choose?
Here is the opening chapter of the reminiscences of a man who was a friend to both Andrew Jackson and Jean Lafitte. I hope you enjoy his friendship as well as they did. I know I have.
Excerpt from The Floodgates of Hell, The Reminiscences of Colonel James McGonohan 1876
I had served more than two years in the Army of the United States prior to January 8, 1815, yet I mark that day as my first as a true soldier. My entire military career, before that day, was a series of mere skirmishes by comparison. On the plains of Chalmette, a pleasant walk downriver from the romance of New Orleans, I saw the unfathomable desolation that war can wreak for the first time.
Thunder cannot compare to the din of constant cannon fire. The sound of a mortar discharging death swamps everything. The roar of artillery on that day drowned the crack of our Dirty Shirts’ rifles, but it couldn’t stop those shots from finding their targets. Dirty Shirts…I haven’t thought of those words in so very many years. By the time the battle began, the red coats of our British foes were well-nigh as dirty as those of our most raggedy Kaintuck, yet still they called our brave boys Dirty Shirts.
At the Battle of New Orleans, the culminating conflict of the War of 1812, the British learned that brass buttons do not fend off grape shot, and intricate marching maneuvers do not outrun death. When the cannons fell silent, 2,000 dead and wounded—but very well-dressed— British soldiers lay on the battlefield. Nay, 2,000 dead and wounded British soldiers covered the battlefield.
Their red coats gave the impression of a vast field of blood, even when viewed from so great a distance that their spilled blood could not possibly be visible. Yet behind the American rampart, a stout wall of earth more than a mile long and as much as eight feet high, lay less than a hundred casualties.
New Orleans erupted in effusive gratitude after that great victory. Her citizens thanked General Jackson for their city’s salvation with parties and balls and pageants and fêtes, all presented with an oddly French flair, considering that the celebrations honored the victory of an American army in defense of an American city. Yet when I returned to the battlefield, I walked down the mighty bulwark that had protected our men from the army of the most powerful nation in existence, and I gave credit in my own mind to the less storied soldiers—the ones who built that wall.
I was one of those military engineers. I served under General Jackson in the Indian Wars and the War of 1812. When the battle was done and the remnant British army had withdrawn through the hellish Louisiana swamps and sailed home, I returned to the Chalmette battlefield. I stood atop the wall of earth that had protected thousands of Americans—some of them my friends. Without that wall, they would have suffered the same end as that great bloody sea of British soldiers. The Redcoats’ bodies were long gone by then, but I could still see them. I can see them now.
When I realized that my skills with life’s practical inventions—bridges, roads, dikes, and berms—could save so many of my countrymen’s lives, I at first thought to devote my own life to serving the army as a military engineer, doing just that. In my twilight years, I realize that the soldiers on the other side of that rampart had fathers and mothers and wives and sweethearts, just as our soldiers did, but even the most brilliant human alive lacks perspective at age eighteen.
I have built roads to move an army through a trackless wilderness. I have built bridges to bring that army across that wilderness without getting their feet wet. At Chalmette, I even held power over floodwaters, if only for a time. I helped breach a levee wall, splashing a little piece of the great Mississippi River onto the Redcoats’ path, forcing them to wade for miles in a Louisiana winter that was as bitter cold as many a December day at my Ohio home.
The
Here is the opening chapter of the reminiscences of a man who was a friend to both Andrew Jackson and Jean Lafitte. I hope you enjoy his friendship as well as they did. I know I have.
Excerpt from The Floodgates of Hell, The Reminiscences of Colonel James McGonohan 1876
I had served more than two years in the Army of the United States prior to January 8, 1815, yet I mark that day as my first as a true soldier. My entire military career, before that day, was a series of mere skirmishes by comparison. On the plains of Chalmette, a pleasant walk downriver from the romance of New Orleans, I saw the unfathomable desolation that war can wreak for the first time.
Thunder cannot compare to the din of constant cannon fire. The sound of a mortar discharging death swamps everything. The roar of artillery on that day drowned the crack of our Dirty Shirts’ rifles, but it couldn’t stop those shots from finding their targets. Dirty Shirts…I haven’t thought of those words in so very many years. By the time the battle began, the red coats of our British foes were well-nigh as dirty as those of our most raggedy Kaintuck, yet still they called our brave boys Dirty Shirts.
At the Battle of New Orleans, the culminating conflict of the War of 1812, the British learned that brass buttons do not fend off grape shot, and intricate marching maneuvers do not outrun death. When the cannons fell silent, 2,000 dead and wounded—but very well-dressed— British soldiers lay on the battlefield. Nay, 2,000 dead and wounded British soldiers covered the battlefield.
Their red coats gave the impression of a vast field of blood, even when viewed from so great a distance that their spilled blood could not possibly be visible. Yet behind the American rampart, a stout wall of earth more than a mile long and as much as eight feet high, lay less than a hundred casualties.
New Orleans erupted in effusive gratitude after that great victory. Her citizens thanked General Jackson for their city’s salvation with parties and balls and pageants and fêtes, all presented with an oddly French flair, considering that the celebrations honored the victory of an American army in defense of an American city. Yet when I returned to the battlefield, I walked down the mighty bulwark that had protected our men from the army of the most powerful nation in existence, and I gave credit in my own mind to the less storied soldiers—the ones who built that wall.
I was one of those military engineers. I served under General Jackson in the Indian Wars and the War of 1812. When the battle was done and the remnant British army had withdrawn through the hellish Louisiana swamps and sailed home, I returned to the Chalmette battlefield. I stood atop the wall of earth that had protected thousands of Americans—some of them my friends. Without that wall, they would have suffered the same end as that great bloody sea of British soldiers. The Redcoats’ bodies were long gone by then, but I could still see them. I can see them now.
When I realized that my skills with life’s practical inventions—bridges, roads, dikes, and berms—could save so many of my countrymen’s lives, I at first thought to devote my own life to serving the army as a military engineer, doing just that. In my twilight years, I realize that the soldiers on the other side of that rampart had fathers and mothers and wives and sweethearts, just as our soldiers did, but even the most brilliant human alive lacks perspective at age eighteen.
I have built roads to move an army through a trackless wilderness. I have built bridges to bring that army across that wilderness without getting their feet wet. At Chalmette, I even held power over floodwaters, if only for a time. I helped breach a levee wall, splashing a little piece of the great Mississippi River onto the Redcoats’ path, forcing them to wade for miles in a Louisiana winter that was as bitter cold as many a December day at my Ohio home.
The
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