January 17, 2006

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), might 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.

Additionally, it seems unlikely that the Prime Minister of Great Britain would have stood by impotently for a week before providing effective relief to the inhabitants of New Wellington as President Bush did when he watched the City of New Orleans drown before his eyes.

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