196 Years Ago - The American Agincourt and Thermopylae

Self | 01/08/2011 | Self

[SES1066]

Even though, as is now well known, this battle occurred after the "Treaty of Ghent" that had formally ended the Anglo-American "War of 1812", there can be little doubt of the importance of this outcome. If the British had succeeded, they would have been in possession and control over the richest city on the Gulf of Mexico and on the Mississippi terminus. What would have happened then? That is alternative history and an interesting speculation but I think that it is certain that it would not have been to the 40 year old American Republic's advantage.

Another side effect is that this battle against the best that Britain had to offer showed that the United States was becoming a military force to be wary of. Just as Crecy and Agincourt had convinced France that England was no push-over, so did this battle show all of Colonialist Europe that there were wolves in the New World. The 1823 Monroe Doctrine would have some proven teeth and would it have even happened without this victory and the earned British respect?

[DuncanWaring]

In 1814 we took a little trip
Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip.
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans
And we caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans.

[Chorus:]
We fired our guns and the British kept a’comin.
There wasn’t nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin’ on
Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

We looked down the river and we see’d the British come.
And there must have been a hundred of’em beatin’ on the drum.
They stepped so high and they made the bugles ring.
We stood by our cotton bales and didn’t say a thing.

[Chorus]

Old Hickory said we could take ‘em by surprise
If we didn’t fire our muskets ‘til we looked ‘em in the eye
We held our fire ‘til we see’d their faces well.
Then we opened up with squirrel guns and really gave ‘em ... well

[Chorus]

Yeah, they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles
And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn’t go.
They ran so fast that the hounds couldn’t catch ‘em
Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.**

We fired our cannon ‘til the barrel melted down.
So we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round.
We filled his head with cannon balls, and powdered his behind
And when we touched the powder off, the gator lost his mind.

[Chorus]

Yeah, they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles
And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn’t go.
They ran so fast that the hounds couldn’t catch ‘em
Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.**

[Last Dakotan]

Thanks for the posting.

I never understood why the British simply re-cycled the same tactics that had failed for them 30-40 years previously in the American Revolutionary War.

[hinckley buzzard]

Control of New Orleans and the Mississippi had been a bone of contention from the beginning. At the time of the revolution it was held by the Spanish, then the French. The Brits held the northern reaches of the continent down into the Ohio Valley.

America's westward growth was not simply pacifying and subduing the Indians in otherwise virgin territory. We had Europeans all over the place and none of them were reliable friends.

This was why Washington fretted about "entangling alliances." As President he had had his own fill of them, playing the Spanish, French and British against each other, just trying to get some space for the Republic to breathe.

[dominic flandry]

“Thermopylae had her messenger of defeat-the Alamo had none.”
-Thomas Jefferson Green

(inscription on the first Alamo monument in Austin, Texas)

[steelyourfaith]

Thanx ! Very interesting. Fascinating actually. This is an area of US military history that I've yet to study about. My main interest is the WWII era.

I essentially audited from afar my daughter's freshman college course devoted to the military history of the US a few years back in that she audio taped the lectures and sent them to me for transcription. I also purchased my own set of the recommended literature. The course provided rather superficial coverage of the War of 1812.

[9422WMR]

Thanks for posting that song.
My grandmother used to sing it to me and I have not thought of that song in YEARS!!!

[Celtic Cross]

I believe the British deployed about 4,000 men in the attacks? Out of about 11,000?

[DuncanWaring]

7,000 REMFs.

[Licensed-To-Carry]

See this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEhG7q0Ncpo

[Celtic Cross]

I've always thought what a waste of life this battle was, as the treaty had already been signed.

Its a shame so many men died needlessly.

[Free Vulcan]

Their arrogance didn’t help, but I think they hadn’t done much beyond the European battlefield by this point in terms of fighting away from home. I would guess they simply had no more living knowledge of fighting by other methods because this was after they’d gotten the Scots and Irish under relative control. They just couldn’t adapt back to the simpler, cruder techniques of warfare in the bush. That seems to be the achilles heel of major powers.

