to in the adopted style of
the Club, which has been so much admired for its antique paper and
beautiful typography. It sets forth with fullness and detail the
hostilities which preceded and led to the main battle, and gives such a
clear description of the final conflict by the assistance of charts as
to enable the reader to understand the maneuvers of both sides and to
virtually see the battle as it progressed from the beginning to the end.
This battle ended the War of 1812, and when the odds against the
Americans are considered, it must be pronounced one of the greatest
victories ever won upon the battlefield. The author, Mr. Z.F. Smith, was
an old-line Whig, and was taught to hate Jackson as Henry Clay, the
leader of the Whigs, hated him, but he has done the old hero full
justice in this narrative, and has assigned him full honors of one of
the greatest victories ever won. Although his sympathies were with
General Adair, a brother Kentuckian, he takes up the quarrel between him
and General Jackson and does Jackson full and impartial justice. If
Jackson had been as unprejudiced against Adair as the author against
Jackson, there would have been nothing like a stain left upon the
escutcheon of the Kentuckians who abandoned the fight on the west bank
of the Mississippi because it was their duty to get out of it rather
than be slaughtered like dumb brutes who neither see impending danger
nor reason about the mistakes of superiors and the consequences. He who
reads the account of the battle of New Orleans which follows this
introduction will know more about that battle than he knew before, or
could have learned from any other source in so small a compass.

R.T. DURRETT,

_President of The Filson Club_.

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

The Author, _Frontispiece_

Seat of War in Louisiana and Florida, 8

Position of the American and British Armies near New
Orleans on the 8th of January, 1815, 24

Battle of New Orleans, on the 8th of January, 1815, 56

General Andrew Jackson, 72

General John Adair, 112

Governor Isaac Shelby, 164

Colonel Gabriel Slaughter, 174

THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS

GULF COAST CAMPAIGN, PRECEDING T