{"product_id":"patriotic-fire-isbn-9781400095667","title":"Patriotic Fire","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, \u003ci\u003ePatriotic Fire\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003cp\u003e“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.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Spectacular. . . .Groom’s finest book to date. . . . An eloquent and riveting account of the Battle of New Orleans.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Mobile Press-Register \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Vivid. . . . A fast-paced historical account that reads like a novel.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e “Gripping. . . . Groom is a first-rate storyteller who manages to breathe fresh life into an oft-told tale.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New Orleans Times-Picayune \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e “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.” —\u003ci\u003eSanta Fe New Mexican\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWinston Groom is the author of twenty previous books, including \u003ci\u003eForrest Gump\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eConversations with the Enemy \u003c\/i\u003e(Pulitzer Prize finalist), \u003ci\u003eShiloh 1862\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Generals\u003c\/i\u003e. He served in Vietnam with the Fourth Infantry Division and lives in Point Clear, Alabama.\u003c\/p\u003eChapter 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 army and navy who were descending upon it as swiftly and surely   as a tropical cyclone.As word of the impending invasion reached decimated and burned-out   Washington, President James Madison and Secretary of War James Monroe   sent urgent pleas for the Western states to come to the aid of their   stricken countrymen west of the Mississippi. Backwoodsmen from   Tennessee and Kentucky were thus recruited into makeshift army units,   but they were far off—as much as seven hundred miles by land and two   thousand miles by water—and river transportation was mostly by slow   river rafts and flatboats. It was doubtful they could get there in   time. Orders from the secretary of war also went out to the legendary   Indian fighter Andrew Jackson, then in nearby Mobile, Alabama, after   having defeated the large tribe of Creeks who had just perpetrated the   bloodiest massacre in American history. Would he go immediately to New   Orleans and take charge?Yes, of course—but of what? Jackson must have wondered. The British   fleet contained more than a thousand heavy guns against the perhaps   three dozen cannons New Orleans could muster, and what of powder and   shot, or flints for muskets and rifles? Assuming that the British   didn’t overrun them outright, to Jackson’s knowledge there was little   or nothing in the way of equipment, munitions, or manpowerin New Orleans for a sustained siege. There were more than 10,000   trained, first-rate British redcoats bearing down, plus the larger   roster of the British navy’s marines and sailors to support them—all   this against fewer than a third that number of untrained and poorly   armed Americans, even assuming the rubes from Tennessee and Kentucky   did somehow arrive in time for the show. Jackson’s task was daunting,   to say the least.This was arguably the gloomiest moment in American history before or   since, it being almost universally believed that Britain, still   smarting from defeat at the hands of the upstart colonies three decades   earlier, now seemed determined to crush, humiliate, and retake her lost   possession. And as Britain at that time was the wealthiest and most   powerful nation on earth, there was little doubt among many Americans   that the British could do it—considering what they had done so far—and   not a few United States citizens prepared, however grimly, to return   hat in hand to the iron fists of His Royal Britannic Majesty and life   again under the British lion.“I expect at this moment,” declared Lord Castlereagh, the British   foreign secretary, “that most of the large seaport towns of America are   laid in ashes, that we are in possession of New Orleans, and have   command of all the rivers of the Mississippi Valley and the lakes, and   that the Americans are now little better than prisoners in their own   country.”As it turned out, of course, this was not to be, but no one could have   known or even expected it at the time. What they hoped for, but did not   count on, was the courage and tenacity of a small band of American   warriors, probably the most disparate and slapdash army ever assembled   on earth. It consisted of Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, Irishmen—and   their descendants—infantry battalions of freed black men, a handful of   gunboat sailors, some displanted Acadians (“Cajuns”) from Nova Scotia,   a regiment of pirates and smugglers, a convent of Catholic nuns,   companies of prominent New Orleans lawyers and merchants, stranded   seamen of all nations, leftover adventurers and soldiers of fortune   from the Revolutionary War era, numerous women of New Orleans from high   society dames to prostitutes, the two small regiments of U.S. Army   regulars, plus