CHAPTER XX. THE CAMPAIGN ON THE GULF COAST.
British Occupation of Pensacola—Negotiations with Lafitte—Expedition against Mobile—Capture of Pensacola—Defence of New Orleans—The Battles before the City—Defeat of the British—Losses.
Though Pensacola was a Spanish town, in Spanish territory, the British forces used it as a station for fitting out expeditions against Mobile and New Orleans. Here they gathered arms and munitions of war; here their vessels found safe anchorage in a spacious harbor, where they were afforded every facility for refitting; and here the savage allies were equipped for war and murder. The British commander sent an embassy to Jean Lafitte, at Barataria Bay, offering him a captain's commission, together with a free pardon for all his gang, and grants of land to be carved out of such territory as might be conquered from the United States, on condition that he and his men would assist with their fleet the expeditions then fitting out. The English commander also hinted darkly at something which he called "the blessings of the British constitution"—probably meaning the abundant bone and muscle of a beef-eater—as an additional inducement to the famous little Frenchman. Lafitte was commonly called a pirate, but that was not precisely his character. He was a receiver of stolen goods captured by half-piratical privateers, which he smuggled into New Orleans. But, pirate or no pirate, he seems to have been too shrewd for the Englishman. He appeared to acquiesce till he obtained the terms in black and white, and then despatched the letters to Governor Claiborne of Louisiana, together with one in which he offered his services in defending the coast against the British, on condition that the proscription of himself and his adherents be terminated by an act of oblivion. The Governor laid the letters before a council of military and naval officers, who decided that they were forgeries and Lafitte a scoundrel. Consequently an expedition under Commodore Patterson was sent against him, by which his establishment was broken up, nine of his vessels were seized, and many of his men made prisoners.
One morning in July, General Jackson was presented with a new English musket, brought to his headquarters by a friendly Indian who had received it from the Creeks at Appalachicola. This told an alarming story, which the General at once communicated to Governor Claiborne and the Secretary of War. Of the latter he asked permission to make a descent upon Pensacola. Before an answer was received, Jackson was joined by new levies of troops from Tennessee, which he hurried to Mobile.
On Mobile Point, commanding the entrance to the bay, stood a ruinous earthwork known as Fort Bowyer. Major William Lawrence, with a garrison of one hundred and sixty men, took possession of this, and proceeded to put it in shape for defence. On the 12th of September, the British landed a detachment of marines and six hundred Indians on the peninsula of which Mobile Point is the extremity, and a few hours later four war-vessels, under Captain Percy, appeared at the entrance of the bay. Two or three days were passed in feeble demonstrations on the land side, and attempts to sound the channel; but on the afternoon of the 15th the fleet sailed up in line, dropped anchor in the channel, and opened the battle. For an hour the firing was incessant; it ceased for a moment when the colors of the flag-ship Hermes were shot away; but was soon renewed, when a chance shot cut the cable of the Hermes, the current swung her bow-on to the fort, and for twenty minutes she was raked mercilessly. She drifted down the channel and ran aground, when Captain Percy abandoned her and set her on fire. Another vessel was crippled and driven off, and the other two then withdrew.
The simultaneous assaults of the marines and Indians had been met and repelled with a few discharges of grape. In this action the garrison lost four men killed and four wounded; the British official report acknowledged a loss of thirty-two killed and forty wounded.
Early in November, Jackson, with three thousand men, marched on Pensacola, where he proposed to garrison the forts till the Spanish authorities were able to maintain for themselves the neutrality of the port. This proposition being rejected by the Spanish Governor, Jackson's men charged into the town and captured a battery, and took possession. That night Fort Barrancas, commanding the entrance to the harbor, was blown up, and the British vessels sailed away.
Hurrying back to Mobile, where he feared a second attack, Jackson learned of the revelations of Lafitte and was urged to go to the defence of New Orleans. He arrived in that city on the 2d of December, was enthusiastically welcomed, and at once set to work to prepare it for defence. He called out the Louisiana militia, appealed to the free negroes, released and enrolled convicts whose terms were within two months of expiration, accepted the services of Lafitte and his men, assigning them to duty as artillerists, and ordered Coffee with his two thousand men to join him from Mobile. While looking anxiously for new levies from Kentucky and Tennessee, who were to come by way of the river, he fortified the city, and proclaimed martial law.
On the 10th of December the British fleet entered Lake Borgne, where on the 14th it defeated and captured the American gunboats. On the 23d a body of two thousand four hundred British troops reached the bank of the Mississippi nine miles below New Orleans, and with two thousand one hundred Jackson went down to meet them.
