CRS strikes again; I rememberd I was wrong about when Pete Seeger dropped out after I posted. Crosschecking between David Dunaway's Seeger biog and Joe Klein on Woody, both agree that Woody was the one who encouraged Seeger to go travelling and "meet the people" which sure helped make Pete into Pete. Catspaw-- it's very hard to imagine today's folk scene without Woody because we're living in the world he WAS in; still my bet is that many songs would have been written along the same themes, maybe not as well.
Bert-- (sorry we had so little time together this past weekend!) Wellington would never have gotten trapped into a frontal attack as Pakenham did. By 1814 the British government was using him as an advisor on grand strategy and they had the sense to know that their national interest was NOT threatened by the American war (Wellington's was one of the stronger voices in saying this) -- in fact, W wrote a dispatch saying "You don't need me, you don't need a good general, what you need is naval superiority on the lakes; without that you shouldn't be demanding anything at the peace conference except status quo ante bellum." -- and that's what they settled for,two weeks BEFORE the 8th of January 1815.