News release Public Information Office  SLU 10880   Hammond, LA 70402   phone: 985-549-2341   fax: 985-549-2061 publicinfo@selu.edu Spring 2004 news releases Public Information home News archive Contact: Christina Chapple Date: 7/14/05   HISTORIAN TO LECTURE ON WAR OF 1812 AT MARITIME MUSEUM        HAMMOND – Gene Smith, professor of early American history and director of the Center for Texas Studies at Texas Christian University, will describe eye-witness accounts of the War of 1812 as guest lecturer at the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Maritime Museum in Madisonville on Wednesday, July 20.        The public is invited to the free 7 p.m. lecture, which is titled “A bloody expedition and so much the better: A British Midshipman Records the War of 1812 in Maine and Louisiana.” The lecture is a special feature of the museum’s quarterly general membership meeting, said Roy Blackwood, coordinator of Southeastern education initiatives at the museum.        Smith, who received his doctoral degree from Auburn University, is author or editor of a number of books, including the recent “A British Eyewitness at the Battle of New Orleans: The Memoir of Royal Navy Admiral Robert Aitchison, 1808-1827.” His research focuses on politics, frontier expansion, and naval and maritime history during the revolutionary era and early republic. He currently is writing a textbook on American military history and a study of African American combatants during the War of 1812.        His books also include “Thomas ap Catesby Jones: Commodore of Manifest Destiny,” “Historical Memoir of the War in West Florida and Louisiana in 1814-15: With an Atlas,” and “Filibusters and Expansionists:  Jeffersonian Manifest Destiny, 1800-1821.”         For additional information about the lecture, contact Blackwood at 985-549-2662 or cblackwood@selu.edu.