History, Geography, and "The Fighting Kentuckian"
I often warn viewers of movies to not watch dramatic movies to learn history nor to expect dramatic movies to hew closely to actual history. Nevertheless, there is a thread of a connection between "The Fighting Kentuckian" and U.S. history.
There really were French Bonapartists who were exiles and who sought refuge in the United States. The United States Congress really did agree to sell them land in Alabama on which to settle with the stipulation that they grow vine's for grapes and olives. This stipulation was to ensure that they did not simply use the new land as a place to build up an army with the idea of launching a new effort to seize control of France. There were also three regiments of Kentucky Volunteer Militia who took part in the Battle of New Orleans and who may have marched through Alabama on the way home to Kentucky. There are just two problems, a small one of geography and a larger one of history.
At first I thought that it must be a stretch for a military unit to go out of its way to march through Alabama en route from New Orleans to Kentucky. A quick reference to a map shows that this is not so. While it would make more sense to take ship and travel up the Mississippi River, if the unit chooses to march (the cheapest way to travel) then a direct line-of-sight march would go directly through Alabama and even go near Demopolis. The big problem is with the details of the history. The Battle of New Orleans ended by 18 January 1815 and the Kentucky Volunteer Militia regiments departed for home by March. The French emigres did not arrive in the United States (at Mobile, Alabama) until May 1817. Traveling by foot is slow and it may have taken months to get back to Kentucky, but I find it too much to swallow that it took any unit two years to get from New Orleans to Mobile.
Still, I credit this movie for getting me curious about how a Kentucky regiment found itself in Alabama. While "The Fighting Kentuckian" does violence to true history, as do most historical dramas, it did motivate me to learn about some details of the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812 and the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars.
The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.