And where is that land who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and wild war’s desolation;
Blest with vict’ry and peace may the Heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
THE DEFENSE OF THE CRESCENT CITY
UPON every recurrence of January the eighth, the city of New Orleans dons gala attire and shouts herself hoarse with rejoicing. She chants the Te Deum in her Cathedrals; and lays wreaths of immortelles and garlands of roses and sweet-smelling shrubs upon the monument of Andrew Jackson in Jackson Square.
“The Saviour of New Orleans,” the inhabitants called Jackson in the exuberance of their gratitude for his defense of the city, and their deliverance from threatened peril, that fateful day of January, 1815. From capture and pillage and divers evil things he saved her, and the Crescent City has not forgotten.
Neither indeed has the nation become unmindful of his great achievement, but upon each succeeding anniversary of the battle of New Orleans—that remarkable battle that gloriously ended the War of 1812, and restored the national pride and honor so sorely wounded by the fall of Washington—celebrates the event in the chief cities of the United States.
During our second clash of arms with England, the Creek War, wherein the red man met his doom, brought Jackson’s name into prominence. At one bound, as it were, he sprang from comparative obscurity into renown.
In 1814 he was appointed a major general in the United States army, and established his headquarters at Mobile. He repulsed the English at Fort Bowyer, on Mobile Point, and awaited orders from Washington to attack them at Pensacola, where, through the sympathy of the Spaniards who were then in possession of the Florida peninsula, they had their base of operations.
Receiving no orders from Washington, he became impatient of delay, and upon his own responsibility marched his troops against Pensacola and put the British to flight. “This,” says Sumner, “was the second great step in the war in the Southwest.”