Tuesday, January 8, 2013

The Eighth of January

You'll be happy to know that today marks the 198th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, the last big battle of the War of 1812. The British sailed around Florida after being repelled from Baltimore – You remember that fight, it was where Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner – and attacked New Orleans. Little did the combatants know that a peace treaty had already been signed and the war was over. It proved to be another rout for the unhappy British, celebrated by the Americans in song and story. The Eighth of January pretty much tells it like it was, except for the part about the alligators.

Kate Gallison


3 comments:

  1. Kate, I love this kind of folk music and history. The initial lines reminded me of the time some mountain men gave me some white lightning in Tennessee- I thought I was going to die!
    Thelma Straw in Manhattan

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  2. I want you to write a mystery that takes place then and there!!!

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  3. It might be fun, but I would like even better to write one about New Orleans a few years afterward, when Jean Lafitte and his brother may have plotted to spring Napoleon out of Elba and install him somewhere in the Quarter. Mountain men are always a hoot, too, Thelma.
    I'll have to see what I want to tackle after I get Bucker Dudley out the door.

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