Letters полностью

But first they must be turned, and to their turning our forebear credits himself with three significant contributions. Early in December Andrew Jackson arrives, gaunt with dysentery and the rigors of his march from Florida, and assumes command of the city’s defenses. He inspires morale; he moves with industry and intelligence to fortify or block the likeliest approaches; but he has not enough men. In particular he lacks trained sailors and cannoneers, and heavy weapons for their use. Reinforcement is on the way, from Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, but it is all cavalry and infantry. Delegations of Creole citizens petition him in vain to enlist the Baratarians. To the bilingual “Ambassador from Kentucky” (whom he trusts for “speaking like a proper American and not a damn’d Frenchie”) Jackson confides that he has begun to regret his proclamation, but fears he will be thought irresolute if he rescinds it. “Johnny Barlow” opines that his friend Henry Clay, in such a situation, would subtly shift his stand and refuse the next such petition on jurisdictional instead of moral grounds: Baratarian leaders are in jail awaiting federal prosecution, and he Jackson has no authority to release them. “Barlow” will then see to it that the petitioners and the federal district judge get the hint; when prosecution is suspended and the Baratarians are released, Jackson may accept their service and materiel without having solicited them. The matter of pardon can be postponed until after the emergency. Jackson will thus have at his disposal the best sailors and cannoneers in the world, at no cost to the U.S. Treasury, together with an exquisite network of strategic information. Any contradictions of his proclamation will pass unnoticed; the Baratarians’ role can be ignored or understated in official dispatches to Washington; their prosecution can even be resumed at some future date, with or without giving them covert advance warning and time to escape.

Old Hickory grimaces. “Politics!”

“John Barlow” shrugs. What is a general of the army but a sort of chief executive? he asks. And what is the President of the United States but a sort of general, strategically marshaling and deploying the forces at his disposal to carry out as it were the orders of the Constitution? Jackson’s frown turns pensive.

Two days later Dominique You and the others are free, Jean Lafitte is reviewing his own maps with the general, Renato Beluche is organizing artillery companies, and the vessels that in September had fired Barataria are now manned by the Baratarians! “John Barlow” discreetly retires.

The British land their advance parties and assemble below the city. A sustained drive against them is out of the question: even with Jackson’s reinforcements, it is some 3,000 American militia against three times that many seasoned British regulars. Nevertheless, the first action between them — a bold and successful night raid by Jackson to induce the British to delay their own attack until their whole army is assembled (thus giving him more time to complete his defenses) — convinces “André Castine” that with the help of the Baratarians New Orleans can be defended. Word has come through Jean Lafitte’s spies that the British service commanders are at odds with each other. Major General Sir Edward Pakenham, Wellington’s brother-in-law, does not like the terrain: his army has the Mississippi on one flank, a swamp full of alligators and Indians on the other, the Americans before (who barbarously harass them all night long), and behind them a fleet that can evacuate only one third of the troops at a time. Admiral Cochrane is complaining that he has another General Ross on his hands; that if the army “shrinks from New Orleans as it shrank from Baltimore,” he will land his sailors and marines, storm the city himself, and let Pakenham’s soldiers bring up the baggage.

All familiar as a re-play’d play, writes Andrew Cook: the Chesapeake moved to the Mississippi! On the day after Jackson’s night raid — i.e., December 24, as Henry Clay and his colleagues in Ghent sign a treaty agreeing to the status quo ante bellum (which the British privately mean to interpret as invalidating Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase) — he puts by his French alias and under his proper name gets himself “rescued” by the British.

More specifically, he devises with Lafitte and Beluche the following strategy: their agents among the Spanish bayou fishermen, who are cooperating with the British, will identify him as a friend of Lafitte’s with whom Jean has broken over the question of the Baratarians’ allegiance to the U.S. However much Cochrane distrusts him after the Chesapeake episode, the admiral will most certainly question him about the strength and disposition of Jackson’s forces. Cook will improvise as best he can to stall and divert a major British offensive at least until Jackson’s defense line is complete.