NEW YORK,
August 26, 1848.
Our city is quite well supplied, now-a-days, with the
article of military characters—both officer and private. Major Gen. Gaines1 has returned among us; and has issued a sort of
manifesto, so unique in its character that I cannot help copying it,2 for the benefit
of the New Orleanois. Gen. Gaines is speaking of the returned soldiers from Mexico.
[The order here referred to was published yesterday.—Eds.
What documents does this remind you of—is this in
the style of Hannibal,3 Caesar,4 or Bonaparte?5
Cool weather yet continues—that is comparatively
cool.—People are flocking back to town from their cotes in the country. Every
one is curious to hear the news from Ireland; and the Irish themselves are half
crazy with doubt.6 Large sums of money have been poured
in to the hands of the "Irish Directory" in this city—of course for the
purchase of arms and equipments to help the Repealers. It is expected that we shall
soon hear of some diplomatic passages between the British and our officers.
Forrest7 appears at the
Broadway theatre next Monday night—one of his "farewell" engagements pre-haps.
Yours,
MANHATTAN.
Notes
- 1. Born in Virginia and educated
in Tennessee, Edmund Pendeleton Gaines (1777–1849)
became a United States Army officer. He served for nearly fifty years
and was a veteran of the War of 1812 and of the Mexican-American War,
which had officially ended in early February 1848, with the
signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. [back]
- 2. See "Military Order,"
The New Orleans Crescent (September 5, 1848), 2. [back]
- 3. Hannibal (247 BC–183–181 BC)
was a statesman and military commander who lead Carthage
forces in the Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC) against
the Roman Republic. Roman troops defeated Hannibal after his invasion
of Italy. [back]
- 4. Gaius Julius Caesar
(July 100 BC–44 BC) was a statesman and a Roman general. Caesar
led the Roman armies during the Gallic Wars and defeated his political rival
Pompey (106 BC–46 BC) in a civil war, after which Caesar assumed control
of the goverment of Rome, ruling from 49 BC until he was assassinated on the Ides of March
(March 15) in 44 BC. [back]
- 5. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1825) was the
military leader who, after the French Revolution, became the first Emperor of
France—Napoleon I—from 1804 to 1815. As Emperor, Napoleon led the
Napoleonic Wars in an attempt to conquer Europe but was defeated at Waterloo on
June 18, 1815. [back]
- 6. Whitman is referring to
the political and cultural forces pushing for an independent Ireland
in the 1840s. The Young Ireland movement was an Irish
nationalist movement that supported Irish independence. The movement
had its origins in the Repeal Association's campaign to dissolve
the 1800 Irish Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland.
Young Irelanders seceded from the Repeal Association and formed
the Irish Confederation, garnering a strong base in
Dublin, and exerting a lasting influence on subsequent separatist endeavors.
Young Irelanders attempted an unsuccessful insurrection in 1848 with
the aims of Irish independence and democratic reform and
as a response to British Parliament's passage of a "Crime and Outrage Bill"
that enacted martial law in Ireland in an attempt to counter Irish nationalism.
The Young Irelanders' rebellion in July 1848, resulted in the arrest of the movement's leaders and the collapse
of the rebellion efforts. Ireland would not become self-governing until 1922. [back]
- 7. Edwin Forrest
(1806–1872) was an American stage actor, well known for his Shakespearean
roles. He was also notorious for his feud with William Macready, a British actor, which ended in an
1849 nativist riot at New York's Astor Opera House that left twenty-five dead. [back]