A Bloodless Victory

The Battle of New Orleans in History and Memory

Joseph F. Stoltz III

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781421423036
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Exploring the changing narrative of the Battle of New Orleans through two centuries of commemoration.

Once celebrated on par with the Fourth of July, January 8th—the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans—is no longer a day of reverence for most Americans. Although the United States' stunning 1815 defeat of the British army south of New Orleans gave rise to the presidency of Andrew Jackson, the Democratic Party, and the legend of Jean Laffite, the battle has not been a national holiday since 1861.

Joseph F. Stoltz III explores how generations of Americans have consciously revised, reinterpreted, and reexamined the memory of the conflict to fit the cultural and social needs of their time. Combining archival research with deep analyses of music, literature, theater, and film across two centuries of American popular culture, Stoltz highlights the myriad ways in which politicians, artists, academics, and ordinary people have rewritten the battle's history. While these efforts could be nefarious—or driven by political necessity or racial animus—far more often they were simply part of each generations' expression of values and world view.

From Andrew Jackson's presidential campaign to the occupation of New Orleans by the Union Army to the Jim Crow era, the continuing reinterpretations of the battle alienated whole segments of the American population from its memorialization. Thus, a close look at the Battle of New Orleans offers an opportunity to explore not just how events are collectively remembered across generations but also how a society discards memorialization efforts it no longer finds necessary or palatable.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface: “A Correct Remembrance of Great Events”
• Acknowledgments
• 1 “By the Eternal, They Shall Not Sleep on Our Soil”: The New Orleans Campaign
• 2 “Half a Horse and Half an Alligator”: The Battle of New Orleans in the Era of Good Feelings
• 3 “Under the Command of a Plain Republican—an American Cincinnatus”: The Battle of New Orleans in the Age of Jefferson
• 4 “The Union Must and Shall Be Preserved”: The Battle of New Orleans and the American Civil War
• 5 “True Daughters of the War”: The Battle of New Orleans at One Hundred
• 6 “Not Pirate . . . Privateer”: The Battle of New Orleans and Mid-Twentieth-Century Popular Culture
• 7 “Tourism Whetted by the Celebration”: The Battle of New Orleans in the Twentieth Century
• 8 A “Rustic and Factual” Appearance: The Battle of New Orleans at Two Hundred
• Conclusion “What Is Past Is Prologue”
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index