and marines. The British rowed up with strong, swift strokes through a murderous fire of great guns and musketry; the vessels were grappled amid fierce resistance; the boarding-nettings were slashed through and cut away with furious fighting and the decks were gained; and one by one, at push of pike and cutlass stroke, the gunboats were carried in spite of their stubborn defenders; but not till more than one barge had been sunk, while the assailants had lost a hundred men, and the assailed about half as many.

"There was now nothing to hinder the landing of the troops; and as the scattered transports arrived, the soldiers disembarked and ferried through the sluggish water of the bayous on small flat-bottomed craft; and finally, December 23d, the advance-guard, two thousand strong, under General Keane, emerged at the mouth of the canal Villere and camped on the bank of the river but nine miles below New Orleans, which now seemed a certain prize, almost within their grasp.

"Yet, although a mighty and cruel foe was at their very gates, nothing save fierce defiance reigned in the fiery Creole hearts of the Crescent

City, for a master spirit was in their midst. Andrew Jackson, having utterly broken and destroyed the most powerful Indian confederacy that had ever menaced the Southwest, and having driven the haughty Spaniards from Pensacola, was now bending all the energies of his rugged intellect and indomitable will to the one object of defending New Orleans. No man could have been better fitted for the task. He had hereditary wrongs to avenge on the British, and he hated them with an implacable fury that was absolutely devoid of fear. Born and brought up among the lawless characters of the frontier, and knowing well how to deal with them, he was able to establish and preserve the strictest martial law in the city without in the least quelling the spirit of the citizens. To a restless and untiring energy he united sleepless vigilance and unquestioned military genius. Prompt to attack whenever the chance offered itself, seizing with ready grasp the slightest vantage-ground, and never giving up a foot of earth that he could keep, he yet had the patience to play a defensive game when it suited him, and with consummate skill he always followed out the scheme of warfare that was best adapted to his wild soldiery. In after

years he did to his country some good and more evil; but no true American can think of his deeds at New Orleans without profound and unmixed thankfulness."

Mr. Roosevelt's description of the troops is not less vivid and characteristic than this of their chief. He says: "Jackson's forces were small. There were two war-vessels in the river. One was the little schooner Carolina, manned by regular seamen, largely New Englanders. The other was the newly built ship Louisiana, a powerful corvette; she had no regular crew, and her officers were straining every nerve to get one from the varied ranks of the maritime population of New Orleans; long-limbed and hardyvisaged Yankees, Portuguese and Norwegian seamen from foreign merchantmen, dark-skinned Spaniards from the West Indies, swarthy Frenchmen who had served under the bold privateersman Laffitte-all alike were taken, and all alike by unflagging exertions were got into shape for battle. There were two regiments of regulars, numbering about eight hundred men, raw and not very well disciplined, but who were drilled with great care and regularity. In addition to this Jackson raised somewhat over a thou

sand militiamen among the citizens. There were some Americans among them, but they were mostly French creoles, and one band had in its formation something that was curiously pathetic. It was composed of free men of color, who had gathered to defend the land which kept the men of their race in slavery; who were to shed their blood for the flag that symbolized to their kind not freedom but bondage; who were to die bravely as freemen, only that their brethren might live on ignobly as slaves. Surely there was never a stranger instance than this of the irony of fate."

It is curious to note that the author, who appreciated the tragedy in the act of these free negroes, fighting for the country that yet held their black brothers in bondage, was later to fight beside their descendants for the freedom of the Cubans. The fact that Mr. Roosevelt saw the pathos of the situation of the colored fighters at New Orleans throws a side-light on the tenderness of the man's nature, a quality in his character that has been lost sight of in his robust activity. That he has always believed in the right of all men to freedom is unquestioned, and that he has recognized as much as any other man

the true brotherhood of men is clear, but those unfamiliar with his private life and thought will find something new to admire in the man who was so ready to recognize at a glance an exhibition of nobility in the slave race of America at a time when a large portion of the population of the United States favored the extension of slavery, and the major portion of the remainder held no pronounced convictions either way. Mr. Roosevelt has lived in an era of great events, the greatest that have ever occurred during the life of one man. He has seen a nation lay down a million of lives and billions of treasure to establish the fact that the little handful of negroes under General Jackson had a right to bear arms under the stars and stripes; he has seen that nation send an unconquerable fleet and an army of its bravest soldiers against a foreign foe to perfect that principle in its establishment, and he has lived to take his place at the head of the nation which has had the spirit to make these sacrifices.

Mr. Roosevelt's power of graphic description, as well as his wonderful insight into the character of men is further exemplified in this chapter. Continuing, he says: "But if Jackson