I will never forget the day in school that I learned about the Battle of New Orleans.

It happened in January of 1815.

I didn't remember that off the top of my head.

I had to look that up.

My teacher told us about it and she gave us the whole run up.

We had been covering the War of 1812 for two or three days, something like that.

We're reading about it in our homework and everything.

I think rightly framed the War of 1812 as the real Revolutionary War.

The Revolutionary War, the War of American Independence that happened in the 1770s.

She argued, and many historians argue as well, wasn't going to stick.

That Britain was just too powerful.

They had too many concerns in other places and they were just sort of reloading and on

their way back to sort of things out and finish things off with the Americas after

the Battle of Yorktown and what they probably viewed as more of a ceasefire and just a

reloading pause period.

By the time you get around to the fall of 1814, the war is winding down.

It seems to be going in the favor of the United States.

But New Orleans is a problem because a whole lot of the grand plan and scheming that happened

with some United States British loyalists and the British government involved, carbon

up the United States using the Mississippi and kind of a weird rendezvous point coming

up the Gulf from New Orleans.

There's all this stuff that went into it.

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