New Orleans was the largest prize which had been contended for in this war. It was a city of twenty thousand inhabitants; and a hundred and fifty thousand bales of cotton, worth two shillings a pound, were stored there. But it was not so much its immediate pecuniary value that tempted the enemy, as the commercial and strategical importance of its position, for they expected not only to capture but to hold it permanently. Lieutenant Gleig, author of "The Subaltern," who was connected with the expedition, after describing the Mississippi and its tributaries, wrote: "Whatever nation, therefore, chances to possess this place, possesses in reality the command of a greater extent of country than is included within the boundary line of the whole United States," and the London Times, announcing that all the disposable shipping had been sent from Bermuda, to the Mississippi, added that, "most active measures are pursuing for detaching from the dominion of the enemy an important part of his territory."
Wellington's veterans, fresh from their victories in the Spanish peninsula, were now before the city, and the inhabitants, knowing how hasty had been the preparations for defence, trembled for its safety. The expectation was, that, if captured, it would at once be sacked.
It was late in the day when Jackson moved to the attack. He sent Coffee and his Tennesseeans to gain the right flank and rear of the enemy, while the rest of his forces were to deploy across the narrow strip of land between the river and a morass, and attack in front. The schooner Carolina was ordered to move down to a point opposite the British left, and enfilade the position; her first discharge to be the signal for the land attack. It was half-past seven o'clock when she opened the battle with a broadside that tore through the British camp and swept down a large number of men. The moon was young and obscured by clouds, so that there was almost absolute darkness, except when the flashes of the guns momentarily lighted up one or another part of the field. The two armies soon became intermingled, and, as one of the participants wrote, "no man could tell what was going forward in any quarter, except where he himself chanced immediately to stand; no one part of the line could bring assistance to another, because in truth no line existed." The fighting was mostly hand-to-hand; few of the Americans had bayonets, but many carried long knives, and the most ghastly wounds were given and received. Officers on either side would gather little companies of men and go out into the darkness to find the enemy; but when they had come in contact with an armed party like themselves, it was often impossible to say whether they were friends or foes.
After three hours of this bloody work, the Americans withdrew to works four miles from the city. They had lost twenty-four killed, one hundred and fifteen wounded, and seventy-four missing. General Keane's official report made the British loss forty-six killed, one hundred and sixty-seven wounded, and sixty-four missing. Lieutenant Gleig, in his "Narrative," says, "Not less than five hundred men had fallen, many of whom were our finest soldiers and best officers; and yet we could not but consider ourselves fortunate in escaping from the toils, even at the expense of so great a sacrifice." A journal found upon a British officer who was killed in the battle of January 8th, puts the loss in this action at "two hundred and twenty-four killed, and an immense number wounded."
Heavy reënforcements of British troops soon arrived, and with them Generals Sir Edward Pakenham and Samuel Gibbs. Pakenham, a brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, had won considerable distinction in the Peninsular War. He found the army before New Orleans in a pitiful plight. It was encamped on a strip of low and level land, on one side a broad river where it had no vessels, and on the other an almost impassable morass. In front were fortifications that were continually being strengthened, and of the enemy behind them almost nothing was known; while two armed vessels kept up day and night an enfilading fire. With all this, alternate rain and frost left them scarcely a comfortable hour.
Pakenham's first movement was to bring heavy guns and a furnace across the peninsula by night, and plant them on the levee; from which on the morning of the 27th he opened a fire with hot shot, and in half an hour had driven the Louisiana up stream and set the Carolina on fire, so that she was abandoned and blew up.
On the 28th he made a reconnoissance in force. As the left wing approached the American lines, a group of buildings which Jackson's men had filled with combustibles was fired by a hot shot from one of his guns, and amid the heat and smoke the British saw before them an impassable ditch, from behind which a few pieces of artillery, handled with the utmost skill, poured destruction through their ranks. The right wing found the left of Jackson's position weak, effected a lodgment within the lines, and might perhaps have changed the fortunes of the campaign, had not its leader been instructed that this was to be a reconnoissance, not a battle.
Pakenham now resolved upon regular siege operations, and brought thirty guns from the fleet, which in the night of the 31st he mounted within three hundred yards of the American lines. His troops were encamped in the midst of sugar plantations, and a considerable portion of his new ramparts was formed of hogsheads of sugar, set on end.
When day dawned, and the Americans saw thirty guns frowning down upon them from high bastions that had risen as if by magic in the darkness, the sight was rather appalling; but as soon as fire was opened upon these apparently formidable works, it was seen that the balls passed right through the hogsheads of sugar, and the whole fabric began to crumble away. There was also a vulnerable element in Jackson's works; for he had used cotton bales as his enemy used sugar, and though the cotton resisted the passage of a ball, it was easily set on fire, and the bales knocked out of position.
Commodore Patterson had erected a battery on the opposite bank of the Mississippi, to rake the ground held by the British, who at the same time had erected one on the levee to oppose it. For an hour these guns were all blazing at once; and when the firing ceased and the smoke rolled away, it was found that the British works had been completely ruined, and seventy of their men killed or wounded; the American works were not seriously damaged, but they had lost thirty-four men.
