Saturday, January 8, 2005

[1815 - Battle of New Orleans - General Andrew Jackson decimates superior British force]

[1912 - Jose Ferrer, actor & director, born Santurce, Puerto Rico]

[1942 - Stephen Hawking, physicist, born in Oxford, England]

On the Bayou

What if Andrew Jackson and a few thousand frontiersmen from Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana (who could shoot the eye out of a gnat at one hundred yards), together with some regular US Army troops, pirates, Choctaw warriors, and free black soldiers had not turned back the British at New Orleans? Would tea and crumpets instead of jambalaya be on the menu in the bayou? Would there be ballroom dancing instead of Zydeco, and maybe a very different kind of jazz?

One big plus, however, the slaves in New Wellington, BCC, (formerly New Orleans), would have fared somewhat better than they did in the State of Louisiana. In 1833 the Abolition of Slavery Act was passed in Britain. It took over a quarter century more, and a blood-soaked Civil War, for us to get to the same result.

Yes, the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812, had been signed in Europe several weeks before the Battle of New Orleans took place, but that treaty resolved none of the issues that started the war, and one doubts that the British would have given up a hard won foothold that controlled traffic on the Mississippi regardless of what that document said.

William's Whimsical Words:

In those days generals who screwed up often died on the battlefield trying to rally their troops, as did Major General Sir Edward Pakenham in the Battle of New Orleans. One mourns the passing of this tradition.

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