns and bear-knives.
That was the night of December 23d, 1814, the beginning of the battle of
New Orleans.
[Illustration: Old breastworks, primrose-covered.]
Let us briefly go back and bring events from our last paper—Jackson in
the wilderness of Alabama, victor of an Indian war, remover of the strong
allies of the Spaniard and British—the red, menacing, butchering wedge
that was thrust in between the two parts of the young Republic. It really
deserves a chapter itself, and that chapter might well be headed, “What
Jackson Did to the Spanish.” Briefly, it is this:
Jackson, having finished the Indian War, marched, May, 1814, homeward,
amid the plaudits of the pioneer West, disbanding his army at
Fayetteville, Tennessee, and receiving an ovation and banquet in
Nashville. He is appointed by the President Major General in the United
States Army, and later, by his influence and the great fear and respect
the Indians had for him, he closed a treaty with them at Fort Jackson,
and the Southern territory to Florida (which belonged to Spain), became
the Republic’s. And now, Jackson was free to turn on the treacherous and
double-dealing Spaniard, who had secretly helped Britain in the Indian
War, and, even then, contrary to her sworn neutrality, was housing and
feeding British troops at Pensacola and other portions of her territory,
and permitting them, five thousand strong, to rendezvous in Pensacola
preparing for the expedition which they knew was already on the high seas
bound for New Orleans.
As stated in our last paper, these were the darkest days of the Republic.
Only Jackson could have saved it. He alone was the cog that fitted
squarely into the wheel of things.
Jackson struck squarely out from the shoulder at the Spanish. He violated
our treaty with Spain openly when he marched on Pensacola, for to his
straight soul he saw more honor in doing a thing openly and aboveboard
than in doing it treacherously and slyly, as Spain had done all along.
If he had not whipped the British at New Orleans, we would have had a
war with Spain on our hands. He had to act quickly. The British had come
and were coming faster. By August, 1814, the sleepy town of Pensacola
had awakened to new life—and the life was red—red English. Eight or ten
English battleships lay in her harbor; regiments of negro soldiers from
the West Indies went ashore, with other British, soldiers, all drilling
daily. The English were repairing the forts, and their commander and the
Spanish governor slept under the same roof.
[Illustration: “Its great banks already overtop the spot where Jackson
stood.”]
There were rumors of a great force coming, but no one knew where it would
strike. Jackson learned it first from the Pirate Jean La Fitte, and that
pirate’s story and the gallant fight his crew made handling a battery of
guns at New Orleans is a story in itself.
Jackson decided to act. He wrote to the Secretary of War, “If the
hostile Creeks have taken refuge in Florida and are there fed, clothed
and protected; if the British have landed a large force, munitions of
war and are fortifying, and stirring up the savages, will you not say
to me, raise a few hundred militia, which may be quickly done, and with
such regular force as can be conveniently collected make a descent upon
Pensacola and reduce it? If so, I promise you the war in the South shall
have speedy termination, and English influence be forever destroyed with
the savages in this quarter.”
Jackson received an answer six months later, full of sound and meaning
nothing, or, if anything, that he mustn’t do it. In the meanwhile he had
done it, for the British became bolder, threw off all restraint, and
prepared to sally from the neutral port of Pensacola to take Mobile.
Jackson sent back to Tennessee through the wilderness for his old
fighters. And they came, so eager to fight again under their idolized
leader that many paid as high as eighty dollars for the privilege of
being substituted for those who could not go. Jackson wrote again and
again to the Secretary of War, imploring him, lecturing him: “How
long will the United States pocket the reproach and open insults of
Spain?... Temporizing policy is not only a disgrace but an insult to any
nation.... If permission had been given me to march against this place
twenty days ago I would ere this have planted the American eagle; now we
must trust alone to our valor and the justice of our cause.” And after
a long series of correspondence with the two-faced Spanish governor,
Jackson ended his talk with him: “In future I beg you to withhold your
insulting charges against my Government for one more inclined to listen
to your slander than I am; nor consider me any more as a diplomatic
character, unless so proclaimed to you from the mouth of my cannon.”
It was now in early fall. The Tennesseans under Coffee and Carroll were
pouring down South to him, past the old battlefields of the Creeks, now
an open road to Mobile and New Orleans.
Before they arrived he had strengthened Mobile, and the immortal Lawrence
had fought them off from Fort Bowyer, killing 162, wounding the vaunting
Colonel Nichols himself, and sending them crestfallen back to Pensacola.
Then, from La Fitte, whom the British had attempted to bribe, he first
knew that New Orleans would be attacked, and he waited no longer. He
marched on Pensacola and took it, and the English fleet and army vanished
at the first thunder of his guns.