the aforesaid backwoodsmen from Tennessee and   Kentucky—but what an army they became!All of this in due time, but first let us focus on the broader picture   of just what the fledgling American nation had become by that time, how   its people lived, and what they thought of themselves.By 1812 America had grown into a huge but unwieldy economic giant,   shipping foodstuffs and raw materials throughout the world. In the more   than two centuries since the first colonists settled at Jamestown, huts   had been replaced by homes, some of them palatial, and roadways and   riverways connected its great cities, which flourished at Philadelphia,   Baltimore, New York, Boston, Charleston, and, of course, New   Orleans—all of them busy harbor ports. A vast westward expansion had   begun, carrying settlers into the fertile lands across the Alleghenies,   in the process pushing the Indians out of western New York and   Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee, which were now   becoming dotted with farms raising corn, grains, cotton, and other cash crops.The U.S. population had doubled in the three decades since the end of   the Revolutionary War, so that by 1812 there were some eight million   Americans, many of them recent immigrants from Great Britain, Ireland,   and Germany, with a smattering of French and Spanish, many of these   last settling in New Orleans, Mobile, and Charleston—all adding to the   simmering melting pot that was coming to define the United States.By the standards of today, transportation and communications were   rudimentary, and the sailing vessel remained the most efficient mode of   travel. Railroads and steamboats had recently been invented but were   not yet in any significant use in the United States. Thus, for   instance, it took about a month to send a message by sea or on   horseback from New Orleans to Washington City, as the nation’s capital   was then called, and another month to receive a reply. The telegraph   was still two decades into the future, as were the reaping and   threshing machines that took so much of the backbreaking work out of   farming. However, Eli Whitney’s cotton gin had opened up the Southern   states to widespread cultivation of that fabulous crop, and with it the   widespread introduction of slavery into the region.In the large cities, gas lighting for homes and streets was just being   introduced. Among the wealthier classes, most furnishings, fancy dress,   and other high-end items were still imported from Europe and England;   the less affluent used cheap local goods or made their own. Newspapers   and broadsheets thrived as the principal means of information and a   number of magazine-type publications of opinion such as the \u003ci\u003eNiles   Weekly Register\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eDebow’s Review\u003c\/i\u003e were also widely circulated.The cities had immediately become hotbeds of political activity, much   to the disappointment (and even disgust) of George Washington, who had   consistently warned against it. After the Revolution ended, Americans   had quickly divided up into two “factions,” or political parties, as   they are now called, which reflected—as they do today—the same two   natural divisions of liberal and conservative human philosophy that   have dominated political thought ever since the days of ancient Greece   and Rome.The Federalist party, exemplified by the first U.S. treasury secretary,   Alexander Hamilton, a transplanted New Yorker, arguably more closely   resembled today’s Democrats, advocating big government and federal   involvement in regulating the economy, including government sponsorship   of manufacturing, industry, and public works, as well as a national   monetary system and a standing army—in short, more federal control—and,   of course, higher taxes to support it all.On the other hand, the Democratic Republican party, as it was known and   defined by Thomas Jefferson and the other Southern presidents, wanted   as little government as possible from Washington and, instead,   preferred that the various states assume the brunt of governmental   activities, including national defense, banking, and, of course, little   or no taxation from authorities in Washington. (Plus, there was the   ever vexing question of slavery, which Southern states were beginning   to suspect was becoming target zero of the small but growing   abolitionist movement in the North.)To that end, members of both factions had conducted for years a   relentless discourse in the nation’s newspapers, treating the reading   public to snide, confrontational, and often libelous “letters”   published anonymously and signed with pen names usually taken from   Greek and Roman classics. This practice sometimes led to duels in which   either the offender or the offended was often dispatched to his   reward.