Ended in a draw. But showed America was not to be f@“ked with..
Two items: What if the Brits had won at New Orleans? Would they have been so eager to end the war or return captured land? 2, As the British were buring DC, a massive thunderstorm began and the heavy rain helped put out the fires and save the outer walls of the White House and other structures. An act of God to save a country he would need later and had great pans for?
But it was the inspiration for a great song:
It also is the war that gave the ‘nucks “The Maple Leaf Forever.”
14 years ago I was on the Canadian side of the Falls, driving down Lundy’s Lane through Queenstown Heights, when I had my Epiphany, that this was in that song:
At Queenstown Heights and Lundy’s Lane,
Our brave fathers, side by side,
For freedom, homes, and loved ones dear,
Firmly stood and nobly died;
And those dear rights which they maintained,
We swear to yield them never!
Our watchword ever more shall be,
The Maple Leaf for ever!
It was about the War of 1812, and here in what used to be the Canadian national anthem, WE were the bad guys! But then, in our anthem the Brits, and by extension their Canadian colonists, were our bad guys.
We did have relative sovereignty thru the Civil War, however various events further cemented the British (Bankers) win, with the Civil War bankruptcy of the nation, the Act of 1871, the creation of the private corporation we know as the FED and the slow but sure conversion from PM-backed currency to pure fiat.
“We stood beside our cotton bales and didn’t say a thing.”
LOL!
(the Battle of New Orleans)
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
We fired our guns and the British kept a-comin’
There wasn’t 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 a river
And we see’d the British come
And there must have been a hundred of ‘em
Beatin’ on the drums
They stepped so high and they made their bugles ring
We stood beside our cotton bales and didn’t say a thing
We fired our guns and the British kept a-comin’
There wasn’t 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
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 our squirrel guns
And really gave ‘em, well
We fired our guns and the British kept a-comin’
There wasn’t as many as there was a while ago
We fired once more and they begin to runnin’
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico
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
On 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
We fired our guns and the British kept a-comin’
There wasn’t 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
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
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico
Hut-two-three-four
Sound off, three-four
Hut-two-three-four
Sound off, three-four
Left out some relevant details:
1. The U.S. won some important one-on-battles at sea (our frigates were bigger and made with very strong Live Oak) but soon what little navy we had was bottled up in port by the Brit blockade.
2. Our army depended on militias and they performed poorly in battle (see: Bladensburg Races).
3. The real war-winner were the swarm of privateers who roamed as far as the Pacific chasing and capturing Brit cargoes. It got so serious that the Brits had to escort convoys all over (and still lost ships) and the insurance rates skyrocketed.
In my opinion, privateers won the war and preserved the American nation from the power of Britain.
Bkmk
1) At Ft. McHenry, the flag actually used was what was called a “storm flag,” much smaller and difficult to see from the bay. When the shelling ended, the commander hoisted a normal-sized US flag, which is what Francis Scott Key saw.
2) Paul Johnson in “Birth of the Modern” has a GREAT section on the implications of the “draw.”
3) The Brits had slowly re-learned the lessons of 1777-83, which was that while they could control PARTS of the seas, they couldn’t control every port, all the time, and interior invasions were doomed because they could never bring the entire US military-—especially one still heavily represented by local militias-—to battle.
4) The US completely destroyed the Brits’ Indian alliance, depriving it of a major threat in the west.
5) On some occasions already (Chippewa, for example), American regulars went toe-to-toe with Redcoats in open field and shocked the Brits.
6) Harkening back to Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill, the Battle of New Orleans showed the Brits how suicidal it was to try to storm entrenched U.S. positions. At NO, Jackson’s cannons took out the bulk of the British guns before the advance actually occurred.
7) A great book on the naval side is “Six Frigates” by Ian Toll.