Julia's Brother's Commanding Officer

An excerpt from Sixty years in a school-room....,  By Julia Ann Tevis, John Tevis:

In connection with General [Sam] Houston I am reminded of Colonel Thornton Posey, who was intimately associated with my brother during his last visit to the home circle in Washington. This dear brother, not twenty years old, held the honorable position of first lieutenant in Colonel Posey's regiment.

Louisiana State Gazette (New Orleans, Louisiana)30 Oct 1817 (Newspapers.com)

Colonel Posey had nobly distinguished himself in the war of 1812, and was retained in the peace establishment as a highly esteemed and trustworthy officer.

Note; Colonel Posey's brother, Alexander Posey, and William Roark [my ancestor] engaged in a real estate transaction.

Emigrants Circa 1818

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"That although in certain cases such special acts have been made in favor of bodies of foreign emigrants, it has always bee on the ground, and in consideration of a general public benefit accruing.... ." 

Louisiana and Indiana were specifically mentioned.

Red River Expedition

From Cahaba. A story of captive boys in blue,:

"Not more brilliant nor cheering to the North was the expedition up Red River, in Louisiana, under General Banks." [Source]

Flowering Tree At A Red River Campaign Battlefield In Louisiana

Hugh McGary's Encounters With Famous People

Excerpts from THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE The Story of the Natchez Trace, by Nathan Daniels:

1763 Map Of Louisiana, Natchez, And The Missippi River (LOC)

(After they were married, Andrew and Rachel Jackson traveled in a large group from Bayou Pierre in Sept 1791) "Yet only the names of three of its members (of the traveling party) are known: Andrew and Rachel, and a dangerous, swashbuckling, Virginia-born Kentuckian, one Hugh McGary."  "The Jacksons had no reason to fear him."  "McGary's brother [Martin] had married Jackson's cousin [Bettie Crawford]."

"...Marquis James described McGary as a famous 'frontier soldier and Indian fighter." (Jackson's biographer)

Displayed At Harrodstown, Kentucky

"Nine years before he rode up the[Natchez] Trace with the Jacksons, McGary had a similar argument with Daniel Boone about an Indian fight in Kentucky."  Then Kentuckians were pursuing a body of Indians and Canadians who had struck at Bryant's Station.....  (McGary challenged Boone and the reluctant settlers to follow him)  "Many did."  "And in the Battle of Blue Licks, August 19, 1782, one of the bloodiest battles ever fought on the frontier, many died, too..."

Plaque (Partial) At Harrodstown, Kentucky

"Even before that McGary had quarrled with James Harrod over an Indian attack."

Political Villains

General Andrew Jackson Statue In New Orleans, Louisiana

[Andrew] Jackson *wrote to the Army quartermaster [William Berkeley Lewis]: ...is this the reward of a virtuous administration, to its patriotic sons, or is it done by a wicked monster, to satiate the vengeance, of a combination of hypocritical Political Villains, who would sacrifice the best blood of our Country, to satiate the spleen of a villain who their connections with in acts of wickedness they are afraid to offend...?  Jackson made it clear that one of the villains to whom he referred was Wilkinson. [Source: The Devils Backbone...]

*Transcription of Andrew Jackson's letter below:

The Influence Of Spanish Agents

Source

"After the war, treaties had been made with them by the State of Georgia, but the Creeks claimed that the stipulated terms had not been kept.  One very strong reason for their hostility was the presence among them of Spanish agents. 

On The Mississippi River In New Orleans, Louisiana

The authorities of Louisiana were determined to keep the navigation of the Mississippi wholly in their hands and to allow the United States no commercial privileges at New Orleans."

Bowie And His Association With Jean Lafitte

From Lots of Land:

In that year [circa 1830] Jim Bowie appeared in Texas with a colorful reputation behind him and considerable means as the result of his association with Jean Lafitte (Bowie and his brother were reportedly agents of the pirate king in disposing of his stolen "black ivory."

In one year they are supposed to have netted $65,000 in commissions.) After having fought alligators barehanded, killing a man with a knife fashioned by his brother, searching for gold among the Lipan Indians, and marrying the daughter of a wealthy Spaniard in San Antonio, Bowie turned to land traffic. In 1830 he purchased sixteen such eleven-league grants from Mexican citizens who filed for them and released them to Bowie.

Old Creole Families Of New Orleans

In The New Orleans Gardens

Creole Families Of New Orleans:

Bartram's Travels

Also see Thomas Brown In The Hornet's Nest.

The Hornet's Nest, A novel of the Revolutionary War by [President] Jimmy Carter, is concerned with the war "as it was fought in Georgia and the Carolinas...".

Two of the characters, husband and wife Kindred and Mavis Morris were associates of Dr. John Bartram of Philadelphia whose son, William, was going to collect flora and fauna, too.

Bartram:  Then the surveyor team is supposed to come here, and I shall join this British and Indian group, who will be establishing the boundary lines of the territory just ceded by the Indians in Augusta.  Then we plan to return to Savannah, continue my examination of the coastal areas of Carolina and Georgia, and later go farther into the interior of northern Florida and southern Georgia.

A Rotten Fight

Rio Grande River Looking Towards Mexico

And Wait For The Night by JohnWilliam Corrington...

