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I had learn’d in the Chesapeake, he writes, that the surest road to Sir George’s confidence was a frank confession of rascality, especially as apply’d against his rivals. And so I gain’d his presence as “one André Castine, bringing news of Napoleon”; but once in his company I reveal’d myself as Andrew Cook, & told him all that had transpired since we saw each other last off Baltimore. In particular I regaled him with the rivalry between General Pakenham & Admiral Cochrane at New Orleans, & the tale of Mrs. Mullens, & Cochrane’s disgust that the peace came ere he had properly ransom’d a city. I then recounted the details of Bonaparte’s surrender (whereof England had as yet heard only the fact) & his hope for passport or asylum.

He has judged his man correctly. At first incredulous, then skeptical, Cockburn is soon delighting in the story of Admiral Malcolm and Mrs. Mullens, of Cochrane’s artillery duel with Andrew Jackson. He calls for maps, and argues persuasively that even after the January massacre it was Cochrane’s fecklessness and General Lambert’s shock that lost New Orleans: at the time of the burial truce the British had command of the west bank of the Mississippi above Jackson’s line, 50 armed vessels en route upriver and a blockade at its mouth, and clear superiority of numbers; to withdraw and rebegin a whole month later from Fort Bowyer was a foolish judgment and crucial loss of time, since everyone knew the peace was imminent. But that was Cochrane! Did Andrew know that the man had left Admiral Malcolm the ugly job of getting rid of all those Negroes and Indians he had so ardently recruited with false promises, and himself rushed home to litigate for prize money? And that while he was about it he was suing for libel any who dared say in print what everyone said in private: that he was a fool and, but for the odd foolhardy display, a coward?

As for Napoleon (whom Cockburn, in the English fashion, calls “Buonaparte”), the truth is that the British cabinet have no mind whatever to grant him either passport to America or asylum in England: they wish him heartily to the Devil and are annoyed that he did not conveniently dispatch himself to that personage. They dare not put him on trial, for they know him to be a master of manipulating public sympathy. Their resolve is to whisk him as speedily, quietly, and far as possible from the public eye forever. The legal and political questions about his status are many and delicate (Is he a prisoner of war? Of Britain or of the Allies? Does habeas corpus apply? Extradition?), and no one wants either to deal with them or to incur the consequences of not dealing with them. Now Sir George happens to know that Prime Minister Liverpool has already decided to confine the man for life in the most remote and impregnable situation in the empire, and consulting the Admiralty on that head, has been advised that the South Atlantic island of St. Helena, owned by the British East India Company, best fits the bill.

How does Cockburn know? Why, because he himself has been proposed for promotion to commander in chief of His Majesty’s naval force at the Cape of Good Hope and adjacent seas — i.e., the whole of the South Atlantic and Indian oceans — and the immediate reason for this promotion, he quite understands, is to sweeten the responsibility of fetching Bonaparte to St. Helena and seeing to it he stays there until a permanent commission has been established for his wardenship! He expects his orders daily, and though he readily accepts the “sweetening,” it is in fact an assignment he welcomes: perhaps his last chance to walk upon the stage of History. For that reason, while the cabinet would be relieved to hear that their captive has taken poison aboard Bellerophon en route to Tor Bay, he Cockburn would be much chagrined: he looks forward to many a jolly hour with Old Boney.