Battle of New Orleans a pivotal moment for United States of America 200 years ago The decisive victory by Major General Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) and his ragtag “army” of wild American frontiersmen, Creoles, African American slaves and Native American Indians at the Battle of New Orleans 200 years ago was a historical event of monumental importance. Often the Battle of New Orleans -- the core fighting took place on January 08, 1815 -- is viewed these days as having been a tremendous military victory but historically insignificant, mainly because an official peace treaty between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the United States of America had already been signed on Christmas Eve 1814 in the Belgian city of Ghent. What I was taught back in my schoolboy days, like most of us, was that the Battle of New Orleans was completely irrelevant. In stark reality, the terms defined in the peace treaty were only as good as the paper that they were written on. There exists a revealing set of secret orders given in October 1814 to Major General Sir Edward Pakenham (1778-1815), the brilliant commander of the British invasion of the Gulf Coast of the United States. The guidelines directed Pakenham to fight on regardless of any peace deal and to capture New Orleans. These top-secret commands should forever put to rest any doubt about British designs in America at that point in time. The instructions truly are the smoking gun. They specifically say to Pakenham: ‘If you hear of a peace treaty, pay no attention, continue to fight.’ Americans just simply don’t appreciate how agonizingly close the Britons came to seizing New Orleans and radically changing the course of American history for all eternity. The British viewed the momentous sale of the vast Louisiana Territory by Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) to Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) as perfectly illegal. The United Kingdom had never been fully reconciled with the painful and humiliating loss of its prized colonies in North America. Their ultimate goal was to colonize Louisiana. The defiant stand by Jackson and his crude army, then, takes on new meaning. Almost 300 British soldiers were killed in action and almost six times as many were wounded in action, captured and made prisoners of war or were missing in action after a multi-pronged attack by the British on the ingenious makeshift fortifications that the Americans had shrewdly erected on the Mississippi River below New Orleans. The staggering defeat caused the once mighty British armada to retreat in total disgrace to lowly Mobile, Alabama, and definitively ended the terrible War of 1812 (1812-1815). The two formidable nation states never went off to war again. This is as big as the Siege of Yorktown in the fall of 1781, the decisive Franco-American victory over the Britons in Virginia during the bloody American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). All the same, it’s not an easy page of American history to digest. Andy Jackson was a cruel, bloodthirsty killer and wealthy slave owner. Though courteous in genteel American society, the future seventh President of the United States (1829-1837) drank, swore, smoked, gambled and loved cockfighting like many other red-blooded American males of his day. He routinely ordered brutal executions and put bounties on the heads of fugitive slaves. As for the other “hero” of the Battle of New Orleans, the notorious French buccaneer Jean Laffite (Lafitte) (circa 1780-circa 1825), he was a known slave-runner and infamous tax cheat who likely never even heard a shot fired during the battle. But in discussing the formation of the United States, the crucial battle for New Orleans and its colorful participants, regardless of their many flaws, were absolutely pivotal in saving the American expansionist dream. When you think of this great continental nation stretching from shining sea to shining sea, it would not have happened but for this battle.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 04:53:17 +0000
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