* In truth, Americans have always been such a fractious people   that it remains something of a wonder democracy has survived at all.Those citizens who tired of political controversy during the era could   indulge in a wealth of literary works by the famous authors and artists   of the day. The poems of Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor   Coleridge, and Percy Bysshe Shelley found their way across the Atlantic   and into American parlors and libraries. So did the novels of Jane   Austen and Sir Walter Scott. If Americans wanted to read the literature   of their own countrymen, Washington Irving was widely known—he was   America’s first internationally acclaimed author—and soon thereafter   arose James Fenimore Cooper. For those who craved the visual arts and   could make the transatlantic voyage, there were the latter-day European   masters Francisco Goya and William Blake, or, if not, there were   American artists and portrait painters such as Benjamin West, Charles   Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, and John Singleton Copley.Americans of the 1812 era ate pancakes, which had been around since the   time of the ancient Egyptians, and mayonnaise was popular, but they ate   no tomatoes, which were widely regarded as poisonous. There were, of   course, no potato chips, Wheaties, hamburgers, or hot dogs, and much of   the main-course table fare was still wild game: turkey, duck, deer,   quail, and squirrel; there was domestic pork, chicken, mutton, beef,   and seafood as well. They drank tea and coffee when they could get it   and otherwise washed down their meals with wine, cider, or whisky.Sudden death was an omnipresent reality, and medicine was in its   primitive stages (“bleeding,” for example, was still a widely accepted   medical practice, as were blood-sucking leeches, and, as a sort of   cure-all for many ailments, patients were commonly fed mercury, one of   the most dangerous elements on earth for human ingestion). The average   American life span in the early 1800s was forty years or so; frightful   epidemics of typhoid and yellow fever ravaged the country every year,   as did scourges of cholera, typhus, tuberculosis, diphtheria,   influenza, smallpox, dysentery, measles, and uncontrollable staph   infections—not to mention things like shipwrecks, horse throws and   kicks, house fires, the sudden and unpredictable arrival of natural   disasters such as hurricanes, and, of course, duels. If you ventured   outside the cities there was always the chance of getting eaten up by   bears or mountain lions or being scalped by Indians. All in all America   was a fairly dangerous place, and many if not most families lost a   heartbreaking number of children before they had even reached their   teens. Complications from pregnancy and childbirth were the leading   causes of death for women of childbearing age.Nontheless, by 1812 those eight million Americans—except for the   dwindling population of Indians and the ever increasing number of   slaves—had surrounded themselves with eight million pleasurable dreams   of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in their brave new   world. They believed that they were part of a land of progress and   bounty unknown across the far reaches of the Atlantic Ocean. Since the   end of the Revolution the U.S. merchant shipping fleet, like the   population, had doubled in size, and American exports had tripled.   Grain and corn from Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and the newly   opened lands to the west were transported across the North Atlantic to   feed the peoples of Britain. Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and North   Carolina provided Europe’s nicotine-addicted with tobacco aplenty. The   vast cotton plantations of the Deep South were churning out hundreds of   thousands of bales of cotton to stoke the looms of the New England   states, and those of Manchester, England, and the coastal millworks of   France. (Always a bit oddball, New Orleans had become a major supplier   of refined sugar from its great sugarcane plantations.)  Beneath all this ebullience and prosperity, however, by the time 1812   rolled around America seethed.The cause of its indignation was the flagrant and long-standing   depredation and bullying by the British, who had not forgiven the   upstart American colonists for defeating their army at Yorktown thirty   years earlier and setting up their own sovereign nation. All this   became exacerbated with the rise of Napoleon and the subsequent war   between Britain and France. That decade-old conflict had drained   Britain of manpower, and especially of trained seamen, so in order to   make up the losses the British navy, acting on orders from London,   began intercepting American merchant ships and searching their crews   for “British subjects,” whom they then “impressed” into their navy.   This immediately became a sore point with the Americans, since the   British policy was that anyone who had been born in Great Britain was   still a British subject and always would be, whether he was now an   American or not.* One of the most infamous of these being the 1804 confrontation between former U.S. treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr on the New Jersey Palisades, resulting in Hamilton being shot to death by the vice president of the United States.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301393584357,"sku":"NP9781400095667","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400095667.jpg?v=1767734550","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/patriotic-fire-isbn-9781400095667","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}