Part 13

On the 29th of August, 1814, Colonel Edward Nichols, in command of the land forces quartered in the Spanish capital of Pensacola, issued a proclamation, from which we quote:

Natives of Louisiana! On you the first call is made to assist in liberating from a faithless, imbecile government, your paternal soil. Spaniards, Frenchmen, Italians, and British; whether settled, or residing for a time in Louisiana, on you also, I call to aid me in this just cause. The American usurpation in this country must be abolished, and the lawful owners of the soil put in possession. I am at the head of a large body of Indians, well armed, disciplined, and commanded by British officers, a good train of artillery with every requisite, seconded by the powerful aid of a numerous squadron of ships. Be assured, your property, your laws, the tranquility and peace of your country, will be guaranteed to you. Rest assured that these brave Indians only burn with an ardent desire of satisfaction for the wrongs they have suffered from the Americans, to join you in liberating the southern province from their yoke, and drive them into the limits formerly prescribed by my sovereign. The Indians have pledged themselves not to injure the persons or properties of any but enemies to their Spanish or English fathers. A flag, Spanish, French, or British, over any door, will be a certain protection.

Inhabitants of Kentucky! You have too long borne with grievous impositions. The whole brunt of the war has fallen on your brave sons; be imposed on no longer; but either range yourselves under the standard of your forefathers, or observe a strict neutrality. If you comply, whatever provisions you send down will be paid for in dollars, and the safety of the persons bringing it, as well as the free navigation of the Mississippi, will be guaranteed to you.

Men of Kentucky! Let me call to your minds the conduct of those factions which hurried you into this civil, unjust, and unnatural war, at a time when Great Britain was straining every nerve in defense of her own, and the liberties of the world. Europe is now happy and free, and now hastens justly to avenge an unprovoked insult. Accept of my offers; everything I have promised, I guarantee to you, on the sacred honor of a British officer.

We might repeat such evidences of the purposes and plans of the expedition to Louisiana. But we will close the subject with the impressions of General Jackson himself.

In a contribution to the Philadelphia Times, of the 1st of November, 1898, Colonel A.C. Buell is authority for the following:

"It was related to me," says Colonel Buell, "by the late Governor William Allen, of Ohio, when, as correspondent of the Missouri Republican, I visited the venerable statesman at his home near Chillicothe, in 1875. After an interview on the current political situation, Governor Allen became reminiscent. A scrap-book beats the best of memories in the world; so I will quote from my scrap-book the exact text of this reminiscence. The Governor said:

"'Shortly after Arkansas was admitted into the Union, in 1836, I, being a member of Congress, then called at the White House. General Jackson--he always preferred to be called General, rather than Mr. President--invited me to lunch with him. No sooner were we seated, than he said: Mr. Allen, let us take a little drink to the new star in the flag;--Arkansas! This ceremony being duly observed, the General continued: Allen, if there had been disaster, instead of victory, at New Orleans, there would never have been a State of Arkansas.

"'This, of course, interested me; and I asked: Why do you say that, General?

"'Then he answered that: If Pakenham had taken New Orleans, the British would have claimed and held the whole of Louisiana Purchase.

"'But, I said, you know, General Jackson, that the Treaty of Ghent, which had been signed fifteen days before the decisive battle, provided for the restoration of all territory, places and possessions, taken by either nation from the other, during the war, with certain unimportant exceptions.

"'Yes, of course, Jackson replied, but the minutes of the conference at Ghent, as kept by Mr. Gallatin, represent the British commissioners as declaring in exact words: "We do not admit Bonaparte's construction of the law of nations; we can not accept it in relation to any subject-matter before us."

"'At that moment, pursued General Jackson, none of our commissioners knew what the real meaning of those words was. When they were uttered the British commissioners knew that Pakenham's expedition had been decided on; our commissioners did not know it. Now, since I have been Chief Magistrate, I have learned, from diplomatic sources of the most unquestionable authority, that the British ministry did not intend the Treaty of Ghent to apply to the Louisiana Purchase at all. The whole corporation of them,--Pitt, the Duke of Portland, Grenville, Perceval, Lord Liverpool, and Castlereagh, denied in toto the legal right of Napoleon to sell Louisiana to us. They held, therefore, that we had no right to that Territory. So you see, Allen, that the words of Mr. Gouldburn, on behalf of the British commissioners, which I have quoted to you from Albert Gallatin's minutes of the conference, had a far deeper significance than our commissioners could penetrate. These words were meant to lay the foundation for a claim on the Louisiana Purchase, entirely external to the provisions of the Treaty of Ghent. And in that way, the British government was signing a treaty with one hand in front, whilst the other hand, behind its back, was dispatching Pakenham's army to seize the fairest of our possessions.

"'You can also see, my dear Allen, said the old General, waxing warmer, you can also see what an awful mess such a situation would have been, if the British programme had been carried out in full. But Providence willed otherwise. All the tangled web that the cunning of English diplomacy could weave around our unsuspecting commissioners at Ghent was torn to pieces, and soaked with British blood, in half an hour, at New Orleans, by the never-missing rifles of my Tennessee and Kentucky pioneers; and that ended it. British diplomacy could do wonders; but it could not provide against such a contingency as that. Now, Allen, you have the whole story; and know why Arkansas was saved to the Union.'"

JUST LIKE JACKSON.

