For every nation there are a handful of events each century that are so transformative, and often so unexpected and shocking, that they become what I call “historical postcards”—big, bright pictures burned into the memories of an entire living generation.One historical postcard for my father’s generation was Pearl Harbor. I remember him telling me that he heard the news on the radio as a young boy and hid under his bed for fear that bombs would begin falling on his New England city. He never forgot the news or that terrible sensation of fear and loss, nor did many members of his generation.
There have been, by my count, five historical postcards in my generation. I do not count, for example, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy, or the Columbia disaster; these were big, important events, and I can still see the pictures in my mind.
But an historical postcard, at least by my definition, changes the way we think the world works, and may actually change the way the world works.
The first and most recent postcard was “9/11.” I remember being at work and walking into a conference room full of people watching television and thinking, “This is weird, watching TV during the day around here. Maybe I should ask people to get back to work.” And later, I recall wondering how many more planes would go down that day, and if this was the start of a chain of apocalyptic events.Before proposing the other four historical postcards, you should know a funny thing about them, and memories in general: They tend to be terribly inaccurate. They even tend to shift every time we remember them. (For example, there are already a large percentage of us who remember seeing both planes hit the World Trade Center.) Sometimes historical postcards become myths that we use to understand the world, or that govern how we act, or that push ahead a political agenda. (Like using 9/11 to start a war.) But more on that in a moment.
Working backwards in time, the next historical postcard for my generation was the first Challenger disaster. I was in Kankakee, Illinois (of all places), trying to purchase a cable television property from one of that city’s great families, the Smalls. There was a huge broadcast console for local cable programming and a group of us watched the Challenger explode over and over again on four or five monitors simultaneously. That image is fixed in my mind.
The third historical postcard was the first moon landing. I remember everything about where I was and who I was with. Probably inaccurately, but I like the memory anyway.
The fourth historical postcard for my generation—and I don’t count it personally because I was just too young to understand the implications—was the assassination of Martin Luther King. I do remember the riots afterwards, and how ominous the world felt.
And the fifth and final historical postcard was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I remember being sent home from elementary school, early I think, but the school decided not to make a general announcement. Still, we all knew what had happened. When the bus rolled down our street there were a group of mothers waiting for us—something common today but surprising then in our safe, quiet neighborhood—and some were crying. Everyone looked dazed. A true historical postcard.Some of you my age might include the fall of the Berlin Wall, or perhaps the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the assassination attempts on Reagan and Ford and the Pope, or even the O.J. trial. I have a vivid memory of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. I also remember losing Gus Grissom on a NASA launch pad sometime in the late 1960s.
But for now I’m sticking with those five—9/11, the Challenger, Neil Armstrong, MLK, and JFK--as the true historical postcards of my generation.
Another funny thing about historical postcards is that they are highly and incontrovertibly perishable. So, once the last person with the postcard in a generation dies, so does the postcard. Which means that if the sinking of the Titanic is still an historical postcard for a certain set of Americans, it’s got a very short shelf life.
That makes it very difficult to know which historical events in American history resonated with the power of a 9/11 or JFK’s assassination. Pearl Harbor did, at least for my father. From the reading I have done, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln certainly did. (I’m not sure about Garfield and McKinley.) So did the Crash of 1929, and probably the death of Washington. Perhaps one or two of the early victories for the South in the Civil War were historical postcards for the North. Maybe the victory at Yorktown. Maybe the opening of the Erie Canal. Maybe Lindberg.
Of course, Carleton Fisk’s 12th inning home run in the six game of the 1975 World Series. We mustn’t forget that.
In my recent reading about the nineteenth century I believe I have found two historical postcards, with the latter being a great example of how such a powerful event gets turned into a productive, if corrupted myth.
The first and lesser of the two actually originated on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa on April 7, 1815 when the volcano of Tambora erupted for five days in the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history-- much bigger than Krakatoa in 1883. Gases from Tambora included sulfer, which formed sulfuric acid droplets high in the atmosphere. These droplets absorbed and reflected the sun’s radiation, lowering the temperature across the Northern Hemisphere. By mid-1816 the North Atlantic felt the effects; snow fell in New England throughout June, July and August while South Carolina suffered a frost in mid-May. North American and Europe suffered widespread food shortages. The fact that this poorly understood phenomenon—termed “the year without summer”-- occurred in the midst of the Second Great Awakening, when there was lots of serious talk about the Day of Judgment and the Second Coming (not the mention the End of Time), may well have turned this (perhaps the first June snowfall, for example) into an historical postcard for the post-Revolutionary generation.