But where? To New Orleans, where their great fleet on the high seas was
now headed—a fleet with a convoy of ten thousand fighting British. And
Coffee and his Tennesseans still in the wilderness!
November 25th, 1814. Good news! Coffee and his Tennesseans are at Mobile.
But that is not New Orleans, and a hundred miles of wilderness lie
between.
Jackson reached New Orleans December 2d. I hesitate to try to picture
him as he appeared to the gay, well fed, well bred people of that Creole
town. Chronic dysentery since two years before, terrible in its pains and
griping on his nerves and temper.
In the Howard Library, New Orleans, the librarian of which is William
Beers, undoubtedly the best living authority of Jacksonia, and a scholar
and natural-born bibliophile, I was shown many courtesies and gathered
some most interesting facts. Mr. Beers ranks Judge Walker’s book first
on Jackson, because he was an accurate, scholarly historian, who got
his information first-hand from survivors of the great battle who lived
with him in his native city. “Parton’s book was not even secondary, but
tertiary,” said Mr. Beers. “He took freely from Walker and gave but scant
credit.” Here is Judge Walker’s description of Jackson’s arrival in New
Orleans, written while many eye-witnesses were living, in 1855:
“Along the road leading from Ft. St. John to the city, early in the
morning of December 2d, 1814, a party of gentlemen rode at a brisk
trot from the lake towards the city. The mist which during the night
broods over the city had not cleared off. The air was chilly, damp,
uncomfortable. The travelers, however, were hardy men, accustomed
to exposure and intent upon purposes too absorbing to leave any
consciousness of external discomfort. The chief of the party, which
was composed of five or six persons, was a tall, gaunt man, of very
erect carriage, with a countenance full of stern decision and fearless
energy, but furrowed with care and anxiety. His complexion was sallow and
unhealthy; his hair was iron gray, and his body thin and emaciated, as
of one just recovered from a lingering sickness. But the fierce glare of
his bright and hawk-like eye betrayed a soul and spirit which triumphed
over all the infirmities of the body. His dress was simple and nearly
threadbare. A small leather cap protected his head, and a short Spanish
blue cloak his body, whilst his feet and legs were encased in high
dragoon boots, long ignorant of polish or blacking, which reached to his
knees. In age he appeared to have passed about forty-five winters—the
season for which his stern and hardy nature seemed peculiarly adapted.”
One of the strange things about the lives of all great men is the
almost certain fact that some grossly untrue story, picturesque lie or
exaggerated half-truth of some personal trait will be started and cling
to them for all time.
For a half-bred lie always outruns a full-blood truth.
The universally accepted misrepresentation of Jackson’s character is that
he was an uncouth backwoodsman, half-spelled, ill-bred and a bragging
bully.
[Illustration: “The beautiful old homes on the banks peeped sleepily from
pecan and oaks.”]
As a matter of fact there never lived a man of greater natural dignity,
of finer manners or more courtly grace when he wished than Andrew
Jackson, in spite of his violent outbursts of passion at times. In 1858,
one of the finest old ladies of New Orleans told this story to James
Parton:
The new aide-de-camp, Mr. Livingston, as he rode from the parade ground
by the General’s side, invited him home to dinner. The General promptly
accepted the invitation. It chanced that the beautiful and gay Mrs.
Livingston, the leader of society then at New Orleans, both Creole and
American, had a little dinner party that day, composed only of ladies,
most of whom were young and lively Creole belles. Livingston had sent
home word that General Jackson had arrived, and that he should ask
him to dinner, a piece of news that threw the hospitable lady into
consternation. “What shall we do with this wild General from Tennessee?”
whispered the girls to one another, for they had all conceived that
General Jackson, however becoming he might comport himself in an Indian
fight, would be most distressingly out of place at a fashionable dinner
party in the first drawing-room of the most polite city in America.
He was announced. The young ladies were seated about the room. Mrs.
Livingston sat upon a sofa at the head of the apartment, anxiously
awaiting the inroad of the wild fighter into the regions sacred hitherto
to elegance and grace. He entered, erect, composed, bronzed with long
exposure to the sun, his hair just beginning to turn gray, clad in his
uniform of coarse blue cloth and yellow buckskin, his high boots flapping
loosely about his slender legs, he looked the very picture of a war-worn
noble commander. He bowed to the ladies magnificently, who all arose at
his entrance as much in amazement as politeness. Mrs. Livingston advanced
to meet him. With a dignity and grace seldom equaled, never surpassed,
he went forward to meet her, conducted her back to the sofa and sat by
her side. The fair Creoles were dumb with astonishment. In a few minutes
dinner was served and the General continued during the progress of the
meal to converse in an easy, agreeable manner, in the tone of society,
of the sole topic of the time—the coming invasion. He assured the ladies
that he felt perfectly confident of defending the city, and begged that
they would give themselves no uneasiness in regard to it. He arose soon
and left the table with Mr. Livingston. In one chorus the young ladies
exclaimed: “Is this your backwoodsman? Why, madam, he is a prince.”
