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Patriotic Fire: Andrew Jackson and Jean Laffite at the Battle of New Orleans
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Product Description December 1814: its economy in tatters, its capital city of Washington, D.C., burnt to the ground, a young America was again at war with the militarily superior English crown. With an enormous enemy armada approaching New Orleans, two unlikely allies teamed up to repel the British in one of the greatest battles ever fought in North America.The defense of New Orleans fell to the backwoods general Andrew Jackson, who joined the raffish French pirate Jean Laffite to command a ramshackle army made of free blacks, Creole aristocrats, Choctaw Indians, gunboat sailors and militiamen. Together these leaders and their scruffy crew turned back a British force more than twice their number. Offering an enthralling narrative and outsized characters, Patriotic Fire is a vibrant recounting of the plots and strategies that made Jackson a national hero and gave the nascent republic a much-needed victory and surge of pride and patriotism. Review “An astonishing story of how a ragtag corps of backwoodsmen, Louisiana creoles, refugees, pirates, Indians and free African Americans defeated a large, disciplined, experienced and professional British army at the Battle of New Orleans.” —The Washington Post Book World“Spectacular. . . .Groom’s finest book to date. . . . An eloquent and riveting account of the Battle of New Orleans.” —The Mobile Press-Register “Vivid. . . . A fast-paced historical account that reads like a novel.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Gripping. . . . Groom is a first-rate storyteller who manages to breathe fresh life into an oft-told tale.” —The New Orleans Times-Picayune “A riveting account of men at war during a crucial moment in the nation’s history. . . . Groom brings to vivid life the dynamic characters of Jackson and Laffite and the latter’s colorful band of brothers.” —Santa Fe New Mexican About the Author Winston Groom is the author of twenty previous books, including Forrest Gump, Conversations with the Enemy (Pulitzer Prize finalist), Shiloh 1862, and The Generals. He served in Vietnam with the Fourth Infantry Division and lives in Point Clear, Alabama. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter OneBy late autumn 1814, the United States of America, a nation barely thirty years old, was shaky, divided, and on the verge of dissolving. The treasury was empty, most public buildings in Washington, including the Capitol, the White House, and the Library of Congress, had been burned to ashes by a victorious and vengeful British army. New England, the wealthiest and most populous section of the new country, was threatening to secede from the still fragile Union. After two years of war with Great Britain, it appeared to many Americans that their experiment in democracy—the likes of which the world had never seen—might only have been some strange, nonsustainable political trial and, worse, that a return to the unwelcome fraternal embrace of the English kings seemed inevitable.American seaports from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico were blockaded by the British navy and the economy was in ruins because of it, with goods and crops piled up and rotting on the wharves. The U.S. Army was stymied and stalemated; the navy, such as it was, had fared little better, except on the Great Lakes. There was finger-pointing, recrimination, and torment everywhere, from the Congress to the press to ordinary citizens; no one was spared.Then, as autumn leaves began to fall, a mighty British armada appeared off the Louisiana coast with the stated purpose of capturing New Orleans, America’s crown jewel of the West and gateway to all commerce in the great Mississippi River Basin, a misfortune that would have split the United States in two. New Orleans was as nearly defenseless as a city could be in those days, with only two understrength regular army regiments of about 1,100 soldiers and a handful of untrained milita to throw against the nearly 20,000 seasoned veterans of the British ar
