The Battle of New Orleans 211 



a visionary, he was utterly unable to grapple with 

 the slightest actual danger, and, not even excepting 

 his successor, Madison, it would be difficult to im 

 agine a man less fit to guide the state with honor 

 and safety through the stormy times that marked 

 the opening of the present century. Without the 

 prudence to avoid war or the forethought to prepare 

 for it, the Administration drifted helplessly into a 

 conflict in which only the navy prepared by the 

 Federalists twelve years before, and weakened 

 rather than strengthened during the intervening 

 time, saved us from complete and shameful defeat. 

 True to its theories, the House of Virginia made 

 no preparations, and thought the war could be 

 fought by "the nation in arms"; the exponents of 

 this particular idea, the militiamen, a partially armed 

 mob, ran like sheep whenever brought into the field. 

 The regulars were not much better. After two years 

 of warfare, Scott records in his autobiography that 

 there were but two books of tactics (one written in 

 French) in the entire army on the Niagara frontier; 

 and officers and men were on such a dead level of 

 ignorance that he had to spend a month drilling all 

 of the former, divided into squads, in the school 

 of the soldier and school of the company. 1 It is 

 small wonder that such troops were utterly unable 



1 "Memoirs of Lieutenant-General Scott," written by him 

 self (2 vols, New York, 1864), i, p. 115. 



