Ripple Effect

PETER: OK, guys, open the windows. Things are going to heat up fast. It’s time to talk about love in the time of 1812. I want to start with what was supposedly a British catch phrase during the war, a watch word, if you will. You ready for this?

ED: Lay it on me.

PETER: Beauty and Booty.

BRIAN: Hey, Peter, you’re sounding more Barry White like every minute.

PETER: Yes. Beauty and Booty. Ed, can you read this letter for me? This is a letter from George Poindexter. He was a volunteer at the famous Battle of New Orleans with Andrew Jackson.

ED: The watchword and counter sign of the enemy was Beauty and Booty. Had victory declared on their side, the scene of Havre de Grace, of Hampton, of Alexandria–

PETER: Ed, those are the cities the British had pillaged earlier in the year.

ED: Would without doubt had been reenacted at New Orleans with all the unfeeling and brutal inhumanity of the savage foe with whom we are contending.

NICOLE EUSTACE: Well, the idea that the British were fighting for Beauty and Booty–

PETER: This is Nicole Eustace, a professor of history at NYU.

NICOLE EUSTACE: –helped to cement in the public mind the idea that the romantic love that Americans fought from was a virtuous kind of romantic love, whereas the English were motivated by evil, sinful, lustful varieties of passion, which was quite distinct from American virtuous love. So Beauty and Booty just kind of sent that message very clearly. And Poindexter spread this rumor that it was the watchword of the British on the day of the attack.

And why did Poindexter claim this? Well, one of the things that I uncovered in the course of looking into the origins of the Beauty and Booty story was that Poindexter did not acquit himself very well on the day of the Battle of New Orleans. He got a little bruise on his arm. And it sounds to me like he kind of had a panic attack.

He wrapped his arm up in a sling and he spent the day inside quarters claiming to be too injured to fight. And he took a lot of flack for this afterwards because he was just bruised. And I think he probably made up the story, this very sensational story, to distract from this.

The English ignored it for a long time. The reason that the English finally had to disavow it was because Poindexter’s story was so politically useful that it was taken up by Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson, the conquering hero of New Orleans, the general who led the troops to victory, went back to Washington after the peace treaty had been signed. And he, literally, became the toast of Washington.

He went around from gala to gala. And he toasted the idea that his troops had saved American Booty and Beauty from the British. Finally, the surviving officers, British officers from New Orleans, got together and they all swore an affidavit that this was absolutely not the call sign. So there’s no reason to think that this story was true. But yet it served this really useful political purpose.

PETER: And here’s what Eustace means when she says useful political purpose. America’s still a new country. It’s never raised a formal military. And so how are you going to convince young men to fight in future wars without TV ads, without tuition benefits, no be all that you can be? Well, how do you get them to fight? Eustace says you need to make them love their country the way they love their women.

NICOLE EUSTACE: Let me give you a great poem that is from a contemporary song book and it was published in poster forms. So this must have been tacked up in taverns. It could’ve been passed around at a sing along in a parlor.

This is called The Love of Country. And it goes like this. “A soldier is a gentleman. His honor is his life. And he that won’t stand to his post will never stand by his wife since love and honor are the same or are so near allied that neither can exist alone but flourish side by side. Farewell sweethearts for a while, you pretty girls ado. And when we’ve drove the British dogs, we’ll kiss it out with you.” So there is this belief in popular culture that romantic love makes good fighting men.

PETER: During the War of 1812 and just after the war, poems and novels and songs just like this were ubiquitous. And the War of 1812 becomes a sort of romance in itself. In the end, it looms larger in people’s imaginations than it does in their everyday lives.

NICOLE EUSTACE: More people died in the Battle of Bull Run, one of the very first battles of the Civil War. 5,000 people died in one day. That’s more than died in the entire war of 1812. And this helps to explain why print culture is so important to the understanding of the war.

This was a minor conflict. People didn’t really experience much suffering first hand or even much fighting first hand. And if we think of how the US winds up backing into the Civil War, I think we can think about the fact that the print culture of the War of 1812 in no way prepared anyone for the disconnect between glorious stories of love and romance and the actual experience of warfare.

PETER: Nicole Eustace is a professor of history at New York University. She’s the author of a new book, 1812: War and the Passions of Patriotism.

[MUSIC PLAYING – BARRY WHITE, “CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF YOUR LOVE BABY”]

ED: We’re going to take a short break. When we come back, we’ll hear how the War of 1812 climbed the pop charts 150 years later and made it all the way to number one.

BRIAN: You’re listening to BackStory. We’ll be back in a minute.