Jackson had indeed arrived, but never did a defender find so helpless and
utterly unprepared a city. The city was a bickering, divided thing, not a
fortification, not a battery mounted, not an idea even, and scarcely any
law.
And scared stiff.
Jackson was both law and idea, and in twenty-four hours, by his own calm
and intrepid bravery, his own self-assurance and fiery determination, he
had the impulsive inhabitants ready to fight to the death.
On December 8, 1814, just one month to a day before the great battle
was fought, a splendid double-deck battleship, the Tornant, flying the
British admiral’s flag, and the advance guard of the great host, anchored
off Chandeleur’s Island. There were two ways to reach New Orleans—up
the Mississippi, or in the open bay through Lake Borgne, thence a march
across the level delta straight to the city.
The English chose the latter. Five little American gunboats with 180
men lay in Lake Borgne, and these put up a gallant fight against the
forty-five barges and one thousand men who finally grappled with them and
took them with cutlass, pike and pistols.
And there, at noon, December 23, 1814, on the banks of the Bayou
Bienvenue, a lonely, marshy place, and the last place that Jackson
thought they would land, the British, 1,900 strong, under General Keane,
one of the ablest officers of the command, landed without opposition and
even without the knowledge of Jackson, who was beyond the city, near Lake
Pontchartrain, expecting them there. In two hours he had four hundred
more troops, a force larger that day than Jackson’s entire available
command, and in nine miles of New Orleans, on a dead level plain, bounded
on one side by the river and the other by the marshes of the lake.
It was a plain, easy march to New Orleans, and if he had marched at it
that afternoon it would have been his before night. And why did he not?
For only one reason—neither Pakenham nor Keane nor any general or soldier
of all the British army supposed for an instant that there was anything
before them but a lot of cowardly backwoodsmen whom they could brush away
with their bayonets or stampede with a single charge.
And who, indeed, were these men? Who was their commander, and what
had they done on battlefield before? Speaking of Pakenham’s utter
defeat of the French Field Marshal Soult, but a short time before, the
English historian, Napier, says: “He was opposed to one of the greatest
generals in the world, at the head of unconquerable troops. For what
Alexander’s Macedonians were at Arbela, Hannibal’s Africans at Cannae,
Caesar’s Romans at Pharsalia, Napoleon’s Guards at Austerlitz—such
were Wellington’s British soldiers at this period.... Six years of
uninterrupted success had engrafted in their natural strength and
fierceness a confidence that made them invincible.”
And here is the same author’s description of how Pakenham fell on
Salamanca, routing the best soldiers of continental Europe:
“It was five o’clock when Pakenham fell on Thomieres.... From the chief
to the lowest soldier, all of the French felt that they were lost, and
in an instant Pakenham, the most frank and gallant of men, commenced the
battle. The British columns formed lines as they marched, and the French
gunners, standing up manfully for their country, sent showers of grape
into the advancing masses, while a crowd of light troops poured in a fire
of musketry, under cover of which the main body endeavored to display
a front. But bearing onward through the skirmishes, with the weight of
a giant, Pakenham broke the half-formed lines into fragments and sent
the whole in confusion upon the advancing support, spreading terror and
disorder upon the enemy’s left.”
Pakenham, and the army under him at New Orleans, were the pick of
Wellington’s troops, who had driven Bonaparte’s greatest general across
the Pyrenees. They had conquered at Rodrigo, Badajos, San Sebastian,
Toulouse, Salamanca. They laughed at raw backwoods militia, with not
even a bayonet to their long, uncouth rifles. And what were they in
victory? Was there any real ground for fear that they would carry out
their threats of Beauty and Booty in New Orleans? When Jackson rode along
in the afternoon of December 23 to the front to meet the British, women
and children surrounded him in consternation. “Say to them,” he said to
Livingston, “that no British soldier shall enter the city unless over my
dead body. I will smash them, so help me God!”