[SunkenCiv]

· GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach · · join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe ·
	Antiquity Journal  & archive  Archaeologica  Archaeology  Archaeology Channel  BAR  Bronze Age Forum  Discover  Dogpile  Eurekalert  Google  LiveScience  Mirabilis.ca  Nat Geographic  PhysOrg  Science Daily  Science News  Texas AM  Yahoo  Excerpt, or Link only?	Thanks SES1066. The War of 1812 revisited [2007] Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.
· History topic · history keyword · archaeology keyword · paleontology keyword · · Science topic · science keyword · Books/Literature topic · pages keyword ·

[70th Division]

They were liberals of course. Trying the same tactic over and over and hoping for a different outcome. Long rifles ruled the day and the war.

[Free Vulcan]

Well on second thought the British had fought the French-Indian war successfully about 40 years earlier. I’m not sure of the the tactics, but you’d think there’d be plenty left alive to know how to fight that way. It might have been politics or it might have been that those who were there didn’t stay in the military. Hard to say.

[NailInACoffin]

Thanks for the interesting history lesson. The War of 1812 is definitely one of those forgotten wars in our history.

[StonyBurk]

Can you imgaine Obama hiding in that red dress of the “I’m for sale ,but I ain’t cheap “ lady from That State while the Americans led by a Tea Party favorite grabs an alligater and teaches them what Johnny was singing about?

[VOA]

“
The vast experience of the British Regulars in movement and volley fire was
made useless by the setup of the battlefield and their numerical superiority
became just more cannon fodder.
“

As said in the first Gulf War, Jackson and company experienced
a “target-rich environment”.
And made the best of it.

I do like the two-hour documentary on The History Channel that included
The Battle of New Orleans.

[SES1066]

The "War of 1812" has such a multiplicity of causes and results that it can be hard to get a handle on it. The British still resented our independence and justly feared our ambitions for Canada. They were fighting for their lives against Napoleon and this war was a supreme distraction. A good recent book on this war from the British perspective is Jon Latimer's "1812:War with America"

For our part, we were a mess of a nation.The US Constitution was just 25 years old, we were on our 4th President (Madison), we were no where near digesting Mr. Jefferson's big real estate deal of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 but we were also facing a succession crisis of the New England states, in part because their Maritime interests were suffering from British predation and they felt that the national government was doing too little. We had a small but able Navy that had won our 1st foreign adventure against the Barbary Coast of Tunisia (1801-05) but were still having little luck in keeping British Navy ships from "impressing" American sailors.

We were trying to be neutral in the Napoleonic War but that basically meant that each side felt free to work against us. We had constant low-level war on our borders as the Native American 'Indians' justifiably hated our westward push, the Spanish in Florida turned a blind eye to fugitive slaves and smuggling while harboring pirates in Key West and other places.

What makes this "War of 1812" difficult is that it started without any real incident but with a lot of political desire and it ended in a brilliant peace treaty that returned everything back to where it was before the war. The only big concession was that Great Briton agreed to stop treating American Sailors as fugitive British Navy deserters.

Part of what the United States won was a sense of nation and bright stars that would play a big part in our history like Jackson, Winfield Scott, John Q. Adams and Henry Clay being just a few. A good book on a broad American overview would be Walter Borneman's "1812: The War That Forged a Nation"

[SES1066]

I do not know where you heard the assertion of only 4,000 British and I can’t buy that as the number of soldiers there. It is known that General Pakenham called off an earlier action the previous day in order to bring is forces to their full 8,000 strength. I would speculate that maybe what you are thinking of is that only 4,000 could effectively move against Jackson’s fortifications at any single time.

As for the “Treaty of Ghent” already being signed, you are using modern perspective on an 19th century world. This treaty was signed on December 24th, 1814, after the British negotiators could wait no longer for what they hoped would be good news from New Orleans. This 16 days would have been greatly insufficient for any sailing ship to cross the Atlantic. The best route from England to North America was to sail down to the Canaries and then follow the latitude line across to the Caribbean and then go north. This route, in the early 1800 took about 28-40 days.