The other, bigger historical postcard from the early nineteenth century was the Battle of New Orleans. Not only that, but this particular postcard had legs as an American myth that powered Andrew Jackson throughout his career.
On January 8, 1815, Major General Andrew Jackson and his citizen army, badly outnumbered, defeated Britain’s professional soldier army, ending the War of 1812. With it, America won its “second war of independence.” Howe says that when news of the victory reached Washington, it came “like a deliverance from purgatory.”I’m betting that the Battle of New Orleans was one of the brightest historical postcards in all of nineteenth-century America.
Here’s are the seven things you need to know about the real Battle of New Orleans, and (at the risk of making this posting way too long, which my wife has warned me about) how historical postcards get created and manipulated:
1. Jackson’s 4,000 man, all-American “citizen army,” supposedly composed of sharpshooters from Kentucky and Tennessee, was indeed comprised of Tennessee militia, but also French-speaking Louisiana militia, mounted Mississippi dragoons, an Irish American regiment, two battalions of black men (one of free and slave African Americans, and the other of Haitian immigrants), Choctaw Indians, and the pirate band of Jean and Pierre Laffite. When Jackson gave orders they had to be translated into French, Spanish and Choctaw. When the militia from Kentucky showed up they lacked tents, blankets and guns, partly because the Army would not pay to have the supplies shipped by the fastest means. When the Kentuckians were attacked in the battle, “they behaved the way American militia units often behaved in the War of 1812: They ran away.”
2. Jackson promised the blacks, as “brave fellow citizens,” the pay and respect equal to whites, including promises of bonuses and land. After the battle he reneged, sending the slaves back to their masters. Forty years later the free black veterans were still trying to get the 160 acres awarded other soldiers. To its credit, the British army refused to return 200 self-emancipated people, taking them to Bermuda.
3. In fact, the Americans won the battle through a series of British mistakes, and by out-dueling the English artillery. It was only the power of cannon, and not a pitched battle of foot soldiers, that could explain 251 British killed and 1,259 wounded vs. 11 and 23 respectively for the U.S. American technology (and luck) proved decisive, not citizen soldiers--a theme of the emerging century.
4. The City of New Orleans was indeed a great prize, but quite different from what we might imagine a typical nineteenth-century American city. It was the second largest port in the United States, after New York, and would be until Los Angeles surpassed it in the twentieth century. Comprised of 25K people, the city included Spanish Creoles, émigré French planters from Haiti, free people of color, slaves, Acadians fleeing ethnic cleansing in Nova Scotia (later shortened to Cajuns), and Anglo-Americans (making up just 13% of the population). New Orleans had only been part of the United States for twelve years, and the dominant French community despised the recently-arrived Yankees. Distrusting the city and many of his own troops, Jackson had imposed martial law on December 16, 1814.
5. The Battle of New Orleans was fought 15 days after the peace treaty ending the War of 1812 had been signed at Ghent, Belgium. Americans, who would turn Jackson into a hero, did not seem to mind when they found out. Despite a variety of evidence to the contrary, this historical postcard would be captured in the American imagination as a great victory of western riflemen over an arrogant European opponent.6. Jackson kept New Orleans under martial law until March 13, long after the news of peace had arrived. As part of his brutal, impetuous style, he executed six militiamen who tried to depart, and then tossed in jail the federal district judge in New Orleans who challenged him. That, along with a career of violence and flaunting authority, caused Jefferson to write of Jackson and his presidential aspirations of 1824: “He is one of the most unfit men I know of for such a place.”
7. Nevertheless, Jackson would have an entire “Age” named for him, and a particular brand of beloved democracy. The Battle of New Orleans was essential to his career. It became one of the most twisted yet powerful historical postcards in American history.
It would have seemed impossible for a man like Jackson to avoid jail, much less become President. It’s nice to know some things in America never change.
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