But that night many of the women of New Orleans slept with small daggers
in their bosoms. And well may the handsome Creole women of New Orleans
have been afraid. Badajos, San Sebastian, Toulouse, all were friendly
towns, only the garrisons being hostile to the English. And yet, General
Napier, who was an eye witness to what he describes, tells how these same
soldiers did at Badajos:
Jackson reached New Orleans December 2d, as stated, more fit for the
hospital than the camp, and with only three weeks in which (as it proved)
to prepare the defenseless city. But under the magic of that strange,
positive, fiery man, the quick tempers of the impulsive inhabitants
were welded to the white heat of desperate determination. And what a
motley lot of defenders he found—About 800 new troops, regulars, raw and
undrilled; Planches’ City Battalion, five hundred; two regiments of State
militia, armed with fowling pieces, muskets, old rifles; a regiment of
free negroes, or, as Jackson called them, “free men of colour,” and right
well did they quit themselves in the fight—in all, about 2,000 men. Two
little men-of-war-armed schooners, the Carolina and the Louisiana, lay in
the river.
But Coffee and his Tennesseans were coming from Pensacola through the
woods, and Jackson sent courier after courier to them, saying: “Don’t
sleep till you reach me or arrive in striking distance.” Carroll, with
other Tennessee and Kentucky troops, had floated down the Cumberland, the
Ohio, and were now on the Mississippi. But he had only one gun to ten
men until he overtook a boatload of muskets, and with these he drilled
his men on the decks of his boat. To him Jackson sent a steamboat up the
river with this message: “I am resolved, feeble as my force is, to await
the enemy on his first landing, and perish sooner than he shall reach the
city.”
Two thousand Kentuckians under Generals Thomas and Adair were also
floating down the Mississippi, a ragged, defenseless and almost gunless
crowd, without blanket or tents, and only one cooking kettle to every
eighty men. And now it was the 14th day of December, and the British had
been at the mouth of the river nearly a week.
On the evening of the 17th Coffee, one hundred and twenty-nine miles from
New Orleans, received Jackson’s note. His horses were poor, three hundred
of his men sick, but in three days he was there; but only with his picked
men—800—all that could follow so rapid a march. Here is a description of
them: “Their appearance was not very military. In their woolen hunting
shirts of dark or dingy color and coperas-dyed pantaloons, made, both
cloth and garments, at home, by their wives, mothers and sisters; with
slouching wool hats, some composed of the skins of raccoons and foxes,
with belts of untanned deerskins, in which were stuck hunting knives and
tomahawks, hair long and unkempt, and faces unshorn.”
[Illustration: “Paying for the privilege of wiping sentiment out.” The
Refinery’s work. The trees on the left were Jackson’s headquarters. The
half-completed monument shows in the center of the picture.]
Of their leader, Jackson, Roosevelt says, in his “Naval War of 1812:”
“Yet, although a mighty and cruel foe was at their very gates, nothing
save fierce defiance reigned in the fiery Creole hearts of the Crescent
City. For a master spirit was in their midst. Andrew Jackson, having
utterly broken and destroyed the most powerful Indian confederacy that
had ever menaced the Southwest, and having driven the haughty Spaniard
from Pensacola, was now bending all the energies of his rugged intellect
and indomitable will to the one object of defending New Orleans. No man
could have been better fitted for the task. He had hereditary wrongs to
avenge on the British, and he hated them with an implacable fury that
was absolutely devoid of fear. Born and brought up among the lawless
characters of the frontier, and knowing well how to deal with them, he
was able to establish and preserve the strictest martial law in the city
without in the least quelling the spirit of the citizens. To a restless
and untiring energy he united sleepless vigilance and genuine military
genius. Prompt to attack whenever the chance offered itself, seizing with
ready grasp the slightest vantage point, and never giving up a foot of
earth that he could keep, he yet had the patience to play a defender’s
game when it suited him, and with consummate skill he always followed out
the scheme of warfare that was best adapted to his wild soldiery.”
It was two o’clock, December 23, before Jackson learned that Keane, with
2,300 men, had landed and marched to the river’s bank, in six miles of
New Orleans. Without a moment’s hesitation he drew up his thin, sallow
form, struck his clenched fist on a table and said: “By the eternal, they
shall not sleep on our soil!”
Very quietly, later, he ate a little rice and dozed on a sofa—the only
sleep he had, say several reputable historians, for four days and nights
thereafter, and he started to meet the enemy with a little over two
thousand men.
I am willing to stake my claim, previously made, that this man was one
of the greatest military geniuses of the first century of the Republic
on this one act alone. Here were the British, more than a match for him
in numbers, equipment and confidence. So sure were they of taking the
city that they had loafed along all afternoon and now had gone in a jolly
camp at sunset, on the banks of the great river, preferring to march into
the city in the morning, and not at night. They were disciplined and
bayonetted, jolly as a lot of schoolboys, and brave as men get to be,
full of fun and fight. I cannot think of another general, from Washington
to Lee, from Gates to Grant, who would not have said: “I will fight them
in the morning; this evening I will prepare. I will barricade, I will
entrench, I will throw up my wall between them and the city.”
