After some introductory remarks, Captain Garland said: “The most reverend prelate, in his otherwise well chosen remarks, suggested that it was a pity that such an awful battle should have been fought after the Treaty was signed across the wide water. I do not agree with him. It needed that battle to make the Treaty good. It made no difference when the Treaty was signed. Without that battle it must have been waste paper.
“The Treaty as written, did not mean anything. It says that the territorial status quo ante bellum shall be observed. But the British Cabinet held ‘’l’arriere pensee’ about that. They never admitted Napoleon’s right to convey Louisiana to us through President Jefferson. They did not mean to include the Louisiana Purchase in the territorial status quo ante bellum!
“The Treaty signed in ink on the 24th of December was a cheat. But the Treaty that the Pioneers of Tennessee and Kentucky punctuated with rifle bullets the 8th of January will stand. The English diplomats at Ghent held, as I have said, ‘’l’arriere-pensee.’ But the British soldiers who lay down to die in front of Kentucky and Tennessee the 8th of January on Chalmette plain were sincere and honest. It was in their life blood that the real treaty was written; not in the ink of Ghent.
“The English plan of subjugation was complete. Soon after the battle it was learned that General Pakenham had a proclamation written, signed and ready to be promulgated the moment his Army should enter the City. This proclamation denied the right of Napoleon to sell Louisiana, denounced the pretentions of the United States to its sovereignty, declared that Spain, the rightful possessor, was incapable of maintaining her territorial rights, and, finally, asserted a provisional occupation by the British forces as a virtual protectorate in behalf of the Spanish Crown. The night after the battle, this proclamation was burned. It may have been used to illuminate the scene where the corpse of its author was being prepared for shipment to England in a cask of rum.
“It is commonly known that, the night of January 7th, a council of war was held in the British camp. It is also known to many that, on that occasion, Major-General Sir Samuel Gibbs spoke of General Jackson’s Army as a ‘backwoods rabble.’ He was right. That’s what we are—from the point of view of a British regular. We are ‘Backwoodsmen,’ because we were born and raised in little log cabins all along our great frontier. The mothers who gave us milk, made their own clothes, and ours, too, of homespun or of buckskin. As soon as we could lift a rifle we had to hunt our meat in the woods. Yes, we are ‘backwoodsmen.’ And from the point of view of a British regular, we are a ‘rabble,’ too. That is, we are not soldiers in the regular sense of the term. We are not enlisted; we don’t get any pay. We are simply assembled, as volunteers, to defend our country. We have a kind of organization, it is true; but it is as independent companies, composed of neighbors, and our officers are simply those men whose characters and experience point them out as natural leaders. In one word, we have no regulations, except those of common sense; no discipline, except that of common consent; no mastery, one over the other, except that of manhood! Such are the men who rallied from Tennessee and Kentucky when Andrew Jackson called.
“Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, they are a ‘backwoods rabble.’ They met, say, three times their number of soldiers who were the Pride of England! And the ‘Backwoods Rabble’ laid that ‘Pride of England’ low!”
* * * * * * * *
“And now just one word more: Most people say that our American Republic was born the fourth day of July, 1776, at Philadelphia. This is not true. It was only begotten then. It was born when Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga. It was baptised when Cornwallis yielded at Yorktown. But it was never confirmed, as they say in the religion of the Holy Saviour, until the 8th of last January!
“That day saw not merely the repulse and destruction of a British Army, but it taught the whole world a lesson never to be forgot. It needs not the gift of prophecy to foresee that the battle fought by Andrew Jackson and his ‘backwoods rabble’ did more than repulse cowardly and treacherous invasion. It taught to all the princes and kings and emperors on the face of the earth that they must let our young Republic alone!”
Apart from his testimony as to Pakenham’s intended proclamation, and apart from his estimate of British diplomacy, the speech of Captain Garland is well worth preserving as a specimen of real, patriotic eloquence.