During the war of 1812-15, the officials of the English Government, civil and military, distinguished themselves by their haughty arrogance and insulting tone of superiority toward the American people; and were, with revengeful malice, guilty of vandalism, spoliations, and cruelties, which were a disgrace to civilization, not to speak of the massacres and butcheries of thousands of women and children by the savage Indians, whom they employed and paid to commit these crimes. Andrew Jackson soon put an end to these English barbarisms wherever he commanded the American armies. An incident, illustrative of his summary methods of dealing with the insolence of his enemies in authority, occurred at Pensacola. The English fleet and army had come in and quartered there in the Spanish capital, with the approval and aid of the Spanish governor, though Spain was at peace with the United States. The British assured him that they would soon be in possession of Louisiana and the coast country, and would fully protect the Spaniard as an ally and friend. When Jackson marched his army to Pensacola, and sent in a message to the governor to expel the British soldiers from the city and order their fleet out of the harbor, the reply of the Spaniard was truckling to the English in tone and evasive and insolent toward the American officer in command. General Jackson replied in the following language:

Your Excellency has been candid enough to admit your having supplied the Indians with arms. In addition to this, I have learned that a British flag has been seen flying on one of your forts. All this is done while you are pretending to be neutral. You can not be surprised then; but on the contrary will provide a fort in your town for my soldiers and Indians, should I take it into my head to pay you a visit. In future, I beg you to withhold your insulting charges against my government, for one more inclined to listen to slander than I am; nor consider me any more as a diplomatic character, unless so proclaimed to you from the mouths of my cannon.

The old hero meant all he said; for he marched upon the town, forced a surrender, sent the British flying to their ships for safety, and compelled the fleet to put to sea.

HUMILIATION OF ENGLAND.

No event in the modern history of her military operations brought a deeper disappointment and a keener sense of humiliation to the English Government, and to the nation, than did the disastrous failure of this expedition, fitted out in haughty pride for the invasion and conquest of Louisiana. The true story of the campaign and battles was in the main suppressed by the Tory press, in the interest of the reigning dynasty and to save the pride and prestige of a really great and imperial people. A coincidence occurred to aid in diverting the mind of the public from the contemplation of the deplorable event. On the 23d of February, 1815, news of the defeat at New Orleans reached London. On the same day arrived the intelligence of the escape of Napoleon from Elba, and of his landing on the shores of France. Public attention was diverted by the new sensation. The government press fostered the illusion, and the horrors of New Orleans were not so fully known or felt.

William Cobbett, the noted Liberal essayist and author, of England, wrote of the event: "And this was all the people of the duped nation ever heard of the matter. Bonaparte had landed from Elba, and the battle of Waterloo soon succeeded. Both the Government and the people were glad to forget all about this unmerciful beating in America. This battle of New Orleans broke the heart of European despotism. The man who won it did, in that one act, more for the good and the honor of the human race than ever was done by any other man."

The author, discussing the incidents and issues of this remarkable campaign, in the light of the vast superiority in both military and naval forces of the British over the Americans, their more thorough equipment, and their veteran discipline under the best-trained officers in the world, put the inquiry: "How can we account for the repeated reverses, and the final over-whelming defeat and expulsion from the country, of such a vast and formidable armament by an inferior body of raw recruits, suddenly improvised for defense from the militia of the country, and but poorly armed and equipped?" "Providence!" was the reply; nothing less than Providence could have baffled and beaten such a powerful foe, bent on conquest and spoliation for a wicked purpose, with a wicked spirit, and in a wicked cause. England's boastful pride and intolerant and cruel insolence toward her American kindred was humbled at last. The God of battle had once again in time punished a strong nation for its stubborn crimes, and given victory to the oppressed. Providence was with Jackson and his militia!

DEATH OF LORD PAKENHAM.

Pakenham died the death of the brave soldier, the heroic Briton, and the beloved commander. His wounds were mortal, and he was at once borne back to headquarters unconscious and dying. No last words came down to us through the grief-stricken aids who ministered to him in his last hour. The British accounts of his wounding and death-scenes are conflicting and unsatisfactory. Judge Walker, in his work, "Jackson and New Orleans," after much research, says that Pakenham was wounded first while attempting to rally the Forty-fourth Regiment, whose chief officer, Colonel Mullins, had failed to lead it to a second attack, after the first repulse by the Tennessee and Kentucky infantry. A musket-ball broke his right arm, and another killed his horse. His aid, Captain McDougall, assisted him to mount his own horse, a creole pony, and led him forward by the bridle-rein, the General's wounded arm hanging helpless at his side. Pakenham continued in front, and to encourage his men. As the Ninety-third Highlanders came up, he raised his hat in his left hand, waved it in the air with enthusiasm, and shouted:

"Hurrah! Hurrah! brave Highlanders!"

A discharge of grape-shot almost annihilated the group. One shot passed through the General's thigh, and at the same time through the body of the pony, and both went down, never to rise again. As the aid raised him once again in his arms, the chief received a third and fatal wound in the groin. He was borne back then, near to his headquarters, and placed under a large oak tree, where, beyond the surgeon's skill, he shortly breathed his last.

BRITISH SOLDIERS WON LAURELS IN EUROPEAN WARS.

From English authorities we learn that there were in the English army, under Pakenham, regiments that had won laurels at Martinique, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vittoria, the Pyrenees, and Toulouse. The English chronicler, Cooke, says of some of these veterans, who touched, on their way to America from the coasts of France, the shore of Old England for a few days, that "scraps from our colors, or other little souvenirs, were craved for with outstretched hands, to find a resting place in the fair bosoms of the ladies of Devonshire."