Page:The Ifs of History (1907).pdf/138

 with his men and ships, there is little likelihood that the Americans would have had in this fight the powerful aid of the vessels of war Carolina and Louisiana, on the river. Nor is it likely that they would have had the passive support of the French population. Nor that they would have found any substitute for the flints with which Lafitte supplied them. And it is very likely that the British assault upon Jackson's intrenchments would have been attended with a different result.

Jackson, indeed, might have been crushed very much as Windsor had been crushed at Washington, not long before.

Such a result at New Orleans would not have affected the outcome of the war, for a peace favorable to the American arms had already been declared at Ghent. But how profoundly a defeat would have influenced the personal and political fortunes of Andrew Jackson and all the