And this would have been fatal. In broad daylight Keane would have
whipped them. He would have whipped Jackson’s troops that night but for
the darkness, but for the darkness and the grizzled, homespun clothed
men, who had cat-eyes for night fighting, who had stalked deer and
panther and Indians in the shadows of it, who could steal in and steal
out and use their knives in close places.
This was December 23, but that night he won the greater battle of January
8.
He fell on them like a panther from the darkness of the swamp.
He gave them a jolt that Soult, nor Ney, nor Napoleon had ever given. He
taught them a warfare they had never dreamed of before. He took the sand
out of their craws and the conceit out of their boasting mouths.
When he finished with them, at midnight, they decided they had gone far
enough toward New Orleans for that day, and several others. They threw up
entrenchments and waited for more troops.
They were hacked, demoralized, beaten!
And this is the way that Jackson did it. For my part I think it a far
prettier fight than he made two weeks later, when he finished the blow.
Jackson put his troops in motion about three o’clock, amid alarm guns and
beating of drums. But he himself galloped to the river bank and signalled
to the little Carolina to drop down. Then he put spurs to his horse and
galloped after the dust cloud going down the road to the Rodriguez Canal.
I could see it all so plainly as I stood on the banks of the river and
saw the same landscape before me. The lean, sallow, booted man, his long
legs dangling underneath his horse’s belly, galloping seemingly to
defeat. This man of destiny, this man who believed in himself, this man
who knew that God Almighty had sent him to whip the British, just as he
knew he would kill Dickinson.
And the troops went down so merrily to death in that cloud of dust—what
pathos, what patriotism, what sublime ignorance of what they were up
against, what blind faith in Jackson and God went forth that day to fight
the conquering, red English, who knew no such word as defeat, no such
tactics as retreat. Marines, raw troops who hardly knew how to drill, and
one little battery, in all, 884; flashy Creoles, gaudily equipped and
making much noise, the battalion of St. Domingo, “men of color,” 210;
Choctaw Indians, 18; Coffee’s Tennessee Volunteers, mounted riflemen,
563; Beall’s Orleans Rifle Company, 62; Mississippi Dragoons, 107, in all
2,131.
And this crowd were going to drive the victors of Toulouse, San
Sebastian, Salamanca and Badajos into the river, and do it at night, and
not a hundred bayonets on their guns and only two little six-pound cannon!
It was six o’clock and the British were having a jolly good time, with
campfires burning merrily and abundance of supper for hungry, healthy
stomachs. And now it is seven o’clock and suddenly a little gunboat
looms out in the twilight of the river before them, a queer looking
little craft to them, and they crowd up on the bank to look at it. It
came steadily on, its guns trained on the crowd of soldiers on the bank,
who were laughing, jollying and bantering it with empty jokes. “Can it
shoot?” “What is it?” “Give it a few from a musket,” are the shouts, and
they fired on the little Carolina with muskets and out of the gathering
darkness came:
“Now, boys, for the honor of America. Give it to them” And, to their
consternation, there was poured into the joking crowd a regular hell of
grape and shell, driving the British pell-mell to camp and arms and the
levee banks.
Jackson had reached the Bayou Bienvenu about four o’clock and formed
his thin lines as far across the plain as he could, to flank the
enemy. Notices were stuck up everywhere, signed “Keane and Cochrane:”
“Louisianans, remain quietly in your homes; your slaves will be preserved
to you and your property respected. We make war against Americans!”
The Carolina floats down to the river opposite Jackson. He sends an
aide aboard and gives her commander his orders to drop down and open on
the British camp. It was an hour before the waiting Jackson heard her
guns two miles below, and then he advanced, Coffee, regulars, marines,
Indians, negroes, artillery, forward, with blazing guns and American
yells and the British caught a circle of fire.
No man can paint that battle in the dark, for no man ever saw such a
fight in the dark before. The English fought nobly, but Jackson went
right in on them, his men using their knives and rifle butts, and in the
mix-up they knew not front from rear, nor friend from foe. Powder smoke
settled, gray and sulphurous over the plain, half dimming an already
cloud-dimmed moon. The fog added to it, and out of it, on the river,
thundered the guns of the Carolina pouring shot into their ranks, and
before them the sheeted fire of Jackson’s battery, up the levee, poured
it in from the front. They fought by companies, battalions, squads.
