General Andrew Jackson defeated the suicidal British at New Orleans in 1815

Posted in America, Famous battles, Historical articles, History, War on Tuesday, 28 February 2012

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This edited article about America originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 653 published on 20 July 1974.

Andrew Jackson, picture, image, illustration

General Andrew Jackson (inset) and the British defeat at New Orleans in 1815, by Graham Coton

It would never have done for the Duke of Wellington, but he was several thousand miles away in Europe at the time, unable to prevent a British army from being annihilated. That was the trouble in Wellington’s day. If he was present at a battle, the British invariably won, for the combination of his genius for war, his brilliant selection of subordinates, and the valour of his troops, forged a weapon that was able to topple even the mighty Napoleon Bonaparte from his throne.

The slaughter was not caused by the French, because this was January 8, 1815, and Europe was at peace, an uneasy peace before the final overthrow of Napoleon at Waterloo in July. The enemy which destroyed the British was an American army, commanded by a general so tough that his men called him “Old Hickory,” his real name being Andrew Jackson.

The U.S.A. had finally gained its independence from King George III when the American Revolution ended in 1783, but in 1812 another war, one that few on either side of the Atlantic wanted, broke out.

The reasons for it are simply told. Britain, fighting for her life against Napoleon’s France, took certain steps which infuriated many Americans. Their ports were blockaded, their ships were forbidden to trade with France, and their seamen were sometimes pressed into service with the Royal Navy. Meanwhile, “war hawks” in the States were casting greedy eyes on Canada. But by 1814, the war had become a stalemate. Canada had survived invasions, many stirring naval actions had been fought, and the British had burnt parts of Washington in retaliation for an American fire-raising raid on Toronto. Now peace was being made. People were fed up with the war. But there was still one final battle to come. The British, having taken Washington but not Baltimore, sailed away to Jamaica and plans were made to capture the great port of New Orleans in Louisiana. It was an appalling place to attack, for the Mississippi Delta on which it had been built, was a mass of swamps and inlets.

In charge of military operations in the Southern United States was Major General Andrew Jackson, a 48-year-old frontiersman and ex-politician who had successfully fought the Indian allies of Great Britain as a general of militia volunteers and been rewarded with a commission in the Regular Army. He heard about the impending attack when stationed at Mobile, Alabama, and headed for New Orleans with his ragged riflemen, to hear on December 23, 1814, that the British had landed eight miles below the city.

Sir Edward Pakenham, the British leader, had some 8,000 men, many of them hardened veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, but this was war with a difference, a war in which the white enemy was likely to fight Indian-fashion. Jackson had some 5,000 men, 700 of them were allegedly regulars, but were actually recruits, 1,000 were local volunteers, and there were some Choctaw Indians as well, plus freed, black, ex-slaves. There were also some French Louisianans and a gang of pirates led by the swashbuckling Jean Lafitte.

Finally, there were Jackson’s best troops, riflemen from Tennessee and Kentucky who more coonskin hats and buckskin shirts and were the best marksmen on the continent. As well as their famous long rifles, they carried scalping knives.

Jackson was a man of the backwoods himself, but he feared that even these rugged characters would be no match for disciplined British Redcoats. Believing that attack was the best form of defence, he raided the British lines on the night of the 24th, then, while the startled invaders regrouped, he had his men build a breastwork of cotton bales stretching some 1,000 yards from the Mississippi to a swamp. In front of this barricade there was a dry canal and behind it, the motley army waited.

On New Year’s Day, 1815, the British artillery opened up and the cotton bales caught fire, threatening to set the Americans’ ammunition alight. American guns returned fire and a thick pall of smoke hung over the barricade. Jackson ordered the bales to be dumped and had his men dig in behind an earth embankment.

There was a week’s pause, every day of which strengthened the American position. On the 8th, with the barricade now strengthened by logs, Sir Edward Pakenham, Wellington’s brother-in-law, unforgivably ordered a frontal attack.

As if on parade, the Redcoats marched forward in a series of long, close columns, company by company, some carrying ladders to swarm over the canal. As they drew near, a withering blast of cannon and rifle fire erupted from behind the barricade and cut into the advancing ranks. They grew thinner and thinner, but the gallant survivors, sent on a suicide mission by their commander, kept on marching, their bayonets fixed. Pakenham may have been foolish, but he was brave, marching forward with his doomed men until cut down by a bullet.

In under 20 minutes, over 2,000 British soldiers had fallen dead or wounded, while the American losses were a mere 8 killed and 13 wounded. Finally, the valiant remnants, many grimly wishing no doubt that they were safely in Europe, were forced to turn and race for safety, leaving their dead, who included three generals, behind them. Andrew Jackson and his rag-bag of an army had saved New Orleans and the South.

Neither the losers nor the winners could know that the war was already over, the Peace Treaty having been signed at Ghent in Belgium two weeks earlier. Communications were desperately slow in those days or many brave men would have been spared. But from the American point of view, New Orleans meant that they had won the war, even though neither side really had, and the treaty hardly touched on the points about which they had been fighting.

“Old Hickory” of course was now a national hero, and he later became President of the United States because of his famous victory. Meanwhile, the surviving British had long since sailed for home, never again to fight against Americans, only with them in two far greater wars.

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