to cover our country with mourning and desolation. The Halifax papers announced the embarkation of troops that had composed part of lord Wellington's army. In the list of the regiments and of the general officers, appear several of the former and of the latter who since came to the banks of the Mississippi. The expedition against New Orleans was to consist of eighteen thousand men. The same papers predicted that the calamities of war would be severely and extensively felt by the inhabitants of the United States.

From that time it was generally believed that the British would attack the southern states in the ensuing autumn or winter, and Louisiana was particularly pointed out as their most probable object of invasion: yet so ill does the general government appear to have been served by its agents in that remote part of the union, that as late as in the month of September, nothing had been done in the way of effectual preparations, to put that country in a state of defence.

Louisiana, which was particularly marked out as the principal point against which was to be directed a formidable British force, with a considerable extent of coast, numerous communications by water, and with hardly any fortified points, open on all sides, having in its neighbourhood a Spanish settlement freely admitting the enemy's ships, and a great proportion of whose population was disposed to aid him, had no force on which to rely for the defence of her shores, except six gun-boats and a sloop of war. From the gallant defence made by the brave crews of these vessels, we may judge what would have been

effected by a number proportionate to the extent of coast to be defended. Fort Plaquemines, that of Petites Coquilles, and fort Bowyer at Mobile point, were the only advanced points fortified; and none of them capable of standing a regular siege.

It may now be made known, without any other danger than that of its appearing incredible, that Louisiana, whose coasts are accessible to such flat-bottomed vessels as are used in conveying mortars, had but two of these engines which belonged to the navy, and which were landed from bomb-ketches that had been condemned. Nor is this all: there were not a hundred bombs of the calibre of those mortars; nor, indeed, could much advantage be derived from them, however well served or supplied. Professional men will understand, that from the construction of their carriages, they were only fit to be mounted on board of vessels, and by no means calculated for land batteries.

The fort of Petites Coquilles was not finished at the time of the invasion, nor was it in a condition to make an ordinary resistance. As to fort Bowyer, at Mobile point, it will appear from the particular account given in this work of the two attacks it sustained, that the brave garrison defending it did all that could be reasonably expected from its local situation and means of resistance. Such was the inconsiderable defence that protected the shores of Louisiana, and covered a country that has an extent of coast of upwards of six hundred miles, and of which even a temporary possession by an enemy might be attend.

ed with consequences baneful to the future prosperity of the western states. The general government might and ought to have been well informed of the vulnerable points of Louisiana. Accurate maps of the country on a large scale had been made, by the engineer B. Lafon and myself, and delivered to brigadier-general Wilkinson, who, it is presumable, did not fail to forward them to the secretary of war. That part of the state, in particular, by which the enemy penetrated, was there laid down, and in 1813 brigadier-generål Flournoy ordered major Lafon, then chief engineer of the district, to draw up an exact account of all the points to be fortified for the general defence of Louisiana. The draughts, which were numerous, and formed an atlas, were accompanied with very particular explanatory notes. That work, which reflects great credit on its author, pointed out in the most precise and clear manner what was expedient to be done, in order to put the country in a state of security against all surprise. I have always understood that those draughts were ordered and executed for the purpose of being sent to the then secretary of war, to enable the government to determine in their wisdom the points proper to be fortified. To what fatality then was it owing, that Louisiana, whose means of defence were so inadequate; which had but a scanty white population, composed, in a great proportion, of foreigners speaking various languages; so remote from any succours, though one of the keys of the union-was so long left without the means of resisting the enemy? I shall be told that to fortify the coast in time of peace, were to incur an

vast amount.

unnecessary expense. This position I by no means admit; but I further observe that the war had already existed two years; and we ought to have presumed, had positive proof been wanting, that the British, having numerous fleets, and every means of transporting troops to all points of the coast of the United States, would not fail to make an attempt against Louisiana; a country which already by its prodigious and unexampled progress in the culture of sugar, was become a dangerous rival to the British colonies. The city of New Orleans contained produce to a The cotton crops of the state of Lou isiana and the Mississippi territory, accumulated during several years, were stored in that city, surrounded with considerable plantations, having numerous gangs of slaves. It was, in a word, the emporium of the produce of a great portion of the western The Mississippi on which it lies, receives the streams that water upwards of a million of square miles, and wafts to New Orleans the annually increasing productions of their fertile banks.-It is by the Mississippi and the rivers emptying into it, that the communication is kept up between the western and northern states. And by the Mississippi and the Missouri, there will, at no distant period, be carried on, without difficulty, or with very little obstruction, the most extensive inland navigation on the globe.

states.

All these advantages were calculated to excite the cupidity of the British, and inspire them with the desire of getting possession of a country which, besides its territorial wealth, insured to whoever might

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hold it, an immediate control over the western states. In possessing themselves of Louisiana, the least favourable prospect of the enemy was the plunder of a very considerable quantity of produce, the destruction of a city destined to become commercial, and opulent in the highest degree, and the ruin of numerous plantations which must one day rival in their productions, those of the finest colonies of European nations. Their other prospects, less certain indeed, but in which they were not a little sanguine, were the separation of the western states from the rest of the union; the possibility of transferring the theatre of war to the westward, by the possession of the Mississippi, and effecting a junction with their army in Canada; and lastly, being masters of Louisiana, to import by the river their various manufactures, and secure to themselves the monopoly of the fur trade.

Let us now see in what manner the British began to execute their hostile designs against Louisiana: In the course of the summer of 1814, the brig Orpheus had landed arms and officers in the bay of Apalachicola, and entered into arrangements with the Creeks, to act against fort Bowyer at Mobile point, justly looked upon as a place the possession of which was of the greatest importance towards the execution of the grand operations projected against Louisiana. The British officers diligently executed the object of their instructions, and had completely succeeded in rallying under their standard all the tribes of Indians living to the cast of the Chactaws, when an expedition of some troops, on board the sloops of war Hermes and Caron, sailed from Bermuda under the