Chapter XI: Testimony From General Jackson Himself

In presenting this case against the school historians, which he feels has already been made, to the satisfaction of any impartial reader, the writer has refrained from using much confirmatory material in order to be as brief as possible. But in the history of Andrew Jackson, written by A. C. Buell, and published in 1904, there occurs illuminating data highly apropos in this connection. It may be remarked that Buell is not a favorite of some historians. Buell was distinctly not pro-English.

In chapter 3 of the second volume of Buell’s history, entitled “British Designs on Louisiana,” the author reiterates a statement before made, that Jackson’s Army of New Orleans saved the Louisiana Purchase, and adds that few people of the millions who were celebrating in 1904 the centenary of the colossal transaction between Napoleon Bonaparte and Thomas Jefferson, realized the significance of these words. Buell later says: “Viewed in the light of its actual influence on the map of North America, and the fortunes of this Republic, it was the most important battle ever fought between Great Britain and the United States.... The real, vast, enduring value of the Battle of New Orleans, lay in the fact that it prevented another war.”

In adducing evidence of the purpose of the English Government against Louisiana, Buell says: “The fleet carried more than an army, the narratives of the subaltern and Capt. Cooke, reputable British officers of 85th and 43rd Light Infantry, respectively, tell us there was on board the fleet ‘a complete civil government staff’ to be installed in place of the State Government of Louisiana at the moment of occupation. One of them, with a spice of humor, informs us that one member of this ‘civil government staff’ was ‘a worthy Colonial official whose confidence in the success of the Expedition led him to resign the comfortable position of Collector of Barbadoes to take the larger and more lucrative post for the (to-be) Crown Colony of Louisiana.”

As other members of the civil government staff Mr. Buell names Honorable Mr. Elwood, Lieut. Governor, transferred from Trinidad, and Mr. Dockstader, transferred from upper Canada; also an Attorney-General, an Admiralty Judge, and a Secretary of the Colony, sent from England direct.

Mr. Buell continues: “Besides his general orders at Plymouth, Pakenham brought with him a proclamation approved by the Home Government or Colonial office. This proclamation was to be published as soon as the British Army should occupy New Orleans. It promised protection to everybody, general amnesty to all previously engaged in hostilities, and proclaimed the sovereignty of England, in behalf of Spain, over all the territory fraudulently conveyed by Bonaparte to the United States. It denied the validity of the secret treaty by which Spain re-ceded Louisiana to France in 1800. It denied Bonaparte’s right to act for France in 1803. And finally it ‘denounced the pretentions of the United States to sovereignty under the alleged purchase from Bonaparte.’ This proclamation was in printed form at British headquarters the night before the battle, and its contents were well known to many British officers. The night after the battle it disappeared. Every copy of it was burned!

“All this evidence was obtained from British prisoners taken in the battle of January 8th. But it lacked one link to make the chain perfect. That was evidence of specific design and fixed policy on the part of the British Government. In the absence of such evidence the cabinet of St. James might, in emergency, declare that the scheme of a ‘crown colony’ and the proclamation itself were the acts of General Pakenham—to be approved if he succeeded or disavowed if he failed. The needed link was supplied long after.”

“The final link in the chain,” says Mr. Buell, “was furnished by General Jackson himself. In the fall of 1875, the author, then a staff correspondent of the _Missouri Republican_, visited former Governor William Allen, of Ohio, at his farm near Chillicothe. During the visit, which was of three days’ duration, the venerable statesman’s conversation—when not upon agricultural subjects—was mainly of reminiscences of his earlier public life. All was interesting; some of it historically valuable, particularly those parts relating to the British invasion of Louisiana. What Governor Allen said on this subject we reproduce here, exactly as it was printed in 1875.”

Governor Allen’s interview is here given in full:

“Near the end of General Jackson’s second administration and shortly after the admission of Arkansas to the Union, I, being Senator elect from Ohio, went to Washington to take the seat on March 4th.

“General Jackson,—he always preferred to be called General rather than Mr. President, and so we always addressed him by his military title—General Jackson 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 said: ‘Allen, if there had been disaster instead of victory at New Orleans, there never would have been a state of Arkansas.’”

“This, of course, interested me, and I asked: ‘Why do you say that, General?’

“Then he said, that if Pakenham had taken New Orleans, the British would have claimed and held the whole Louisiana Purchase. But I said: ‘You know, General Jackson, that the treaty of Ghent, which had been signed fifteen days before the battle, provided for restoration of all territory, places and possessions taken by either nation from the other during the war, with certain unimportant exceptions.’

“‘Yes, of course,’ he 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; and we cannot 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 these 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, from 1803 to 1815—Pitt, the Duke of Portland, Granville, Percival, Lord Liverpool and Castlereagh—denied the legal right of Napoleon to sell Louisiana to us, and they held, therefore, that we had no right to that territory. So you see, Allen, that the words of Mr. Goulburn, 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 perpetrate. Those 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 while with the other hand behind its back it was despatching Pakenham’s army to seize the fairest of our possessions.

“‘You can also see, my dear William,’ said the old General, waxing warm (having once or twice more during the luncheon toasted the new star), ‘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 the English Diplomats 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 couldn’t provide against such a contingency as that. The British Commissioners could throw sand in the eyes of ours at Ghent, but they couldn’t help the cold lead that my riflemen sprinkled in the faces of their soldiers at New Orleans. Now, Allen, you have the whole story. Now you know why Arkansas was saved at New Orleans. Let’s take another little one.’”

Thomas E. Watson, at one time United States Senator from Georgia, in a history of Jackson, written after Buell’s history, quotes this interview and comments that it settles the question, and that if the British had captured New Orleans, the United States boundary line would have stopped at the Mississippi.