Letters полностью

Andrew goes, then, after all, not home to Castines Hundred, but to Louisiana. The reason he gives, here at the end of this second posthumous letter, is that, his patriotism having been both excited and gratified by the McHenry episode, he hopes to forestall the battle he knows is to come. That New Orleans will be Admiral Cochrane’s next objective he is certain, and that to atone for the inglorious retreat from Baltimore — as well as for Prevost’s retreat from Plattsburgh — the British will commit their forces to a major assault. But it is the opinion of William Patterson, whose judgment our ancestor respects, that the British economy, drained by the long campaign against Napoleon, cannot sustain the war into 1815. Patterson believes, and Andrew concurs, that when the news of Baltimore and Plattsburgh reaches London, the prince regent’s cabinet will settle a treaty at Ghent before the year ends, with or without their Indian buffer state and Mississippi navigation rights. Andrew fears that a decisive victory by either side at this point will upset the stalemate he and Andrée have been working for, and which despite his new feeling for the U.S.A. he still believes to be in the Indians’ best interest. Inasmuch as the Niagara Frontier is quiet (on Guy Fawkes Day 1814 General Izard will blow up Fort Erie and withdraw across the river to Buffalo, the last military action in the north), and Andrew Jackson has been authorized by Secretary Monroe to raise and command another army for defense of the Gulf Coast, the danger is clearly from that quarter.

But we do not forget, Henry, that our ancestor, no homebody at best, has been struck a severe blow to the head (the lieutenant of that gig has happily reported him killed; John Skinner and Dr. Beanes are not sorry to hear it; but Francis Key, less certain that the fellow was a turncoat, dutifully reports the news to “Mrs. Cook, Castines Hundred, Canada,” and somehow the letter reaches her despite the war and the vague address). Even as he closes this letter, two years later, Andrew is subject to spells of giddiness, occasional blackouts, from each of which he awakes momentarily believing himself to be on Bloodsworth Island, 36 years old, and the War of 1812 not yet begun. Though he never loses sight of his larger end—“the rectification, in [his] life’s 2nd cycle, of its 1st”—his conception of means, never very consistent, grows more and more attenuated. We remind ourselves that he is completing this letter in France, from Bellerophon, Napoleon a prisoner on board, himself about to set out on an urgent errand in that connection, and yet nowhere in these pages explains how he got there, and what business it is of his to get the fallen emperor a passport to America! No wonder Andrée was skeptical, if she read these lettres posthumes at all.

There was also talk at Mr. Patterson’s of the Baratarians [Andrew concludes his letter glibly], a band of freebooters led by the brothers Lafitte, of whom the younger, Jean, had been a captain with Napoleon. When the British in the Gulf solicited their services against New Orleans, Jean Lafitte sent their letters to his friend (and mine) Jean Blanque in the Louisiana legislature, hoping to raise his stock in New Orleans, where his brother Pierre had been jail’d as a pirate. But the Governor’s Council declared the letters forgeries, sent a Navy force to destroy Barataria, and jail’d Lafitte’s band. Thot I: Here is a man after my own heart, who might serve as a go-between to mislead both Admiral Cochrane & General Jackson into avoiding a disastrous battle. Thus I determin’d to seek out this Jean Lafitte at once, and solicit him to this end, before rejoining you & our children.

Incredibly, Henry, here his letter ends!