Chicago Citizen

CORRESPONDENCE

Chicago, Jan. 4, 1926.

Editor of The Citizen:

In my opinion the people are forgetting the importance of Jackson day, Jan. 8.

Gen. Jackson was a great man and stands in the first rank of patriotic Americans.

His services in driving the British out of New Orleans cannot well be overestimated.

England hoped, with the aid of the Indians, to recapture the United States and make them again part of the British Empire.

Napoleon was practically crushed in 1814, and England send Gen. Packenham with the crack soldiers of the peninsular war, men who had won the plaudits of all Europe, and Jackson, with his sharpshooters from Kentucky and Tennessee, dealt England such a crushing blow at the battle of New Orleans that her hopes of winning America were forever blasted. Packenham was killed and the scattered remnants of the proud army that had dealt Napoleon so many crushing and telling blows withdraw to Jamaica, and from that day to this there has never been a foreign foe on American soil.

There is no doubt that the war of 1812, of which Jackson was the hero, was the second war for American independence. Had England won that war the United States would have again become English colonies.

The end of her (England's) dreams of American and world domination which Jackson accomplished at New Orleans on the 8th of January, 1815, was the greatest humiliation to which British ambition ever bowed and, conversely, it was the greatest "boost" or impetus, so to speak, that the new-born republic of America had received up to that time.

Up to that time it was a question whether America could hold her own or not, but on the 9th of January, 1815, the world greeted your Uncle Sammy as the master of his own house. Gen. Jackson showed the world that we could not only take care of ourselves but that the American eagle was master of the Western Hemisphere.

It is the custom of Democrats to celebrate Jackson's day, but this day should not be confined to Democrats alone, for the appreciation of the far-reaching results of Jackson day should rise above the plane of party politics. It should appeal to all red-blooded Americans, no matter what their business or calling. It should dominate every home in our land.

Respectfully yours,

GEO. F. COSTELLO.