They charged around in the darkness and under clouds of smoke and fog,
and heard strange backwoods yells and ungodly oaths, and felt strange
bear-knives rip into their vitals from out of the dark. They fell back,
fighting, to the river bank, to the camp of trees. They charged and drove
the Tennesseans time and again before the naked, cold bayonet, but each
time they came back before clubbed guns and tomahawk and bear-knife. It
was a riot, not a battle; a butchery, not a fight; a stabbing contest
in the dark, where the bear killers and Indian fighters had all the
advantage.
At midnight Jackson collected his men, fell back to the canal and began
there to throw up the long line of entrenchments over which the vaunted
British battalions never put their foot.
Keane was stopped, shocked, chagrined; his troops dumbfounded. Three
hundred and three lay dead or wounded in the field, and sixty-four had
run off or been captured.
And now before them, entrenched, lay the same intrepid backwoodsman who
had violated all the rules of warfare in fighting them hand-to-hand in
the night, when, if he had waited a few more hours, the city had been
theirs.
They had gone far enough. They would entrench and await Pakenham and the
ten thousand embarking troops. They would take the city later.
* * * * *
_Shakespeare did not write his plays to live, but to make a living._
* * * * *
_There is no greater coward than he who despairs._
A Master Hand for Marryin’
BY FLORENCE L. TUCKER
(NOTE.—A real story and a touch of real mountain life.—Ed.)
A young girl on a bare-backed mule rode up in front of a cabin at the
foot of a hill in the Tennessee mountains. Slowly she surveyed the
premises; beside the open door hung a gun and a powder horn and a string
of red peppers; to the left, rearing itself against the hot afternoon
sky, stood a gaunt martin pole, and around the corner of the house,
inquisitive, but not unfriendly, advanced a lean, spotted hound.
“Hullo,” she called in a quiet voice.
From inside a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles was shined upon her, and
the heads of two half-grown girls peered out.
“Ther’s somebody at the gate, thar, Gabe,” said the woman.
But the man had already taken in the figure in the pink calico frock and
faded sunbonnet and was regarding it with a stealthy, sidewise glance
from under his flop hat. Deliberately he rose, and was followed by the
woman and the two girls.
“It’s Whit Bozeman’s Luce, from over t’other side the mountain,” he said,
halting in the doorway. Then to the girl waiting at the gate: “Hullo.”
But the woman went out. “’Light an’ come in,” she said, advancing with
some show of interest.
“No, I ain’t hardly got time,” responded the girl. “Ole Gran’pap Bozeman
is be’n tuk pow’rful bad with the mizry in his side, and I rid over to
see ef I could git a black chickin. I come acrost to Weems, but nobody
wasn’t to home, an’ I come on down here. I ’lowed I didn’t know none o’
you-all, but I’d hearn tell yer was mighty feelin fer folks in trouble,
so I’d resk it.”
“I seen yer at the meetin’ over at Big Valley,” said Gabe from his
station in the door.
“A black chickin? Co’se yer kin hev the blackest one we’ve got. Chicken
gizzard tea is mighty good fer the mizry in the side. My ole aunt used
to keep ’em dried and ready. Ever’ time she’d kill a black chickin she’d
save the gizzard an’ jes’ string it up ’gainst the time when some o’ the
folks or the neighbors would be tuck down. She wuz a master han’ fer
chicken gizzard tea. But git down an’ come in; settin’ in a cheer is jes’
as easy as on the back o’ that thar critter.
“Gabe, ketch that long shanked young rooster I be’n er-saving—the one
with feathers on his legs. G’long, chillun an’ he’p yer pap run that
chicken down! An’ don’t yer be long about it, fer the sun’ll be gittin’
low afore she gits back over t’other side the mountain.”
Luce sprank lightly to the ground and the two seated themselves on the
rude wooden bench upon the porch. As the girl removed her bonnet her
reddish hair clung in a mass of shining wave about her neck, the warmth
of the summer sun was in her cheek, and stood in a delicate moisture
above her full lip. The elder woman settled her glasses and regarded her.
“Law, yes,” she said. “I had gizzards saved up sence ’way back ’fore
Chris’mus two year ago, but Gabe’s las wife wuz sick quite a spell—she
jes died this spring—and the gizzards jes’ did hold out. She mighty
nigh lived on chicken gizzard tea toward the las’. I give it ter all
o’ his wives. Gabe’s be’n married moren’t onct or twict,” she said
explanatorily; “he don’t have no luck with his wives. The fust one died
in no time, an’ the next one didn’t live so very long—she wuz the mother
o’ these two chillun; the las’ one never had none. Gabe’s a master han’
fer marryin’.”