Jackson made haste to throw away his cotton bales, supply their place with earth, and construct a second line of works a mile and a half in the rear, and for a week nervously awaited the next move of the enemy. In that week he was joined by nearly three thousand Kentucky and Louisiana militia; but as they were in rags and had scarcely a firelock among them, they could hardly be considered a reënforcement. The British were reenforced by two regiments under General John Lambert.
Pakenham's final plan was to send a heavy force across the river to capture Patterson's batteries and turn them upon Jackson's lines, and at the same time push forward the remainder of his force to assault those lines in front, the advance guard to fill the ditch with fascines and plant scaling-ladders against the ramparts. Preparatory to this, it was necessary to dig a canal across the isthmus, to drag boats through from Lake Borgne to the Mississippi, and this occupied his troops nearly six days.
On Saturday, January 7th, Jackson stood upon the tallest building within his lines, and through a large spy-glass which a planter had mounted for him, saw the red-coats making fascines by binding up sheaves of sugar-cane, and constructing ladders. At the same time, Pakenham was surveying the American works from the top of a pine-tree.
The British general intended to make an attack on both sides of the river simultaneously, before daylight on the 8th. But there was great difficulty in navigating the canal, the sides of which had caved in; only enough boats were brought through to carry over five hundred troops, instead of fourteen hundred, and these were delayed several hours. A detachment under Colonel Thornton embarked in them, but were swept down by the current and reached the western shore far below the intended landing-place.
Meanwhile the sun had risen, the fog was rolling away, Pakenham was impatient, and before Thornton could get near his enemy he saw the signal rocket which announced the attack. The Americans understood the signal quite as well as he did, and were ready to meet the shock. One thirty-two pounder was loaded to the muzzle with musket-balls. A deserter had told the British commander that the weak spot in Jackson's line was the extreme left; true enough when he said it, but now that spot was strengthened by two thousand Tennessee and Kentucky riflemen. The heaviest attack was accordingly made at this point, a column of three thousand men, under General Gibbs, moving against it. They were to be preceded by an Irish regiment bearing the fascines and ladders. At the same time, a column of one thousand moved along the river road, under the cross-fire from Patterson's battery, to attack Jackson's right. These were to be preceded by a West India black regiment with the necessary fascines and ladders. Midway between stood nearly a thousand Highlanders, under General Keane, ready to support either column, as circumstances might require. The British had also a battery of six eighteen-pounders; and, drawn up behind all, a considerable reserve.
The battle was what Bunker Hill would have been if the Americans had had stronger works and plenty of ammunition. The beautiful British columns moved forward only to be mowed down. When the thirty-two pounder discharged its musket-balls, the head of one column melted away before it, two hundred men being disabled. Both the Irish and the Negro regiment failed in their duty, so that when the main columns arrived at the ditch they had no means of crossing, and the terrible blunder had to be remedied under a continuous and withering fire. The ranks were badly broken. Pakenham, trying to re-form them, was killed, falling into the arms of Captain McDougall, the same officer who had caught General Ross when he fell at North Point. General Gibbs was wounded mortally; General Keane seriously. Colonel Dale fell at the head of the Highland regiment, which was almost entirely destroyed. It went into the fight with over nine hundred men, and came out with one hundred and forty. A major and a lieutenant, with twenty men, crossed the ditch before the American left, and the two officers mounted the breastwork. The major was instantly riddled with bullets; the lieutenant demanded the swords of two officers who confronted him, and was told to look behind him. He turned, and saw, as he expressed it, that the men he supposed to be following "had vanished as if the earth had opened and swallowed them up."
On the American right, the British carried a small outwork; but the guns of the main line were turned upon it and cleared it. Of this column, only three men—a colonel, a major, and a captain—reached the breastwork, and as they mounted they were all shot and tumbled into the ditch together.
The action lasted but twenty-five minutes. Seven hundred of the British were killed, fourteen hundred wounded, and five hundred prisoners. The Americans lost four killed and thirteen wounded; in the entire campaign, three hundred and thirty-three.
The force under Thornton, on the western bank of the river, carried the American works, where but brief resistance was made, and were pursuing the retreating militia, when news of the disaster on the other bank was brought to Thornton, together with an order to return. He had lost a hundred men, killed or wounded, and inflicted a loss of but six.
The 9th was spent, under an armistice, in burying the dead and caring for the wounded. General Lambert then determined to withdraw to the shipping and abandon the enterprise, but was ten days about it, during which time his troops were annoyed by incessant cannonading by day and "hunting parties" by night. The British fleet had entered the Mississippi at its mouth, and from the 10th to the 17th bombarded Fort St. Philip, seventy-five miles below New Orleans, but effected nothing, and on the 18th withdrew.