Description
The Battle of New Orleans: Andrew Jackson and America’s First Military Victory
By Robert V. Remini. Robert V. Remini is a prolific biographer of Andrew Jackson. He has written a three-volume biography of Jackson considered “majestic,” even by The New York Times, America’s leading tribune for internationalism. (A philosophy that Jackson would have energetically despised during his lifetime.)
Remini’s most recent book on Jackson is The Battle of New Orleans: Andrew Jackson and America’s First Military Victory, detailing the pivotal battle wherein the United States finally sealed its independence. It has to be remembered that Great Britain is the only real enemy that these United States have ever had. The Revolutionary War won our legal independence and saw the Constitution established. George Washington is our Founding Father and he and the others of that exciting age have to be honored, but their victory was temporary in the minds of the king and the other empire builders of imperial England. Seventeen-twentieths of the Earth’s surface wasn’t enough for them. They wanted it all. It was for Andrew Jackson to make our independence a matter of fact, regardless of all that England could do.
Readers will find this book of 290 pages a real page turner. Don’t start it too late in the evening or you may miss sleep. Fighting against incredible odds, Jackson turned probable defeat into victory—not once but numerous times. Above all, being personally committed to victory at any cost, he was able to inspire and command the loyalty of professional soldiers as well as volunteers from all over, including Kentucky and Tennessee mountain men who made up for their rustic frontier ways and appearance with sharpshooting that no Englishman could match, nor any of their multinational troops, including Irishmen and East Indians. Jackson also accepted the support of a most amazing array of fighters imaginable, from slaves, freedmen, Creek Indians, even pirates—anything he could assemble into the units he so effectively commanded.
And command he did. Stern, demanding, authoritarian, a brilliant strategist, Jackson is portrayed by Remini to nevertheless be a man of sensitive feelings and instincts. He could be what it takes to handle anything.
Above all, Jackson was a patriot, determined to make America into a first-class world power—which he did.
Spare us the thought that if he could return today, what he would think. He would see a nation without a sense of purpose, mired down all over the world in senseless wars, hopelessly indebted, a slave to minority pressure groups, its population blindly following greedy and corrupt politicians and worse.
Andrew Jackson is a man who would be called “great” in any country, but he is ours and must not be forgotten or minimized.
To see Andrew Jackson in his rightful stature, read this book.
Softcover, 290 pages