Just then Gabe and the two girls and the dog, in wild pursuit of the long
shanked rooster, the feathered legs well in the lead, rushed pell-mell
around the house.
“What’s them girls’ names?” asked Luce.
“Liz an’ Bet,” replied their grandmother. “The’r ma wuz name’ Lizabet’,
an’ when the twins wuz born I sez: ‘Well, ef it had er be’n jes’ one
we’d er called it Liz, an’ sence it’s two we’ll call ’em Liz an’ Bet.’
An’ so ’twuz. They’ll be fourteen year ole three days afore this comin’
Fourth o’ July. I ain’t never fergot, kase I didn’t want ’em ever axed no
questions about the’r age thet they couldn’t answer. I ain’t ever knowed
jes’ how ole I wuz, an’ sometimes I kinder wisht I did. My ole man, he
used ter figger on it, but I never could feel no ways certain. I wuz
married when I wuz fifteen, an’ from then on I kep’ ercount o’ things
jes’ in my head. Like them hats in thar tells me how many year I be’n er
livin’ on this mountain.”
She motioned her hand toward the open door, and Luce shifted her position
to get a better view of a string of wool hats swung across from one joist
to the other.
“Yer see, thar’s eleven of ’em. The ole man, he bought a new one ever’
two year—that would make twenty-two; an’ he’s be’n dead two year, which
makes twenty-four sence me an’ him moved into this yere house. I never
could bear to see nothin wasted, so ever’ time he quit wearin’ one I jes’
strung it up thar on the j’ist, an’ sence he’s be’n gone I ain’t never
had the heart to take ’em down.”
A great flapping of wings and squawking under the lean-to at the rear of
the house announcing that the remedy for Gran’pap Bozeman’s “mizry” was
in hand, if not in sight, Luce, conscious of the press of time, rose to
be ready to receive it. Gabe came round holding the feathered legs in one
hand and a strip of old cloth in the other. As he saw the girl’s look
full upon him, he straightened himself and quickened his gait.
“They do say,” said old Mrs. Freeler, “that a green gizzard ain’t nigh
the good that a dry one is. Ef I kin git holt o’ ary other black chicken
I’ll save it and dry it out fer yer.”
“I’m mighty glad I come on down here,” said Luce, as she mounted from
the rail fence. “I couldn’t er gone back without that chicken. Gran’pap
Bozeman’s pow’rful bad.”
“I’ll be over that er way Sunday,” said Gabe in a low voice, as he handed
up the firmly tied legs, “an’ll stop by ter see how the ole man comes on.”
“Ther’s preachin’” replied the girl, a little red coming into her cheek.
And when mule and rider had vanished behind the thick wood he took down
his gun called to the dog and followed slowly the way she had gone.
Sunday, betimes he had ridden away on the old gray mare.
“Yer pap mus’ be goin’ over ter Big Valley ergin,” said Mrs. Freeler to
the girls. “Ther’s a preachin’ over thar onct a month this summer. But
he never said nothin’ erbout it. Curious, too; he inginerally does leave
some idee o’ whar he’s goin’.”
“I heern ’im tell Dick Weems he seen a mighty fine lookin’ girl over thar
las’ meetin’-day,” said Bet.
“Mebbe pap’s courtin’ ergin,” commented Liz.
And when, four weeks from that day he again rode off without having let
fall any hint of his destination, the suspicion was confirmed. Mrs.
Freeler had come to know the signs; she grew restless and watched Gabe
furtively every time he left the house, and when he came into it. His
tall, lank form was less indoors than ever, and he grew more silent and
moody, riding away oftener over the mountain. Always a shiftless fellow,
he appeared more so now, except at times, when, in spurts of industry, he
worked off his newly-awakened energy. But not so with Mrs. Freeler. The
more her son idled, the faster her fingers flew. “I wuz allus a master
han’ at patchin’,” she said, as she turned over and over the garments of
them all.
As the haying season came on Gabe became possessed of an unusual fit
of application. He had worked steadily for three days when something
happened. Driving up with a load of hay piled rather higher than the
old mare liked, she rebelled, and while she and he were having it out
together the load was overturned. Liz and Bet, walking some distance
behind, rushed forward, and Liz stooped to pick up her father’s coat,
which, lying on top of the load, had been thrown to one side. As she did
so she discovered a letter that had dropped out, and at the same moment
his eye fell upon it.
“You Liz,” he cried, his voice trembling with excitement; “you leave my
love letter alone!”
The seal was unbroken and Liz turned it over in her hand.
“Gabe Freeler,” she read slowly, “frum Luce Bozeman.”
“You give it here,” he reiterated. “Er—mebbe,” sheepishly, “yer mout make
out ter read it. I ain’t rightly guessed what it mout be.”