"He remembered the long tortured negotiations that summer before the war with Mexico, the equally tortured logic of the administration, the coarse gleeful representatives in the Louisiana legislature who wanted a war that would net not only Texas to the Rio Grande, but the whole of the subcontinent down to Central America if the Mexicans gave trouble."

"Mexico was a rotten fight, and you were right on top of the heap. You fought ‘em from the border to the City of Mexico itself. You saw Scott ride in, and you were part of what went on before he made that ride. I bet you remember Chapultepec."

The Finest And Strongest

Courtyard - Beauregard-Keyes House - New Orleans

Source

Spanish Intrigue

In a neat tie-in to the Aaron Burr saga, Brigadier General James Wilkinson, who played a very prominent part in Burr's scheme, made a "cameo" appearance in the Daniel Boone book because of his (Wilkinson's) plot to have Kentucky break away not only from Virginia as a separate state, but from the United States as well, and for the Kentuckians to switch their allegiance to Spanish rule if Spain supplied Wilkinson and company with arms.

From DANIEL BOONE by John Bakeless (1939):

 "He (Wilkinson) had soldiered with Benedict Arnold; but so far--at least no one knows anything to the contrary--he had been loyal. The war over, he had come to Kentucky in 1784 to make a fortune. The fortune proved harder to achieve than the brigadier had anticipated. He looked around for easy money. Arnold had done that, too, years before. The British were gone. The Spaniards? Brigadier General Wilkinson took a boat for New Orleans. He had a long and very private conference with Spanish officials there. When he came back, the brigadier had found his easy money. He rejoined the United States Army later; but still he kept that easy money. Eventually he went before a court-martial. His enemies were entirely correct in suspecting unutterable treason. Wilkinson had actually asked the Spaniards for arms to use against the United States. The trouble was that, though his accusers knew they were correct, they could not prove it. All the evidence was neatly tucked away in the Spanish Government's archives in Havana."

The (Early) Life Of Pauline Cushman

Life of Pauline Cushman: The celebrated Union spy and scout. 

Pauline's father....abandoned his enterprises in the Queen City of the South [New Orleans] and removed to Grand Rapids in the State of Michigan when Pauline was about ten years of age. He there opened an establishment for purposes of trade with the Indians, as Grand Rapids was still little more than a frontier settlement... . 

Pauline's memorial at FindAGrave.

That Pattern Began To Crack

Below is an excerpt from And Wait For The Night by JohnWilliam Corrington...:

From the starched rectitude of the family, through the unsullied rondo of the schools, to the rich properties of his father’s bank, young Lodge had stepped without a hitch. There was one city: Boston.  One church: Episcopal. One state superior in all ways: Massachusetts. One law: gentlemanly conduct and smart business practice. One political party: Whig. And one view of life not sicklied o’er with the film of degeneracy and indecency: his kind of life. It was possible for a man to be born, to live, and to die within this regimen. It had been done. His father had done it. But as the century moved forward into the middle 1840’s, that pattern began to crack and shred along the edges. 

House In Louisiana (Chalmette Battlefield)

Vast new territories were being consumed into the Union (already swollen beyond decent bounds by the damnable and possibly treasonous Louisiana Purchase—which yet might prove the seed of ultimate disunion) and almost all of this territory was either in the hands of slave-state representatives, or well on the way to falling into their grasp. Not that Lodge, in 1845, was an abolitionist. Hardly that. Abolitionists were seedy radicals at least as distasteful as the slave-owning, pseudo-aristocratic barbarians themselves. A conservative man would have as little truck as possible with the latter and no conversation with the former at all. Still, the slave-power burgeoned and thrived: in Virginia, Nat Turner had revolted, slaughtered, been captured, and executed, and still the threat of another Santo Domingo, another slave-rising under a L’Ouverture yet to make himself known, seemed to hover over the states south of Washington City. Even a conservative like Jonathan Lodge could say this much: --The system is basically unstable. 

A LA Nouvelle Orleans

Source

Bricked Between Posts NOLA Pioneer House

Creole Families Of New Orleans:

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"Briquette entre Poteaux"

Louisiana Plantations

Oakley Plantation In Louisiana

Old Louisiana Plantation Homes and Family Trees, Volume 1:

Tom Cringle's Log

Tom Cringle's Log :

At New Orleans....

General Wilkinson And The Louisiana Purchase

Jim's Photo From Downtown New Orleans

From the History of New Orleans, Volume 3, by John Smith Kendall:

On November 9, 1803, he [William Charles Cole Claiborne]  received an appointment by President Jefferson as a commissioner, with Gen. James Wilkinson, to receive from France the Louisiana Purchase, and to succeed the Spanish governor until a government for the new territory be established.

More about the colorful character, General James Wilkinson, here.

It Was The Americans Who Broke Through

From Lots of Land:

Source

But, by and large, Spain never attempted to settle Texas, only to guard it, to keep anyone else from grabbing it.  As Mattie Austin Hatcher wrote...,

The Spaniards felt compelled to be on their guard against...the Americans, whom
they feared most of all. 

The latter premonition proved a wise one. Spain had held her own against the French, had maintained at least a formal authority over the Indians, was able to reduce the Louisiana immigration to only a trickle, and had completely shut the English.

It was the American who broke through the closed door.  He was on his way by the end of the century, when Nolan had already captured wild horses (and perhaps drawn his maps for General James Wilkinson) west of the Red River.