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Show A GLORIFIED ANNIVERSARY. The eighth of January has come and gone i again.. Great anniversary that. The splendor of it r grows steadily. All the great battles fought since do not in the least dwarf New Orleans, j & Guns were of short range in those days. When a column was charging something had to be done i quickly or it was too late. The English com mander fihurcd the thought that carried Brad-dock Brad-dock to his death, that spread the shallow slopes of Bunker Hill with 1,500 dead, the scarlet of i their uniforms deepened by their own blood. The thought was that a trained British column in motion was irresistible. The British troops at New Orleans had been trained with that thought by Wellington in Spain. It did well enough there but was bad generalship at New Orleans. Na-j Na-j poleon, when he heard of it, sent to America for ( information as to the guns used by the Ameri- cans. When the answer was returned to him that I, they had no improved arms, that they fought with 1 the old long Mississippi rifles, his quick brain i invented an expression that has been famous ever ; since. Said he: "I see. It was the men behind the j guns." ji Still it was not in the accepted sense a battle. i It was annihilation on the one side, well nigh ! exemption from harm on the other. It was on V land almost what Manila and Santiago were at 'j sea. In the arrogance of immemorial pride Gen- eral Packingham formed his command in col- . umn intending to sweep the rude works before him. His guardian angel forsook him that day 'j, or a whisper would have come to him to hold but a thin line in front and to send a regiment to I flank the foe. j When he saw the destruction being wrought Supon his troops he even then refused to with-.draw with-.draw and reform them on more prudent lines, but rather flung himself into the fiery vortex and li died with his soldiers. Those long-haired, lithe I rifllemcn who were his scorn in the morning, were j still intact at night, but he and the flower of 3 his army had grown still. a, The world was thrilled when the story was told. With every repetition of it through the ninety-one years since it was first told, the thrill ; has been reawakened. In point of fact it was Ino such fight as Lundy's Lane in the same war. There all night the two armies wrestled, often in a death grasp, bayonet against bayonet. Al the ! prominent officers were killed or wounded and the British dead numbered 878, the American 868. It was on the bank of Niagara. The roar of the great falls was hushed repeatedly, and in the end it was a drawn battle. But it settled nothing, while New Orleans was absolutely decisive. Then, too, there was one distinct personality at New Orleans, Or-leans, a man who counted even his own life as nothing if his country needed it, who counted not at all the odds against him, and when the crisis came never doubted the result. His was a wild, untameable soul; ' old age he was given to fits of fury when crossed, but deep down he was the very soul of honor, and his love of country was a grand passion. In calmer days he would have fretted through life like a caged eagle; as it was, all the elements vere in accord when he was born, a path was marked out for. him and he strode along it until old age, a conqueror. The years have mellowed his stormy memory, and his countrymen now think of Andrew Jackson as the great soldier, the clear-brained statesman, thfc devoted patriot, the incorruptible citizen one of the noblest and greatest personalities in American Ameri-can history. |