Dirty Shirts, Nuns, Pirates, and Old Hickory: The Battle of New Orleans

Rarely if ever has a battle so effectively matched the culture of the town it was fought in like that one did.

You have the all time badass American Andrew Jackson teaming up with local
elites, freed slaves, native Americans, volunteers from all over the frontier and legit pirates.

And they all came together to put an all time asswhipping on the British.

This article lost me in the second paragraph when he says the battle was "unnecessary." The Treaty of Ghent hadn't been ratified and we were still at war. And the British were not acquiescing in the validity of the Louisiana Purchase. Had they taken New Orleans there is a chance that they would not have given it back. It was a very important battle. The lazy narrative that it was fought after the war was over is just wrong.

In elementary school (1970’s) my class took a field trip the Chalmette Battlefield where the battle took place. I went again a few years ago because I was in the area. The battlefield itself is rather small. It’s a shame because it is really not being kept up very well.

“In 1814 we took a little trip”

Did you bring the bacon?

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. The battlefield itself is rather small. It’s a shame because it is really not being kept up very well.

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This seems to be the case with many historical sites these days. Revisionist history seems to be much more important than the real history of our nation.
Case in point - my wife and I took the long way back home to Georgia after attending my mother's funeral in WV a year-an-a-half ago. Rather than take I-64 to I-75, we decided to take US60 and back roads. Along the way we decided to stop and check out Fort Boonesborough being that neither of us had seen it since a field trip in fifth grade some forty-five years ago.
The grass was tended well enough, but the facilities were run down and boarded up and the only real attraction that seemed to be even mildly maintained was the boat ramp into the Kentucky River.

You'd think that the state of Kentucky would have a bit more pride regarding the single most famous individual who took part in the founding of the state.

After seeing what Ft Boonesborough looked like, we didn't even want to make the drive to Hopkinsville to see Lincoln's birthplace.

The hard reality is that 2nd and 3rd tier sites like that are very poorly attended.

Everyone wants to see Gettysburg or Yorktown, but the places that don’t get covered in the school books are easy targets when it comes time for budget cuts.

And yes, at a federal level there is 100% an effort underway to discredit and defund places that don’t fit the social and cultural narratives that the political class is trying to set.

It’ll take a concerted effort to get those sites back up both at the political and private level like what I mentioned about the American Battlefield Trust to purchase, renovate and maintain these sites.

One of the best examples is the Battle of Franklin south of Nashville. It was a massive and horrible battle but when you get to the park there’s a nice primary site where the Union had battle lines with a house with bullet holes, but when you look south 50 yards away is a warehouse and modern road sitting where thousands of men were killed and wounded. Because in some areas the land wasn’t preserved or was privately owned and became valuable ruining the battlefield.

It’s not a priority at the federal level so unless people who care get involved those places will continue to be lost to history and development.

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because Lincolns birthplace is outside Hodgenville which is over an hour away.

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Thank you for correcting me. I always get mixed up with this one because of seeing the sign for Hodgenville near the Hopkinsville sign heading toward E-town on Bluegrass Pkwy from Lexington. (I'd probably wind up in Mayfield thinking I was heading toward Maysville without someone checking my navigation!)

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My great-great grandfather was there as a 15 year old private.

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Whoa how cool is that! Although it would be three or four "greats" ... I think, I dunno, hard to figure that stuff. All depends. I had great great AND great great great grandfathers and uncles fight in the War of Northern Aggression.

Upvoted!

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This article lost me in the second paragraph when he says the battle was "unnecessary." The Treaty of Ghent hadn't been ratified and we were still at war. And the British were not acquiescing in the validity of the Louisiana Purchase. Had they taken New Orleans there is a chance that they would not have given it back

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Very true. Id say there’s a better than 50% chance they’d try to keep New Orleans and all of the original Louisiana Territory.