258 Naval War of 1812 



them could have brought them into shape at all. 

 The regulars were just as good as the British, and 

 no better. The Kentucky militia, who had only 

 been 48 hours with the army and were badly armed 

 and totally undisciplined, proved as useless as their 

 brethren of New York and Virginia, at Queens- 

 town Heights and Bladensburg, had previously 

 shown themselves to be. They would not stand 

 in the open at all, and even behind a breastwork 

 had to be mixed with better men. The Louisiana 

 militia, fighting in defence of their homes, and well 

 trained, behaved excellently, and behind breast- 

 works were as formidable as the regulars. The 

 Tennesseeans, good men to start with, and already 

 well trained in actual warfare under Jackson, were 

 in their own way unsurpassable as soldiers. In the 

 open field the British regulars, owing' to their great- 

 er skill in manoeuvring, and to their having bayo- 

 nets, with which the Tennesseeans were unprovid- 

 ed, could in all likelihood have beaten them; but in 

 rough or broken ground the skill of the Tennes- 

 seeans, both as marksmen and woodsmen, would 

 probably have given them the advantage; while the 

 extreme deadliness of their fire made it far more 

 dangerous to attempt to storm a breastwork guard- 

 ed by these forest riflemen than it would have been 

 to attack the same work guarded by an equal num- 

 ber of the best regular troops of Europe. The 