The girl regarded him uncertainly as she hesitated to break the seal.
“Read it, ef yer kin,” he said irritably, standing beside the mare
now disentangled from the broken harness and shafts, and mopping the
perspiration from his brow. “Ef ever I’d er be’n ter school three months
I ’low I could read any writin’ thet ever wuz writ.”
“’Tain’t no three months!” replied the girl with asperity. “’Twasn’t but
only two months and three weeks; but I reck’n I kin read anything Luce
Bozeman kin write!”
“You gimme that letter!” he flared. “I guess yer won’t git no chanct ter
read it!”
As he advanced to take it from her hand the attention of the three was
arrested by the approach of a shock-headed youth riding rapidly around
the bend in the thickly-shaded road. He wore no hat and appeared to be in
excited haste. Without salutation or unnecessary parley, he delivered his
message:
“She says, air yer er comin’? Yes or no!”
Freeler stared at him blankly. “Wall, I know who ye air, an’ I know whar
yer come frum,” he said slowly, “but I’ll be durned ef I know what ye air
er drivin’ at.”
“Luce,” said the boy, “she writ yer a letter and sont it by Dick Weems
las’ Sadday.”
Liz and Bet regarded their father silently. His face was a curious
mixture of chagrin, earnestness and baffled determination. He had said
Liz should not read the letter; yet he must know the contents now; and
how to do it without disclosing to the boy his ignorance of learning?
“I ain’t but jes’ got the letter a little bit ago,” he said, lying lamely
as Liz’s eyes were upon him. “Liz, thar, wuz jes’ about ter read it when
we seen yer er comin’—I ain’t seein’ very well sence that spell I had o’
the yaller janders.” He brushed an awkward hand across his eyes. “Read
it, Liz—ef yer kin!”
But this time the girl did not retort; her curiosity invited nothing that
would delay its satisfying.
“Ef yer mean what yer sed las’ Sunday,” she read, spelling out the words
slowly, “ther ain’t no time ter lose. Gran’pap Bozeman wuz berried
yistidy, an’ no sooner wuz he in the groun’ than Hiram he sez the place
is hisn now, an’ ef I’m goin ter stay on here I got ter marry him next
Chuseday when ’Squire Stark comes here. Which I’ll die fust, fer I ain’t
goin’ ter marry no cuzzen. In pertickler I ain’t goin’ ter marry Hiram
Bozeman which I do despise fer the meanest man on this mountain. Ef yer
ment what yer sed, then yer kin come ter the big spring Monday nite an’
I’ll be waitin’ fer yer in the shadder er the ole chestnut. Ef yer ain’t
thar by nine o’clock thar won’t be nothin’ fer me ter do but ter run
away, which I will, so help me God afore I’ll marry him as sez I must.”
“You will no hoo this is frum fer the name is writ on the outside.”
Gabe sat during the reading as if stupefied, but when Liz had finished
and held out to him the scrawled sheet, he rose. He looked at the sun; it
was five o’clock and a good three hours to Bozeman’s when the mare was
fresh; he would have to take it easy, for there was the return trip with
the double burden. “Lord!” he ejaculated under his breath, and threw a
leg over the animal’s lean flank.
“I ain’t got no hat,” said the boy. “I dropped it fordin’ the crick an’
this pesky critter wouldn’t let me git it—orneriest mule I ever see!”
“I got ter git my saddle an’ bridle. Come on an’ I’ll find yer a hat,”
answered Gabe, as he put off in the direction of his stable, followed
by the other. And in a few minutes the two returning passed Liz and Bet
still sitting in a state of bewilderment by the side of the overturned
hay load. As they gazed after the disappearing figures Liz turned to Bet,
a growing horror in her wide eyes.
“That’s one o’ Gran’pap’s ole hats he’s got on!” she said in an
awe-struck voice.
To reassure themselves they hastened home. Crossing the porch where
the dog lay asleep, their hurrying feet lagged a little, a sort of
superstitious fear upon them. A sound fell upon their ears—a low, piteous
sobbing, that made them clutch each other’s frocks and peer breathlessly
in at the half-closed door. On the sill was a freshly-filled pail of
water, and in the middle of the floor knelt their grandmother, her head
bowed in the string of wool hats which hung dependant from one nail—in
his haste Gabe had not taken time to fasten again the end which he had
removed from the opposite joist. And so it was, when she returned from
the spring whither she had gone when he entered the house, the sight
met her gaze—the sacred line of relics trailed in the dust, as it were,
affection’s altar rudely torn of its sacred image, and that by the
ruthless hand of her own son—and his son!