Author: Pam Keyes
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Cobbett the Body-Snatcher, or What Happened to Thomas Paine’s Corpse
Even before Thomas Paine had died, at least one of his “friends” had designs on acquiring his skull. John Wesley Jarvis, an artist who was a close associate of the author of “Common Sense,” asked Paine once, in a rather morbid but friendly mood, if he would permit him to have his skull to study…
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The Poison Pen Duels of William Duane and Peter Porcupine
Some eight thousand times a day, six days a week, pressmen cranked the heavy wooden press of the Weekly Aurora newspaper of Philadelphia. They were printing platens of tiny type on the Aurora’s eight linen paper pages, much of it poison pen invective written by pro-Jeffersonian editor William Duane against mortal enemy Peter…
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Laffite Talk at Battle of New Orleans Historical Symposium Jan. 10, 2015
Get your travel plans ready now for the Third Annual Battle of New Orleans Historical Symposium slated Jan. 9 and 10, 2015, at Nunez Community College Auditorium at Chalmette, La., near the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park. Among featured speakers will be William C. Davis, who will deliver the keynote address about “The Pirates Laffite”…
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The Aurora Editor Snipes at Britain, Post War of 1812
With one of those quill pens he so often had wielded to acidulously attack targets in his Weekly Aurora newspaper at Philadelphia, Editor William Duane reflected at length in March 1815 about the Causes and Character of the Late War with Great Britain, in an exposition that flowed like a river of tiny type and…
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The First Battle of New Orleans Poem
The following is believed to be the first poem written about the Battle of New Orleans, published in the New Orleans Gazette in either late February or early March 1815, and reprinted widely in newspapers throughout the United States in April and May, 1815. The author, sadly, is unknown, but from the content of the…
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Capt. Percy’s Folly at Fort Bowyer
Young British Capt. William H. Percy found himself in dire straits on the afternoon of Sept. 15, 1814. His ship, the sixth rate class HMS Hermes, was mired for the second time that day on a sand bar in shoal water within 150 yards of Fort Bowyer near Mobile Bay, and the Americans…
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Yellow Fever: Napoleon’s Most Formidable Opponent
By Pam Keyes In mid-1802, French general Victor-Emmanuel LeClerc took up his pen to write back to his superior and sighed in the dripping, humid heat of Port-au-Prince. His brother-in-law, Napoleon, thought it would be an easy mission to quash the latest slave uprising on the island of Haiti and French-controlled colony St. Domingue. After…