The Embroidery Of History

One of the bits of history most familiar to Americana is Jackson's battle of New Orleans, wliere, from beliind his breastwork of cotton bales (a material whieh the enemy's cannon could not pierce), he repulsed with prodigjous slnughter Packenham's veterans, fresh from their European victoi'ies. This story of the rampart of cotton, as related in both English and American histories, is, however, purely apocryphal. lts origin seems to have been the fact that, many days befare the battle oí Jan. 8 (for Jackson's troops had been working steadily at the intrenchments since Christmas), about fifty cotton bales were taken out of a neighboring flat-boat and thrown into a line of eartlrworks to increase its bulk. About a week before the assault, in a preliminary skirmish, as Walker tells us in his " Jackson and New Orleans," the enemy's balls striking one of these bales knocked it out of the mound, set fire to the cotton, and sent it flying about to the great (langer of the amiuunition. _A11 the bales wore consequcutly removed. "Af ter this," continúes the account, "no cotton-bales were ever used in the breastwork. The mound was composed entirely of earth dug from the canal and the field in the rear. The experiment of using cotton and other articles in raising the embankment had been discarded." Again, for eighteen years after this battle it was gospel with us that the British officers at dawn "promised their troops a plentiful dinner in New Orleans, and gave them ' booty and beauty ' as the parole and countersign of the dny." In 1833 Gen. Lambert and four other British officers, who had been engagcd in the luckless expedition, denied this story, which accordingïy has meastirably vanished out of history. The absnrd fiction of the "booty and beauty" watchword reappears, however, at intervüls in our own civil war, ascribed to Gen. Beauregard and other Confedérate officers. Our ancestors, also, used to enjoy the story of Putnana's exploit at Horseneck, where he escaped from a party of Tyron's troops by forcing his horse down a flight of sevënty stone steps (another account swells them to a hundred) that formed the stairway by which the villagers ascended to the church on the brow of the hill. This is the narration in Peters' "History of Connecticut," a book which Dwight calis "a niass of folly and falsehood." The story of the stairway is sheer fabiication, founded on the fact that common stones here and there aided the villagers to ascend the hill ; yet there exist pictures of Putnam charging down a long tier of steps, as well-defined and regular as those of the Capítol at Washington, while the discomfited dragoona at the top pour in a VpHèy that does not harm him. A partial parallel to this oxaggeration may be fouud in tlic current desci-iptions of " Sheridan's Bido " at Winchester, a a solid exploit, brilliantly touched up in Buclianan Beade's verse, eonceriiinp; wliich last the great cavalry General is said tohave jocosely remarked that il' the bard had seen the horse he novcr would ïave written the