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  • The Generals: Andrew Jackson, Sir Edward Pakenham, and the Road to the Battle of New Orleans
  • Gene A. Smith
The Generals: Andrew Jackson, Sir Edward Pakenham, and the Road to the Battle of New Orleans. By Benton Rain Patterson. New York: New York University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8147-6717-6. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 288. $32.95.

In 1989 when Don Hickey's book The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict appeared, he rightfully informed us that the conflict had been ignored since the mid-1960s. During the following years there has been an explosion of scholarship on the war—more than seventy-five books during the 1990s alone—with studies documenting the major campaigns and battles, leaders, and the role of Indians and African Americans.

Patterson's study offers a comparative biographical view of the Battle of New Orleans, focusing on Andrew Jackson and General Sir Edward Pakenham. In an engaging and readable style, the former staff writer and editor for the Saturday Evening Post and the New York Times describes their divergent paths to the swampy battlefield at Chalmette. Jackson, the self-made frontier Tennessee patrician, secured his battlefield appointment through political channels and demonstrated his ability by defeating the Creeks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Pakenham, the second son of a moderately prosperous Irish nobleman, gained his opportunity to command in Louisiana because of his brother-in-law, General Sir Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington.

Beyond vividly describing the paths the two combatants took to New Orleans, this book offers nothing new to our understanding of the battle or of the participants. In the introduction, Patterson insists that the battle "is the story of a diverse people, championed by a heroic leader, joined together in a fierce struggle to preserve those precious things they held in common—their citizenship in a free country and their own personal freedom—and to do so against enormous odds" (p. 2). Yet the Andrew Jackson that emerges appears to have personally won the battle through sheer determination and fortitude. This interpretation is too shallow and cursory, because free citizens did not ensure Jackson's victory. Instead, slaves and free blacks who had no citizenship and Jean Lafitte's band of pirates/privateers who had flaunted American law provided Jackson the manpower and supplies needed to defend the city. And while Jackson's army certainly faced a numerically superior enemy, the Americans had the important advantage of defense and terrain.

Jackson certainly commanded American forces to an all-important victory, but he persevered because of complicated reasons. Certainly, British arrogance played a role, but equally important was the unwillingness of British commanders, primarily Admiral Alexander Cochrane, to acknowledge that their plans had not developed as they predicted. Slaves had not rallied to the British standard, the Baratarian pirates had not joined with British forces, the Spanish and French populace along the Gulf had not risen against the Americans, and southern Indians were not the fighting force British commanders anticipated. And despite these setbacks, the timid Pakenham [End Page 232] continued with plans developed by his naval counterparts; this, too, is not a new interpretation.

The major flaws of this book are its simplistic description of Jackson and its almost exclusive reliance on secondary sources. If you seek simply to be entertained, read this book. But if you are seeking new insights, new interpretations, or new research, look elsewhere.

Gene A. Smith
Texas Christian University
Fort Worth, Texas
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